With busy lives and long commutes, the best way for some shop owners to hone their leadership style and gain information is to listen to podcasts. Time is everything and it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the massive amounts of leadership sources that have become available.
“We are so overwhelmed and so inundated as entrepreneurs,” says Frank Leutz, owner of Desert Car Care Center in Chandler, Ariz. “We can easily get burned out, so we have to have the proper method to distinguish what we can put into action.”
Three shop owners share their favorite audio resources that they turn to in order to make their businesses better and to become better leaders. As well as what they have taken away from each podcast and how they’ve implemented those strategies into their shops.
The Podcast: Cardone Zone with Grant Cardone
The Reviewer: Jimmy Alauria, owner of 3A Automotive & Diesel in Phoenix, Ariz., a $1.5 million shop with an average monthly car count of 275.
The Takeaway: Get new ideas from professionals in other fields.
Alauria has always been one to pick up a self-help book over a science fiction novel, and that interest has made the seamless transition over to podcasts. He listens to leadership sources for a convenient way to improve his ability to lead his employees at his Pheonix shop. Alauria began listening to Cardone Zone with Grant Cardone and, soon after, enrolled in Cardone University, a series of business training lectures, to motivate his employees.
“Grant Cardone is one of the top sales motivation business educators out there,” says Alauria.
Although Cardone has a background in the auto industry (he has consulted dealerships on how to increase their car sales), the podcast itself is more centered on business. What makes Cardone Zone unique and applicable are the individuals that join Cardone throughout the episodes. The podcast features interviews with people of all different verticals, from a gym owner to a real estate agent, to speak on their successes and leadership styles. The different perspectives give new ideas of how other industries are running their business, that can then be implemented into running an auto repair shop.
“Sometimes when we’re just studying in our own industry, we get closed minded on what works,” Alauria says.
He gives the example of how using a dentist’s tips on how they get their patients to come back and give recommendations can be used for fresh ideas on getting the same in the auto repair industry.
Cardone Zone seems to be geared toward the younger entrepreneurs, Alauria says, but that’s one of the reasons why he likes it. It gets him thinking with millennials.
“It’s not just about business or finances, it’s also about personal improvement,” says Alauria
The Podcast: John Maxwell Leadership Podcast
The Reviewer: Bambi Crozier, owner of CAR Clinic in Lowell, Ark., set to hit $1 million in yearly revenue.
The Takeaway: Be aware of your leadership blind spots.
In 2012, Bambi Crozier opened up her Arkansas shop with almost no working knowledge of the industry. She spent the last decade working in call centers and communication sales for AT&T, before deciding to start a business with her husband. After debating on opening a daycare, British pub, or auto repair shop, they landed on the CAR Clinic. But Crozier had to make the transition from working in a business, to leading a business.
“I was a horrid leader,” Crozier says. “I was really bad at something, I saw it in myself, and the only way to fix that is to go to the experts.”
Crozier calls John Maxwell the “father of leadership;” he’s written a plethora of leadership and team building books since the 1980s, and entered the podcast world in late June 2018. Maxwell speaks on everything surrounding being a good leader, from the four C’s of leadership to the core values of a team. His tips are easily implemented, and can be applied almost immediately, says Cozier.
After listening to a few episodes on “leadership blind spots,” Crozier realized she needed to start working on her business, instead of being focused on the customers as if she were a service writer. She needed to stop putting all her focus on her clients and put more on her employees. She began training her staff on becoming aware of the culture she wanted at CAR Clinic.
Now, she knows that her employees will take care of their customers in the same way she would have, and can put her focus elsewhere.
“People can get a thousand different things out of these podcasts,” Crozier says.
The Podcast: Jocko Podcast
The Reviewer: Frank Leutz, owner of Desert Car Care Center in Chandler, Ariz., a seven-staff member shop with an average monthly car count of 400.
The Takeaway: Dial in the essence of your shop’s culture.
Frank Leutz has spent the last 10 years listening to leadership-style audio books, and, in the last five, he began listening to podcasts. He wanted a way to take advantage of long commutes by consuming information. One of the many pieces of audio that he listens to during his drives is the Jocko Podcast. John Gretton “Jocko” Willink covers everything from holistic talent, to principles of war, to authors. The guests brought onto the Jocko Podcast are all individuals that have built their careers with one trait in common: they all have an innate sense of drive.
Leutz says the idea is for the podcast is to be able to present stories, and not to specifically teach the listener how to do something. It is then up to the listener to receive the information as they wish.
“The heartbeat of the author are the triggers to get you to act,” Leutz says.
When Leutz hears something on the podcast that he wants to implement, he takes notes and then puts them into a file. He then sets a reminder in his Google Calendar for a week out. When the time comes, he receives the refresher and takes action.
One of the things that Leutz has implemented into his leadership style includes his business’s culture. With the tendency to think that once one feels comfortable about their company’s culture, it’s set, Leutz has learned to really dial in to the essence of his shop’s culture.
Time management is another area of growth that Leutz has been able to implement. By looking at his estimated time of interruptions, he has been able to cut that down by honing in on those time-wasted moments.
Jocko Podcast is one of the 8–10 podcasts that Leutz listens to per week. One of the things he enjoys most about the media form is that the stories come from the individual telling them. Some leadership books have great content, but the person behind the information sometimes isn't the best writer, Letuz says, whereas podcasts and other non-book sources create a more accessible platform.
