Building a Leadership Training Program with Ed Roberts and Matt Norris | 2024 NADA Show

Paul J Daly: 0:06

So it is so fun to be able to connect with the people we see all over the industry doing the real work on the frontlines. Ed Roberts, you have a very special guest today, we're gonna let you introduce your

‍Ed Roberts: 0:16

guest. So I have my fixed ops director. A lot of people see what we do at Bozard Ford Lincoln, but not necessarily see all doing behind the scenes. And Matt Norris is my fixed operations director. And he's been with the store now for coming up on six years. Yep. And then that rolls into vacated back in 2021. So

Paul J Daly: 0:33

let's get this straight. You vacated the role, and you had to fill his

Matt Norris: 0:37

shoes? Yeah. No, no small task there.

Paul J Daly: 0:40

Yeah, no expectation, no small task. What was the nature of like the mentoring relationship you had with that leading into that? Like, did you feel ready, when you stepped in?

Matt Norris: 0:49

I did. It's very, we've been doing leadership classes at the dealership now for a little over two years. One of the other service managers that I went to add a little over two years ago, and they were looking for more for more growth, not just personally, but obviously, professionally. So we created Edie helped us put this program together. And he's pretty much led it but three days a week, we do some leadership meetings. And it's really benefited me, not just in the business aspect, but also in my personal relationship at home with my wife and my kids as well. So

Kyle Mountsier: 1:22

you did this thing, just there. I don't know, if you notice that you just kind of said like, you know, three days a week, we, you know, as if that's normal as if that's somewhat normal, right like that. I think that in itself speaks volumes to the operational fortitude of an organization to say, No, we are going to commit three days a week time, however long that is, I don't care if it's 10 minutes or two hours time to saying this is important. Because we don't do it. We'll die. Right? It's like, that's the mentality, you have to have to make sure that happens.

Ed Roberts: 1:54

So I want to dive into it a little bit. Because he didn't he didn't play it out well enough. I did. About 60 days into his wife says what was going on with you, you're changing it. I'm having fun with this, whatever you're doing. And that's that job. Yeah, that's better human, human. The ones around you feel that they become better humans as well,

Matt Norris: 2:17

it is. And the other cool thing that you've we've gotten to see over the course of this two and a half years is it started out with three of us that it quickly became five of us. And now it's I think 10 of us that are doing it consistently three days a week. And it's one thing that we don't like, there's no excuse, like we it's so important to us that we do this every single day that we explain when you

Paul J Daly: 2:38

when you meet so much structure around it. Probably a lot of people listening that are like, okay, like, how is this? How do you fit this in? Yes. Service service is kind of a busy position it Yeah,

Matt Norris: 2:49

just a little bit, right. So we meet three days a week, it's on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, Mondays, one person from the group presents, and then Thursdays and Fridays at usually will Thursday's is usually a very interactive portion of it. And then Fridays is is is is more lecture. But it's really good because we don't see a

Kyle Mountsier: 3:11

morning thing. Yes.

Ed Roberts: 3:13

We try to keep it between 30 to 40 minutes, sometimes a little bit shorter, sometimes a little bit longer. Yeah. But so intimate. And a couple of hours we have the impact from us is

Matt Norris: 3:22

huge. And it's not we were specifically avoiding business related stuff we talked about like the overarching How do you become a better person? How do you become a better leader and what those qualities involve? And we discussed, we dive into those and discusses but we make it a point not to go into the day to date operations. Because then your

Kyle Mountsier: 3:41

times for that absolutely correct. Oh, my good. Every time got like, little chills down

Paul J Daly: 3:46

my back, are talking to well gets deeper and deeper and deeper. Well, because

Kyle Mountsier: 3:50

we talked about in our industry, we're like train, train, train, train, train, and everybody's talking about training and training people get good people are good people good, right is the phrase and that always is centered around the process of doing your job. Right. And those are important things that type of training, that type of interaction with leadership and employees are extremely important. The the the change that can be done through personal growth, as opposed to professional like, practical, tactical. expedient, it makes the practical tactical stuff go so much faster, right? Have you seen in those 10 people, like the thing of doing your job role actually have an impact to it?

Matt Norris: 4:35

It's incredible. You can look at all of the people that have been involved in it since day one, including myself and the people that have subsequently joined the group because of their desire. We don't go out and farm it. Work. It's strictly like you see us in there, you ask about it. You're inquisitive. And these people are like, hey, I really want to be a part of this.

Paul J Daly: 4:54

That's the first fight club first. Well, it's the first you got to first yeah criteria for or that, like, you have to actually pursue it yourself? How did it start?

Matt Norris: 5:06

So like I said, about two and a half years ago, John Douglas and I were co managing working for it. And we're co managing, you know, the service department. And we both felt like we were lacking a lot of like, you know, backup in our industry, it's, it's so common, Hey, you did a great job selling cars, you did a great job writing service. Here's the service management. Now, you're totally in the pit, there's been no leadership, or there's been no formal like training and people pouring into other people on how to how to be a leader and how to lead people properly. It's just been, hey, you were really successful, and you sold a lot of cars, or you wrote a lot of service, and you turned a lot of hours. And now we're gonna put you into this position. And so some of that was that that that effect of getting put into those positions without having a lot of that background of how do we lead people? How do we truly care about people and treat them the way they should be treated? And how do we grow them and mentor them? And, and that's really ultimately like, hey, we feel like this is where we're really lacking? Can you help us with this? And he was like, 100%, all in?

Kyle Mountsier: 6:09

And every leader wants that out of your people, right?

Ed Roberts: 6:11

Yes, let me let me break it down just a little bit more, John, and Matt was running a very large, very successful fix operations department. And that's demanded. So sure. And in those moments, you feel like you got to pick up a lot of pieces. And that's we're busy versus the fact that was our first meeting was, were busy, because I says, Hey, we need some help but least guidance because we don't feel like we're we ever have enough time to get everything that we need to do. And so we got to figure things out and become less busy. Let's look at what we're doing. And so that led him to the mastering the art of delegation and all those elements and leveraging strengths and those things to make them more effective. Yeah. And immediately, they felt the impact from it. And they wanted more. So the Monday is everybody sitting there it goes on rotation to every 10 weeks, each one I'm holding, so those rotation on different parts going every Monday, and then I'm hosting on Thursday, Friday, unless I'm out and then that'll take over. But it everybody grows from it. And when that happens, everybody, everybody in the store wins because they're connected to one of those 10 people somewhere on what, what's

Paul J Daly: 7:11

one step that I think they're probably a lot of people hearing this, that this triggers something inside them saying that sounds great. Let's set all this training people. How what was your response? Or what would your advice be to leadership? Who maybe hears this? Or maybe even if they're not in leadership, but this is kind of magnetic and drawing it forward? What's a good starting point? All right, like I mean, I'm talking like training this, how do you like make a commitment to actually move a little bit for?

Ed Roberts: 7:38

Well, it starts with starting starts with scheduling it because we talked about that we needed to train it and every year, we usually that's usually part of our priorities, we need to make sure we do some training always, but we never ever get started with and you can't make something better until you get started. So get started YouTubes and stuff, use the resources that's out there, it's already there and use it stuff to get started with it. You're not

Paul J Daly: 8:02

gonna say this I'm gonna say this, your book bio on leadership is a great place to get started because you could literally just take a chapter of it at a time and from someone who's actually practicing it right now and you're a pretty you're pretty responsive and available like even you on LinkedIn like you love to help people do this. So I'm gonna go ahead and recommend your book while leadership as a good place to start because you can go chapter by chapter and there's a lot of bite sized principles of say you unpack enough that you could easily become a discussion session.

Ed Roberts: 8:29

So I will take that for a moment because a wrote the book in a way that if you take a moment and it takes about seven months three a chapter if you read that chapter, yes, whatever chapter that is, you should get something from and if you do read another one that the adult pass along with somebody else will take those elements read that chapter that is a leadership class to be looking put together for your team. Yes.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:52

Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for sharing a little bit of your heart for the industry, your heart for each other and and your team and given maybe like a pathway for someone to start sharing

Ed Roberts: 9:02

is available to the industry.

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