AutoShop Ministries Episode 3 - From Technician to CEO: Pace, Purpose, and Long-Term Success

0:01Joe Adams with Adams Automotive, the number one shop in America. This is Master Tech to Millionaire presented by Auto Shop Answers, where we talk about the transition from technician to business owner and CEO. We're here with Auto Shop Ministries chaplain once again, uh, Devonte Tidwell. How you doing, Devonte? Man, I'm doing great. It's good to see you again this week, man. How are you?

0:21That's, that's the better question. How are you doing, man? Dude, I'm in the air conditioning right now, so I can't complain. But, uh, it's time to get— we got to get back in the trenches. But, uh, man, yes, we're going to talk, I think, about endurance today, are we not? So let's, let's get right into it. Absolutely, man. So I want to talk about the idea that has actually been sweeping through a lot of business owners, a lot of leaders in general, that you have to move fast to be effective.

0:47And I get it to an extent. There are some things that you need to be able to move expediently on, right? You have to be able to say, I got to be expeditious with this idea. Or, you know, I've heard this quote where it's, hey, the opportunity of a lifetime has to be seized in the lifetime of that opportunity. Right? You only have a window of time for certain things.

1:05I understand that. However, the cool thing about kingdom culture and kingdom leadership is sometimes it does contradict what society says we should do. So I want to talk about running your race, but how we're supposed to run our race is important. So Hebrews chapter 12, verses 1 through 3, there's a passage of scripture I want to read. So just stick with me.

1:23It says this, therefore, since we have also such a great cloud of witnesses, Let us rid ourselves of every obstacle and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with— watch this— endurance the race that is set before us, looking only at Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

1:54For consider him who has endured— again, 3 times in 3 verses— endured such hostility by sinners against himself, so that you not grow weary and lose heart. We love speed, Joe. Like, I mean, we love speed. F1 is massive. NASCAR is massive. Like, we love speed. But not once in this passage do we hear the word speed, yet 3 times in this passage do we hear the word endure.

2:20That kind of messes people up. That's not to— you know, when people hear this, especially when we're talking about it in a business setting or in a leadership setting, It kind of messes people up because they're thinking, man, I got to be fast. I got to be, you know, quick. I got to be agile. I got to be all these things that surround the idea of moving quickly.

2:37But, you know, society wants everything fast, but not necessarily God, right? God doesn't want everything to move quickly all the time. He sits outside of the context of time. He's not constrained by time. So like, even if we're in the kitchen using the microwave, sometimes the minute on the microwave feels like it's taking forever. Like, we're just so impatient, you know what I mean?

2:58I'm like, bro, I want this pepperoni hot pocket right now. Like, why is it a minute and 30 seconds? You know, anything beyond 30 seconds feels ridiculous. But we don't use the Crock-Pot all the time. So like, I grew up in an era where, you know, when we were going to church as a kid, my mom would put the Crock-Pot on the night before for the pot roast.

3:18Like, and the pot roast would be in there simmering low and slow. You know, you got all of the good stuff in there. You got all the ingredients and the seasonings, and they're just sitting down in there. They put the Crock-Pot on at 7 PM the night before. And she didn't turn it off when we went to sleep. She didn't even turn it off when we got up and got dressed to go to church.

3:36She turned the Crock-Pot off when we got home from church. So this roast has now been sitting in there for 14 hours, 15 hours, 16 hours, 20 hours. And what I learned about the Crock-Pot food, if you know anything about a roast, a pot roast, is once it's done, it just falls apart. Yeah. But when you put it on a plate, you better blow it for a long time because when you take it out of the Crock-Pot, it stays hot for a very long time.

4:04It's like in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but it's slow. It takes time. It takes endurance. And yes, it's a longer process. But the, the process produces a better result longer. You know, everything is right now. Everything is right away. Every— even the trends in fashion are called fast fashion because they don't last long. It's, you're here now, come get it, come buy it.

4:27And then when somebody else does something different, we're going to change it. Technology is obsessed with how can we get faster? What can we promote? Well, there's not much left that we can promote. So we're going to put a better camera and a faster processor in your new cell phone. It's the same phone as the last 5, but this was faster. No one promotes a new piece of technology and says, man, this one is slower than anyone we've ever released.

4:48Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, it endures. Yeah. Nobody says that. You know, as a matter of fact, remember with iPhones, like when they first came out, the problem was if you dropped them, it basically was cooked. Like your Phone screen was done. There was options. There were tempered glass available, but it was like, well, we don't want to put that on there.

5:06We want you to have to buy a new phone or buy a new screen, you know. So endure is a verb, Joe. You know, verb is the thing that gives noun something to do. And endurance is one of those things that isn't the cool thing, the pretty thing, but it's the necessary one. You know, we, we speed through life, but I don't know if you— maybe, maybe Joe, maybe Joe, not necessarily me, you know, I'm just playing.

5:32But I would rather be able to do good for 40 years than to be elite and fast for 40 minutes. Yeah, it just is. If good is just here, if good is the standard, it says, hey man, I'm gonna give my absolute best and my best falls at good, but I can be good for 40 years, I'm satisfied. Versus, man, I gave it my all and I was elite, but I could only sustain being elite for 40 minutes and then I had to crash because I gave it all I had.

5:57Does that make sense? Um, I want people to really understand that we are called to do this with endurance. We need to build with tomorrow in mind. We need to build with 10 years from now in mind, with our children in mind. We need to build with the next service advisor in mind, the next tech in mind, the next CEO, the next CFO, COO in mind.

6:21Not just chase hard after right now, because right now only lasts for a second. And then it's the next one. Does that make sense? Yeah, that totally makes sense. You know, I think we talk about in our business a lot how good speed is, and it is good to move fast on a kind of day-to-day basis. But I think what you're talking about is more of a lifetime basis.

6:43Like, you know, you just can't come to our training in 2 days and expect to like speak the language. We talk about speaking the language, and it's like, man, you know, You can't go to a 2-day boot camp in Spain and learn Spanish. It doesn't work like that. But if you were on Duolingo for 5 minutes a day for 5 years, like, like you can't go to work out for 8 hours straight for a weekend and then have a 6-pack and expect to be in shape.

7:10It's like, but if you do, you know, 10, 15 minutes a day and get your steps in for 2 years, um, then you see the results. I think you see the results. Uh, it's like Warren Buffett, you know, like he's like 100 years old. He's like, yeah, He's not a guy who's trying to day trade his way to get rich super quick.

7:28It's like, it just doesn't work that way. Being diligent and having endurance. Is that kind of what you're getting at? Yeah, absolutely. That's exactly it. You know, you take the same thing on, you work out and the results are lasting. The cool thing about it is most of the things that we get into in life, you don't get in overnight and you don't get out overnight.

7:45Everything takes time. So, you know, we, a lot of people chase money and they chase the finances and they chase the wealth and gaining wealth is not a bad thing. It's a good thing we have the ability to do so. But the one thing you can never gain more of is time. So you have to use it wisely. You have to build with endurance.

8:02You have to be able to last. Like, you know, what good is it if we gain all these things and it only lasts this long? It's like, man, you made it to the mountaintop, but that's it. Cool, you saw it. But like, you were there. I mean, I guess that was a cool 32 seconds, you know. I guess that was a cool 25 minutes.

8:20I guess that was a cool 1 year. You know, but I wanna be able to look back and say, man, it was because of the small decisions to Warren Buffett's being alive at 100 years old and being like, man, like, look at what we were able to build and this cool story and this problem we had to find and this problem we had to solve.

8:35You know, you know, speaking of working out, I'll get into it. I'll nerd out a little bit here because if you don't know and you're listening, Joe and I both love sports, you know. So, you know, I like to talk about different sports because I think that God uses sports and I think that God uses our biology to kind of give us clues about how he's wired us.

8:52So I think this is going to blow your mind. Are you ready, Joe? Oh, I'm ready. Okay, so I don't know if you know this, right? But humans are actually one of the worst athletes on the planet out of all the animals, right? Water or land, worst animals on the planet for speed as far as athletes. I think I know where you're going with this.

9:14This is, you know what I mean? Fire. Yeah, okay, keep going. So Usain Bolt, right? We know who Usain Bolt is. Olympic medal, like holds the record for Olympic gold medals in track and was the fastest man alive at one point. Olympic sprinter, was like 6'5. He was a freak anomaly from Jamaica. 100, 200, you know, 4x100, didn't matter. Like, he was just an insane athlete.

9:36His top speed was 27 miles an hour. That is freakishly fast. Like, it's crazy. 4.1-something 40 for those of y'all that watch the combine. To the rest of the animal kingdom though, like, think about this. A giraffe weighs 2,600 pounds, bro, and his— and a giraffe's top speed is 37 miles an hour. That's crazy. God, that's what you're getting smoked, Usain. Getting crushed by a giraffe, bro.

10:04Like, and giraffes are awkward. They got big kneecaps. Like, they're just like— they got purple tongues. Yeah, long necks. Like, they're just awkward, and they are 10 miles an hour faster than Usain Bolt. That's crazy. I'll give you one even crazier. A hippopotamus is 9,000 pounds, Joe, and it can run 19 miles an hour. So it's keeping up with Usain Bolt at a certain point.

10:27Faster than me for sure. Faster than your average shop owner, right? Exactly. So think about it on the opposite extreme though. We are superior athletes for endurance. Oh yeah. There is a, there is a competition called Man vs. Horse Marathon in Wales, and they literally put humans versus, versus horses, and humans consistently outrun them over 22 miles. I, I, I, yes, I think I know where you're going with this, and I've read studies like that was our superpower, you know, when we were hunting and gathering, is we have skin that can like sweat and, uh, exactly, and regulate our heat.

11:09And so You know, like a jackrabbit obviously is like way shiftier and faster. But what I, from what I read, it's like we would literally just chase animals down and never give up. And eventually they would just get tired like a deer or something, you know? So we can't, yeah, we're not as fast, but it's like the endurance is what gets you.

11:28That's what wins the race, you know? Slow and steady. Slow and steady. It's the tortoise versus the hare. So what I think of is, you know, sometimes if we reverse engineer that, if we look at the way that God wired us, He's given us clues for how we're supposed to live. It's like, you are not supposed to live a fast life. You are not supposed to live one that, that moves completely— like, again, it's like running on a treadmill at level 10.

11:51Like, if you do that for a long time, now your heart's gonna explode and you're gonna pass out and you're gonna have like, you know, crazy treadmill burn on the side of your head. Like, you're just gonna be passed out. But if we put that treadmill at 2 miles an hour, people can run for hours. Yeah, like you can literally train. We have people who do 100 miles, you know, through mountains and forests and change shoes and take a little electrolytes and keep going and climb.

12:20We have triathletes that, that'll swim and run and bike. And it's like, well, if we are superior there, where have we gotten away from that? The way that we're wired, the way that we're supposed to do things, the way that we hunted and we gathered. To get into a space now where we are living life quickly, where we're trying to make results happen quickly, where we're not satisfied with, hey, this is going to take some time to train and develop that individual.

12:42Hey, this is gonna take some time on that handoff or that acquisition. Hey, this is gonna take some time when we're trying to scale, or we're trying to expand or open another location. Those things take time, and time is not a bad thing. It's actually the most valuable one. And the way that you manage your time well is by building something that has endurance and making sure that you have the endurance to outlast the trend, the fast fashion, if you will, right?

13:10The tempo of everybody else in society. But I think what drives people this way, Joe, is they don't want to run with endurance because there's fear. There's fear that if I don't move fast enough, I'm going to miss out. And most people are afraid of being irrelevant. So they don't build things with endurance. They build things to be relevant right now. And then you have this whole thing where it's like, man, they were an overnight success.

13:34And it's like, no, they weren't an overnight success. They were doing this every single day when nobody watched them for 10 years. You know, they were doing this every single day when it was boring. You know, you and I were just talking recently because you're a friend of mine about golf. And it's like, it's doing the slow motion things every single day consistently versus trying to get out there and, and, man, how fast can I get to bombing 300 yards?

13:57Or, you know, with a driver, it's like, nope, can I take a 7-iron and make sure everything is right? Let's go slow, let's stop. You know, some of your favorite golfers— Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy— they still— let me pause at the top, let me see, let me check, let me come down slowly, let me make sure my hips are right, and pause at the top, let me go all the way back, let me hold it here, let me turn my wrist over.

14:18It's those things that make them great. So it looks like, man, like, bro, Tiger's just so elite. And it's like, yes, he is. But he's also been playing consistently since he was 2 for hours on hours on hours. I saw somewhere that like a routine of his looked more like 6 days a week, you know, 2 hours a day. Tiger is like, that's before his workouts.

14:39That's before his like physical training. That's just, that's just mechanics. He says, I make 1,000 contacts per day, Joe. Yeah, that's crazy. Like, I'm gonna putt 300 times. He said on tour. That's on tour. It's like, yeah, I'm gonna putt 300 times, I'm gonna drive 300 times, and I'm gonna do, you know, some intermediate to short range work and chip and like everything else with the other 400 every 7 days a week.

15:06It's like, but he's built to last. It's— that's what— that's how you have a dominant run. That's how you show up overnight. It's because you have said, I'm gonna run my race Whatever my race is, not somebody else's. I'm gonna be the best service advisor I can be, but I'm gonna build this in a way that I can keep being the best service advisor 2 years from now, 3 years from now.

15:27Yeah, the business analogy or connector there for us is gonna be, you know, Todd's favorite phrase is scale to fail, you know, like, and so everybody in our industry, once you start to have a successful shop, I've seen it so many times, and I try to warn people against this, is it's like the phrase, You gotta nail it before you scale it, you know?

15:51So they'll, everybody likes to talk about how many stores they have. They're like, but they don't talk about profit or they don't talk about, you know, like revenue or like anything like that. They'll be like, oh yeah, I'm, because there's kind of like maybe, and if you're listening to this, please don't get mad at me or if I'm not talking to you, you know, specifically, but sometimes I think there's people who maybe have like a little bit of an insecurity.

16:13Like, cause it's, cause when you talk to people, they're like, what do you do for work? And it's like, I'm a mechanic. You know, I think some people don't feel the pride in that like I think they should. And, you know, I even felt this early in my career. It's like, oh, I work at a shop. But then like a couple years go by, we had multi-unit, and it's like, oh, we have a chain of shops.

16:32And so it's like a status thing, and a lot of people are chasing that, and they'll be like, oh, I have 11 stores. And if you have 11 stores, you're probably doing pretty good. But like a lot of people, like they just try to grow really fast to kind of present that they have this like big company. And it's like, okay, but what's your revenue?

16:50Like, what's your profitability? Like, are your technicians making money? How are you gonna grow? You know, all that. And so we call it scale to fail. And so Todd's whole philosophy is at the beginning, he was like, I wanna do one spectacular business, one store per year for free, for like, we did it for like 4 years, you know? And then once we've got it all built, then we can, you know, go, basically we had to go slow at first so that we could go fast later.

17:15And somebody who famously did this is Sam Walton. I don't know if you ever heard of him, Walmart. Yeah, yeah, no, small up-and-coming guy. Yeah, yeah, up-and-coming guy. I don't know the exact numbers. I'm totally gonna botch this, but it was something like, it was something like for 17 years he only had like a store or a handful of stores. And then he launched Walmart and then he, like in the next 5-year window, he went to like 30 stores.

17:40Like he like, and then 10 years later he had like hundreds of stores. And so it's like, you might look at them and be like, oh, overnight success, how do I scale to 100 stores? It's like, you're not gonna like the answer, is crush it in one market for 20 years and figure everything out that you can, and then launch Walmart, and then now you've scaled.

18:01It's like, it just doesn't, it's not a freaking, let me, I'll hand it back off to you, but one of my favorite verses in Proverbs, you know I love my Proverbs, is Proverbs 13:11. Yep. It said— this is a New Living Translation— says, wealth from get-rich-quick schemes quickly disappears. Wealth from hard work grows over time. And I totally buy that. It's like, it is— you don't get in shape over a weekend.

18:26You get in shape over 5 years by making it who you are from hard work that grows over time. So that's exactly right. It's so true. And you don't— you know what else, Joe, is you don't lose what you've gained after working out for 5 years. Overnight either, right? So that's a good point. It's like, I, I got the six-pack, I'm not gonna lose it because I went on vacation, you know what I mean?

18:46Like, I got the six-pack now over 5 years, over 3 years. I'm not gonna like go on vacation and finally eat tacos instead of chicken and rice, you know, for— yeah, you know what I mean? Now that I've dialed in my diet, like, I'm not gonna lose the abs and the muscle and the strength. And like, this is what I worked for.

19:02And, and then when I get back and I'm consistent again, like, I don't lose it. That's the key. That's what this proverb is saying. You know, there's a, there's a saying, again, I've talked about this on previous episodes that, you know, I come from a military family. So I have a lot of like tactical military mantras and stuff that I've always been taught and obsessed with.

19:18You know, it's funny how like both of us have dads that have given us different, you know, advice from different perspectives. My, my dad, you know, was again in the US Navy, but there's a tactical phrase that the military uses. They say slow is smooth, and smooth is fast, right? Because again, it teaches you to focus on being precise. I would rather you, you move slowly to be precise so that we don't make mistakes than to move fast, be sloppy, and then now we got to go back and unravel.

19:49Because now that is fast because we don't have to backtrack. We don't have to go cover up things. We don't have to go fix things. We don't have to go undo, you know, um, damage that was done. We know that when we do it, it was done the right way. So now we can move on to the next thing versus if I go fast and I get that objective done, but I skipped all of these steps, and this was an issue, and that was an issue, and this was damaged, and this was ugly, and this was not right, and this wasn't presented well.

20:16Well, now guess what? Now I got to spend more time instead of moving on to the next objective, going back to clean up the details between where we started and where we ended on this last one. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. You know, it's so special, I think, and scripture backs this up. You know, I want to read out of Galatians because there's a, there's a A verse that says, let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we don't give up.

20:43That's Galatians 6:9. That's all timing. Let us not get tired of doing good, for at the proper time— it doesn't say immediately, it doesn't say if you do it quickly, it says at the proper time you will reap a harvest. You will receive the gain, you will receive the reward. It will be ROI positive. If we don't give up. You can't give up in the 5 years when you're trying to get the abs.

21:09You're like, man, I don't got a 6-pack yet, man. Like, well, my guy, like, you had 300 pounds to lose. Like, it's not— yeah, it's gonna take some time. That's not a shame. That's not a knock. It's just going to take time. But if you're building and running this race with endurance, you can guarantee that you're gonna get to wherever that proper time is that's mentioned in Galatians.

21:28If that proper time is 5 years from now and you don't give up, I can, I can promise you listening, you're gonna get there. If it's 10 years from now, if you move slowly enough, if you do this with endurance, whoever's listening, I can promise you whatever that proper time is, you're gonna get there. You just have to be consistent and do this at a pace that you can sustain.

21:47I don't think people talk about pace enough. You know, we want to go speed, but I think we have to say, hey, let's pace this. We have to have a pacer when we're talking about a marathon like we talked about. There are pacers when the people are training, they're wearing like bright orange highlighters. And, you know, jerseys that are running on top to let you know, hey, this is where you need to be to stay at this amount of time, or hey, we need to slow down so that you don't burn out.

22:11You need something to control your pace so that you can cross the finish line. Wherever that finish line is, is it 10K from now? Is it 20K from now? Is it 2 stores from now? Is it 5 years from now? Is it 100 employees from now? Wherever that is, is it a certain revenue? Maybe there's a, there's a, there's a certain, you know, profit margin you're trying to hit.

22:32It's going to take time. But if you don't build for endurance and you build for speed, Joe, I can promise you that you may not make it there because you'll burn out before you get to wherever that proper time is. Yeah, I mean, it's— Todd says it like this, he's like, you gotta bury your head in the sand for 5, for 5 years.

22:50That's, it's his, that's, it's like bury your head in the sand, like ignore everything else and focus on your career for 5 years. Obviously, you know, you want to take care of yourself and like take care of your family, but he's like, man, if you just learn this, yeah, it's like the, the security of knowing like, man, I've got this. It's like it takes 10,000 hours though.

23:08Yeah, you know, it takes, it takes some mastering time, but once you master it, you know, in, in our, in our career, in our business, like you got it for life, you know, you know it. You can't unsee it is what he says. And so, you know, something I wanna touch on is, you know, I think there's, I think I've heard somewhere that 30% of entrepreneurs have ADHD or something, or maybe it's like 70% or something.

23:33I certainly fall into that category. And one of the side effects of that is I like to call it shiny penny syndrome, which basically means like, You know, you're an entrepreneur, you have all these ideas that are gonna change the business, and they're gonna be the silver bullet, or they're gonna like, you know, it's like a, it's basically a penny. You're chasing the penny, you're stepping over the dollars to chase the penny.

23:57And I never wanna like discourage people's ambition when they have certain ideas, or certain like new angles at how to solve a problem, but everybody in training in our business, they kinda want the silver bullet, the new software, the new script that's gonna like, work better and help us grow the business. But whenever we get off track, Todd always says the same thing.

24:21He's like, it's the basics. Like, it is literally the basics. And just only do that for 5 years, you know, for, for whatever the timeline is, right? With endurance, kind of like you're saying. And we always paint the picture of like the weight room. Yeah, I know we talk about sports a lot. It's like, yeah, how do you actually get in shape?

24:40Like, there's 10,000 marketing campaigns for like yoga and Pilates and like all these extra things, but it's like, you go to the gym, you sleep, you eat good food, you don't drink alcohol, and pretty much do that for like 5 years and walk 10,000 steps. There's no silver bullet. It's like, let's just get back to the basics here, you know? And we think about that in the business the same way.

25:06It's like, just stay focused, hit the, you know, slow is smooth. I love that. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast, and just execute over and over and over again. And that's that's how you, uh, that's how you run the race with endurance. So I think that's really great. Yeah, absolutely. I, I agree. And I think, you know, to me, maybe we take it out of sports for people who are like, man, you guys talk about sports, I don't know anything about it.

25:26Let me make it a little bit more practical. You know, a third of all vehicular injuries or fatalities are because of high speed? Oh, I buy that 100%. Yeah. And at 70 miles an hour or higher It is a 100% fatality rate. Like if there's an accident at 70— really? Is it 100%? 100%, bro. Which is crazy. That's, that's wild. So if a large chunk of all deaths that happen in a vehicle are not, you know, oh well, somebody got hit on a bike or somebody was walking on foot, it's, it's, it's high-speed situations.

26:07It's telling us something because I don't think there are a lot of deaths that happen because of slow speed. Like, nobody is saying, like, man, I was driving in a school zone and I hit somebody else in a school zone in their car. And like, man, like, I can't walk anymore. It's like, no, like, do we call those fender benders? Or like, man, now we traded paint, or, you know, you scraped the side of my car, or— because you can recover a lot easier when you're moving slowly and moving within your— moving for endurance too.

26:34And the recovery side of all of this is important too, Joe. Because it's not a matter of if you make a mistake, it's when. But if you're building for endurance and you're doing things consistently at a pace that you can sustain, you also have enough time to go back and correct. You also have enough time to stop and say, hey y'all, I missed it.

26:51I just want to apologize to our team. Like, man, I made that call on that initiative. Like, that was not a great idea. I just want y'all to hear it from me. And they're like, wow, like, I'm glad that we were moving slow enough where everybody could sit down and even hear an apology. But if you're moving fast, like, hey y'all, we missed that.

27:04That was, you know, we're just gonna keep moving, but we got to cut everybody's pay. We got to da da da, you know what I mean? Like, you're now you don't have the equity. But again, when you build things for endurance, you have to do it at a pace that's sustainable. So let that encourage people out there. I don't want to just challenge them, you know, because— and I'll give you a practical challenge, but I want to also encourage people because, you know, when, when we talk about in Hebrews where it says let us throw off every obstacle and sin, everything that's hindering us is not necessarily bad.

27:32It still could be a weight though. Like, it can be Things that you've committed to. It could be a speed you've committed to. It could be an insecurity you have. It could be a fear that you've bought into. You got to throw all of that off so you can move at a sustainable pace and you can do this for a long time, not just a good time.

27:48So I want to give them a practical challenge this week if that's cool, right? Yeah. Number one is slow down first. I talk almost every week when we're doing these about going to get a journal. Please go get a journal and write these things down. So that you can go back and look at your progress. I want you to be able to celebrate you.

28:05So slow down and write this question. Am I doing right now something that is good for today? Or will it still be good 8 years from now? When you put things through the lens of that perspective, it actually makes you say, man, what really matters? Like, yeah, am I Okay, it was good for me for this opportunity to say, hey, I'm gonna have my wife go pick up the kids, I'll get to them later.

28:36Okay, sure. Like, you were able to have that meeting, but you got to the end of that meeting and then you realized that the meeting didn't even materialize the way that you wanted it to, and you still didn't land the contract, and now you canceled on your kids for something that you didn't even reap the benefit of. But what you can say is, all right, Will going to the park with my kids let us have a better time 8 years from now?

29:00Will we be more connected when it's time to talk about relationships? When it's time for me to start teaching them the business because they're 16 now, when they're 24 later, you know, when it's time for me to start, will we have the equity because I'm building for the future to be able to sit down and say, you know, like the relationship that you have with your dad Joe is so admirable of like how many moments and conversations and stuff you get to be able to recall and replay.

29:24It's like, because he was making decisions to say, man, like, when it's time, you know, I want to be able to have the equity to say, hey, I can teach you these things. And some of it I don't have to teach you because you're my son. We've invested that time when you were a kid, even when you didn't even realize it. Even though those sayings that you felt were like quirky at the time are now like your North Star for how you treat people and how you do business, you know what I mean?

29:46So, right. I want people to write, am I doing something that's just good for today? Or will it still be good 8 years from today? And run everything you can think of through that filter. Run the way that you operate, the way that you talk to people, the amount of meetings you have in a day. Look at your calendar and ask, is my calendar stacked like this good for today?

30:09Or will I be— will I need antidepressants in 8 years? Or will I need— you know what I mean? Like, you have to ask yourself that through those questions. So let that be a challenge for people It's like an investment, you know? We talk about that to our team, like buying, you know, if you're buying a stock, it's like, who cares what is in the news today?

30:30It's like, would you hold it? Would you wanna hold it for 8 years? You know, do you wanna hold this stock? It's like, for 8 years, is the work I'm doing in the business today gonna be a good investment 8 years from now? And I think you can apply it to your family, your whole life. So man, that's great stuff. I think we're up on time here.

30:48Devonte, as always, you're the man. Do you want to pray us out as we go into this week? Absolutely. Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for everybody listening this week. God, I thank you that they are going to build with the end in mind, with the future in mind, 8 years from now, but ultimately eternity, Father, because we know that you are the one that's gifted us with all of these things and all of these resources, relationships, and business and access.

31:12So Father, I pray that you would be pleased so that we would build with eternity in mind as well. Help them today be closer to you, closer to each other. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, happy Sunday everyone. Uh, let's go into the week. Uh, let's do— let's run the race with endurance. We'll end with this verse, uh, number 6. May the Lord bless you and keep you.

31:31May the Lord make his face shine, shine upon you and be gracious to you. And may the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace. Let's make it a great week. For more information, reach out to Todd Westerland at 925-980-8010. To, or visit autoshopanswers.com. You can get more information about Key to Key to Callbacks, uh, Courtside. We have a VIP Rack Attack Day where you spend an entire day in the trenches with our team learning this perfected business model.

31:59Uh, we offer leadership classes, we have an AI Academy, and also get more information about Auto Shop Callbacks. Uh, we have auto tech training. We are literally your one-stop shop. Once again, that number for Todd Westerland is 925-980-8012.