Curing Organizational Drag: The Courage to Fire a Non-Fit Employee [RR 1100]

0:01This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. What's up everyone. Welcome back to Episodic Education. It's Carm Capriato here in the virtual studio with you. Got a great topic today, firing a non-fit employee. Now, if you're listening to this, all of a sudden your memories are coming back to you and you're saying, oh my God, did this been there? We, we need to hear someone talk about it.

0:28Maybe I need to do something tomorrow. Maybe I've been contemplating it. It's going to be a great discussion with Matt Lockowitz here in a minute, but we appreciate you being here. Thank you. So grateful for all of our great sponsors here on the podcast. Are you looking to take your shop to the next level? With NAPA Autocare, you can deliver unbeatable customer confidence through the Peace of Mind Warranty.

0:50Learn how to upgrade your service and grow your business. Connect with your local NAPA rep today. Hey, for over 30 years, NAPA TRACS has made selecting the right shop management system easy by offering the best, most comprehensive SMS in the industry. We'll prove to you that TRACS is the single best shop management system in the business. Find NAPA TRACS on the web at napatracs.com.

1:18So yeah, we've been doing this 11 years. Remarkable Results Radio. Well, big part of the Automotive Repair Podcast Network, and we have a great app. I want you to get this thing. Absolutely. arpn.app. Get it downloaded. You're gonna have a blast with it. All the shows we produce every week are there. All the show notes. You can create your own playlist. Oh, I love this one.

1:41This is on leadership. I love this one on, on firing people and hiring people. You can keep 'em and you can share your episodes with friends. It is a blast. That's all I use to listen to our own shows because it's great because I listen to all the shows in the ARP Network. Can I introduce you to a friend of mine, Matt Lockawitzer?

2:03Hey, Matt. Hey, good to see you. Well, we're gonna talk about firing and non-fit employees. With 11 stores now, you've probably done your fair share of that, or if not, your HR person has. More likely to be the HR now, but, uh, yes, I have. All right, let me tell you a little bit about Matt. He's been on the show before, but not for a while.

2:23Owner and founder of Matt's Automotive Center. I just found out as of last Friday, 11 shops. I was going to introduce him and say 10. Fargo-Moorhead, North Dakota, and the Twin Cities out there, Minneapolis, Minnesota. 2009, 2-bay garage. It sounds like a great story. We all— everybody started In, in a situation like that. Matt won Entrepreneur of the Year in 2015 through the Fargo-Moorhead-West Fargo Chamber of Commerce, and Ratchet and Wrench named him top shop in the country in 2021.

2:56Good for you. So here's the deal, everyone. Matt reached out to me. I can't remember where it was, Matt. I found this thing. It says, uh, let's talk about this. I'm willing to talk about this. Come on the show. Because you've probably done this a few times and you realize you have built such an incredible core value and culture system in your business.

3:19And whenever you introduce a new spice to the sauce, sometimes in your reaching out to try something new, it doesn't taste good. There's a food analogy for you. So can you define what doesn't fit? I think the biggest thing is when we look at a team member, they have to be the right person for the right seat. We don't hire just based on, can they fix a car or can they do this?

3:46They actually have to be a cultures and values fit in our company, and they have to get, want, and have the capacity for what they're doing. And that's every seat in our company. We don't look at bodies, we don't look at job descriptions. It is, what does this seat require? You know, people say he fogged the mirror, she fogged the mirror, let's bring them in.

4:04I mean, that is a bad example of where toxicity can come from now, but you look at that individual from maybe a DiSC assessment, maybe a StrengthsFinder, some kind of, and I don't want to say the word test, but some kind of rationalization where you can find out a little bit more in depth about that person and say, you know, in the discussion that I had, I didn't quite like where some of their diag techniques were, but we can teach that.

4:31But I loved the person. Yep. I'm hiring for potential, not for skill a lot of times. So we're looking at, do they have all the attributes of a great employee and can we train them on what they're not as strong at? So if the person that we're looking to possibly terminate and you're sensing and feeling they don't live in the value set, it's not hard.

4:56You have a wonderful set of values. I love your values. Maybe we'll cover 'em a little later. But when they fail in those particular regards, it doesn't make it difficult to make that decision, does it? Well, yes and no. So, I mean, obviously if they're failing in the values, we have to look at ourselves first as a business. You know, did we fail them?

5:15Because I think that that's where a lot of places forget is, you know, we have a part to play in an employee failing. You know, we obviously hired them for a reason, but did we get them on board with our values and show them how we live them every day and what we do? That is such a great point. I love that point.

5:35Look inside first. And if we failed to describe— here's one of your values: be passionate in every moment. And if we fail to describe what that is or catch that individual not living that and then redirecting them, then you could kind of put a little bit of the blame on you, even though this person may have to go. You'd say, why did we have to do this?

6:00And I think every one of the values, the way we do that, we start with the why the value exists. So that, 'cause I think, you know, we can talk like, this is our value, this is what it means, but why does it mean this? Why does it exist? And when an employee knows the why, it's a lot easier for them to act on the how.

6:20When you've hired people that fit the mold, Do you set up a career path and a requirement for education, Matt? Yes. Every team member has a path that they can either advance or what's required of them for their role or their seat. Give me an idea. So technicians have to do a minimum of 4 hours of training a month. They have to have ASC certification within 12 months of working for us.

6:46You know, we have minimal acceptable standards for every position in our company. And we're very clear about what we expect and why we expect it. Our advisors, you know, they have to attend X amount of training as well. You know, we measure guest satisfaction higher than we measure our metrics of sales. And where are you getting that from? Reviews or personal discussion?

7:11We have a BDR center, so we actually have people that call every single customer. We have a whole system that we've built out. And we are not just measuring 5-star Google reviews, but we're measuring how are people coming back, you know, what are they saying on the callbacks, and are people getting mentioned by name. Like, all these components are, are part of how we measure guest satisfaction.

7:35Help me with the acronym BDR. Business development rep. Rep. Got it. I figured it was business development, but I couldn't figure out the R. I love that. So you have a separate team or individual that, that's what they do 8 hours a day? Yep. We have 2 people that we kind of have them split in half. So half of them take care of our 5 Fargo-Moorhead stores, and then one takes care of our now 6 Minneapolis locations.

8:04So they're in touch with the client before they even started this role. They were taught as service advisors, so they know exactly what the service advisor goes through from start to finish. And before they make a call, they study the repair order, what was done, you know, what was declined, what was approved. So they know intimately what happened with that experience. And then that's when they start the process, you know, like, how did your visit go?

8:31You know, were you greeted? All the components that we ask of a customer. We just don't do enough of that in our industry, Matt. It's tough. It takes a lot of bandwidth. You know, I think about an advisor in a busy shop. It's hard for them to build, make those callbacks. But callbacks, to me, the key to generating business and not having to spend a ton of money on accruing new customers.

8:53Well, you've got a big enough shop where obviously, number one, you could afford it. You've got the people bandwidth to do that. How does a smaller shop, 1 or 2 stores, do something like that? You gotta make time for it. I know when I'm coaching, you know, my coaching clients, I'm talking to 'em about doing callbacks, you know, What we found is a 29-day cadence.

9:15So we go back 29 days and every car that was in 29 days ago, those are the people we call. So when you're a small shop, I mean, it might only be 7 or 8 phone calls, it might be 12 phone calls. You can find time to make 12 phone calls in a day if you start to eliminate some of the distraction that we allow ourselves to have happen.

9:35I know we're off the beaten path, but I just, love to go down rabbit holes. That's just how I am. So let's talk about this for another moment or two. How willing are the people willing to pick up the phone and talk? I mean, you're bothering me. Is this a spam call? How's that work? Because of the way we've trained them, they're calling to check in.

9:58We're not calling to sell them something. We're not, you know, and we're very clear about why we're calling. So I think that's the biggest thing. Obviously, if it's a good experience and they have declining services, we train them to bring it up, but we're not trying to shove stuff down their throat. We're not trying to be a robocall. It's a very personalized call.

10:18And some of the reason it's personalized is because we do a very good job collecting information at write-up. We know stuff about the customer, we know stuff about their car, why they use it, and we tie that stuff into these phone calls. I think I've talked about Ford on this podcast before, but Understanding their, our customers' Ford is such a huge component of this.

10:38John DeJulius, family, occupation, recreation, dreams. Oh God, Ford is fabulous. Okay. So as I'm listening to you, and again, I'm sorry, I'm going down this rabbit hole because I love it. And I think this is a little gem coming out of this episode. I think of the word advocate. And I love to call the people on our counters client advocates, but if you're on the phone and you're feeling like an advocate and you wanna find out, hey, how did we do?

11:09Sally was working with you. We had our specialist Bob work on the vehicle. I know we had some challenges. How's the car running today? Is that the kind of thing that we're looking for? Yep. And good acronym. Our managers are called guest experience managers and our managers, our advisors are called guest advocates. So. Same terminology, but yes, we're calling to check in.

11:32You had some repairs done, you had an oil change, whatever it is. How did everything go? Is the car running good? Did you have a good experience? It starts with that. And the nice part is when we do fail, because we do fail, we have an opportunity to fix it. And I think that's the whole thing of all this that I think really opened my eyes is we have an opportunity to fix it when we didn't make the mark.

11:57Matt, I don't think there's enough companies in the whole of our world that do this. How many attitudes do I get on a weekly basis? Be it, I'm saying they're failing miserably. I called to get a test. Doctor said, I'd like you to have this test. I call, you're 33 in line, and then leave a message, we'll call you back in the order that we get.

12:21It's so impersonal today. Now I got the question, either healthcare medical is so enamored, there's so much going on, or they just want to spend the money on the people. Go check out at a Lowe's or a Home Depot or a grocery store, and you just can't figure out what they're asking next, or you can't get the barcode right, or you have to figure out what this rebar is because there's no label on it.

12:47I'm sorry, I find this stuff so, well, let them figure it out. Why isn't there somebody walking me down the aisle? At the end, we're getting married. Okay, let's go back. Thank you for firing me up, my friend. Appreciate that. And I read a cool article that it says sometimes it costs you double what it costs to— you let someone go and it costs you double because you've made a bad decision and you have to let somebody go.

13:17So which is forcing you to think about making a better hire? Yeah, so like my company runs on EOS and traction. So like when we look at, you know, all of that, you know, the EOS world's called organizational drag. And so when you have a wrong person, you know, one wrong person affects the traction of the business, the accountability of others, the morale and the execution of the whole team.

13:43And like in a shop environment, that could be comebacks increases, your communication suffers, Other team members get frustrated, and your leaders spend time managing drama instead of growing the business. And like, so for me, like, that's a do not pass goal. Do not collect $200. And one wrong seat can consume more leadership energy than 5 right seats. First of all, EOS, fan of it.

14:10We did a lot of episodes a couple of years ago. We haven't done any in a while, but I know a lot of people have embraced EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, and it is a great discipline. It, it'll make you a better CEO and entrepreneur in your life if you would take a look at that. But what you said recently, just a, a moment ago, organizational drag, these wonderful moments in time that I want my listeners— I'm listening like you are to Matt, and if that organizational drag powered into me, Let it power into you.

14:44And after you're done listening to this episode, just close your eyes a moment and say, do we have organizational drag and why? Well, you think about this, you know, I think every company has it. It's what you're going to do about it. But like in a shop, like, you know, when I'm coaching clients, they're like, well, my technicians don't produce enough and this doesn't know.

15:03Well, where's the drag coming from? It's coming from somewhere, you know, and your job as a leader is to figure out where it's coming from and deal with it. And it doesn't have to be firing someone all the time. It could be moving someone to a different seat. It could be training someone differently. You first have to identify it. As a NAPA Autocare, you already know that your reputation is built on trust, reliability, and service.

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17:53NAPA Tracks is always customized and tailored for you, whether you're a one-man shop or a large multi-bay or multi-location company. After all, it's your shop, so it's your choice. Visit us on the web at napatracks.com. That's napatracks.com. So you coach this client into stopping to think that all through, and then 2 months down the road, after they maybe have identified a fix, they never actually do it.

18:27And I'm not talking about termination. I'm talking about moving into a different seat. I'm talking about training. I'm talking about bringing baggage from home. And I know we have to tolerate some of that, Matt, but it would be awfully nice if we could learn how it fits into the, you know, the value set, the core values of our business. Again, another very powerful thing.

18:48We're just not acting on it. Yeah. And I think this is universal. It doesn't have to be in the shop environment. This is just a business owner thing, but Leadership, whether it's an owner or leadership team, whatever it is, we get paralysis and we wait too long. So everyone usually knows what the problem is or they've identified it. The team around them sees what's happening, the leadership sees it, the employees often see it, but nobody acts on it.

19:19And usually by the time termination happens, it's usually not a surprise to anyone. And it's often a decision that like everyone's seen coming months ago. Okay. Give me one minute to tell my story. And I've told this probably in the last 11 years. I may have told it 5 times over the course of thousands of episodes that one day, and we're going back a whole bunch of years, my entire leadership team, all my stores, my district managers, my sales manager, they all came in my office.

19:52And it was one of those, uh-oh, this is gonna hurt moments. And my number 2 guy in the company said to me, him or us. Now, I wasn't surprised, Matt, because I knew I had to do that. And I kept procrastinating, not realizing the impact of my procrastination on the rest of the team, knowing How could you tolerate that? I wasn't prepared to invest the time to find someone new, and that was my terrible mistake.

20:27And it was a wake-up call. I remember the cup of coffee on my desk. It was a life-changing moment for me. And almost people have to have them in order to shake 'em up. Yep. 100%. Ever happened to you? Oh yeah. Yep. And that's the cool thing about when you identify this, you have to take emotion out of it. And if you have strong culture, strong values, and you make decisions off your values, it takes emotion out of making these decisions.

20:58And with that, your person you need to get rid of might be your top performer, and that's what scares a lot of people. And you have to be okay with, is this best for the whole company though? And so this was probably about 12 years ago now, 12, 13 years ago. I had a tech and he was a phenomenal tech. I mean, 80 hours a week, you get to take a loan out against it.

21:25But if he got in a fight with his kid or his wife or didn't agree with something, he would blow the shop up and nobody would get anything done for a week. And when I fired him, I didn't have someone to replace him. We had tried to coach through it and tried to get him to see what he was doing to the others.

21:43We let him go. The shop had a record week without his 80 hours the next week, and he hadn't been replaced yet. And that was the big eye-opener for me. I have to protect the people that aren't doing these habits or aren't causing these things to happen in my company. The team wants you to act, and they're waiting on the sidelines for you to grow a set.

22:07That's about the best way to say it. That's the first time I've ever said that on the air. I can't believe it, but it's the truth, buddy. And I love your analogy that we beat last week's record even though this individual was doing 80 hours. The point is, is when we stop to think about tolerating vacations in our company and we never miss a beat, why would we miss a beat if we let a toxic individual or a non-fit person go?

22:37Oh my God, I can't wait to come into work tomorrow. The excitement, the attitude. It changes. Like, it was interesting because, like you said it right, your employees, like my employees, were waiting for me to do this. I was scared to act because of what this technician produced. I knew what I needed to do, but I was scared because I'm like, how do I replace that production?

23:00So it put me in paralysis. But my employees knew that I knew I didn't need to do this. And it was after the fact when I did it and they showed me what they could do without that person. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm so proud of you guys. And they're like, why didn't you do this before though? We were capable of this.

23:19You just had to let this happen. Where do we find the courage to do that, Matt? It's, you gotta dig down deep. You have to look at, you know, in some capacity, your business is your child. And like, you have to protect your child. It's a great, great analogy. Oh my God. Stop for a moment to my listener and realize that you may be failing your business.

23:46And if you think about it being a child, you would not do that. You would not fail your child. That bond between the business and the owner and the child is identical in my mind. You have responsibilities to nurture and grow and, you know, provide food for the table, provide food for the table for all your people's families. Oof. And you should protect it at all costs.

24:13At all costs. No matter if there's a short-term hurt, Or even a 3 or 4 month hurt while you're still looking to find. But I've heard enough stories like this. It even happened in, in my business where we, we were getting applications for this because people were reaching out and says, hey, he finally let X go. We're looking for people. And all of a sudden floodgates start to open.

24:39The other thing is, is so when you have someone like that, the other people in your company are gonna be less apt to refer the people they know because they don't want to bring that person into that environment on top of it. Oh yeah, they'll have a bad rep. So when you have a strong culture, what happens is your people bring the people that they want to come into your company and elevate around you too.

25:03Everything is about how you elevate the people around you. And if you have someone that's not a culture's values fit, doesn't get, want, or have the capacity for their job, it brings everyone around them down. Instead of up. This is not how Matt would run his business. So why is he not acting? Because you have the proven track record, Matt, to make these decisions, to grow your business, to be a very strong and important leader to your team where they look up to you, you look up to them.

25:33And if you're not in that position as the CEO of your business, then work to get it. And it goes back to So how do I do that? Well, peer groups, 20 groups, coaching, all of that brings accountability into you becoming a better business person, leader, financial manager, and all that stuff. And I keep hearing too many stories of late. I should have done coaching a long time ago.

25:57I want to sell my business at 60. I want to get out by 65, 67. What do I have to do? And they never do anything about building and developing a stronger business, stronger financials, and And we could go on and on and on. I always hope every time we turn on the mics and we get into the virtual studio, that's even if it's just one person listens to learn just one thing, but implements that one thing that they learned.

26:21Don't just come back, write it down mentally, write it down on a piece of paper and say, I gotta do this and never do it. And I think like, you know, all these things, like coaching is phenomenal. Like I wish I would've actually invested in coaching. I didn't even know it was a thing when I was younger in business. I, I taught myself a lot by going to classes.

26:39And reading. To me, reading is still the most powerful thing. Coaching is great and all these things, but listening to podcasts, reading, listening to— even if you listen to the book, as long as you can pay attention and see the message, there's so much knowledge. And then people have been through a lot of these things in other businesses. It's not— auto repair is not different from anything else in the fact that we're dealing with people, we're selling a product, and there's a million books out there that can help you.

27:05And if you take one message out of a book, It could change things for you. One message out of a podcast could change things for you. I think about book reading. I'm a book reader. I've never listened to one book yet. I listen to podcasts, but I've never listened to one book. And what book reading is to me, Matt, is if it's in your hands, by the way, I take really interesting notes when I find a great section of a chapter that I want.

27:33I open up the front cover. And then inside front cover, I write down the page number and my thoughts so that I could always go back to the book and scan and look to find it. I learned that from somebody years ago. However, in my world, having the book in my hands allows me to pay attention to it. Then if I wasn't drifting, oh, there was a bird.

27:53There was a— you know what I'm saying? If you're listening, there's other sensory things, in my opinion, Could it happen when you're reading a book that you could look up? Well, you're probably closer to paying attention when your eyes are in one place. Maybe your ears can move you, but your eyes don't. I would agree with that. I like the physical book too, but I can tell you that a lot of people, they struggle with that part of it.

28:19And the Audible side of it is something very powerful still. That's where, like, I think it's a combination. Like, I've only listened to one book on Audible myself. I like to read them. And the only reason I listened to the one, it was Matthew McConaughey's book, and I, he read it and I like the guy's voice the way he talks. I agree with you on that.

28:38So look at, we want to make a seat change inside of our company. We don't necessarily want to do a termination, but we discovered that an individual would be maybe best served in this company. We love everything about this person. They get what we're doing, but we discovered that their talent is best served in another place. They don't look at that as a terminate— people don't look at that as a negative way, or you have to structure it the right way?

29:01I think it's how you present the message. So like, not every issue in a company is a people problem. It is sometimes simply a seat problem, and how we approach that change in the seat is the biggest thing. You know, so like, you know, a manager, you know, might be better suited as a service advisor. Maybe that's their best thing. We have to show them why, the why.

29:22It all comes down to, and I'll say this probably 10 more times, it has to start with the why before you can do anything. So why is this person not performing in this role? Maybe it's because the way we do things, they can't keep up with it. Or maybe, the one I see the most is the shop foreman role. A lot of shop foremen are put in the role because they're the best tech.

29:46But then we give them no leadership training, no leadership coaching, and then we try to hold them accountable and we don't try to show them what the numbers mean and how they affect them. And that's why a lot of the shop foreman roles fail, is because they don't get that. Matt, your why word is so powerful. You have a new shop manager and now they're in charge of flow inside the business and keeping the clients happy, ultimate goal.

30:12And then working with the service advisors and making sure we're meeting the demand that they set, but we're communicating and talking back and forth. I have a lot of common sense because I always say the word why to me. When I say, when I look at something that doesn't make sense to me, I ask myself, why does that bother me? Or why does that person think that that's a good thing?

30:34Because I am willing to learn the other side of a situation. But if it doesn't meet my why, and that's why you put me here, cuz I'm a good whyer, a good why person, I'm gonna be so good at what I do because I care about the why. The what is there, the who is, but the why. Powerful stuff. Are you constantly coaching that to your people?

30:58Yes. It has to be a message that's consistent. And, you know, every time, you know, if we make a change or we do something, We want to reaffirm the behavior though too, and that has to start with the why. You know, it's like the way we train our people, it's I do, we do, you do. And then we all— and but it starts with why.

31:21Powerful, powerful stuff, Matt. How are we going to take an individual— okay, and I know the answer to this— you take an individual, you move them into a different seat, you teach them the concepts of why, are they responsible for 4 hours or at least 48 hours a year in leadership training and in workflow training and in software training? Are you requiring everybody in the company?

31:46Yeah. So we use an online LMS called Trainual. Okay, great. Yeah. So every person, every seat in our company has a training path and we're constantly adding to it. And on top of that, we obviously do in-person and different things like that. But when you talk about making the change, I think that's where this kind of started with. Leadership requires courage, and you have to build your courage off clarity, accountability.

32:13And if someone isn't living up to the values of the company, getting and wanting to have the capacity to see, and they don't meet expectations after you try to coach through those things, then you have to act. Because a quote that I really like is, compassion without accountability isn't leadership. Accountability without compassion isn't leadership either. Great leaders bring both. That one just really has always stuck with me because I was probably more compassionate at first, and then I went like, no, I have to be accountable because that's what my business needs.

32:46But it's both of those melded together that make you a strong leader. And that then when you're a strong leader, people want to follow you. People want to run through walls for you. And by doing that, People will start showing themselves the door if they're not the right fit too. Does that happen often? Today, no. When we really started down this journey, especially with EOS, yes, because it was a very big focus.

33:12Like, 'cause what I did, and I'm sure a lot of businesses do this, we build jobs around people. And then when that person changed, guess what? My business was on fire. That was not sustainable for growth. So we looked at everything. What does this job and what does this seat require? And it doesn't matter who does it. It does, but it doesn't because the seat doesn't change no matter who's in it.

33:37Imagine you're on fire, you're doing all this great change, and someone, an individual comes up to another person who is totally bought in. I mean, they are on fire. And another individual comes up to them and says, This is junk. This is no good. I don't like this. And the person says, well, then I guess you should leave. Because the person who said that is so bought in, so encouraged about what could be every day that we don't want Debbie Downers around.

34:04Yeah. One thing too is when we did this, we started at the bottom. We didn't start at the top. So we would really work on how do we level up? We had to start at the bottom because our guest experience is only as good as our weakest link. So we started at the bottom instead of the top-down leadership. It's a great idea.

34:25How did the team take it? Really, really well, you know, because they seen that we were trying to invest and really level up the people at the bottom. When that person leveled up, they pushed the person that was in their spot up a level too. Leading from the bottom up, you're actually letting the people at the bottom push the people up the ladder.

34:46And it creates an accountability ladder almost of like, hey, I'm rising, you need to rise so I can take your spot or I can get into these roles. And that's where having the clear job paths and all these things are a big part of that too. How do you get from a C-level tech to a B-level tech or whatever you want to call it?

35:05How do you climb that ladder? What's expected of you? And what do you need from us to help you do that? Because we have a part to play in that too. Just like if an employee fails, in my opinion, it's at least 50% the business's fault the employee failed. At least 50%. In some cases, it's 100%. If you don't have any structure, you don't have any clear expectations, that's 100% your fault that employee failed.

35:31And they're pulling down the business and they're just coming in for a paycheck. It's not a career, it's not an occupation, it's just a paycheck. Let's try to sum this up by me telling the world that you hold an annual meeting every year, and it's probably done wonders for your culture, your team, your value set to— I don't know if you shut the place down.

35:54I, I don't know that, but it's, you know, it's a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, whatever, but you have a big event and you bring in people to come in and teach and share and talk to your people. I mean, Wow, there's not many places that do that. Yeah, it's something our team looks forward to every year. It's called our company summit. And yes, we actually do close the business down for 3 full days.

36:18That's an investment I make in my people. And I think that by not asking them to spend their weekend in training and actually, I'm gonna close my business to make you better, that gets a lot of attention by them. We bring in a keynote speaker every year, we bring in trainers, and I'm a coach and a trainer in the industry. I bring in other people and we talk about the message I want to bring into them and have them do it.

36:45We bring in the best technical trainers in the industry, Keith Perkins, Brandon Steckler, we bring in the best and we let them train our people to make them better. But we do this intentionally too. So on the technical side, for instance, Every one of our shop foremen, we have foreman assistant help forms. And so if a technician's struggling with something, they have to fill out a form to get help from the foreman.

37:10And it's not a penalty, it's really about, was this a lack of training or lack of education or lack of understanding? So we can really decide, do we need to bring in training for this? Do we have a pattern that's happening in all of our shops? And that's how we decide the type of training we bring in. So we use that data to actually say, this is the type of training we need for our team because this is where our weak point is, this is where our struggle point is.

37:34We do the same thing on the front side. So if we're having a problem with close ratio or getting Google reviews or whatever it is, we try to find and build out the training that we want to help them overcome those problems so they get better. When we bring people in, I want this to be something they can take on Monday and apply it that'll change Our guests, because at the end of the day, this is all about serving our guests.

37:58That's internally and externally guests. It's not about how much money I can put in the bank. It's about how, how can we make our employees happier? How can we make our customers happier? And by doing that, the money shows up as a byproduct. Matt, I think you're on fire. Thanks. You are absolutely on fire. So proud of all the great work that you've done.

38:20And thank you for sharing this. I think you would be an inspiration to any person who's listening to this podcast. And again, you've been on before. We actually, you were on the, the Karm Cruise with us and just so good to know you and, and how well you're doing. But thank you for coming in and giving us the legacy that you've had to get to the point where you could talk so comfortably and easy about letting an employee go that just wasn't a fit.

38:48And to say, probably a little bit more of my fault than anything, but I've got to relieve this person. They're not having any fun. We're not having any fun with them. They gotta go out and find another place for their kind of fun, because it's not our kind of fun. Absolutely. And I think the biggest thing, if anyone's listening to this, you have to look in the mirror first before you go fire someone.

39:12Look in the mirror and say, what did I contribute to how we got here? Well, we talk about that a lot. It's the man in the mirror. There's more and more articles being written about that and the humbleness of people joining coaching groups, getting accountability partners. So cool to hear them say, I should have done it before. I was the problem. And people don't want to admit that because it's very difficult on— I've done this for 10 or 15 years and I can't seem to get out of this.

39:41If you will, spiral of not being able to make enough money and hiring great people, no one ever stops the, well, it's the market, it's the pricing pressure, it's the software, it's just the client. They don't want to pay. No, I'm sorry. The more I got out of my way and instead invested in my team, the better our business got. And it's not that I was a hindrance, but like I didn't let them grow to what they could have been by being involved at the level I was.

40:08So the more that I got out of my own way and let them run, the better our business got. Matt, thank you. It's been great to have you on the show. This was a lesson beyond, again, what we talked about. So refreshing to hear your perspectives on things. And as always, come back anytime. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thanks for being on board to listen and learn from the premier automotive repair business podcast, Remarkable Results Radio.

40:36Get your episodic education on the A RPN listening app at automotiverepairpodcastnetwork.com. Also enjoy the podcast on our Carm Capriato YouTube channel. Carm is all for advancing the professional automotive service industry. Until next time.