PodCrash with Matt Ebert
PodCrash with Matt Ebert
When a Location Faces Closure: CEO Answers the Tough Questions | Ask Matt Anything
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Welcome back to Podcrash. We're wrapping up our Ask Man Anything series from our Crash Champions Leadership Summit. There I open the floor for our team to ask me anything. Check out parts one and two if you haven't already. In this final part, things get real. I'm asked about a location that's closing. I'm asked about how to lead teams through tough moments. And stick around to the end where you'll hear about a standing offer I've got for any employee who's really all in on Crash Champions. Let's get into it. This is Podcrash.
SPEAKER_00My name is Thomas Rosales. I'm the general manager over at the Grapevine, Texas location. And just happy to be here.
SPEAKER_03Oh man, we're losing your spot.
SPEAKER_00Yes, that's what I wanted to ask about. It's almost been a year now. I was privy to the conversation as to a possible re relocation. It wasn't really voiced to everybody. But then I've got teammates in my office that are asking, hey, are we moving? And so at that point, um, you know, I speak spoke to my leadership and they said, hey, we need to address it with the team. Really, no news uh to give them, no update to give them, but uh we see, you know, the dealership that we're attached to, uh, remodel, uh, making changes, coming through our facility, looking at our facility, and it's almost like, hey, we should put the curtains here, we should paint this wall, this color, knock out this, move this. Uh so the team is concerned, right? I do my best to try to let them know that, hey, look, it's business as usual, right? Um, we don't know yet what's gonna happen, and try to give them that reassurance that the company's gonna take care of them. But my question to you really is um, what is the plan? Is there a plan in place for that?
SPEAKER_03You know, I'm surprised that you're not more in on the plan than you are. I I would have hoped that you know more than more than I do. So, high level, here's what I do know. Actually, we've been working on this for two years, trying to get another location. We had two sites identified, got shut down by the municipality a couple times. So we're we're struggling to find another place to put the location. They don't want us there, they're they're running us out. Um, and they're setting it up to where if we stay, the rent's gonna go up every month to like ridiculousness, to where like no matter what you do, we're just gonna lose money. The plan is to um use it as a satellite location and and relocate all the all the team members. So we need everybody and we need the work coming out of there. So they're gonna give us some space where we can use it as a satellite, move the cars while we continue to look for another location. So if you don't know that, that's a shame. I'm gonna have to yell at some people for for a nice way of saying it, that you're not all included in that loop. Because what you guys can do in the is help us if you see a location that might work, like that's what we need. We just need a spot to go. Um, because they're gonna make sure we can't stay there. They want the space that bad. But we can keep it as a satellite to where we can keep the work and we're gonna move the teammates around. We'll have to talk. You'll be you'll we need you too, so don't worry. We just gotta figure out what to do in the interim. And I think um it's gonna take a minute to find a space, from what I can tell, because the talent seems to not want us there.
SPEAKER_00As a leader, having to give that type of news to someone that is already concerned, how how would you approach that? And would you share that information? Would you wait to share that information?
SPEAKER_03I know it's multiple questions, but so first, I believe you don't wait to share information when you when you have it. Adults don't like surprises, right? Like kids do. Adults don't, especially when it comes to things like what's the what's my future and my life and my my job hold. We owe it to communicate that as soon as possible. Now, the trick to it is when you think you got something that's gonna work out, you don't want to tell the team, hey, we don't know if you if you're pretty confident. So it's a little bit of confidence level that that we got a solution um before you talk about it. But I think you have to put yourself in their seat and think about what would you want to hear. So, first of all, they're gonna want to hear the truth and they're gonna want to know are they gonna be okay? Which they are, because we need we need people, we need them. And and so I would want to know, am I gonna be okay? I would want to know where am I gonna have to go. And is there a chance that the location opens somewhere else? And when do I get to come back? And I would communicate all those things as soon as I could, give them confidence. Again, we definitely need you. We we've got another spot for you in the interim, and we definitely want this location, and we're we're looking elsewhere. And I would let them know sometimes things are out of our control. Like we are not by our choice leaving that location. The lease ran out, the lease was in place long before I came around, long before you came around, probably long before they came around. And so legally, the property owner can control the situation because our lease is up, so they don't have to let us stay. We can stay and they can take us to court and kick us out, but that's what would happen, and it wouldn't take that long. Or we can try to work with them on an interim solution, which is to at least keep the zip code, keep the r keep it as a satellite refer to work out. So I believe be transparent, let everybody know it's not anything we can do anything about, or else we would. And number two, we we are continuing to work plan B, plan C, plan D, plan E till we get another location to open and give them confidence in their ability to do well and stick around in the in the temp role.
SPEAKER_01And I feel bad that we're having this conversation now because I would have thought it would have happened already. So, Matt, I was uh standing uh behind the camera when Thomas came through and I was thinking, man, he was like our second or third interview at that at that moment. Yeah. And I was thinking, what a freaking terrible idea this was to do the podcast, right? To get uh to basically expose you that way. But you immediately Yeah, I said in the interview, adults don't like surprises.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for the surprise.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. But you said immediately, I mean, it was as soon as you mentioned the the location name, you knew immediately what was happening. Yeah. And uh I just want to call that out because you're not only on the business, you're in the business. And I see that every day uh during the conference or during the summit. It seemed like every GM that you had conversations with, you knew specifics of you know, their PL, the insights of the business, what was going on. So that's super cool to watch uh from the outside. So kudos there. But watching that over again, would you change the way you you approach your answer, or you would keep it the same?
SPEAKER_03Well, I would have stuttered a little less, maybe, but nah, I mean, what I told him was what I feel is right. Like you always want to be as transparent as possible. You don't want to go early and create a bunch of unnecessary panic. So I would have added that when I talked about you got to balance when you say something because say something two years early when you got a real good chance of finding a solution. Why cause unnecessary panic among the team? When you start to see the timeline horizon closing in, I feel like you got to make a decision to be transparent and assure the team that everything's gonna be all right one way or another. But I think the other thing too is the team can help. So they live there. I don't, right? Yeah, I'm going through real leaders and everything else, but that team can have their eye out on their way home every day as to another location if a new sign went up, something for sale. So I think engaging their help is always the best because they're right there, boots on the ground, can be super observant where we're waiting on people to bring to us what what might be available, they'll see it a lot quicker. The best questions are usually the ones that are hard. What video is gonna be watchable if it's just all like fluff? Like nobody wants that. So that's not what was set up for. So I actually don't mind and don't think it needs to be over-vetted. You want to over-vet crazy questions like my garage door isn't opening, because all I'm gonna do is call our facilities guys and try to get them an answer for why the door isn't opening. So those are questions you vet because I can't really help them. I'm gonna have to do the same thing they need to do, go to the real resource that we have in place to take care of it for them. So those are things that you want to vet. But hard questions, why would you ever want to hide from those?
SPEAKER_01So I want to hit on that because you've, since I've known you, since I've been here, you don't shy away from the hard questions. I think for a lot of folks, they don't like that controversy or they don't like to know or understand what might be wrong, but you've never shied away from it. I mean, I think about our town halls and the exposure that we have there, yourself and the executive team included, basically the market has an opportunity to tell us what's right, what's wrong, what's not working, what is. And you've never shied away from that. You've always been able to hit those conversations head on, and I'm sure you experienced that a ton. But what's important, you know, for those watching who might not be okay with that confrontation or be okay with, you know, having somebody tell them what's wrong, what's important to keep in mind when somebody does approach you like that? Well, well, that's easy.
SPEAKER_03The problem doesn't go away. Like you can't hide from it. So I've seen people do that where they think not answering the phone or hiding in the back when the customer's in front, or just choosing to not have a conversation, like the problem doesn't go away. It's still it still remains. I just view in life like you're better off you're you're better off uh addressing it, better off tackling it. Otherwise, you're just postponing until later in all kinds of areas. Just think about like you see a a phone number come through, you don't want to answer it. Okay, well you just prolonged it. Yeah, now it's going to voicemail, and you're gonna get in today's, you're gonna get a voicemail and a text. And it's gonna linger in your mind. And then you're gonna have to play phone tag with them to actually call call them back and have the conversation. You'd have been way better and you're gonna stress over the conversation, you'd have been way better off just answering the phone at it on the phone. So that's just a simple example of why I don't think I don't think it's productive to avoid.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, uh admire you for that. I mean, again, I've seen tons of exp uh experiences where you're just like, hey, let me have it or let me know what's on your mind, and you just deal with it directly. Yeah, avoidance is a terrible strategy, yeah, in my opinion. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02All right, um, moving on. I am uh Joe Vanick, I'm from 576 Mokina, 191st Street. You know, we're we're targeting um, you know, the blue collar, right? The blue collar workforce. And I myself have a lot, you know, based off of this company coming here and and just growing and and growing up in this company and and having a lot of mentors and stuff like that. What made you go towards like the blue collar, the the the non-degrees, the the tattoo, the people who haven't found their niche, you know, in this in this world?
SPEAKER_03I'm not against college. Sometimes it can get fun and sound like I'm all against college. I'm not at all. I embrace it, but it it's not for everybody. It didn't work for me. I didn't have the opportunity. But I still found a great way to have a a rewarding career, have work that matters, and and and make some money along the way. And so I just want to share that with everybody else because I think there's so much pressure on young people to have their whole life figured out at an age where there's no way you have it all figured out. And the great thing is, is you can go to school. If it's not right for you right now, you can work a little bit. You could try this, and you must love it. And if you hate it, you still could go to school, you can still do something else. So it's more just making sure everybody knows the opportunity that's out there that's been really great for me, great for you, great for others. And I think we've been stereotyped and it hasn't been talked about enough. And so we're on a little bit of a mission just to make it known because I think the world should know nothing against all the other opportunities. If if they love that and and have a way, whether it's college or not, great. But if you're wondering what I can do, want to be rewarded with seeing instant gratification from transforming a car from wreck to fix and have a great career along the way. I want people to know that there's opportunity here.
SPEAKER_02100%. I'm one of them.
SPEAKER_03So you know, just for those that don't know, you still got the tattoo or did you cover it? I no, it's there, it's still there. So told everybody like uh anybody who gets a company logo tattooed, I would pay for the tattoo if they do it. Joe's one of them that did it. That's how committed he is. Um, I don't even have a tattoo, but I'm willing to fund anybody who gets one, and he actually took me up on it. Him and the several others. We got a few in the company, but he's one of the first.
SPEAKER_01So that's still true. Like you you will pay for somebody to get a tattoo. Yeah, when are you going?
unknownI guess.
SPEAKER_01Well, okay, so is there a threshold like on size and cost, or you don't you don't care as long as it has a crash logo? Those details don't matter. How many people have a crash logo right now?
SPEAKER_03I know of a half a dozen. And I would assume I would know about it because they would look for the reimbursement.
SPEAKER_01You do pay back, right? Uh okay, so are you willing to ever get a tattoo or no? Do you have a tattoo, Matt? No, no. Kind of a weird question.
SPEAKER_03Here's the reason why I say, because I look back like what I thought was cool 10 years ago, I sure don't think is cool today.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's my hesitation. Makes sense. Yeah, mine would be I just what's that single thing that you could live with the rest of your life? Kind of like your guest ideal guest on the podcrash. Like I don't, I don't I just don't want to pigeonhole myself on creating something and then me 10 to 15 years hating what uh I tattooed, right? So um, but moving on to the foundation of of Joe's question is, you know, what are the key components to appealing to blue-collar workforce in your opinion? Like what message do we have to deliver uh to appeal to this uh to this workforce?
SPEAKER_03I think I've articulated that a little bit already in the in the conversation, but I think the opportunity that it is isn't well known. So you know, I referred to the stereotype with that in that conversation and then the earlier one about um is the industry appealing to women. Like the the stereotypes I think involve like it's hard, dirty work that doesn't pay very well, and nobody wants to do that. And I think um a lot of work is hard. I'm not saying that our work isn't isn't hard. I know it pays better than a lot of people think. I know that there's a lot more variety to what we do that than people think because of the technology on the vehicles today. It's not the image of the body tech of old, and there's big companies in the industry, so there's a whole career path behind it. So I think if those things are known on a large scale, people would think about it differently.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So yeah, pathways, money, income, opportunity, like all those key things. Yeah. And yeah, we just have to be better at uh at getting that message out. Um so that brings us to the end uh of the podcast, Matt. I want to thank all of our leaders and general managers who took the time at the summit uh to take the chance to ask you those questions. And secondly, thanks for letting me crash the pod. So thank you. Thanks, Danny.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it was fun. Absolutely. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. If you want more podcast in your life, which of course you do, make sure to like, follow, and subscribe to us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Catch you next time.