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Leadership, Accountability, and Building Winning Teams | Kris Gaerlan
Leadership, Accountability, and Building Winning Teams | Kris Gaerlan
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About this episode
Kris Garolin of Dallas Lease Returns shares how he built a top independent dealership by combining early internet innovation (eBay listings) with a leadership system he calls his “Management 10 Commandments.” The conversation focuses on accountability and culture: don’t manage by email, don’t make policies to control “bad employees,” address mistakes directly in the moment, lead from the floor (not behind a desk), and remember you can’t manage intent—only what you see. He also emphasizes “lead up,” proactive decision-making, and the mindset that “it may not be your fault, but it is your responsibility.”
Topics:
leadership principles
lead up in organizations
accountability and responsibility
psychological reciprocity in sales
no policies for bad employees
coaching after deal mistakes
don’t manage by email
leadership as an active sport
perception over intent
proactive vs reactive management
What separates good leaders from great ones and why does it matter more than ever?
In this episode of Three Key Insights, Sanjiv Yajnik, President of Capital One Auto, sits down with Kris Gaerlan, founder of Dallas Lease Returns, one of the most successful independent auto dealerships in the U.S., to unpack the principles behind sustained growth, elite performance and culture that actually sticks.
You’ll hear:
- Why leadership is a skill that shows up on the showroom floor – not a title behind a desk
- How strong teams eliminate the need for constant management
- Where most leaders get accountability wrong and how to fix it
CONNECT WITH SANJIV YAJNIK on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjivyajnik/
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on this episode of Three Key Insights.
I was fearful of having hard conversations, Sanjeev.
So someone would make a mistake,
and I would have a meeting with everybody
because I didn't have the guts to talk to that one person
and then make everyone live that one person's mistake
in hopes of, you know, it landing on that one person
and everyone else in that room.
I know was thinking,
I wish Chris just had the guts to speak to so-and-so.
The auto industry is moving fast
and it's getting more complex.
Success today takes more than instinct.
It takes insight.
Welcome to Three Key Insights with Sanjeev Yajnik,
president of Capital One Auto.
Each episode features real conversations
with top dealers, operators, and industry innovators,
delivering actionable insights you can use
to navigate change and take the lead.
Hey Chris, and for the audience,
I'd like to welcome all of you,
and I want to introduce you to Chris Garolin.
He is the founder and the president of Dallas Lease Returns.
It is one of the most successful independent dealers
in all of the United States.
Chris has been a trailblazer in innovation
and leading his organization,
and I can't wait to have this conversation with you, Chris.
We've known each other for quite a while,
but what I'd love for you to do,
I'd love for you to do two things just to start off.
One is, can you brag on your company?
I know that you show a lot of humility,
but if you had to brag on your company that you founded,
what would you tell the audience about it?
Well, it's easy for me to brag
if I can put it in the context of my people.
So currently, my people have won
Dealer Raider, Dealer of the Year.
I think we're going on our eighth year for Texas,
and I believe it's our third year for the United States.
So that's a big accomplishment for us.
We've got, I think as of last month,
we're seeing at about 10,000 positive online reviews,
which would be kind of a milestone for my team.
And the other thing is just kind of the staying power
of the team, Sanjeev.
I've got, I mean, I have salespeople
that have literally been with me for 21 years,
which as you know, keeping salespeople for that long
is pretty long.
I think last time I looked,
the average tenure of a Dallas lease returns,
we call them sales managers specifically for a reason,
but others might call them sales was somewhere
in the four or five year range,
which is pretty long for that position.
So yeah, we've had some success over the years,
and it's transpired into, I think last year
at the end of the year, I ended up at north of 30%
repeat and referral business,
which I think again, for used cars,
I'm told is a pretty good metric
and something that I really measure pretty closely
for whether we're doing a good job.
Every stat that you just laid out is pretty done unbelievable,
and I've known you for some time,
and all I can tell the audience is you are a mover and shaker.
You don't rest on your laurels.
You don't take a step back.
You're always pushing forward.
You've leveraged technology.
You've done a whole bunch of things that makes you successful,
but can you just tell us about a bit about your background
and how do you get into the car business?
Did someone give it to you?
Yeah, no.
So I started at the groundups on Jeev,
and literally as a runner.
So a runner here in the Dallas area, detail shops,
ran a foreign car repair shop for a couple years,
so kind of did it all,
and then was part of a group of people
that just was kind of at the right place
at the right time, honestly.
The internet had just become a thing.
I remember back when you were an internet dealer,
and now if you don't have the internet,
you're just not a dealer.
But eBay would have been one of the very first platforms
that a lot of us took seriously,
and yeah, I started putting cars on eBay.
I had someone much smarter than me that knew how to do it.
I didn't even know how to do it at the time,
and they were literally,
I mean, we were cutting and pasting code
in eBay auctions before there were even listing services.
So yeah, we had pioneered a few things,
and then fast forward, there were companies like,
I remember the first one that I found was eBay's autos in California,
and we started listing cars online,
and yeah, what that company was called Texas Auto Gallery.
I sold that company 23 years ago, 24 years ago,
and was introduced to Mike Hernandez at DNM Leasing,
which was probably one of the best introductions
I could have ever had,
and at the time he was not doing anything
with his lease return vehicles.
They were just sitting on a back lot,
and I started putting them on eBay
with another gentleman named Jeff Morgan,
and lo and behold, 21 years later,
we're kind of a grown up business.
We went from, I'm sitting in my conference room right now,
and if I took myself back,
so I started when I was at Dallas Lease Turns
at the time, we didn't even call it Dallas Lease Turns,
that was just a website address,
but I started literally in a wash bay behind DNM Leasing.
Fast forward to maybe not now,
but you mentioned something earlier
about how long we've known each other,
and I don't know if you even remember this moment,
but it was probably a decade or so ago
that I was one of the dealers
that you called in to Plano,
and you brought us with this idea
that you were going to partner with the dealers
and had this idea for what became Auto Navigator,
and so I actually remember that moment.
I remember the stories.
Yeah, I remember that entire process.
Yeah, thank you, Chris,
because I think one of the things that has given me
a lot of joy in the business that we do,
I didn't start in auto.
I came into auto interestingly enough in 2008,
and when people did not believe in the lending business,
and I reached out to a few of you all,
and then later on,
but we are the only company I know of,
the only bank that started building products for dealers
with the express objective of making sure
that customers went to dealerships
and not trying to circumvent dealers,
and you played a huge role in helping us think through
what do we need to do?
This is a completely new business.
Back to your success story,
one of my folks went into your dealership.
And he came back with your Management 10 Commandments.
Yes.
Which I find to be pretty awesome.
So before we even get into anything else,
can I have a bit of a chat with you
about your Management 10 Commandments?
Yeah, so it's funny.
So I wrote them with Ken Pernell,
who was my GSM at the time.
Of course, I haven't done any of this on my own by any means,
but he and I sat down at the time and we just asked ourselves,
you know, what do we want to be the guiding light
for everything that we do?
I mean, certainly core values,
which I can speed out or core actions as we call them here,
were important.
And really, everyone has them.
Everyone's got core values.
Even if they don't have it written down,
they have core values.
So I just wanted 10 core principles we were going to go on.
And so for us, it's be a leader,
which starts with that for me.
So the first one is be a leader.
Yeah, be a leader.
And by the way, it's a muscle, Sanjeev, as I'm sure you know.
You just don't become a leader
by being the boss of your organization.
I mean, it's a skill.
You have to be willing to learn.
You have to be willing to study.
You have to be willing to learn how to communicate,
which is huge.
Yeah, I could cite off a number of books I've read in the past
that have been instrumental for me.
And you're saying be a leader no matter who you are
in the organization.
Every single person, the first commandment is be a leader.
You got to be a leader.
You have to be a leader.
You're out how you become one.
Bingo, which by the way, you do a good leader
has to know how to follow.
You know, Craig Groeschel had a fantastic podcast
I saw years ago that I shared with my team,
and it was about leading up.
I mean, you do have to understand how to lead up
in order to lead down.
If you don't know how to lead up, you can't lead down.
So it's a conversation, but leadership
does not mean you're the boss by any means.
There's many times where you have to know
how to lead up in an organization as well.
What do you mean by lead up?
Again, Craig Groeschel does a much better job than I will.
But for me, leading up is understanding that your leader
may need your help and support.
And your leader may even be incorrect at times.
And so you have to understand how to pay respect
to your leader and guide them through those times
because they're imperfect as well.
So not just this, like if you don't believe
in the direction of the company,
you can't just go this with your leader.
You have to be willing to follow them,
and you have to be willing to give them credit,
where credits do, and then kind of bring them
to the point where you feel they need to go.
But you can't just fight them to get them there,
if that makes sense.
That's such a great concept.
And most people, when they think about leadership,
is like, if people report to me, what do I do?
But an equally effective and in fact a critical thing,
no matter which level you're at, is leading up.
Even a GM, even a owner has to lead up
because then there are investors, and then there are customers.
But I love this whole issue of be a leader,
and leader doesn't mean you're the boss.
It means show the characteristics of a leader.
Bingo.
Bingo.
And again, it's a muscle.
I tell my people, because I try to promote within.
And the thing that I tell my team when we're promoting within
is that we're looking for someone
that is already the person we need.
We're just going to change their pay plan,
and we're going to change their title.
And what that means to me is that it means
we're not going to give them the title,
and then hope they become that person.
So I'll give you an example.
Roelle Ortiz, who is my GSM, he was already a leader.
He was already a good producer.
He already took good care of his customers.
So he was already the person.
The only thing I did was sit down with Roelle and say,
hey, do you want this extra responsibility?
Do you want these extra hours?
Do you want this extra pressure?
And do you feel like falling to do it?
And if so, here's the pay plan.
Here's the title.
Yeah, that is just such great advice.
Okay, your second one is Law of Psychological Reciprocity.
What does that mean?
So I got that from a book by Robert Caldini called Influence.
And so everything that we do here and every process
I've built here is based on that one single law.
And the Law of Psychological Reciprocity basically means this.
We are born with the want to do and give what others give us.
And so the Law of Psychological Reciprocity basically means
if you're nice to someone,
they're going to have a higher probability of being nice to you.
Here's how it works in sales.
Someone can call you and say how we would coach against this single law
is someone would call you and say, your price is too high.
Well, you can do this and give them a bunch of information
of why your price is not high, or you can say, maybe it is high.
Can you let me know what information you see
that's leading you to that conclusion?
And then listen with intent so you can help understand
where they're coming from.
Then you're not doing this with a client.
Another principle from there,
which would be based on reciprocity is kind of a liking idea.
The easiest way for someone to like you is to simply like them.
You think about the people you like, you usually like people that like you.
And so again, that's a reciprocal piece.
So Law of Psychological Reciprocity just means that.
Make sure everything you do is with the mindset of reciprocation.
That's so powerful, not only with customers,
but even with fellow team members.
That's a great one.
Okay, your third one is never make policies to govern bad employees.
Simply don't have bad employees.
That is my single artist one, Sanjeev, to manage for myself.
I had a handbook.
It's funny, I give people a handbook when they're hired,
and I had a handbook that gave you a thousand things
you weren't allowed to do at Dallas Lease Returns,
and like a list of 10 you were allowed to do.
So it was like, welcome to Dallas Lease Returns, don't do this.
It was just, it was really, it was almost ridiculous
when I looked at it through that lens.
And so I went in and got rid of all of the policies
that I just felt were just things that you should know
if you're a good person and you're someone I want,
I want to work here.
Now, you know, I need, I need rules and policies
like any good company does,
but I'm not going to write a policy
that says that you need to be a work on time.
If you can't come to work at time, you can't work here.
Like there's just, it's just common respect.
So, so yeah, in its simplest form, that's it.
I love that.
I can't tell you how many companies make policies
based on the 0.1%, but then it applies to 99.9% of everyone
and makes everyone's life miserable
because you're trying to protect against the 0.1%.
I love the simply don't have bad employees,
choose your employees.
Okay, the next one.
Well, if you were to skip the next one, Sanjeev,
and be willing to go the next one,
it speaks to the, the, the never make policies piece.
Okay, so let's go there.
It's speak directly to and about the problem.
Yeah.
So, so I'm sure if someone that's in the car business
is listening to this, they've never done this,
but I did it all the time
and it does fit with that never make policies statement.
And that is I was fearful of having hard conversations Sanjeev.
So someone would make a mistake
and I would have a meeting with everybody
because I didn't have the guts to talk to that one person
and then make everyone live that one person's mistake
in hopes of, you know, it landing on that one person
and everyone else in that room.
I know was thinking, I wish Chris just had the guts
to speak to so and so.
And so I had a problem with that personally.
I knew it and I knew I had to write it down
and share it with my staff so they could hold me accountable.
And I can tell you, I do not have those meetings
or those group emails at all anymore.
I have not, I'm very proud that I was able to stop
that, that bad leadership behavior that, that I had.
You know, I think we can all learn from that.
You know, I'm just introspecting on when have I done that?
And, you know, there's a human tendency of, you know,
I don't really want to tell the person,
but if I tell all these people,
it'll kind of permeate to the person and, you know, all of that.
But maybe they'll all do my dirty work.
Exactly.
So it's been directly to and above.
I love that.
Okay.
Don't manage by email.
Something that needs true leadership.
Now, certainly we have some informative things
that we need to cast to our staff.
But, but conversation just works way better.
Conversation just works way better.
It always has.
It always will.
I think the new email is text.
Yes.
But okay, the next one is lead during the deal,
coach after the deal.
That's an interesting one.
Yeah.
So what that means is if an agent comes to you
and they're in a deal and they're,
they've messed up the deal,
don't beat them up for their mistake in the moment
and send them back into a situation that's
uncomfortable for them and for the customer to prove a point.
Stand up, grab the deal, walk in the office and lead.
And then afterwards, sit down with the agent.
Hey, John, you know, what would you have done differently?
We can agree this didn't go exactly how you want.
What, you know, what could we have done differently?
Usually the agent knows and then, you know,
decide that you're going to make a change and go on from there.
You know, what we would have a tendency to do here
is when John, you know, made that mistake,
they would come in the office and then we'd tell John
everything that he did wrong and then we'd send them out
and make him have this uncomfortable piece.
And, and I almost feel like it was somewhat
to foredesign Sanjeev.
It was to kind of teach teach them a lesson
and we're also doing it at the customer's expense.
This is a really practical kind of a suggestion to people,
which is not natural.
The natural tendency is to do the opposite,
but I totally get you and it's much more powerful
the way you're talking about it.
Okay, the next one is interesting being that
we're sitting at a desk.
Don't lead from behind the desk.
What does that mean?
I mean, so it's just that Sanjeev.
I mean, so specifically if you were to come into my office,
you'll see I don't even have a desk chair.
I have not had a desk chair in my office for many years.
Simply because I just, I would have a tendency
when I sit down to waste time.
So for me standing.
So yeah, leadership is an active sport.
I mean, look, agents don't come to you with,
you know, don't come to you all the time
with the true needs that they need.
I mean, they don't just come into your office and say,
hey boss, I'm not working hard enough.
I'm not focused properly.
I'm messing up here.
I'm messing up here.
I'm messing up here.
You have to get out of your office to find, to desk fish.
You got to get off out of your office to help somebody.
So yeah, I mean, for me, it's just that simple.
The sentence you just said, the statement which is,
it's so incredibly powerful.
Leadership is an active sport.
Yes.
An active sport.
Yes.
It's a sport.
It can be a lot of fun.
It's active, not passive, not sitting.
I think that is really powerful.
Okay. Be proactive, not reactive.
Mm-hmm.
Well, so, I mean, it's just that.
It's just that.
I mean, just have a plan.
Follow your plan.
I love different quotes.
One of my favorites that I heard years ago was,
very seldom are urgent things important.
And very important things are usually not urgent.
So it's kind of a long, it's kind of a long,
along that idea.
You know, the, quite honestly,
the don't made us buy email probably saves me a lot that,
you know, in that.
So, you know, there's just a lot of things that you just need
to take a deep breath, get a grasp of it.
And it's so hard to do because you obviously have built yourself
from the ground up.
You've got a whole bunch of perspectives
on pretty much everything.
And that's a hard one.
Be proactive, not reactive for the associate or the employee
or the sales managers or whoever it is.
So I can see that being,
it's both a discipline on your side,
but also a forward lean on their side.
It is.
And it was important for me to put it on there, Sanjeev,
because since I started this place,
literally in sales with two people,
and I, you know, now we're much larger,
I've done a lot of the roles.
So I've, that's been hard for me.
I've had to learn that others need to be able to make decisions
or we're just not going to grow.
I'm not smart enough.
And I'm certainly not good enough to do all these roles.
I have to have people being willing to do it.
And so how I've decided to look at it
is in my mind, if they're making the decision 80% correctly,
I'm okay with it because usually 100% isn't 100%.
100% is just exactly how I would do it,
but very seldom are they going to do exactly how I'm going to do it.
So for me, if I feel like they're handling it 80% correctly,
I step off and go, okay, that's my,
that's kind of my number that I've decided to go with.
You know, the reason I think I emote so much with you,
Chris, and with many of the dealer owners
and people in the business is,
you know, I was an engineer, but I started right at the bottom.
So I had to dismantle things, put it together with my own hands.
I joined Capital One when we were not much of a company.
Into auto when it was a complete, you know, turn around,
we're going to shut it down, build it up.
But when you build it from the ground up
and you play every position,
it's so hard to do the thing that you're just talking about.
Because it's not delegation from the standpoint of,
you know, do anything you want to do,
but it is really hard to do this thing that you just talked about.
Especially when you're the visionary,
because it's so, the vision is so personal.
Yes.
You know, so the decisions,
the decisions around the vision are so personal.
It's the hardest, you know, you mentioned ground up.
My, I always go to my warehouse people.
My warehouse people have always been spot on
on whether someone is going to make it at Dallas Lease returns.
They always know.
They tell me when someone's a good person,
hey Chris, so-and-so is doing really well,
but I think you got to watch yourself there.
And they're always spot on, always spot on.
That's amazing.
And that is true.
It's so true.
And you're right about the vision.
We, it's almost like you can taste it.
And, and then it becomes hard,
but then forcing yourself to do this makes you successful.
Now, the next one is perception matters.
Yes.
Yeah.
So one of the things I tell my team all the times,
we can't manage intent.
Very simply, we can't manage intent.
Oftentimes when we need to correct somebody,
or oftentimes when people are not understanding our heart
of what we're trying or what we're intending to do,
we have to come to the conclusion
that whatever we're doing is landing
improperly on those around us.
So specifically when we're leading our teams,
and we have to do correcting,
oftentimes when we're correcting somebody,
there seems to be this disconnect between their actions
and between what they feel or what they intended to do.
And so what we have to do here is we just have to have a version
of a conversation with, hey,
I'm not smart enough to manage intentions.
I can only manage what I see.
And so here's what I see.
You know, here's,
here's what I need you to change based on what I see.
You know, whatever you intended to do,
I'm just not smart enough to jump in your head.
Okay, I love the last one.
Yeah, yeah.
Make sure you are not the problem.
Yeah, yeah.
Talk about that.
I mean, gosh, that could be a whole podcast.
That could be a whole podcast.
I mean, in the simplest form, it's just that, Sanjeev.
It's just that, you know, it's a unique position
to be in the position where you affect
and make the policies.
Then you write the guidelines and the plan and, you know,
kind of what you say goes type of thing.
And I do think that we run into situations, especially,
I would say most, I would say for me, reflecting back,
it's probably been stages of growth for Dallas lease returns,
probably more personal growth than just the company,
because I have to become a different person
and a different leader as the growth of the company
and the scope of the company changes.
And so, you know, where it speaks to me is just those moments
where I have to come to the conclusion that it is my plan
that has brought us to this position that I'm not happy with.
And so, you know, I might need to look at it and say,
hey, Chris, you know, I get it.
You know, you can keep whipping everybody for it not happening.
But at the end of the day, it's your plan, you know,
and it's not working for an extended period of time.
That's also a hard one and probably even harder for you
because you got such a, I call it larger shit.
I look at businesses kind of like boats
in the way that you manage them.
But yeah, knowing whether you should be sticking to your guns
and it should take more time or you need to be changing course
is probably one of the hardest things for me to understand
and it gets harder for me as we grow.
As I call it, as the ship gets larger,
understanding what things I need to do at what time
seems to be a lot harder, a lot more patience,
takes a lot more patience than when it was a much smaller organization.
I love that.
So, but let me ask you now, these are unbelievable.
All these 10 is just not words.
The stuff behind it that has allowed you to run your dealership
and to take it to the great heights.
Now, you know, in life, we write down a lot of things
and then we do a lot of things.
But, you know, in life, we then get a ton of experience
and we start reducing things down to really the core of, you know,
what makes things tick.
So, if I had to challenge you, every one of these 10 is unbelievable.
Yes.
Every one of these 10 is amazing.
But if I had to tell you, Chris, given all of these 10
and given all of your experience and everything that has made you successful,
if I said to you, you are only allowed to give me three, no more than three.
Which of these 10 would you rise to the three that if you just keep these in mind,
it gives you much of the juice of success?
I mean, be a leader, I think, is the easy, you know, the first easy one.
So, be a leader is clearly no matter which position you're in,
you're a salesman, manager, whether you're GM to the person sitting in reception.
Be a leader.
And what does it mean, you know, in the traditional sense, but also lead up,
which is a very, very important aspect of the whole thing that you talked about.
Yes.
So, that's the first one.
Gosh, man, hard one.
I would say the second one would have to be never make policies to govern bad employees,
simply don't have bad employees.
Okay, that is a huge one.
Because bad employees are a cancer at the end of the day.
I can't tell you how many times I've let an employee go,
and it's like I was the last person to know.
It's like, I think I've made this monumental decision that's going to help the entire staff,
and I'm on to something, and I'm leading the charge, and I do it,
and everyone in the building is going, why did it take Chris that long to get rid of this person?
Not so much now, if you want to know the truth, but in the past, that was a big one.
You know, we've got a monthly review now, and quite honestly, when we fire someone,
they're basically packed and apologizing for not hitting their metrics.
But that one has been instrumental to getting me to where I am today, absolutely.
And of course, I can't tell you the number of times I've spoken with dealers,
and I've said, but why doesn't the salesperson do XYZ?
And they say, Sanjeev, there's so much turnover, and they don't listen.
But your whole thing is, if you don't have bad employees, you don't have to try to convince them
to do anything. If they're good employees, they're going to do the right thing.
And so instead of trying to cajole people to do it, simply have good employees.
Sounds simple, but the number of times people stick with bad employees is crazy.
You know, I did a commercial last year, and I think the statement I made, Sanjeev, was,
we don't do anything unique here at Dallas Lease Returns. We just do what we say.
And so it's just that idea of, you know, and you've been to more dealerships than I have,
you're going to go into every dealership, and they're going to have core values on the wall,
and they're going to have rules and everything. And I stole just about everything that I have
from other people. I mean, I don't have really an original idea. You know, the difference at
Dallas Lease Returns is we just have the discipline to do it. Like, okay, you have to make 450
outbound calls. If you don't, you get a strike. You know, you have to get, you cannot have bad
reviews, or you lose your job. Like, you can't have bad reviews and be here in its simplest form.
It's just, I just feel like we overcomplicate simple things so we can find excuses for ourselves.
You know, you just said about discipline. This is what I can tell the listeners is after talking
to dealers all across the country. You know, one of the key differentiators is the discipline.
The other thing I would just say is for salespeople who are listening to this podcast,
if you want to get rich, if you want to have your own dealership in the future, if you want to do
well in your life, heed what Chris is saying, because every single person who has gone on to
build themselves from doing the jobs and doing every job and building it up to owning a dealership to
really doing well in life, this single thing has been one of the biggest truths, which is be a good
employee. It's not about listening to someone you're building yourself up for the future.
Yeah, 100%. So I like, I like your second one. What is your third one?
The third one would be make sure you're not the problem. Make sure you're not the problem.
Make sure you're not the problem. Any good leader, any good successful person
has some part of their brain that introspects?
Yeah, I would, I would hope so. I would hope so. Look, at the end of the day,
if you truly believe that you are the head of your business, and by the way, speaking to salespeople,
look, I do believe, you know, that idea of leading up and the idea of wanting to be somewhere else,
be the person now. You know, in other words, you know, and I, same thing with the business,
I always treat my business for where I want it to be, not where it is now. So personally,
just because you're in sales does not mean that you can't have full ownership of your success
and your ability to be, to be successful. I mean, it's completely a mindset. And so from a, from a,
from a leadership standpoint, I think that if you truly believe that you are the head of your
business, you are responsible for everything in your business, everything in your business.
At the end of the day, you know, one of the things I like to say for myself is,
it may not be my fault, but it is my responsibility. I mean, at the end of the day,
everything is my, is my responsibility. Another one that I love is coaching the failures, failure.
You know, all of these isms that if you walk in my office, you'll say, I keep quotes on my
board when I hear when I write one down, but, but they're all, they're all just true. At the end
of the day, if you're the head of your business, everything is your responsibility. You can't
blame the person underneath you. You can't. Now they might make a mistake and you need to correct
them, but look, you hired them. You're keeping them. I mean, it's, it's your decision. You can't
put anything off on anyone else because you make all the decisions. Receptionists not taking care
of customers. Okay. And you know, who's, who's powerful, you know, who's able to change that?
You, you don't blame the receptionist. You fix it. I mean, you have to, and you,
again, you might have to do it through channels or what, or whatnot, but, but I've, look, it's,
a lot of these didn't come because most of these came because of, of mistakes that I've made
while trying to build Dallas lease returns, you know, they weren't just ideas. Hey,
I've got this great idea. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to never make bad policies to
govern bad and poisonous because I was doing it incorrectly. You know, not managing by me.
I was doing these. These are all, these are all things that I needed to correct.
Everything here are things that I needed to correct. And so yeah, the making sure you're
not the problem is absolutely an important one. Look, if, if things are not working in your
dealership and you're the head of the dealership, I mean, yeah. And actually you can even take it
all the way down to the sales manager, anyone, if it's not working for you,
figure out what you need to do. You're in charge of everything, everything around you.
100, 100%. So, so, so I just want to, you know, I just want to, this is amazing time that we
spend together. I started in Capital One when we were nothing, just a few floors, built a whole
bunch of business in Capital One. But the insights that I find and the leaders that I find in the
dealership community is very inspiring to me. I've learned a lot from all of you. And I just
want them to know that you are one of the most successful people in all of the United States.
And the United States is one of the most competitive markets, if not the most competitive
market in the world. And so the three major insights from Chris that has made him a beacon in the,
in the market is, is be a leader. That's one, never make policies to govern bad employees,
simply don't have bad employees. And the third and the really unbelievably powerful one is,
make sure you are not the problem. But thank you, Chris. I really appreciate you spending the time
with us. Oh, thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to many years of, of working together.
Get up. Thank you.
This has been Three Key Insights with Sanjeev Yajnik. Now let's turn those insights into action
and take the lead. We'll see you next time. The views and opinions expressed by guests on this
podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Capital
One Auto, Capital One, NA or its affiliates. This content is provided for informational and
educational purposes only and is not intended to serve as financial, legal, tax or business advice.
Viewers should consult their own independent professionals regarding their specific individual
or business needs.
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