Ep.59 - The Silent Killer of Business: Assumptions

In Episode 59 of Crossroad Conversations, the Lewis Brothers expose the silent killer of business: assumptions. From assuming employees understand priorities to believing customers know your process, the conversation unpacks how false clarity creates blind spots that stall progress. They share stories of miscommunication, unclear expectations, and unspoken motives—and how leaders can replace assumption with accountability, structure, and clear follow-up.

The brothers reveal how even strong teams fail when leaders assume too much, why clarity and measurable expectations matter, and how understanding what truly motivates people (beyond money) can transform performance. They also explore the customer side—assuming loyalty lasts forever, that pricing transparency is universal, or that old processes still fit today’s buyer. It’s a powerful reminder: what you don’t clarify will cost you.

Takeaways

• Assumptions quietly destroy productivity, culture, and trust.
• Clear communication beats assumption every time.
• Don’t assume employees “get it”—teach, show, and follow up.
• Motivation changes with life seasons—learn what drives each person.
• Silence in meetings doesn’t mean agreement.
• Loyalty must be re-earned through consistent service and transparency.

Chapters

00:00 Opening – The Real Silent Killer of Business
 01:00 Welcome to Episode 59: Assumptions
 02:12 Recap of Episode 58 – Leadership Lessons
 03:19 In the Garage – Ford Expedition Feature
 08:04 Assuming Employees Understand Priorities
 09:23 The Dangers of Unspoken Expectations
 10:39 Why Communication Beats Memo Management
 12:55 Teaching vs. Telling – Building Habits, Not Hints
 14:28 Motivation Isn’t Universal – Understanding What Drives People
 15:26 Money Isn’t the Motivator—Access Is
 16:28 Coaching Conversations & Finding Real Motivation
 18:35 Silence in Meetings ≠ Agreement
 20:10 Reading Nonverbal Cues & Meeting Feedback
 21:09 Assumptions About Thinking & Reactions
 22:33 Trusting They’ll “Figure It Out” – Why They Won’t
 25:33 Teaching, Inspecting & Following Up with Accountability
 26:06 Quantifying Expectations & Tracking Progress
 28:32 KPIs and Clear Feedback Loops
 29:50 70% of Workplace Mistakes Come from Unclear Communication
 31:08 Assuming Customers Already Know
 32:51 The Power of Customer Needs Assessments
 33:36 Selling to What Matters Most to Each Customer
 35:11 Listening as Your Competitive Advantage
 37:07 Believing Loyalty Lasts Forever
 39:14 Re-Earning Trust & Transparency Every Sale
 39:52 Letting Preference Override Data
 42:34 Outdated Customer Assumptions & Modern Expectations
 45:15 MythBuster – “We Know Our Customers Best”
 47:35 Assumptions About Size, Success & Failure
 49:38 Confidence vs. Blind Spots in Leadership
 51:08 Continuous Learning & Staying Adaptable
 53:08 Humility in Decision-Making
 55:00 How the Lewis Brothers Check Themselves for Assumptions
 57:00 Closing Thoughts & Takeaway Challenge

Feel the dynamic energy of the Lewis Brothers as they deliver real stories and lessons that keep local businesses on their toes, and share how experiences in the community inspire them to keep on driving.

Check out all our great episodes at CrossroadConversationsPodcast.com!

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Is even if you have one person's motivation figured
out, the season of their lifecould change and the motivation
changes.
And here's what I mean here.
People are not motivated bymoney.
I'm just like, here's an I don'tcare what you think on the other
side.
If you're like, no, no, I am.
I'm motivated by money.
You're not motivated by money.

(00:21):
You're motivated by what moneygives you access to.
Hey everyone, welcome toCrossroad Conversations with the
Lewis Brothers, where we aim toshare real stories about running
a successful family business,working through adversity, and
pouring back into the communitythat keeps our door open.
We're your host, Matt, Shelby,and Taylor, and we bring you

(00:42):
relevant local business adviceand automotive insights that are
sure to change the way you lookat running a business.
And maybe even throw in a plugfor you to do business with us.
Hey, welcome to CrossroadConversations.
It's episode 59 today.
The subject, the silent killerof business.
It's the word assumptions.

(01:02):
Oh kids.
Assumptions.
And man, are we going to diveinto that topic today?
You know what?
Every business has blind spots.
And most of the time, it's notbecause leaders don't care.
You know, it's because they makeassumptions about customers,
employees, the market, and eveneach other.
Today we're talking about howassumptions quietly, that's the

(01:24):
key word, kill progress.
Most leaders don't know whatthey don't know.
And guess what fills the gaps?
Assumptions.
Assumptions feel safe but aredangerous.
They lead to poor decisions,missed opportunities, and
communication breakdowns.
Every business owner listeninghas made at least one
assumption, including myself.

(01:47):
I think that's kind saying one.
I know.
I was gonna say more than that,but you know, I didn't want to
lose our listeners right off thebat.
Blanket coverage.
Maybe have made one.

SPEAKER_01 (01:54):
Or a hundred.
Absolutely.
And you know, I love diving intolast week's episode because a
lot of times, like, oh, yeah,I've got everything figured out
of going through there.
No, we went through instancesthat each of us and then deep
dove into each of them, havehard lessons that we've learned,
processes that we've changed,policies that we've changed, and

(02:17):
we've had to swallow pride alittle bit and say, hey, help me
with this.
Let's look at this, and we needto redirect.
So it was a great episode ofdiving into there.

SPEAKER_00 (02:26):
You know, one of the things I loved about that is,
and we talk about this, but youknow, never miss an opportunity
when you failed or made a wrongdecision to learn from it.
Yes.
And that's what we did byexamples last week.
So, you know, if you miss thatone, go back and check it out.

SPEAKER_03 (02:40):
Yeah, you're always winning or learning.
That's right.
It's not winning and losing,it's winning and learning.
Hey, always check it out,LewisSupershore.com.
You can see over a thousandvehicles in stock for your
shopping convenience, whetherit's cars under$10,000 or 0%
interest across 72 months on alot of or up to$15,000 off.
LewisSupershar.com is where youcan see the freshest inventory.

(03:02):
And as always, to see our pastepisodes, you can go to
Crossroad ConversationsPodcast.com.
If you'll hit like or follow,it's gonna hit you the latest of
every Thursday when that drops,and it'll bring you the most
relevant, up to date.

SPEAKER_00 (03:15):
And one of our favorite subjects of the podcast
about what's in the garage.
And today we're talking about avehicle as we start to creep
into fall in the holiday seasonof you're gonna be taking people
around.

SPEAKER_03 (03:28):
Let's go to the pumpkin patch.

SPEAKER_00 (03:29):
You know what I mean?
Whether you're going to thepumpkin patch or we're going
trick-or-treating, poppingeverybody, Thanksgiving, and
you're going to grandmother's,then maybe it's Christmas.
And the weather could bedifferent too.

SPEAKER_04 (03:41):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (03:41):
So you got to have a vehicle that packs everybody in
there and that can get throughthe woods or in inclement
weather up the mountain.
And that vehicle today, it's theexpedition.
Oh, yeah.
And not only the expedition, butthe redesigned expedition.
And then I've seen, you know,you guys have been doing a
little bit behind the scenes,and you got a couple that are
upfitted.

SPEAKER_03 (04:01):
Yeah, yeah, because we the Ford does a great job.
We just like to be a littledifferent.
Just a little bit better.
2,800 Ford dealers in the UnitedStates, and we just want to be
able to offer.
So we just finished one upbuilding a uh Expedition Max.
Okay.
That means same three rows ofseating plus storage behind it.
For all your stuff.
Oh my gosh.
If you bring it up and they'rein sports, all of it.

(04:23):
Buddy, you got a Matt's got moretackling dummies than you can
imagine.
Cones.
You can't put anything else inthe back of my truck at all.
I can.
I can't.

SPEAKER_01 (04:30):
I didn't put my luggage in the other day and he
said, uh-uh, bring it up.

SPEAKER_03 (04:33):
Put it in your lap.
So had you been driving anexpedition, you could put it in
the back of the back of yoursports gear.
So it's a max.
The 25 model is completelyredesigned.
It is.
I I haven't driven one yet, butthis one that we finished
yesterday, it's got a differentyoke style steering wheel.
And it doesn't have a bunch ofbuttons on the steering wheels.
It just has a couple touch pads.

(04:53):
And so you're able to change,and you have dual maps.
It's powered by Google Connectand Google Play.
So you can say, hey, Google, andit starts doing stuff.
Then it's dope.
It has a connectivity package.
So your car's connected, yourphone can be connected.
And I'm talking about uh signalof Wi-Fi that it does.
Uh they've rolled it alltogether as a bundle root ski.

(05:14):
Uh so you're not having to pay abunch of subscriptions there.
Uh it's got blue crews.

SPEAKER_01 (05:19):
You know what I love they did on that, and that Ford
really figured it out.
There's a family vehicle and theblue crews this last year, they
simplified.
But it's all the way from theused to be XLT active all the
way up to the Platinum Plus, allhave Blue Cruise.
Self-driving on the Interstate,lane change.

SPEAKER_03 (05:36):
And and you're like, man, I don't know.
And I'm gonna tell you, like,I've got a Bronco that has
adaptive cruise.
I don't use it.
Um, I have an F-150 that hasBlue Cruise.
And let me tell you this onroads in Mexico, uh on closed
tracks, I like to drive fasterthan normal.

(05:57):
Okay.
Right?
Okay.
Blue Cruise, that was mydisclaimer.
Uh blue cruise uh only goes upto 81 miles an hour.
What do you like that?
Uh I don't like it.
But I'll tell you, I've beendriving all over the place
lately, chasing kids and goingto Little Rock and all these
things.
Yeah, yeah.
I would rather drive 81 in 75miles an hour uh than drive

(06:22):
faster and have to keep my handson the wheel because it's
hands-free.
Right and uh it's like you hopon the interstate, set the
cruise, and go.

SPEAKER_00 (06:31):
You know what some people talk about, like they
throw around this term, butuntil you've experienced it,
you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah,whatever.
That's not real.
But driver fatigue.
Oh.
You know, when you're actuallygetting to an event where you
feel more rested because you youdon't realize the amount of
energy and focus, you know, thatyour brain uses and your arms

(06:51):
and your, you know, directingthat vehicle down the road.
The blue cruise is fantastic.
It is.
But I also got to ask you about,and I think it's a platinum, it
might be a it might be alimited, the one that you wrap
the top on because it caught myeye the other day.

SPEAKER_01 (07:04):
Oh, yeah.
So that one is, you know, that'sour off-road package.
It's level kit, wheels, tires,36.

SPEAKER_03 (07:10):
It's got 22s, 35s, a three-inch level kit, blackout
package.
And it's built on an active, youwould never know that.
Okay.
It still gets heated leatherseats, second row buckets,
twin-panel moonroof, and it's uhit's sub sub$90,000.
Gotcha.
But then the one you're talkingabout is a platinum.

SPEAKER_01 (07:27):
Yeah, this is like our street pad.
Yeah, it looks good.
I love the tall hat package,that's what we call.
But it is from basically whereyour windows roll down up is
gloss black, bottom is pearlwhite, so looks star white,
which looks really good, but itis on the showroom and gives
that sleek street look.
The 22-inch wheel.
Yep.
It's got the high output motor.

(07:47):
So it's a Raptor motor, powerboards, and you're like, good
night, that thing is probably sohigh.
It's in the mid-80s.
It's in the mid-80s, so a lot ofvalue there.

SPEAKER_00 (07:58):
Yeah, so the expedition is perfect to get
your family prepared to make itto all the family events and all
the family fun in this holidayseason.

SPEAKER_03 (08:06):
No doubt about that.
All right, so let's unpack thisthing.
The second killer of business,the assumptions.
The assumptions leader makeabout people.
We're gonna start with mostimportantly, uh this could go
off the rails.
I'm taking some time.
Assuming employees, the uh thisis uh Craig wrote this for me, I
think.
I don't know if he knows this,but I have struggled with this

(08:28):
for the past uh three, four,five years, whatever.
I struggled before that.
I recognized it.
But assuming employeesunderstand priorities without
you ever saying them out loud.
What's your thoughts about that?

SPEAKER_00 (08:42):
Well, I'm just as guilty there, and I'm just gonna
throw Taylor on the bus.
He is too.
Oh, yeah.
Okay, because we're brothers andwe get to call each other out.
Your fault.
And one of the things I thinkthat even drives this nail
farther home that we've talkedabout in a past episode is
because we've all grown uptogether, working on projects,
working on business.

(09:02):
And honestly, we've gotten towhere we can't read each other's
minds, but we have a pretty goodidea like what needs to be next.
So for umpteen years, we'vespent working together doing
that.
And then we assume all of asudden, if the three of us can
do that, that our employeescould do the same thing, right?
And man, was that wrong?

SPEAKER_03 (09:23):
It was so wrong.
And the problem was it drove awedge between you, productivity,
and your team because you hadcrazy high assumptions of when
they would show up, how longthey would work, how hard they
would work, how the processwould go, pretty much everything
in your daily operations.
And if you didn't clearly takeit from your brain and translate

(09:46):
it to paper and then deliver itto them, and here's what we want
to do, and manage thoseexpectations, you could come up
with anything.
Yep.
Right?
There's a a billion differentvariations of how someone would
get there, and the chances of itbeing how you want it to be done
because it's proven and itworks, are little to none.
It really is.
And it would drive you nuts.

(10:07):
You want to talk about brainfatigue.

SPEAKER_01 (10:09):
What do you mean though?
It because in business, let'ssay you're taught of, hey, you
work hard, you show your teamhow to work hard, and they'll
follow.
That that's what everybodythinks of going through there,
but that's not necessarily trueif you don't communicate that.

SPEAKER_00 (10:28):
You got to communicate it.
Now, I I want to say somethinghere because there's this fine
line, and there's these wordsthat get thrown around all the
time about manage, aboutmicromanaging people.
And so some people will putsomething out of the send a memo
of we need to do X, Y, and Z.
But then they don't take thetime to explain it and to what

(10:50):
some people would callmicromanage it at first, not the
end all be all.
All right.
But it but it takes introducinga subject, but putting in the
time and the tools and thetraining necessary for your team
to then go with it.

SPEAKER_03 (11:06):
You gotta you gotta manage the process.
You have to manage creating anew habit.
Yep.
We're just gonna say in the longterm, it's gonna at least take
90 days.
You're gonna have to changetheir habit.
You can't just say, hey, go fixthis car and then just stop
there.
You're you're gonna need to tellthem the entire process.
If you really want to streamlineand build so that you don't come

(11:28):
back to service after you'vebeen in parts and service or
sales, or you've been inwhatever you're doing, whatever
business we're talking about,and you say, Hey, go and sell
this hot tub, or hey, uh, go mowthis yard.
Like you have to know Mrs.
Smith wants it at three inchesand she wants you to trim the
hedges.
This guy, if you touch hishedges, he's gonna flip crap.
You know what I mean?
Like all those things and somecourtesy and some checks along

(11:51):
the way, but you cannot, itcan't just be a memo.
It can't not be a memo, and youjust go around and show them how
to do it because they don't carethat much.
And you can't not follow up withthe memo and show them how to do
it.

SPEAKER_00 (12:06):
Were you talking about my yard?
No.
No.
I figured because you ought toscalp your yard, mine's gotta be
a three inch.

SPEAKER_03 (12:12):
We have different grasses.
Mine's mine's a natural mix.

SPEAKER_00 (12:16):
Because it's low for low time.
I gotta get a little bit of aplush there.

SPEAKER_03 (12:20):
But anyway, just because my neighbor mow says
with the dad gum straight fromthe golf.
I know.
Oh my gosh.
So if I mow mine really short,it looks like mine's three weeks
long.

SPEAKER_00 (12:31):
But I think that's a great subject that you gotta
take the time, and it'sfrustrating as a leader,
especially when you're a go, go,go.
How can I pack more into it?
But it goes back to the oldproverb about you know, you can
give somebody a fish or you canteach them a fish, teach them
how to fish.
You know what I mean?
But in order to teach them howto fish, it takes longer,
doesn't it?
But it pays off.

SPEAKER_03 (12:51):
It's no different than the story of stopping to
sharpen your axe.
Yep.
Right.
And it is so basic, right?

SPEAKER_00 (12:58):
But naturally it doesn't happen.
No, like even though we'retalking about it, you we have
these filters like, whoops, slowdown.
You gotta take the time, nomatter what's on your schedule,
to teach them how to do this ifyou want it done, how you're
talking about doing it.

SPEAKER_03 (13:13):
And now that now that now that I full, uh not
fully, now that I somewhatunderstand it, it's like, oh
yeah, it's basic and simple.
Create a policy, create astandard operating procedure,
and steal it, introduce it, showthem how, follow up with it,
manage it, have KPIs.
This is like, oh yeah, yeah,yeah.
Yeah, it's still not easy, butand someone else is like, I

(13:36):
can't figure this out.
It's like, when did youintroduce it?
Did you tell them how?
Did you show them what'simportant?
Did you, you know, it's nodifferent than the car wash
thing.
And that we I day later.
Yeah, I find one sitting behindthe car wash, someone's dropped,
and I'm like, hey guys, what arewe doing?
So I get in it, I drive itthrough, and then I park it
right in the middle of service,and I walk around with the keys,

(13:57):
knowing who it belongs to.
I'm like, hey, whose was this?
Who's was this?
And they're like, oh my gosh.
And that's my way of saying,hey, we fell short a little bit.
What can I do to make sure thatthat doesn't happen again?
That that's so tricky.
Here's the another pointbelieving everyone is motivated
by the same things that you are.

SPEAKER_04 (14:17):
False.

SPEAKER_03 (14:19):
That wasn't a question, but uh the the
statement like that everyone'sgonna the age old, everyone's
gonna pick up the trash.

SPEAKER_04 (14:28):
Sure.

SPEAKER_03 (14:28):
Everyone's gonna get the leaf blower down that I've
been asking them for two weeksto do and blow the parking lot.
Everyone's gonna park all thecars before they go home so it's
fresh and ready to go in themorning.
Sure.
Everyone's gonna do the laundryFriday, Saturday, this morning.
There was no towels.
Somehow we have 150 towels andthere was no clean towels this
morning.
I was using the the washcloth todry off with.

(14:50):
So then I was doing the laundry,just assuming like somebody
would see like the towels arepiled up this high.
Yeah.
Hey, I should probably startsome laundry.
If you believe or assume thateveryone is by motivated the
same level or the same things asyou are, you're setting yourself
up for huge failure.

SPEAKER_00 (15:06):
And then let's go on the other side of it of
believing that everybody'smotivated by the same things.
You know, that's far from thetruth.
Not only that, but I'm gonna goone layer deeper here is even if
you have one person's motivationfigured out, the season of their
life could change and themotivation changes.

And here's what I mean here: people are not motivated by (15:24):
undefined
money.
I'm just like, here's an I don'tcare what you think on the other
side.
If you're like, no, no, no, Iam.
I'm motivated by money.
You're not motivated by money,you're motivated by what money
gives you access to.
And that's when we talk aboutpeeling the layers of the onion
back, you're like, no, no, I'mreally after X, Y, and Z with

(15:46):
money.
Well, why is that?
Because you want to be able toretire, because you want to
build your 401k, because you'resaving up to put more
investments, because that you'resaving up for your kids to go to
Disneyland, to pay to college,to pay off your house, to buy
your first car, to move out ofyour parents' basement.
All of these things, currency,money, is the engine towards it,

(16:07):
but it's not the motivator.
So once you peel back the layersand what was one time a
motivator for somebody to moveinto their first house, then
they have kids and they have atotally different motivator.
They still have to make themoney to do it.
But there it is, you won't talkabout secret sauce.
You figure out what motivatessomebody in the real deal, you

(16:29):
can get them to a differentgear.

SPEAKER_03 (16:30):
And that's a powerful one-on-one of really
just like, hey, Matt, what'sgoing on in your life right now?
Hey, tell me, like, what's thething that you're chasing right
now?
It's no different than uh atRunning Man, uh, Ben Neptum was
talking about this was thisquestion, he'd start when they
were like 14, 15, 16 years old.
Him and three other guys came upwith, hey, if I died today,

(16:53):
what's on my bucket list ofsomething I want to do?
And he came up with a hundred ofthem.
Uh, and it kind of puts it in adifferent perspective.
And so then you ask, like, hey,what's on your radar now?
And sometimes I just hit you inthe gut and you're like, I don't
know, I'm just in the trenches,just like just swamping through
it.
But if you slow down, uh,because it's funny, I I got uh
an opportunity to push a guy ina wheelchair around the loop.

(17:14):
And so I was asking him, I waslike, Hey, what's your thing you
want to do?
Sure.
Right?
And he was like, That's a reallygood question.
And then he asked me, and I waslike, huh.
And I'm the idiot that asked himthe question.
Uh so I was like, okay, but ifyou can peel it back and you you
find, here's what I want to do.
My kids really want to go snowski.
Sure.

(17:34):
Or my kids really want to beable to go to Disney.
Or me and my wife has alwayswanted to go to California to
wine country.
Well, if you can find that, thenyou help them set their lock
screen on their phone.
And you're like, hey, Steve,today we need 38 phone calls and
four appointments and twodeliveries from you, and that's
gonna get you another wine tour.

SPEAKER_00 (17:55):
That's right.

SPEAKER_03 (17:56):
You know what I mean?
And they're like, these peopleget it.

SPEAKER_00 (17:58):
Yep.
Right?
Such a big deal.
Now you only figure that out bynot making assumptions.
Yeah.
That's where the assumptionspart, let's bring this back
around for the audience.
You know, people assume thatthey're motivated the same that
I am, that you are, Taylor, thatyou are.
Even the three of us havedifferent stages of motivation.
We all want the business to besuccessful, but why and what

(18:18):
does it lead to?
So when you when you take thetime to do that, instead of
assuming, you don't make themistake.
You don't make the mistake.

SPEAKER_03 (18:27):
So think about this.
This is the same subject, butthinking that silence and
meetings, you know, we've allbeen in meetings, right?
You don't want chaos.
So silence is what you're goingfor, right?
A little bit.
But silence in meetings meansagreement.
When it often means hesitation,right?
So that's sometimes in meetingsyou'll ask for feedback because

(18:48):
you you want to know, am Ispeaking the right language,
language?
Is anyone actually connecting tothis?

SPEAKER_01 (18:54):
Are they wait?
You know, what are we doing?

SPEAKER_03 (18:57):
What's going on?
Is this real?
Is this transacting?
Does this make sense?
If not, we're all pretty welltrained enough that you can
completely change the trajectoryand say, scrap the rest of the
slides.
Yeah, let's focus on this andlet's peel it back.
But silence in meetings meansagreement.

SPEAKER_00 (19:14):
That's that's not true.
Um, so there's two things whenI'm up in front of a meeting
that I'm doing.
One, feedback, and that'sverbally, but then two,
nonverbal communication.
So I'm looking to see ifsomebody leaning in, are their
eyes open, or they back, or do Isee their eyes down on their
phone, or this or that.
I'm looking for that nonverbal.
They don't necessarily have tosay something, but they at least

(19:36):
have to be interacting.
And that might be interacting,taking notes.
That might be interactingleaning forward.
Like you can tell whensomebody's listening or they're
not listening, or if they'vekind of got that look on their
face where they're they're kindof looking a little confused or
they're questioning you.
It doesn't mean they agree.
They're listening, but youbetter pause and go deeper into
it because they don't completelyunderstand.

SPEAKER_03 (19:57):
Because uh, let me just be honest with you, they're
not gonna say, Hey, can I havethe meeting after the meeting
with you?
Never.
It is so rare.
There'll be a couple people thatare they're trying to get over
on your good side.
It's like, hey, boss, that wasreally good.
Let's talk about this.
But all the other people thatyou really needed to get the
point across to, they're notgoing to stop and say, Hey, when

(20:17):
you said do X, Y, Z, what didyou mean there?
So if you can read the audienceand say, hey, are any of you
questioning this?
Like, and then you can helpfully.
Sometimes you gotta scrap thewhole presentation.

SPEAKER_01 (20:29):
Yeah, you do.
They're the ones that didn'teven bring a pen to the meeting.
And whenever you ask and say,hey, take notes, they're just
hoping you won't call them outagain because they're definitely
not taking notes at the end ofthe day.
They're just going through it toget through it.
That's it.
Right?
That's it.

SPEAKER_00 (20:44):
Hey, I'll tell you this last week I was listening
to a podcast uh from StephenFurtick with Elevation Church.
And he's going through, he wastalking about people in their
mind and thinking andassumptions.
No different than this here.
One of the things he was talkingabout was anxiety, and he was
talking about him and his wife.
And he said, everybody has allthese files in their mind.

(21:04):
And as soon as somethinghappens, it's a trigger point
that they go pull that file out.
Yep.
And some people have it dialedin that when something comes
their way, an issue, they'recalm, cool, collected, and they
just figure it out and they'resolution based.
And then he was talking about,then other people, when
something happens, they go pullthe worst file out of that

(21:27):
situation that was a one-offtime, and that's where their
mind goes.
He was talking about when hiswife Holly was flying, she had
called to tell him that, hey,the flight's delayed.
And he started completelyfreaking out about it.
Like, oh my gosh, it's delayed.
Why would they do that?
You're gonna miss this.

(21:48):
This is gonna happen.
You paid for the ticket, youdeserve to be on time.
He's not even the one flying.
Yeah, okay.
She is, and she's like, it's nota big deal, Steven.
I've got this figured out, Ilayered in this time.
Yeah, it's okay.
And the reason I bring thatstory up is because if you
assume that somebody's gonnareact the same way as you are,

(22:10):
that's not correct.
We all have different reactions,and that really helped me.
And Shelby, you started talkingabout it at first, is
understanding that people thinkdifferently.
And if they think differently,as leaders, we need to be able
to coach and lead themdifferently, too.

SPEAKER_03 (22:27):
Most most certainly, and you you can't assume any of
that stuff, right?
That they're thinking the sameway you're thinking.
And so you we have to learn tothink out loud.
Not all things, but majority ofthe time.
And you're gonna say, Hey, I betyou're sitting there thinking
this, and they go, boom, andthen say, Hey, let me tell you a
story.
Right?
And then you can help themthrough that.
So the last thing that'll hit onthis is trusting that they will

(22:51):
figure it out.
That they're gonna figure outinstead of clarifying
exceptions.
You walk by something in theshop and you're like, Oh, that
doesn't look right, or thatneeds some attention, and you're
like, ah, they'll figure it out.
You know what they'll figureout?

SPEAKER_00 (23:05):
Something else to occupy their time.

SPEAKER_03 (23:07):
That's exact that's exactly right.
They will figure out that itwasn't important enough to you
for you to point it out to them.
And so it's just like forgettingto shut the gate in the field,
ah, the horses didn't get out.
Ah, the horses didn't get out.
I had dad didn't get on to me.
And then when the horses getout, like, how long's this gate
been open?

(23:27):
It's like, oh it's been a weekor two.
It's like, why would you leavethe gate?
Why did you not lock all thecars behind service?
Well, no one broke in for thefirst two weeks.
Like, what made that okay?
Right?

SPEAKER_01 (23:39):
So I had something.
Yes, I had something with rent,and this is great, it'll
resonate with y'all.
But uh our biggest deal isprobably like where is inventory
at?
Where's the placement of things?
So, you know, always circlingthrough, always checking and
walking through no differentthan we talk of walking through
departments.
I saw a car that was backed byChrysler Car Wash, and it was

(24:00):
parked there on the side.
And I said, Hmm, that's out ofplace.
Well, it was locked.
I was leaving that night.
I said, Okay.
So I went by a couple of daysand happened to be a day that we
were doing hands-on inventory.
And I just knew that I was like,you know what, I bet that's not.
So he said, Hey, got everythingchecked.
I said, Great.
Checked everything, all of thesethat are in green, because I

(24:21):
quickly scanned down, saw thatcar that it was checked in
green.
I said, All these green ones areout front.
We touch place, everything readyto go.
Yep, yep, yep.
We got everything ready to go.
I said, Okay, great, let's gowalk and look at this.
And I'd already walked past theother.
And so nicely walking themthrough, I said, What about this
one?
I thought you said these wereout front.

(24:41):
We just checked all thismorning.
Yeah, it just must have gottenmoved.
Okay, great.
Can we go ahead and open it?
It was locked because I knew itwas locked from a couple of days
before.
So going through, they won'tfigure it out.
It sat there for two days, yeah.
And there's so much going on inyour business that they're not
gonna intentionally lie to youor not tell you the truth.

(25:03):
They're just trying to make itthrough.
So you're not teaching them howto properly do it.
And this one individual goingthrough, we've taught them, so
there's other things goingthrough there, but you have to
teach them.
You have to teach them.

SPEAKER_03 (25:15):
Yeah, and that's no different than having your KPIs
of your checks.
Yes.
Okay, here's what I expect.
Now I'm going to inspect, andI'm gonna have your proper time
tools and training.
Yep.
Uh, and then if you continue tohave the same issue with the
same person, you need to say,hey, let's flip this Rubik's
Cube over and look at it.
Is there a different way toapproach this?

(25:36):
Is there a better time to dothis when you have less
distractions?
You know, any of those things.
And you're always gonna assumethe best.
People won't always do that, butyou assume the be the worst, the
best.
I'm sorry, you assume the best,and then help them through if it
actually is not the best.
And you're like, mm-hmm.
How can I help you?

SPEAKER_01 (25:53):
That so that's that's because I could have
yelled and said, Hey, youthought, but that's just not how
any of us No, it's just it likeyou wouldn't like it, and it's
not received well.
And then I still like that, it'sso much harder, like walking
over there.
Oh, it does.
Oh, for sure it does.

SPEAKER_00 (26:07):
Oh my god.
Hey, I will tell you this too,and and and y'all brought this
up after we had a a meeting theother day last Friday with our
managers and we had been meetingtalking about how to improve.
You can't always do this, butwhen possible, quantify your
expectations.

SPEAKER_03 (26:23):
Oh, that was I saw that one's like light bulbs.

SPEAKER_00 (26:26):
So anytime we can and you set an objective or you
set a KPI goal, when you can dothat, it's easier to track, it's
more transparent, and you don'thave emotions involved of like,
hey, I think I'm killing it, andyou're going, no, you're not
killing it.

SPEAKER_03 (26:41):
So the to break that down, it's not to say, hey,
what's your goal?
I want to be bigger, faster,stronger.
And you say, okay, that's agreat goal.
Peel layer back, uh, bigger thanwhat, stronger than what, and
faster than what.
And no different than that wasour, I think that was our high
school program, bigger, faster,stronger, right?
And they're like, okay, well,let's check your metrics.
Yep.
Let's get that all the way down.

(27:03):
Okay, you can run this fast, youcan lift this much, you can
sustain energy this long, this,this, this.
Okay, now here's the game plan.
So some of our objectives wewere going over with managers is
like, hey, I want to do moreone-on-ones.
It's like, that's great.
How many are you doing now?
Exactly.
Right?
And how long are they?
And how often do you do those?
So you can really break it down.

(27:24):
Because then I was looking atthat, I was like, hey, we need
to make those all quantifiable.
So then we can just chart them.
And so they can be like, we'llask them, how's it going?
They're like, oh, it's goingpretty good.
It's going pretty good, goingpretty good.
But then you put it as atrackable, and you're like, that
one's supposed to be in greenand it's trending red, just
keeps trending red.
So that's so good.

SPEAKER_00 (27:43):
I'll I'll tell you, and you'll you all laugh about
this, and probably the audiencewill too, but I don't care.
Um, and and your kids are nevertoo young to talk about this
stuff.
And and I'll give you a quickstory.
Um I'm coaching my son's fifthgrade football team.
Okay.
And and we're trying to get someprogress, and I won't get into

(28:03):
all that.
And and and we've had someprogress, but I started tracking
the data and sharing with themthe details that matter so that
we had clear expectations.
And one of the big deals was wegot to get a first down.
So we tracked how many plays didwe have versus the other team,
you know, how many first downsdid we have?
Because I knew that if we put aKPI out there that they knew,

(28:28):
and if we did that enough times,then obviously what would
happen?
We'd end up in the end zone andwe'd win a game.
So now after every game, I'vegot fifth grade kids asking me
if I, and they're simple stats.
If I have the stats, hey, coach,what were the stats from the
game?
They want to know, hey, did werun more plays than the other
team?
Did we, how many first downs didwe get?
And we started off with zerofirst downs.

(28:49):
You know, last game we had sixfirst downs.
Yeah.
So nobody's ever too young tostart instilling that in their
mind and tracking.
So you're not just assuming thatthey know that we got to do
that.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (28:59):
No, that's that's they're never too young because
on the other side, everyone isalways assuming, hey, you're
doing good or you're giving ityour best, but without tracking,
you have no clue and you're notat all.
It's like, hey, everybody, raiseyour hand.
Okay, now everyone raise it alittle higher.
Okay, raise it higher.
It's like, why didn't you raiseit all the way to the top the
first time?
Like it's it's so basic andsimple that even fifth grader,

(29:21):
third grader, first grader,whatever, you know, that you
could because many people assumethat everyone understands, hey,
let's do the best we can today.
Yep.

SPEAKER_01 (29:30):
There's a whole lot there that's really good.
Hey, fun fact quiz for you here.
What percentage of workplacemistakes stem from unclear
communication?
All of them.
Yeah, I was gonna say it's big.
Give me a multiple choice.
Okay, so A is 25, B is 50, C is70, and D is 90.

SPEAKER_03 (29:50):
What percentage of workplace mistakes stem from
unclear communication?
I'm saying 90.

SPEAKER_01 (29:57):
It's not A or B, it's actually C 70%.
You're really close there.
Okay.
Seventy percent.
Seventy percent of mistakeshappen from unclear
communication.

SPEAKER_00 (30:07):
You know what I like about that?
And y'all have heard me talkabout this, but I love being
able to see opportunities.
And you go, okay, I can beat 70%of all the other workforces out
there by just clearcommunication.

SPEAKER_03 (30:19):
So that that was your choice of positive mindset.
You were just talking about itfour minutes ago.
I love that, right?
Everyone's like, man, this statis awful.
70% of my mistakes are come fromunclear communications.
But class half full is like,hey, there's most people are
only getting it right 30% of thetime.

(30:39):
It's like, oh my gosh, we canbeat so many people by just
doing this.
Just by giving very clearcommunication.

SPEAKER_00 (30:45):
So it's not doing anything more.
But that one's a hard one for mebecause I'm not the best at
giving clear communication.
And that starts with a leader.

SPEAKER_03 (30:53):
It'd rather do than show and tell and create, right?
But that's definitely getting awhole lot better.

SPEAKER_00 (30:59):
You bet.
All right.
Now, assumptions that we we'vereally talked about our
employees and leadership, butassumptions about customers.
You know, assumptions aboutcustomers.
We talk about it in thisbusiness, and let's just talk
about a vehicle at first.
Is we assume that the customerunderstands what Blue Cruise is.
We assume that they understandwhat, you know, automatic

(31:21):
emergency braking is or lanekeeping or Bluetooth or whatever
it may be.
We assume those things.
We assume that they know thatvehicles have gone up quite a
bit and your payment's going tobe more than when you bought 10
years ago or five years ago.
You know, what are some ofy'all's thoughts on what you see
about your customers assumingthat they value the same things

(31:44):
that they wanted five or 10years ago?

SPEAKER_01 (31:46):
Um, you know, I really see it that we customers
do come in and do that, and thenaggravates me whenever we don't
go through the process becausein I'll park on vehicle prices.
A lot of people that come in ofvehicles that haven't bought one
in 10 years, haven't bought onein five years, even five years,
we'll go five year stretch.

(32:06):
It's gone up quite a bit.
I may have some that are even ayear old that have gone up from
base price.
But assuming that they'vealready read the window sticker
and they know and they knowwhat, like in your head, you may
get a little aggravated, butthat they should know from a
year ago that they went up$3,000for the base package, and then

(32:27):
each individual option's thismuch more.
We've really noticed, hey, don'tassume that.
Go and walk your customerthrough it.
Now, they do a lot of researchonline, so they know what stuff
is priced at.
Sure.
But you've got to be able toshare the differences of those
two with them.

SPEAKER_03 (32:42):
You know, one of the things that I love that we've
built into our process and weconstantly have to go back to it
is our customer needsassessment.
Uh, and it allows you to beatmajority of the people out there
in the car sales industry andany industry.
If I can just learn, there'ssome a few basic questions that

(33:02):
I'll ask because everyone has adifferent one of these.
And so when I'm talking to acustomer, or assuming my
salespeople talk to thecustomer, I say, hey, Mr.
Steve, got a couple questions Iwant to ask here.
One of the most important is Iwant to learn what is most
important to you in buying thisvehicle.
And by that I mean do you needfour-wheel drive?

(33:23):
Do you want leather seats?
Do you need good audio?
Do you want an 18-inch wheel ora 22-inch wheel?
If you were to pick three ofyour highest rated, most
important features, what wouldthat be?
They will tell you how to makeit what they say a lay down or
an easy sale.
It means you saw what wasimportant to them and forgot the

(33:43):
rest.
That's right.
People, there's over 20,000moving parts in a car, and so
many people make the mistake oftrying to sell all 20,000 parts.
And then they were like, man,that last customer loved it as a
four-drive and it was 10 grandoff.
Love this four-drive and 10grand off.
Love those four drive and 10grand.
The next guy could care less.
Yep.
Right?
You could be one that's threegrand off, but it's initially 18
grand less money, less of apackage.

(34:05):
He didn't need a power seat, hedid see cold seats, massaging
seats.
And so if you can ask thosequestions up front, you can save
the time of browsing a thousandvehicles and walking the lot
because you're on the wrongprice, and you can help a
customer say, this guy justlike, I don't know how.
He knew exactly what we wanted.
And like, well, I know how.

(34:25):
I asked him questions.
So the whole time in mypresentation, I'm talking about,
hey, you know, you said you liketo go camping.
Let me show you this feature,this feature, this feature,
instead of just cookie cut orsell.

SPEAKER_01 (34:35):
That's right.
That's good.
I have an uh example of hearingthat, and I just I've shared
this with a couple of majors.
I loved it, loved it.
This past weekend of Friday toSaturday, I had three sets of
customers, three differentcustomers, not connected with
the same salesperson.
So I love that even more.
And they came.
Customers now, more thananything, in any of your
business you're doing, they justwant to be heard and they want

(34:59):
to walk through the process.
They walked in and said, Hey, Ijust want to let you know, you
weren't the lowest price in themarket.
But what you did do is youlistened to me and you provided
better service than anyone.
And for that, I thank you and Iwill be back.
And guess what?
They already sent another personto us and they came back to look
at a different vehicle for theirspouse.

SPEAKER_03 (35:20):
It's it's funny you say that because when when
there's a wave of it, or maybeyou're just paying attention to
it, there was another customer Italked to Saturday that everyone
was busy and I was like, Yeah,you got how can I help?
And they were like, This guyover here, I'm almost there, I
just need some help.
So I went and talked to him.
What we kept hearing, this iscrazy, but what we kept hearing
from customers about otherdealers, was like, thank you for

(35:42):
honoring what your price wasonline.
What you said it is is what itactually is, because there was
one that was like, they wouldn'tlet us put any cash down.
They wanted us to finance thefull term.
They said we didn't qualify forthis price because we didn't
have this trade.
And there were so many hoops andyo-yos.
And so we said, nope, this isour price.
It is 1,000% transparent.

(36:02):
Everyone qualifies for it, andthey all kept saying, Thank you.
Like they had gone to anotherplace and they were like,
they're marking my rate up twoand a half points.
Yep.
It's like, well, we told youthat.
And they're like, hey, and oneof them came back because we put
on the worksheet, hey, two and ahalf points less because we're
selling at buy rate, tenure 120,uh, Lewis Guarantee free of

(36:23):
charge was like, here's yournumbers and here's the details.
They came back two hours laterbecause they went to the other
place and they wouldn't do that.
Well, they wouldn't honor theirprice.
Guess what?
The card sold.
Yeah.
And they were like, oh, no way.
Like, they wouldn't do it.
It was like, we tried to tellyou, and I don't blame them,
right?
The this industry has a shlackeye for those things, but I'm
telling you here, LewisAutomotive, we're in the

(36:44):
long-term game.
Yeah.
And that, but you can't justassume that customers know.

SPEAKER_00 (36:48):
No.
No, that's good.
Well, here's another one thatpeople assume, and we talked
about this in a previousepisode, but let's let's get
y'all's thoughts.
Believing loyalty will lastforever just because you've
earned it once.

SPEAKER_03 (37:02):
That's like believing that you can always
run a sub four hour marathonjust because you did once.

SPEAKER_00 (37:06):
Yeah, and that's so true.
But it's easy to slip into thatbecause you're like, how many
salespeople do we get come up tous and they thought the customer
was loyal to them, but they hadnever followed up with them?
They're like, no, that's mycustomer.

SPEAKER_03 (37:20):
People are so much less brand loyal or company
loyal than they have ever been.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (37:27):
I'll rephrase that and I'll say loyalty gives you
the next opportunity.
That's it.
Okay.
And I do believe that.
Yeah.
I do believe that a companythat's done a lot of business
with us and an individual willgive you the next opportunity,
but you have to prove yourselfagain.
It's no different than if you goto your favorite restaurant and

(37:49):
it's been great, it's beengreat, it's been great.
And then all of a suddensomething happens five years
down the road, and you go andyou're like, man, that's not
what I'm used to.
Now you chalk it up, and you'relike, you know, maybe they had a
bad day or this or that.
You go back again, and it's it'slike, man, this place has
changed.

SPEAKER_03 (38:05):
You're done.
You're not, you're moving on.
If you try a second time,that'll be the as much as you
give it, right?

SPEAKER_00 (38:10):
So that that proves the point on loyalty gives the
opportunity, but does not setthe track that they will always
do business with you.

SPEAKER_01 (38:18):
And a lot of people definitely in that area just put
it on cruise control.
Let it, yeah, yeah, I got you.
I got you.
I got it.
That's my customer.
Always get you, we'll always getyou taken care of until it falls
through the cracks.
And you never know when you'rebeing tested.
I had a friend the other daythat didn't intentionally tell
me, and luckily, you just swingevery single time and make sure.

(38:42):
But he was getting a truck fromus and going through, and he
happened to go to someone elseand get his vehicle appraised.
And they said, They're doingwhat for you?
He said, Never go anywhere else.
So luckily, we had done what weneeded to do through the process
because you never know, evenwhenever it's a friend or you
think it's anyone going through,that they're gonna check you.

SPEAKER_03 (39:02):
And that's one of those things of long-term
business of our new term peopleto make sure they're still
delivering that.
Like, hey, this person comeshere because we treat them
right.
And by this person, I meaneverybody, but this person has
before because they love how wemake them feel.
We love how it's an easyexperience, but life changes for
people.
Maybe it passed from onegeneration to the next, sure, or

(39:25):
maybe their buying mode havechanged, or maybe they bought
platinums for the last 10 years,but they restructured a little
bit, and now everyone's gettingXLTs or Lariates.
You need to be adaptable in thatto realize you need to earn
that, re-earn that businessevery single time and prove to
them.

SPEAKER_00 (39:41):
That's so good.
Now, this next one here, it'llgo down a little bit of a rabbit
hole, but it's but it's soimportant.
Letting your own preferencesreplace the actual data.
And man, does that happen?
And initially, and the untrainedprofessional, that's where they
go.
Shelby, you brought it upearlier our salesperson will
sell a vehicle, and then theythink that they sell the next

(40:04):
one the same way on the samefeatures and the same benefit.
Or you get your personalpreferences in there and you
start talking about I would buythis vehicle because of X, Y,
and Z, or I would structure thedeal because of X, Y, and Z.
And that's not the customer.
And the customer is the onepaying for the vehicle, not you.

SPEAKER_01 (40:22):
No, and the crazy thing you'll go down on that is
people go down that becausethey're comfortable with it.
Yep.
They can talk about it.
They're vo they will verbalvomit.
And then whenever you reviewwith your salesperson of, hey,
how'd that process go?
Man, it was great.
I told him about$10,000 off thatit was red, that it was the best
color, that it was XLT, and theydidn't listen to anything.

(40:44):
So in their mind, your salesprofessional, whoever it is,
thinks they're doing greatbecause they're doing something
they're comfortable with whenthey didn't really follow your
process or procedure.

SPEAKER_03 (40:53):
That's a tricky thing if you think about it,
because it is important.
We don't order the cars that welike.
We order the cars that sell.
Sure.
That and that's a thing there.
But in today's industry, peoplehave never been this much
influenced by others.
You know, the age old keeping upwith the Jonges.
Now in social media.
It's at a whole different level.

(41:14):
I mean, the click to buy, welaughed.
Uh one of the managers had somestuff sew up the other day, and
I was laughing, and I gave him ahard time, and I was like, you
know what this is?
This is a subscription, asubscription that he didn't
cancel because I'd already seenit once.
Yeah.
And so I called him, he's like,hey, you got a package over
here.
And so I tossed it at him.
He's like, Dad, gummit, I triedto cancel that because they saw

(41:36):
someone that they saw of highvalue and they were touting this
product.
The shoe didn't fit.
Uh-uh.
Like there was no reason forthem to have that product.
Well, now they've got them inthis fair soil of hard to cancel
the product.
So you need to understand thatthat you it can't just be all
right, everyone's buying theseEVs because it's a low lease.
Like you need to, in the needsassessment, learn about the

(41:59):
customer.
They might not need acarbon-plated running shoe.
They might just need somethingthey can stand on all day.
That's right.

SPEAKER_00 (42:06):
So that's that's tricky.
You know, what what do you guysthink about this one?
You know, what's an outdatedcustomer assumption you've seen
hurt a business?
And I'll tell you one to get usstarted in our business.
Uh a customer assumption was iswe needed to take when they're
buying a car, we needed to takesomebody through the entire

(42:26):
process.
And that's outdated.

SPEAKER_04 (42:29):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (42:29):
Because people now spend a minimum of 20 hours on
the internet before they come tothe lot.
So we need to meet them whereverthey're at in the buying process
and not necessarily drag themthrough step one.
They might already be at stepfive or step six.
So if we try to start everybodythe same way, it's just gonna
frustrate them and they're gonnafeel like that we didn't value

(42:50):
their time.

SPEAKER_01 (42:52):
Oh, I've seen a big deal in service that we've
really pushed over becauseservice advisors, now there's
younger people, but aredinosaurs in their communication
era.
And y'all really, we've reallypushed to hey, text your
customer, you know, meet them intheir form of communication.
So in servicing going through,it doesn't have to be a phone

(43:13):
call that you're locked in goingthrough every single detail.
It's a quick update.
Hey, I checked on X, Y, and Z.
This is what we're waiting on,this is what we still have
going.
Quick text.
Takes you five to 10 seconds,and then you move on.
So it's learning that form ofcommunication to help with our
customers.

SPEAKER_03 (43:30):
You know, something that we've adapted to and are we
are working on adapting to isthe age-old belief is the
customer must be here for themto be able to get proper
numbers.
Yeah.
When you're seeing industrystandards saying be transparent,
be up front, give the best youcan on this, give the best sight
on scene saying we still need toinspect, give them the best

(43:52):
rate, the best term, even whenthey're not sitting in front of
you.
Yeah.
Because, like, you know, theage-old is you miss a thousand
percent of the shots you don'ttake.
Well, like, you know, theage-old industry of like, when
can you be a hero?
And we still say that, right?
It there's something about beinghere to physically touch and
feel to make sure that's exactlywhat they want.
So we got to find a hybridversion.

(44:14):
But then I know sometimes whenI've done my research, when I'm
looking to buy something new,you say, where are they in the
process?
Like when you were buying a bikefor your son, sure.
You've probably gone really fardown a rabbit hole.
You know how much one weighed,how much group set was on this
one versus this one.
So then when you went to thestore, or maybe you were just
like, Let me call these fourstores, who's got this bike in

(44:36):
stock, what trim is it, uh, andwhat tire set does it have?
You're 10 out of 12 steps in theprocess.
And so you have to be carefulthere.
That's like you do anavailability check, a stock
check, you do a price check andmake sure it falls in the
variances.
And then if they'll treat youwith that speed, yep, I've got

(44:57):
it in stock, I can have it readyto ride today.
It's gonna be X amount ofdollars, and you're like, I'll
take it.
Yep.
You know, have it ready for me.
Uh, do you want me to pay youover the phone?

SPEAKER_04 (45:05):
Yep.

SPEAKER_03 (45:06):
Right.
And majority of those things,because if we're dinosaur age,
like, no, I need you here, we'regonna start the process, and
it's gonna be six hours, it'sgonna put a lot of people off.

SPEAKER_00 (45:14):
It really is.
It really is.
I think so.
That those are just some greatdiscussion points that we've
talked about, assumptions whenit has to do with the customer.
And there's many more out there,but that gives us a brief
overview of that.
There is.

SPEAKER_03 (45:26):
No doubt about that.
All right, Mythbuster time.
This week we're talkingMythbusters.
We know our customers betterthan anyone.
Yeah.
So saying we hey, I know uh Mr.
Smith better than anyone.
Yeah, generally everyone'sthinking that.

SPEAKER_00 (45:45):
I think when you take, and I know this is a
little cliche because everybodytalks about the internet, but
it's really the truth.
When we opened up and we wentfrom having to go dealer,
dealership to dealership, orlet's talk about learning, the
the whole library of theencyclopedias, you know, to now
you go onto the internet, nowyou have AI involved and you and
you have all these resourcesthat changes at the speed of

(46:09):
light.
I think our customers, there'sno way that we know them better.
You know what I mean?
Because it's just changing at afaster pace.
It is.
We want to.
It's it's it's not a lack ofwant, but it's just they're
moving so much faster because ofthe resources and access that

(46:29):
they have.

SPEAKER_03 (46:30):
Well, think about that.
The best companies, uh, theyrelearn their customers daily,
weekly, monthly, or yearly.
Like they know, like, thinkabout how an internet provider,
uh, you see, like, you'reshopping for shoes, and it
starts then after you've clickedon one ad.

(46:51):
Now it's on Instagram, now it'son Facebook, now it's a
carousel, now it's a scroller onthe side, and you're like,
golly, I didn't even type thisin the search.
They know everything, but justin a flip of a switch, once
you've bought those and you sayturn this ad off, or you stop
talking about it, then that'snot their dominant buying motive
anymore.

(47:11):
Now they've switched over tosomething else because they've
got Shoppophobia, and nowthey're over here.
If you thought you knew it lastweek or three years ago, I sold
them this, they've completelychanged their pace or what
they're tracking, right?
That's good.
So that's uh, I would say wedon't know our customers better
than anyone.
We have to constantly relearn.

SPEAKER_01 (47:29):
Yeah, it's a busted there.
Hey, rolling through theassumptions, going into I like
this one a lot, but aboutyourself and the market.
So assuming we're too big orsmall to experience fail.

SPEAKER_00 (47:46):
Yeah.
That that's an easy one to gettrapped in.
Or you've been, in our case, inbusiness for a long time.
You know, and what we realizethere is again, that's no
different than the customerspart.
You may have been in business along time, you may be big
enough, but that just gets youthe opportunity.
You still have to perform.
You know, we're in the sportsseason, and it'd be really easy

(48:08):
for a football team that had wonthe Super Bowl last year to say,
hey, we're too good to fail now.

But let me just tell you this: when you're at the top, guess (48:14):
undefined
what?
Everybody's coming for you.
And you got to keep improving.
So if you start assuming that,like, hey, just because we built
these huge complexes out here on49, there's no way we'll fail,
you're kidding yourself becausethe expense monster's falling
you.
You know, and if you don't keepincreasing and keep refining

(48:35):
your processes and in whatyou're offering the customer,
you will fail.

SPEAKER_01 (48:40):
And they probably expect that from you.
You know, you go on a sportsanalysis that you go, take the
Chiefs that have been on a runthe last several years.
They talked about this with adifferent coach.
Every team that plays them everyweek treats it like they're
playing the Super Bowl becausethey've been in there.
So they bring the thunder.
And if they don't have theirchin strap on, which happened at

(49:02):
the beginning of this year, theywere like, whoa, we got to wake
up and they've made someadjustments and start going.
No different than people show uphere.
They see an awesome complex.
They say this is better thananything we've seen in the area.
They want to experience thedifference, and you have to
deliver.
If not, you'll have a losingrecord and you'll fail.

(49:24):
That's right.

SPEAKER_03 (49:25):
Every single time.
The bigger it is, the more youhave to fail.
The smaller it is, the more it'son your shoulders.
The more experienced it is, itmeans the less you might not
know about what's currentlyhappening.
So I'd say all of those are notgood.

SPEAKER_01 (49:38):
Absolutely.
This one kind of hits you in themouth, but believing you've
already learned what you need toknow.

SPEAKER_00 (49:43):
I think that that is there, there is truth, and then
there's false expectations tothat.
Yeah.
The truth is, is you did areally good job learning to get
you to where your stage are now.
And when you do that, it thenunlocks other doors, other
opportunities, other people foryou to be around.
Yeah.
You know, climbing to this peakgot you the view of the next

(50:06):
peak.
So it was important, but itwon't get you to where you
ultimately need to go.
That's always moving.

SPEAKER_01 (50:13):
Yes.
That's good.
Uh letting your confidence turninto blind spots.

SPEAKER_03 (50:20):
That's like the age old.
We were talking to a guy theother day, interviewing him, and
it was like, what's one of yourdownfalls?
He was like, It's not current,but previously I was way too
cocky that I never like hedidn't say this, but uh, or
these words, but it was like hehad his blinders on it.
He was the best.
You know, no one else couldcompete with him.

(50:40):
You know, if anyone was gonna doit or get to that level, it was
him, right?
And then he got quickly humbled.
Uh, and the confidence just wasovershadowing all these things
he was missing.

SPEAKER_00 (50:53):
I I'll tell you one that I had that we talked about
is the confidence on growingleaders from within.
And I'm still confident aboutthat, but it became a blind spot
in hiring other great talentthat's out there that needed to
join our team.

SPEAKER_01 (51:08):
Absolutely.
Those are a lot of good thingsthere that um, you know, just
making sure about assumptions,yourself in the market that you
are keeping a clear mind, movingforward and not letting that
overshadow that X, Y, and Z canhappen to your business no
matter what stage you're at, toalways be moving forward and

(51:29):
feel okay that, hey, I'm I'mtowards the top, I'm really a um
leading this area, but youalways have to be improving and
excelling to stay that way.

SPEAKER_00 (51:39):
You know, I think I think one of the things we
talked about in here too, andand I saw it listed, so I'm
gonna go and talk about it, isyou know, how do you make sure
that you're not overestimatingyour clarity?
I have some key people that Iknow I can go ask and they'll be
honest with me about when wecome out with something.

SPEAKER_01 (51:56):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (51:56):
Not somebody that'll yes, yes, yes, me, you know,
just a brown nose, but they'llactually give me feedback on
clarity.
Hey, what we went over in themeeting today, tell me your
thoughts about that.

SPEAKER_04 (52:06):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (52:07):
But I have to ask them the specific questions.
I can't be like, hey, do youthink that was a good idea?
I have to ask them, hey, can youcan you summarize that for me?
Like what we know, how do yousee that working in your
department?
And then it helps give mefeedback on was I clear?
Do we need to revisit that?
Do we need to approach itdifferently?
So I don't just assume, becausewe talk about the learning

(52:28):
pyramid, if you're the one upthere teaching, it's a 90, 95%,
you know, success rate.
So uh, but but you gotta be ableto stick that thermometer in.

SPEAKER_03 (52:37):
It's no different than asking a kid, hey, how was
school?
You know, if they're halfpositive, they're gonna say it
was good, right?
But then if you super dissectit, like, hey, today in your
learning lab, what was one thingthat you didn't know that you
learned today?
Right.
And then you're those people arehelping you give specific stuff

(52:58):
to help you coach that.
Um something that that I noticedand saw was what's something
that you learned the hard wayabout staying humble and
adaptable?
You know, something learning thehard way about b staying humble
and adaptable.
I think the biggest thing is inthe right room with the right
people, putting the walls downand learning together.

(53:20):
Right?
And we've talked about thatbefore, but of just in micro
meetings or in meetings whereit's okay to be, just say, hey,
here was our game plan and oursix-month forecast, here's what
we did, you know, here's whatthe KPIs we tracked.
Throw some darts at this.
Where did we miss at?
You know, where did I miss ofgiving clarity?
Where did I miss of givingtraining?

(53:40):
And you start with yourself ofstaying super humble of not
saying, hey, we're the best, weonly do the best, here's where
we're at.
Sure.
What do you think?
Right.
And I think that's somethingthat not that we struggled at,
but we struggled at being ableto be open to say we don't have
it all figured out.

SPEAKER_00 (53:56):
I think another thing there too, and I'm gonna
come up from a different angleon those micro meetings, was if
you're the leader, just becauseyou're in the meeting, you don't
have to run the meeting.
And and we noticed that, like inour in our service meetings, for
example, our controller runsthat meeting, you know, and like
we saw that, and I was like, Idon't have to run this meeting.

(54:19):
I'm here, I'm support, I'mpresent, I don't tune out, but
let me let her run the reportspart of the meeting and this and
that, help her recap and finishanything else out.
Yeah, that's good.
That's really good.

SPEAKER_03 (54:32):
That brought different eyeballs and different
uh strengths from differentdepartments.
It allowed other people to feelempowered uh and just kind of it
gave us a different angle.
It really super good there.
All right, frequently askedquestion.
How do you guys generallypersonally check yourself for
assumptions before making bigdecisions?

SPEAKER_00 (54:51):
This one's an easy one for me.
And it's because the way we grewup, you know, we weren't able to
make any decisions fast.
It was we always thought aboutit.
The word stew came in that mydad, meaning like if you were
cooking stew, you know, you putit on low heat.

SPEAKER_03 (55:07):
Probably why I don't like stew.

SPEAKER_00 (55:10):
But so we've always had a great understanding
because we were trained, not wewe weren't burned with it.
We were trained of kind of slowplaying it and just checking the
facts, the data, you sleep on itbefore just making assumptions
on big decisions, you know.
And then I'll always go aroundand I'll either ask, I'll do

(55:31):
some more research.
We always ask for references, wetalk to people, you know, it's
no different than all thesebuildings.
You'll y'all have heard us talkabout this, but we went to a
hundred different dealershipsand we always found somebody
that was in charge and we said,Hey, what would you do
different?
So we were checking those boxesbefore we made the big decision.

SPEAKER_01 (55:48):
Yeah, that's good.
I think just carrying off ofwhat you said there, it's just
always into I'll alwaysacknowledge whenever a decision
or a question or something comesin of absolutely let me uh give
me a little bit of time and I'mgonna think about that and go
through X, Y, and Z here.
So it lets the person know thatis either waiting for the
decision, a different than ifyou don't take the big scale of

(56:12):
a business and it's a bigservice ticket or big something
else that you're looking at.
Hey, yeah, let me get the factsright here.
And whenever I get the facts, Iheard your story, I need to hear
this one.
And whenever we put themtogether, I think that's a big
part of it.
Get all of your factssurrounding.
So if you need to talk tomultiple people, and then make
the decision.
If nobody's life or death has tohappen right now, just step back

(56:35):
and you'll make a much moresound decision if you do that.
That's good.

SPEAKER_03 (56:39):
You know, I'm sitting here thinking about
this.
Um, and so one of the downsides,I would say, uh, in just our
personality is generally we allhave the same personality in
this perspective, what I'mtalking about.
Sure.
But with the STU mentality orlet me get the idea, and then
we're gonna collect the data,what will happen then if there,
whatever the issue is, whetherit's a personnel issue or

(57:01):
whether that's a client askingfor something, or if it's
somebody asking for a donation,generally, if it doesn't equal
like exchange of currency for aservice, sometimes what'll
happen is because our naturalstew mentality will say, let's
put that at bay for a minute andlet's see how really bad do they
want it and how really will theydeliver the goods that we've

(57:24):
asked for.
Like, hey, why don't you send mereferences, break it down?
If it's something really worthit, sometimes that stuff will
get put on the back burner.
Yeah, that's true.
That that happened, I thathappens to all three of us.
I see it all the time.
Luckily, because three of us arein a lot of the conversations.
Hopefully, one of us remembersand is like, hey, let's get this
back to the top and let's solvethis.

(57:45):
Either let's tell them no, orlet's tell them yes, but it
needs to look like this or this,this.
And so that helps us of our stewmentality.
Because what happens is we putit on the back burner, but then
we get 13 more burners going inthe front.
It just keeps going.
And there's like, hey, uh,that's about out of water back
there.
Did you want to do somethingwith it?
Um, so that happens.

(58:06):
Like, got an email frommarketing yesterday.
It was like, hey, just fall.
And if your team understandsthat, yeah, then they can help
you say, hey, bringing this backto the top.
Sure.
And uh Craig and I were talkingthis morning and he was like,
Hey, did you get with Natalie?
I was like, No.
I was like, hey, I'll explainthis to her.
But if you cross paths with herteller, we don't give her the
cold shoulder because she'snewer to the team because we

(58:29):
don't like what she said.
It's just we get a lot of thingsin our natural mentality as to,
okay, let's collect the data andthen we'll answer it.
Yeah.
So then they're like, hey, wehave this thing coming up.
Can you guys make it?
And I was like, yes, I can makeit, and they probably can too.
And then they're like, yeah, Ican make it.
And it's like, yeah, I can makeit.
But it's one of those thingsthat that's a slippery slope
that sometimes you fall into ifyou put everything back there

(58:51):
and handle the stuff in front ofyou.
That's true.
Sometimes you miss out on thoseopportunities.

SPEAKER_00 (58:55):
Yeah, I think that's a good point.
It's a it's a balance of both,of not just knee-jerk reaction
to everything.
So you check, check, check,check all the boxes, but at the
same time, don't let it stew.
And and really the way to dothat, you know, we have each
other, and then now ouremployees know too, whether it's
our controller or marketing orwhoever else, it's okay to ask
them.

SPEAKER_03 (59:12):
No doubt, like to bump it back to the top.
You know, it's like, hey, what'dyou come up with?

SPEAKER_00 (59:16):
But naturally they think it it isn't.
So if you're in business outthere, just know if you've got a
CFO or if you've got an officemanager or you got a project
leader or a superintendent orwhatever it is, you got to tell
them, hey, if I hadn't gottenback with you by Tuesday, will
you please ask me again?

SPEAKER_03 (59:33):
No doubt about that.
Like, and you have to, becausesometimes they're just like
scared to death.
They're like, nope, I don't needto ask them again.
It's like, no, I've forgotten.

SPEAKER_04 (59:41):
Yeah.
Right.

SPEAKER_03 (59:41):
And that's one of those things that I've like on
Google Task, if I get an emailand something like, I don't need
to make a decision right now, Ijust throw it over in the task.
So then when I'm running throughand there's 13 other things in
the front bars, I'm like, I needto do something with that.
I need to tell them no, or Ineed to say I need more info.
Yeah.
So you don't just Hey, I'll tellyou this.

SPEAKER_00 (01:00:00):
You know, just and I know we're getting close to the
end here, but you just I Iremember the story, so I gotta
tell you.
Uh this weekend I had driven oneof our used cars home.
Okay.
Nice Mustang we had traded for.
I'd driven it home.
Um well there was a customeryesterday that wanted to come
look at it.
And and this salesperson thatwas showing it has my cell phone
number because he's texting meabout other stuff.

(01:00:21):
He was afraid to text me to seeif the car was available to
sell.
And had a manager actually callme.
And I'm thinking, I'm like,well, absolutely, it's for sale.
I mean, that that's what it is.
Yeah, let me grab my stuff outof it.
I'm gonna pull it through thecar wash, it's clean, I'll get
it right over to you.
And immediately.
Um, I was thinking in my mindlater, I'm like, what have I

(01:00:41):
done to make him feel like hecouldn't ask me if a vehicle was
available to sell that earns himincome and me income?

SPEAKER_03 (01:00:50):
Yeah.
It's because we gotta work inyour jokes.
I guess so.
Taylor's the approachable one.
Uh-huh.
Uh, and then Matt, they're justgonna be like, oh god, I'm not
asking.
That's not for sale.
Nope, it's his.
He's taking it.
It's like, no, I was justdriving.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:05):
Because then later he's like, give me a bring it
back.
Can you put your stuff in?
I was like, no.
I was like, no, I want you tosell it.

SPEAKER_03 (01:01:10):
Right?

SPEAKER_04 (01:01:11):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:01:11):
All right, super solid episode 59, where we
talked about the silent killerof business is the assumption.
Assumption.
Don't assume.
Hey, as always, check us out atlewissuperstar.com and
crossroadconversationspodcast.com for the latest and
greatest.
Like, subscribe, send to yourfriends.
Have a great day.

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:28):
Hey, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to give it
a like, share it with yourfriends and family.
You can visit our website, sendus the questions about what you
want to know, what you want tohear, tell us about the
automotive industry, familybusiness in general.
Who do you want to hear from?
Send them our way, and we'll doour best to answer any questions
you have.
But make sure you tune in nexttime where we bring in another
guest and we talk more about theautomotive industry and all the

(01:01:50):
great things going on within ourbusiness.