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

This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.

What's up, everyone?

Welcome back to episodic education.

It's Karm Capriotto 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 too

and you're saying, oh my God, did this been there?

We need to hear someone talk about it.

Maybe I need to do something tomorrow.

Maybe I've been contemplating it.

It's gonna be a great discussion

with Matt Lachowitzer here in a minute.

But we appreciate you being here.

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So 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

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You can create your own playlist.

Oh, I love this one.

This is on leadership.

I love this one on firing people and hiring people.

You can keep them and you can share

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That's all I use to listen to our own shows

because it's great because I listen

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Can I introduce you to a friend of mine, Matt Lachowitzer?

Hey, 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 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.

Owner and founder of Matt's Automotive Center.

I just found out as of last Friday at 11 shops.

I was gonna introduce him in say 10.

Fargo, Moorhead, North Dakota and the Twin Cities

out there, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

2009, 2-bay garage.

It sounds like a great story.

Everybody started in a situation like that.

Matt went 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.

Good 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 and says, 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.

And whenever you introduce a new spice to the sauce,

sometimes, and you're 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?

Can they do this?

They 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.

What does this seat require?

People say he fogged a mirror.

She fogged a mirror.

Let's bring them in.

I 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 strengths finders, some kind of,

and I don't wanna 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 dyag techniques were,

but we can teach that, but I loved the person.

Yeah, I'm hiring for potential, not for skill at 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

in your sensing and feeling,

they don't live in the value set.

It's not hard.

You have a wonderful set of values.

I love your values.

Maybe we'll cover them 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 of the business.

Did we fail them?

Because I think that that's where a lot of places forget,

is we have a part to play in an employee failing.

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.

Look 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?

And I think every one of the values,

the way we do that,

we start with the why the value exists.

So because I think,

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.

When 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 four hours of training a month.

They have to have ASC certification

within 12 months of working for us.

We have minimal acceptable standards

that for every position in our company.

And we're very clear about what we expect

and why we expect it.

Our advisors, 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?

We 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 five-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 part of how we measure

guest satisfaction.

Help 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 eight hours a day?

Yeah, we have two people that we kind of have them split

in half.

So half of them take care of our five Argo Morehead stores

and then one takes care of our now six Minneapolis locations.

So 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?

You know, were you greeted with all the components

that we asked 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 even to spend a ton of money

on approving new customers.

Well, 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, one or two stores,

do something like that?

You got to make time for it.

I know when I'm coaching, you know, my coaching clients,

I'm talking about doing callbacks, you know,

what we found is a 29-day cadence.

So 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 seven or eight 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.

I 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 does that work?

Because of the way we've trained them,

they're calling to check in.

We'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.

Like, obviously, if it's a good experience

and they have declined services,

we train them to bring it up,

but we're not trying to shove stuff down their throat.

We're not trying to, you know, be a robo call.

It's a very personalized call.

And some of the reason it's personalized

is because we do a very good job

collecting information at write-up.

You know, 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 our customers' Ford

is such a huge component of this.

John de Julius, 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 want to find out, hey, how do we do?

Sally 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?

Yeah, 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 the check-in.

You had some repairs done, you had an oil, 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.

Matt, 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 call to get a test.

Doctors said, like you'd have this test,

I call your 33 in line,

and then leave a message, we'll call you back

in the order that we get.

It's so impersonal today.

Now, I do the question,

either healthcare medical is so enamored,

there's so much going on,

or they just wanna spend the money on the people.

Go check out it, a looser, 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.

I'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, I 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,

so which is forcing you to think about making a better hire.

Yeah, so my company runs on EOS and traction,

so when we look at all of that,

the EOS world is called organizational grade.

And so when you have a wrong person,

and one wrong person affects the traction of the business,

the accountability of others,

the morale and the execution of the whole team.

And like in a shop environment,

that could be comebacks increases,

your communication suckers,

other team members get frustrated,

and your leaders spend time managing drama

instead of growing the business.

And so for me, that's a do not pass goal.

Do not collect $200.

And one wrong seat can consume more leadership energy

than five right seats.

First of all, EOS, fan of it,

we 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'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 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.

And 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,

I think every company has it,

it's what you're gonna do about it.

But like in a shop,

like when I'm coaching clients,

they're like, well, my technicians don't produce enough

and this doesn't, well, where's the drag coming from?

It's coming from somewhere.

And your job as a leader is to figure out

where it's coming from and deal with it.

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.

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So you coach this client into stopping to think that all through

and then two months down the road

after they maybe have identified a fix,

they never actually do it.

And 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 value set, the core values of our business.

Again, another very powerful thing,

we'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 a leadership team,

whatever it is, we get paralysis when 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.

And usually by the time termination happens,

it's usually not a surprise to anyone.

It's often a decision that 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 five 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.

And it was one of those,

uh-oh, this is gonna hurt moments.

And my number two 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 and 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 them up.

Yep, 100%.

Ever happened to you?

Oh yeah, yep.

And that's the cool thing about anybody who identify this,

you have to take emotion out of it.

And like, if you have strong culture or strong values

and you make decisions off your values,

it takes emotion out of making these decisions.

And 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 like,

is this best for the whole company though?

And so like, this was probably 12 years ago

and I'll tell 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 on against it.

And, but if he got 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 try to get him

to see what he was doing to the others.

We 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 like the big eye opener for me,

like I have to protect the people

that aren't doing these habits.

So they aren't causing these things

to happen to my company.

The team wants you to act

and they're waiting on the sidelines for you to grow a set.

That's about the best way to say it.

This is 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 is 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-fitting person go?

Oh 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?

So it put me in paralysis,

but like my employees knew that I knew

I didn't needed 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.

You're like, why didn't you do this before though?

Like we were capable of this.

You just had to let this happen.

Where do we find the courage to do that, Matt?

It's, you got to dig down deep.

You have to look at, you know,

in some capacity your business is your, is 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.

And 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.

Woof.

And you should protect it at all costs.

At all costs.

No matter if there's a short term hurt

or even a three or four month hurt

while you're still looking to find.

But I've heard enough stories like this.

It even happened in my business

where we were getting applications for this

because people were reaching us as,

hey, he finally let X go.

We're looking for people

and all of a sudden floodgates start to open.

The other thing is, is so when you have someone like that,

the other people in your company

are going to 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 like 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.

Everything 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 one 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.

And 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

in to 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.

I want to sell my business 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 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 learn.

Don't just come back, write it down mentally,

write it down on a piece of paper

and say, I got to do this and never do it.

And I think all these things like coaching is phenomenal.

Like I wish I would have actually invested in coaching.

I didn't even know it was a thing

when I was younger in business.

I taught myself a lot by going to classes and 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.

Outer repair is not different from anything else

and 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.

And 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 listened 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.

I open up the front cover and inside front cover,

I write down the page number in my thoughts

so that I can 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, well, there was a bird.

There 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 that I like the physical book too,

but I can tell you that a lot of people,

they struggle with that part of it

and 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

and I like to read them.

And the only reason I listened to the one

was the Matthew McConaughey's book and he read it

and I liked the guy's voice the way he talks.

I agree with you on that.

So look, we wanna make a seat change inside of our company.

We don't necessarily wanna 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 termination.

People don't look at that as a negative way

or you have to structure it the right way.

I 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.

It 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.

You know, so why is this person, you know,

not performing in this role?

Maybe it's because, you know, the way we do things,

they can't keep up with it or maybe, you know,

what I see the most is like the shop foreman role.

You know, a lot of shop foremen are put in the role

because they're the best tech.

But 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

and 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?

Because 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,

because I'm a good wire, 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?

Yes, it has to be a message that's consistent

and every time, if we make a change or we do something,

we wanna reaffirm the behavior though too

and that has to start with the why.

So like the way we train our people is I do, we do, you do

and then we all, but it starts with why.

Powerful, 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 four 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?

Yeah, so we use all nine LMS called training L.

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 know,

you have to build your courage off clarity, accountability.

And if someone isn't living up to the values of the company,

getting a wanting out of the capacity seat

and they don't meet expectations

after you try to coach through those things,

then you have to act because like 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 is always stuck with me

because like 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.

But it's both of those melted 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.

Is that happened often?

Today and all, when we really started down this journey,

especially with the US,

yes, because it was very big focus like,

because 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 is 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.

Imagine 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 Downer's around.

Yeah, one thing too is when we did this,

we started at the bottom, we didn't start at the top.

So we really worked 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.

How did the team take it?

Really, really well, you know,

because they've seen that we were trying to invest

in 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.

And it creates like an accountability ladder almost

of like, hey, like 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 like 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?

You know, like how 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 when, if an employee fails, in my opinion,

it's at least 50% the businesses fault the employee fail.

At least 50%.

In some cases it's 100%.

If you have any structure, you don't have a clear

expectations, like that's 100% your fault that employee fail.

And 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.

I don't know that, but it's in us 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.

We have, it's called our company summit.

And yes, we actually do close the business down

for three full days.

That's an investment I make in my people.

And I think that by not asking them to spend their weekend

and training and actually I'm gonna close my business

to make you better, that gets a lot of attention by them.

We bring in the 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 wanna bring into them and have them do it.

We bring in the best technical trainers in the industry.

Keith Perkins, Brandon Secler, we bring in the best

and we let them train our people to make them better.

But we do this intentionally too.

So like on the technical side, for instance,

every one of our shop foreman's have,

we have form and assistant help forms.

And so if a technician is struggling with something,

they have to fill out a form to get help from informant.

And it's not a penalty.

It's really about, was this a lack of training

or lack of education understanding

so that we can really decide like,

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.

We do the same thing on the front side.

So if we're having a problem with polls 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 will change our guests.

Cause at the end of the day,

this is all about serving our guests.

That's internally and externally guests.

It's not about how much money I can put in the bank.

It's about 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.

And 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.

Actually, you were on the the Karm cruise with us

and just so good to know you 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.

And 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 got to go out and find another place

for their kind of fun.

Cause it's not our kind of fun.

Absolutely.

And I think the biggest thing of anyone's listening to this,

you have to look in the mirror first

before you'd go fire someone, look 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,

if you will spiral of not being able to make enough money

and hiring great people.

No one ever stops, well, it's the market,

it's the pricing and 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 the level I was.

So 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.

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