Changing the Culture Through An Employee Stock Ownership Plan with Bethany Sobczak

Paul J Daly: 0:00

Michael, I have a question for you.

‍Michael Cirillo: 0:01

Yeah, oh boy.

Unknown: 0:08

This is auto collabs.

Paul J Daly: 0:12

What is the now, I'm not gonna I was gonna ask you, what is the worst I was gonna ask him, What is the worst HR situation he's ever been in the middle of, but that's probably the kind of thing you don't talk

Kyle Mountsier: 0:22

about that's wrong. You don't talk about

Michael Cirillo: 0:27

breaking up fist fights in Sunday School at church, that there's no HR situation

Kyle Mountsier: 0:34

I book for that. There's no book for that, right there. Can

Paul J Daly: 0:37

you tell us what it was over?

Michael Cirillo: 0:40

There were so the flannel girls living in Vancouver, Canada. I was, my assignment was, I was a youth pastor. I taught Sunday school for 12 and 13 year olds. And this particular Sunday these two girls were going, like, just, you know, bickering like you're either one that. And I'd be like, okay, come on. Is this

Paul J Daly: 1:00

a fist fight between two girls.

Michael Cirillo: 1:02

Cut it out. Cut it out. And, come on, guys, cut out. I turn around to the chalkboard and I start writing something because, you know, we kind of got them to settle. I turn around to the chalkboard to write something, you know, like a Bible passage for them to look up or something. And I hear these chairs, you know, those metal folding chairs? Oh, yeah, yeah. And I turn around and these two girls, and I didn't know what else to do, so I put my hand in one of their face, like, like a foot, like, like the Heisman trophy. And I don't know how it happened, but the other girl was in a head lock, and I was like, and I was like this, and I'm like, knock it. What is happening that feels

Paul J Daly: 1:46

like a Nacho Libre moment,

Kyle Mountsier: 1:48

obviously, as a note for all of the listeners, they gotta watch the policy not approved for workplace environments,

Paul J Daly: 1:57

is the what not to do podcast, which is why we have an expert

Kyle Mountsier: 2:00

today. Yes, that's right. We do have an expert. Her name is Beth Bethany. So Zach, I believe I got that right. You got it right. And Bethany is an automotive news 40 under 40 winner this year. So we're excited. It's a bit of a mini series that we're doing with a bunch of these winners. Hey, look, we should be talking to these people, because they're obviously doing really great work in and in the dirt, on the ground, in real dealerships, and so we really hope you enjoy the actual professional opinion, not the headlock face Palm, headlock on HR with Bethany. Enjoy this conversation. All. Right. Bethany, thank you so much for joining us for a little conversation today. Here, awesome.

Bethany Sobczak: 2:48

Thank you guys for having me. All

Kyle Mountsier: 2:50

right, I'm gonna go right in, because a lot of people enter the car business, and they kind of, like, work into their, you know, their careers, and then, like, Fine, I find the car business. But we found out that you did, found the car business right out of high school. Is that right? That is correct. All right, tell us how that happened, and then we'll get into it. Well, I

Bethany Sobczak: 3:12

was looking for a job that was not in fast food or, you know, not the typical teenager thing out of high school. And I just saw I'm gonna come across an ad for car sales, and I was like, you don't know what? What the heck that sounds like? Fun. I'm an HR person trapped, or I'm a car guy trapped in an HR person's body, you know? Like, I love cars my whole life, car family. So I walked into the dealership, I met with the general manager for all of 30 minutes, and he's like, she's great. I love her. Gotta have her, get her on the floor. No training at all. Just

Unknown: 3:47

right, no training.

Bethany Sobczak: 3:49

I know everyone's shocked, get her out on the floor. And I was kind of a natural at it, you know, I love people. I was able to adapt my personality to the different types of customers that we had, and I ended up, you know, having pretty early success. Ended up averaging 15 to 20 cars a month by like, month three. So it was awesome. Oh,

Kyle Mountsier: 4:09

let's go. So now you've gone all the way from, you know, getting out of high school, getting in the car business, to now having the distinction of automotive news, 40 under 40 winner this year, which congratulations. It was so cool. You know how what along the way have been the shaping things to move you from, you know you said, I'm a I'm a car guy trapped in an HR body or something like that. I think you said, like, what do you think has maybe been a couple of the defining moments that have that have led you to start to track toward that type of role? So

Bethany Sobczak: 4:52

being in car sales was my absolute favorite job to this day I've ever had in my life. But at the time, it just was not. Super Woman friendly, I suppose. I was new mom. I was new wife, and the hours just did not align with having a new family, so I decided to trend towards HR. That was what I was working on. My education in I got a Monday through Friday nine to five job in the White Collar corporate world. It was very buttoned up, it was very strict. But, you know, it paid the bills. It was great. I kind of found a niche in getting to make positive impacts on people's lives. At work, my biggest thing was, if you can work with me on a daily basis, and you can walk away from the conversation saying, either that wasn't so bad. Or, you know, talking to you made my day a little bit better. That's all I try to do. However, the corporate world was super boring. It was not automotive. It wasn't auto. Your first day

Paul J Daly: 5:53

was a lot different. HR job. You did get training. However, I'm sure they gave you training, but

Bethany Sobczak: 6:01

I will tell you, it was so stale. And, you know, automotive called to me like the ocean calls to Moana. So,

Unknown: 6:11

yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 6:12

I'm so happy you just made that reference. Are you excited for Moana too? Of course, I'm

Bethany Sobczak: 6:18

excited for Moana too. You know, my kids think I'm taking them to go see it, but I'm really taking me to go. Yes, exactly. But yeah. So I ended up getting a call from coons. I still maintained, you know, a lot of my contacts and the HR are in the automotive world, and they hit me up and was like, hey, we need somebody to take over our HR department here. I'm like, You guys are pretty big. And

Paul J Daly: 6:42

after my first what was the size of the organization when they called between four

Bethany Sobczak: 6:47

and 5000 people, a couple

Paul J Daly: 6:50

of me in charge.

Bethany Sobczak: 6:52

Have you met me? Are you sure? So I ended up meeting with Mr. O'Connell, who's their president over there, and he was wonderful, absolutely great group of guys to this day, best in the business in some aspects. But they, they were like, hey, we want you to take it over. We think you're great. We think you can do it. And I'm like, I mean, this point, even I was questioning myself. I was like, This is big task, guys. And they're like, Well, you, we believe in you. Why don't you believe in you? And I was like, well, that's a fair point. Let's do it.

Paul J Daly: 7:22

Let's go car business for the win. Exactly,

Bethany Sobczak: 7:25

different culture, right? Yeah. So I took it over, and I knocked it out of the park. And then from there, I met Rob Smith here, Fitzgerald and Mr. Fitzgerald, and, you know, they really sold me on the concept of having a people centric culture as well as employee ownership. So that's when I made the jump and been the best thing I've ever done to date.

Paul J Daly: 7:48

So the employee let me, let me drill in the employee ownership thing, because that's a pretty recent transition, right? How recently did it? Did it flip?

Bethany Sobczak: 7:56

We closed on it in February of 2023

Paul J Daly: 8:00

Okay, so just a little over a year, and you are part of that transition, yes, sir, you probably, you're probably a really big component talk about that, because I think Aesop's the conversation in automotive has definitely been on the increase from from, I mean, that's an anecdotal perception, just like the way I see and hear it. And obviously we're good friends, and Liza Myers, Myers borches is a great friend and friend of asotu. So like, sometimes I feel like we're like, we feel like it's a bigger piece of the organization. But then I've heard it a few other places, hearing it from you talk about that transition, like, why did they decide to do that, and how's it worked out? So,

Bethany Sobczak: 8:36

like a lot of groups, we didn't have a solid succession plan in place as far as who was going to take over. And as you guys know, the big dogs are out there eating right now. They're eating up everybody. Mr. Fitzgerald, he's pretty much a legend in the industry. You know, he's not new to this. He's been true to this since 1966 and he wanted preserve his philosophy on the auto business, which is transparency and trust. So he was at the forefront of making pricing transparency to customers. He's been doing it for decades and decades at this point, and he did not want that to be eaten alive by another group swooping in and buying us out. So he said to me, the best way to preserve my legacy and to preserve the culture that we've created at the company is to sell it back to the employees. So that's what we did. And I mean, he didn't go just halfway. I know a lot of the other groups are not 100% employee owned. I think we might be the only one that is 100% employee owned. So, yeah, we made that transition. It has been phenomenal. I wouldn't say we're perfect at it. Obviously, we're a year in. We're still learning every day, but the shift in culture that it's changed has been phenomenal.

Paul J Daly: 9:58

Explain that, like, what are some of the shifts? Like you say, the shift in culture has been you already had a great culture, and you're saying there's been another shift. What's the shift? So

Bethany Sobczak: 10:08

at the start of the ESOP, our shares were worth X amount of dollars, okay, one of the points of the ESOP was that employees now need to gain the ownership mentality. So they need to come in here, and they need to realize that the people who are working beside of them every single day you guys are all now not only related or partners with them on the operational sense, but you're also partners with them financially. So their success affects your success and vice versa. Every single ounce of effort, whether it's me, whether it's a detail support staff, whoever that is, it makes the difference to every single person in this organization. So knowing that you have to rely on the person beside you to be financially successful really created a shift of I guess, getting exuding that discretionary effort from employees that maybe wouldn't have been there before. So just in the past year, our share value has doubled, close to tripled, yeah, and we're about to release that to the associates within the coming months. So that's gonna be a really big, yeah, it's gonna be a really big thing for them, but we're excited about

Michael Cirillo: 11:26

it. How do you, how do you manage ego in this ecosystem, right? Like, and I don't want to sound like the negative Nancy here, because that's not the intention, but it's the car business, right? There's, we're going to, like, have an ego or two somewhere in an organization, per person, per person. Yeah, look at that. We even offended. Kyle, he's gone.

Paul J Daly: 11:48

He's like, fine. Yes, we were, we

Bethany Sobczak: 11:50

were talking about you. Kyle, yeah, if you think

Paul J Daly: 11:52

we're talking about you and you're offended, that's because we were talking about

Michael Cirillo: 11:59

you. Kyle, how do you guys manage that across the board? Like, making sure expectations are there where people don't, you know, have that bravado of, oh, like, so and so's not pulling their weight. And if I was a owner, I would have never hired that person. Like, how do you how do you navigate that in this ecosystem?

Bethany Sobczak: 12:18

That's a fantastic question, and I think you guys are correct that in the automotive business, there's always going to be ego. I don't care what company you go to, there's ego. And quite frankly, I think the ego can work to our benefit to some degree. I think it's great when sales people have a big of an ego about them, right? They go about their day to day like, I'm the best to ever do it. You know? I'm confident and I know what I'm talking about. And I'm going to close this gonna close this deal, but I wouldn't say we have a tremendous amount of people who would look at the person next to them and say, you're not pulling your weight. You need to be doing more. It's very rare that I get circumstances like that. So I just don't see it as a problem here. Have

Michael Cirillo: 13:03

you always seen the silver lining and everything?

Kyle Mountsier: 13:07

Yeah, she's like, ego, great.

Michael Cirillo: 13:10

Bring it up. But it is. I think it's such a critical piece. I mean, I was having a conversation this morning with a team member about the importance of mindset, how really mindset is the foundation of of one's definition of success, or it could be the reason you catapult to higher levels of success. And the way I basically explained it was like, like a dragon could come out of the clouds and destroy everything around you, and your mindset needs to be such that you see the opportunity amidst all of it, right? And it sounds like, I mean, just the way you responded to that question, even with a smile on your face, I'm like, okay, has this optimism always been a part of who you are, or is that something that developed organically, that looking back in hindsight, you've developed within yourself? I

Bethany Sobczak: 13:59

certainly wouldn't say it's always been who I am, but when I got into human resources, I recognized that a lot of what I have to do is not good news, especially in large organizations, when people see me a lot of times, it's not for great reasons. And I didn't like to have the perception of I'm the Grim Reaper when I walk in the door, you know, I don't want people to look at me and be like, Oh God, Bethany's here. Like everyone,

Michael Cirillo: 14:22

Hi. You look at peace. Paper, and they like, dive under their desk, like, I'm about to read something to you.

Bethany Sobczak: 14:33

But um, it more so became I realized I'm gonna have to relay a lot of bad information a lot of times, and if I can develop a way to put a positive spin on that and help people walk away from the conversation, recognizing that it's not so bad. You know, the the velvet hammer is what I've been referred to,

Michael Cirillo: 14:51

the old velvet hammer. Hey, you can't be here anymore, but on the positive side, you can sleep in tomorrow.

Unknown: 14:59

Great news. Is

Bethany Sobczak: 15:02

free news, your ESOP benefits being paid out a lot sooner than you thought.

Paul J Daly: 15:10

So, before the podcast started, we started having this conversation about HR needing a rebrand, right? And you were going to start to talk about that, and then we're like, stop talking about it, because we want to talk about it on the podcast. So when you think of how people perceive HR, and then the difference between what it actually is on the inside, how you view the role, like, what is the rebrand that is needed? What should people know about HR, and how should they lean into it?

Bethany Sobczak: 15:37

So as I said earlier, you know, pre show, I do not think that the brand we have been given is unearned. I do think a lot of us have sounds familiar. I believe a lot of this has kind of put it on ourselves, because a lot of us have been we've put our own self into a box of it's all about procedure. It's all about policy. There's no gray area, you know, we're just here to fire. It's, it's always such a negative cloud around us. And one of my missions has been to show people that, hey, we are not so bad, like we can actually be really fun. You know, believe it or not, we can be fun. You know, you don't have to mince every single word around us. There is area, gray area that we learn to operate in, and we can be strategic and positive partners. And not just here to fire people or to write people up or whatever that looks like, but being in HR for about 10 years now, I've been to enough conferences, I met enough people that I'm like, wow. Now I see why people are like,

Unknown: 16:47

I thought, HR, like, it's a bit stiff.

Bethany Sobczak: 16:49

It's a bit stiff. So I want people to recognize that, especially in this particular industry, in HR, you have to be loose. You have to be willing to go with the flow the way we communicate with each other here is very different than how we communicate with each other, you know, in more white collar setting, but it is so much more fun here. Automotive is the best industry to ever be in HR, because you can be yourself. That's the biggest thing. You can be yourself.

Michael Cirillo: 17:21

I feel like I feel like I need you right now.

Kyle Mountsier: 17:24

Do you know the team at Walser?

Bethany Sobczak: 17:26

No,

Kyle Mountsier: 17:27

oh, my goodness, Claude silver is,

Bethany Sobczak: 17:31

I don't know who that is. We're gonna

Kyle Mountsier: 17:33

make you some intros because, like,

Unknown: 17:35

whatever names you should know

Paul J Daly: 17:37

is my whole thought. Do

Michael Cirillo: 17:39

you know Victor Borg or Bing Crosby.

Paul J Daly: 17:45

These aren't random. Michael,

Bethany Sobczak: 17:48

I can't believe you don't know this random person I know. Okay,

Michael Cirillo: 17:51

therapy session, what you just touched on, hold on. I need to lay down for this that what you just touched on is probably why I think I'm awful at the HR side of things, because, for example, I think I've, it's, oh, it's bitten me in the butt when I've tried to be like, too kind or too nice or too whatever, in the way that I've because, like, I always, I always want to soften the blow, you know what I mean, to the degree that there have been enough occasions where it's, like, been exploited right on the backside, and then all of a sudden it's caused problems for me. So like, from your perspective, and keeping it loose and fun and and human, and like, re injecting a soul back into this field or this discipline. How do you do that? For those that are listening and curious, how do you do that in a way that you're also protected? Right? Obviously, everybody goes to extremes and the way they protect themselves as policy and procedure, and say this and don't say that and never. So how do you how do you balance that? So

Bethany Sobczak: 19:01

I think first and foremost, it comes from keeping an open mind. So when we're talking to people, and we go into these investigations, it's recognizing that people are flawed, you know, from myself to support staff to managers, people are flawed. And I think at the end of the day, it's recognizing that innately, most people are trying to be good people, and they're trying to do the right thing, whether or not it turns out perfect is another scenario. But I have always had a massive amount of leniency. If a manager calls me and they're like, hey, Bethany, I just fired somebody, and I think I said this, that might get us in trouble. My favorite is the hypothetical, the hypothetical, hypothetically, what if I said this to somebody with firing them, and I'm like, did it happen? I just hypothetically and with who I. Just tell me, yeah, so we can, so we

Paul J Daly: 20:02

find out anyway, right? We can get this squared away. We can start planning.

Bethany Sobczak: 20:06

Just let me know. Um, but it really does come from recognizing that people are human. People make mistakes, and they really are trying to be good people. At the end of the day, I will always, always, always err on the side of protecting somebody who is trying to be a good person. One of my first questions I ask when people call me and they're like, hey, Bethany, you know, I have this person and they I want to let them go for X reason. I said, Okay, you know what? What could be the legal ramifications of that? I'm like, before we get into the legal ramifications? Is is this something a good person would do? Is this something are you thinking about the employee right now, or are you thinking about yourself? Let's answer that question, and when you can provide me with that answer, then we can go down the legal ramifications rabbit hole. And we usually don't have to get down to the legal ramifications rabbit hole, because it's just, you get there, you're losing. Yeah, it's just making them pause and reflect on, okay, am I making the best decision for somebody else and for the company, or is this something I'm being selfish about?

Michael Cirillo: 21:14

When does your book come out? Yeah,

Bethany Sobczak: 21:18

I've always wanted to do like the office, but like the dealership, this place is the it would be the best show. No one really would be heard

Paul J Daly: 21:28

something about that. Hey, I've one last question, because we're almost out of time here. A lot of the things that we just talked about in HR, and I think by nature, whenever there are legalities involved, you tend to be reactive right to situations, right when it when an HR situation happens, right? Like you just said, like, I have questions to ask, talking about ramifications, we're going to react to what just happened. What are some What are one or two things that HR directors in automotive, very similar scenarios? What are one thing, one or two things they can do that are proactive, that kind of minimize the need for reactive.

Bethany Sobczak: 22:04

Well, I mean our favorite word, and something we do so well training. So you need to be proactive about getting in front of these managers and, more importantly, forming the relationships with them to where they feel like they can come to you and talk to you openly about these things, whether they feel like they've already made a mistake that has led to this situation. Once you show them that you're a safe person, that you can be human and make mistakes with they will come to you beforehand and get your advice and say, Hey, Bethany, this is what I'm thinking about doing. What are your thoughts on this? That is how I have been able to be very proactive in preventing a lot of these situations from happening. But if managers do not feel like they can talk to you, and they feel like the information they provide to you is going to be weaponized against them, you will never succeed. Find out at the end, yeah, you will never succeed. Sounds,

Paul J Daly: 23:00

a lot more like like loving people more than you love cars. Bethany, congratulations on your 40. Under 40. We love seeing HR represented on that list, and thank you for giving us a little bit of your time and your wisdom with us today. Michael is gonna go rethink his life.

Bethany Sobczak: 23:16

Well. Thank you guys so much. I sincerely enjoyed it, and I look forward to those introductions you're making for me,

Kyle Mountsier: 23:22

absolutely done. Can I just look at at the beginning? We were like, we were like, This is not the headlock conversation, but apparently she's got her own little way of, like, head locking, but not with the actual, like, physical piece of it, right? Yeah. You know

Michael Cirillo: 23:40

I was gonna say I wanted to give you a compliment Kyle, because it happens so subtly. I mean, if you're listening to the audio version of this, you have to hop over to the YouTube channel watch the video version of this. The movie Moana comes up. And the level of joy that I see in Kyle. Joy. This is only, this is the compliment. I mean this sincerely. This is only the joy that a girl, dad that's gonna have last

Kyle Mountsier: 24:14

night. I'm not kidding you, my daughter, I'm putting her to bed, my 10 year old daughter, and she goes, Dad, what's your favorite kid movie? And I was like, What do you mean? She was like, you know, animated, like Disney or something like that movie. And without even hesitating, Moana Period, end of story. Oh, I

Paul J Daly: 24:31

can see, I can see Kyle just sitting on the couch crying like a little girl during time. The very

Kyle Mountsier: 24:38

end of that movie, with the thing and the

Paul J Daly: 24:41

heart and the music, man, well, man, the song, yeah, brought

Michael Cirillo: 24:49

up too, that the ocean calls to her and she answers. Because ironically, I think Moana too is now she gets married and never answers her husband's phone calls. I just, I think, I. Oh my goodness, there's, there's a tie in somewhere. Now

Paul J Daly: 25:04

it's circling all the way back to something that's gonna violate an HR somewhere, right back to the beginning of this episode. Listen, we hope you enjoyed the conversation we had with Bethany. We hope you get to meet her. She's gonna be at nada show because they all the 40 under 40 get their awards. And it is so fun to see the next generation carrying the torch, loving people more than cars, loving people more than policy. We'll have to get that shirt made for her. But on behalf of Kyle mountsier, the crying Kyle Michael Cirillo, the head locking, stiff arming. Michael Cirillo and myself, thanks for listening to auto collabs. Sign

Unknown: 25:37

up for our free and fun to read daily email for a free shot of relevant news and automotive retail media and pop culture. You can get it now@asotu.com That's asotu.com if you love this podcast, please leave us a review and share it with a friend. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time you welcome to Annika. Last recording you.

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