What happens when creativity punctuates the automotive industry? Our latest episode promises to redefine your perception of the car business. We sit down with the dynamic Judy Serra, the CFO of Headquarter Automotive, who has turned the corporate culture on its head. Judy's innovative approach, from her five-star wall of fame at Headquarter Toyota to her talent-scouting prowess, is undoubtedly setting the pace in the industry.
Ever wondered what makes a leader in the car business? Judy shares her insights on leadership and how she effectively communicates with her team to recognize and celebrate not just the big wins, but also birthdays, anniversaries, and the embodiment of company values. We also delve into how the car industry gives second chances, the importance of sharing these inspiring stories, and creating a diverse workforce with opportunities for remote workers.
The future of the car industry is electric, quite literally! We discuss the rise of the new era of dealers and the government's influence on consumer choice, particularly with the bill on the congress desk. Listen in as we explore Toyota's Kaisen philosophy and the potential of the hybrid of electric vehicles and PHEVs. Want to connect with Judy Serra? She's just an email or LinkedIn message away! Join us for a conversation that promises to be as electrifying as the future of cars!
What happens when creativity punctuates the automotive industry? Our latest episode promises to redefine your perception of the car business. We sit down with the dynamic Judy Serra, the CFO of Headquarter Automotive, who has turned the corporate culture on its head. Judy's innovative approach, from her five-star wall of fame at Headquarter Toyota to her talent-scouting prowess, is undoubtedly setting the pace in the industry.
Ever wondered what makes a leader in the car business? Judy shares her insights on leadership and how she effectively communicates with her team to recognize and celebrate not just the big wins, but also birthdays, anniversaries, and the embodiment of company values. We also delve into how the car industry gives second chances, the importance of sharing these inspiring stories, and creating a diverse workforce with opportunities for remote workers.
The future of the car industry is electric, quite literally! We discuss the rise of the new era of dealers and the government's influence on consumer choice, particularly with the bill on the congress desk. Listen in as we explore Toyota's Kaisen philosophy and the potential of the hybrid of electric vehicles and PHEVs. Want to connect with Judy Serra? She's just an email or LinkedIn message away! Join us for a conversation that promises to be as electrifying as the future of cars!
Today, on dealer tech Tuesdays, we have a great guest serving over 30 years in automotive driving company growth, mentoring passionately within and beyond the industry. The CFO of headquarter automotive, Judy Sarah. How are you?
Speaker 2:Great how you doing, john Acosta.
Speaker 1:Good, very happy to put this together. I know we've been talking about getting you on the podcast for a couple I mean a couple months now, right? Yeah, I'm glad you were able to come. I think this is going to be a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:That's my pleasure, thank you.
Speaker 1:So, judy, I've, you know, followed the headquarter organization from afar for a while and I've seen kind of always something that's been very intriguing, like the culture of the organization. And I know you have a big part of that of bringing that, because I see your LinkedIn post and like how you celebrate people's wins and how you kind of create some cultural momentum. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I really am fortunate to have grown into my skin in my stores and in our organization, starting where I never thought we would go as an office manager at headquarter automotive, and then surely but surely things changed, transitioned into controller, then transitioned into sort of CFO and started scaling the company, and then that came to the point where we had to start hiring many people, so not just one replacement or maybe a new project department, it was a whole company to start, and from scratch.
Speaker 1:Oh, scaling is so hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, while you're in the middle of it, I guess you don't feel it as much. It's kind of like it's like when you're finishing the marathon. Then you look back at it so yeah, but there were definitely some periods where it became, you know, tiresome. It was definitely a stretch, but I learned as I went along and I was not afraid to take risks and to spend that extra effort, recognizing the people that are helping us do it. Because there's one thing you realize when you do something as large as that, you need many, many people. You can't do it alone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's so contrary into the traditional view that I see of that side of the house. Right, that side of house is usually on the second floor, tucked away somewhere, you know, with behind walls. That is like don't go in there, you'll piss them off. All you'll do is piss them off, right, Like when I see your guys organization. It's like it's front and center, Like it's there, the recognition is there, the collaboration is there, the connection is there and I know that you know there's this thinking in systems that's like like attracts like. So it talks a lot about the leadership team, about the ownership team and having that freedom of being able to take risks and be open and kind of brave in a new way of like doing that recognition. Am I on the right track on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no for sure, and I think that you know, obviously part of the trust and the flexibility that I've been provided is due to the years, you know I've been tested and tried with my organization, my ownership, my leadership team and generally my compass is, I know, I know where things are good, so I'll just keep going in that direction.
Speaker 2:I don't have to run too hard with you know, as for permission or forgiveness, I really that's really not my slot and I guess, coming from my heart, the things that I do, it generally gets a lot of support from leadership, so I just kind of run with it with things like, you know, the birthday balloons and the anniversary balloons that we've now started doing and the recognition for any small success. And I opened a Facebook group page just to kind of keep us more connected, as, especially during COVID, it was really good for us to just keep seeing each other, more and more ways to see and talk to each other. But yeah what? I have creative ideas, I kind of try to get them down on paper and get them out as quickly as possible and generally it comes with much support from our ownership or leadership team, from the family that owns our company.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. So what's that process like when a new idea comes in, and then what does the implementation of that look like?
Speaker 2:Well, generally these are small things at least they come out small, but they have a big impact, even like making cards. I have cards printed for thank you, I've got cards printed for wow, and there are cards that you would write with your hand and they're not. They're not printed cards. So I've kind of make a big effort to handwrite notes to people and I remember recently we had some technicians that graduated through a TAC program, which is a development program through SET and basically gets them from LubeTech through a fast track, through all the trainings to get them certified, to be certified technicians where they can work on the cars and be warranty certified, and they sell these to you.
Speaker 2:To send a gift card. They send maybe a certificate and we were arranging like a small celebration that they got it, but I wrote in the car I mean they were getting, let's call it, somewhere around $1,000 for doing it or in tools, like a tool card, and so you would think that's the grand finale, that they're able to obviously grow their careers and make more money and be able to work on vehicles. But then here's your reward, here's a gift card. And then I wrote just congratulations, we're so proud of you. And I had our GM sign it, our dealer principal signed it and gave it to our fixed ops director to present it with the gift cards and stuff. And he comes back to me and I'm dealing with these amazing men and men are awesome men and women are even better. We are able to have this chemistry where I kind of find those small teeny things and he comes back to me and goes you know what his favorite part of the day was? And I'm like what? And he says they're handwritten note.
Speaker 2:I'm like I'll give you a stack, you can use them.
Speaker 1:Authenticity goes a long way and that's you know. You see, you know the car business has these characters in it, right? Yes, larger than life characters. And I've seen a shift over the past, you know, five years, like a shift towards authenticity and just like a shift towards like realness. And I see that with you know, I've seen your guys as you do the like team building, that you go on the, the Tennessee trip or the, and it's like that's the stuff that creates a cohesive team that can have long lasting power in the automotive business. Because the incentives are set up sometimes in such a wrong way as, like, 30 days, you know, erase the, the chalkboard and start all over again. It doesn't set the what you're doing right. It doesn't set the incentive for what? Like the stuff that you're doing. That's like let's create sustainable growth over a long period of time. That creates a winning team.
Speaker 2:Right, like just a long term commitment to success. For sure, yeah, and it's. It gives me joy, which really gives me something to do that I really love to do on the side of the things that I have to do. Yeah, so yeah, I would. Also, you know, our, our, our leadership team, we've all evolved. I mean, none of us. I don't think that if you sat down with our, our dealer principal, would he say that he thought we would have four stores or, you know, I'm hoping he's going to say, wow, we have 12 now.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm looking to do.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so when you look back at it, okay, so how do we do it? Oh well, we made some big risks. We made some big risk, we put some big investment into it, but how did it really happen? And I think, to fill in all those, those gaps between the very important pillars of making happen are is what we're discussing? Yeah, talking about the long term success, the long term recognition, the case, the cohesiveness yeah, it's. I don't think anything is better if you're enjoying what you do.
Speaker 1:There's. I talk about this way too much, but are you familiar with Tony Shea from Zappos?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:So Tony Shea was the CEO of Zappos. Zappos became like this, Like the world-class delivery customer service. It was the first company that started selling shoes online. And he had this book that changed my life. It was called Delivering Happiness and when you said delivering wow, it was like delivering that wow experience to your employees and to your members of the team and also to your customers. It's like a core value of the organization.
Speaker 1:And he was here in Miami probably 10 years ago doing this talk for the Atlantic and he was saying they bought this place in downtown Henderson, Nevada, and what he wanted to do was create random moments of interaction between teams. So if you had somebody from parts talking to somebody in sales, talking to somebody at their lunch break, they can be like man, I've been dealing with this problem and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then I was like hey, have you thought about doing this? We do this internally. And then it's about creating system density, and I think that's exactly what you're doing. You're creating density in a system by creating more connections between the nodes, and I've seen the organization do that over years and I'm like that's the underlying secret formula of something it seems like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you pointed that out very eloquently. I thank you for that. I guess again I'm in the weeds doing it and it doesn't feel as easy to really flush it out. So again we have five-star walls of fame. That was my creation. So I started with the first one at Toyota and basically I wanted to help obviously recognize our associates, let them feel proud when they're delivering exceptional service to our customers. So I created the wall just in Toyota, which is the store where I usually am, and I put it up, put the frames up and then created the template. There's a template that I did marketing.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to wait. So you asked how I'd bring stuff to fruition. Generally I'll do it myself, at least for the first iteration, and it could get fine-tuned later. But I don't want to have to wait and let it die. So I went through painstaking details to get this perfect template of where it's basically a hand holding a phone, where I then blurred out the phone and that was where I put the review. So it's like a hand holding a phone and then there's a picture Then that gets pushed on the wall of that review. That's actually just paced into a phone template. It's a cool background. It's hazing the back, you can tell it's a hand holding a phone. Yeah, and I did it. I took a million pictures of my hand and I had somebody else taking pictures of me. I wanted the perfect angle and it's not the most beautiful hand, but it is a hand holding a phone and actually that has stuck for the wall and I remember the first one I put up and I take a picture of the associate pointing to their review on the wall and it's got a beautiful logo and has five stars. It's a five-star wall of fame.
Speaker 2:So then I would say, a week or two later I get a call from one of our parts associates. This was actually our first. One was a front end person, like a retail counter, and one of our back counter parts people who I think worked previously in the front said that he had a customer and she wanted to be up on the wall. I'm like, wow, this is something I didn't even expect, that customers would want to have their reviews on the wall. I said, well, ask her to post it online and I'll grab it, because that's what I'm doing. That was the initiative I'm grabbing reviews from online. So that was just an extra that told me we're in the right direction with this, and so, obviously, the wall is full and I scaled that to the other stores and it's just taken off. Everybody loves it and it's just a great way to recognize, it's a great way to brag, it's a great way to be proud, Wow.
Speaker 1:I mean just setting the right incentives changes so much momentum in an organization. Yeah, wow, I mean. So what are? I would imagine people out there is going to be listening to this. It's like what are things that you've implemented that maybe they may be small details but have massive impacts? I know you mentioned the reviews. I don't mention the handwritten notes to the internal team. What are some of the things that you're doing that create that authentic connection environment?
Speaker 2:So very important to me. I'm also self-responsible for building our bench of leadership ready for expansion or ready for change if needs to be. Whether it's in our control or out of our control, it's the most critical thing to have a bench of leadership, and I am constantly looking for ways to send our emerging leaders to any kind of professional development or trainings, and actually just recently we attended a Women on Automotive Conference and there was a data. There was a desk there from JMA&A and they were announcing a scholarship program for a women's professional development, thank you.
Speaker 2:So I said, man, this is great. So a few of our ladies signed up to get the scholarship and out of it, three of our people in our organization, three of our women in our organization, were able to get the scholarship and they are actually in it. And now today's our last day. Yeah, I actually met them for dinner. I drove up to Fort Lauderdale to meet them and have dinner and they were just doing so well in it and just a really great week of self-reflection, learning about leadership, learning yourself.
Speaker 2:One of our rental associates she's. I'm so happy that she was chosen because she's got such the talent and I guess part of it too is recognizing talent and even if it comes in a bigger package that you need to really open a few of the boxes to get to where that real talent is there. And I think it's part of my job to find it and make sure. And along there's when I see opportunities and it no free is really nice, like when they see something that's paid for, it's an easy sell, right or easier. And we have a really amazing desk full of sales managers. The number one question when I go to pitch manufacturers for an open point is who's going to run the store. That is a key to getting a new franchise, and I want to be able to say, oh, I have this person, I have this person, they are ready, they're trained, they've been to NADA, and so that's what we did. We had an opportunity to send somebody to NADA to get the it's the general manager leadership program. Yeah, it's called exactly.
Speaker 1:A dealer, school or whatever they are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like that, and I knew one of our candidates so it would be just perfect for it. So he is almost finished with it. I think he's at least five out of eight done and just learning the world and this thing and loving it. I love to hear that they're learning and they're growing and they're prepared to take the next steps in their career.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow, yeah, that's. I mean investing the team is what's the? There was a famous, there's like this famous quote. It's like the CEO says we have to send to the CFO, we have to send our team to training and we have to invest all this money. And the CFO says the CFO, the CEO is like what if they leave? It's like, well, what if they stay? It's like you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. It's like you have to. Nothing against CFOs, obviously, but no slain on the CEO's intended, but you know just like.
Speaker 2:I don't really feel like one anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that, like just understanding what your position is, it's just small to put it into that parameter, right, it's like more of a kind of holistic leadership, you know position that it's just really cool to see that somebody's naturally investing in leadership, creating that bench of leaders. It's just, it's what the you know incredible winning organizations do. And I'm on a call every morning with you know, a bunch of car people for last three years, right, it's called Clubhouse. At 6.45 in the morning we're on Clubhouse talking about the car business in and out, you know, just getting updates on what's going on. And there's leaders from all over the country and most of them have most of the successful ones. They have long term success, have something in common they believe in investing in their team. And when I saw you doing that, I'm like man, like no wonder this organization is winning Because there's trust. I'm about to read this book called the Speed of Trust. How much trust has to do with that, having those connections and creating that system and connection between the organization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. So what are some of the challenges that you've gone through throughout this process? Is there, have you seen any resistance from the team? How do you get buy-in? How does that happen?
Speaker 2:I mean, sometimes you have to take a few at bats at ideas, say not exactly, maybe my idea doesn't come exactly to what it works 100%, and I welcome feedback. I have a few, I guess I would say, sort of work best friends, the people that are really smart in my organization, smarter than me, that I can just say, hey, what do you think about this? And we can end up maybe coming out with something or closer to perfection than what it started. So I think it's really important. I don't just usually go out with pedal to the metal. Every single idea, a lot I do come to let's call it some sort of a very non-formal committee of think tank Another long-term thinkers at work with me. Our fixed ops director started with us. Really great story. My favorite thing of my job are hiring the best people that we have in our company, so I will take that as my goal. Those are my Oscars, or whatever you want to call them, my gold medals. They're the best part.
Speaker 2:And so particularly I would say that Mike Gipper. He is our fixed ops director for the platform, but we stumbled on him. We were opening that first store in 2010. And I call a friend of mine Cal Piper. He worked with me in the 80s and 90s. He was a fixed ops director and I called him. He lived in Orlando when we were new to the Orlando market. So I call Cal and I say Cal man, I need help unloading this parts truck. We're going to be unloading a whole inventory with three in part. We had three employees for parts. It was a small start.
Speaker 1:The store was small to start.
Speaker 2:And he's like, yeah, I have this gentleman, he's really smart, he's my parts manager. He's way too smart to be a parts manager, he needs to be a service manager. I'm like great, like give me his number. And it kind of just blew up from there with him and our VP, haronimo Esteve. He met him and we all basically shared the same ideas and immediately hired him and he was our service manager at Honda and slowly we all worked together and he's scaled up and now he's in charge of all our fixed ops. He's a brilliant person, a long-term thinker, very compatible with the way that I look at things. So I think collaboration with people like that, people like Cheryl Lopez she's another one of our collaborators and our think tank yeah, and bringing people together, like you said, in the Zappos example also, I've been in all these jobs.
Speaker 2:I started in accounting, I started answering telephones, and those jobs don't always get too much appreciation and it's just because they don't, it's not. There's a lot of them, it's small details, and small details are what build the foundation. So when I send my communications out, another thing I do weekly is communicate with the entire company. I send out our lineups, which is a program we designed through the Ritz Carlton who. They do the same thing.
Speaker 2:They do daily lineups every day and basically we celebrate every birthday, their anniversaries, a quote, the acronym of our name. We have a whole thing set up with that our values. So that communication is a wonderful excuse for me to communicate what happened this week or thank, or great jobs for a close month. Then make sure everybody remembers to thank our accounting department. I mean thank you, sales for getting the deals up clean and great and quick, but thank you accounting for getting them cleaned up, done and turning around commissions so that everybody, all our sales departments, are celebrating their success with their paychecks, which is a really good. That's their gold medal at the end of the race.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so where did? Ok, I have like four tracks that I want to get down here. I said this is we're getting into the weeds now, so you've been in the car business for 37 years.
Speaker 1:So it speaks to you of how do you preserve the adventure and I'm going to get personal here, if that's OK so how do you preserve the adventure in that? Because sometimes you see, people have been in the car business for a long time and they're jaded. They've had some battles and they're jaded, and whatever that looks like, I have this core belief, and I'm just going to test it here is that your ability to lead is directly correlated with your ability to work on your crap. So is that true?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I'm a crap dealer for sure, OK.
Speaker 1:All right. That's the kind of like the. I strongly believe that you can't get it to the end of a career and then attract a team that you have without doing some really serious heavy lifting on the personal kind of side. It's like the more you work on your stuff, the better leader you are, the better your environment is. All these things have this systemic approach to it, so can I ask you about that? Sure, what's that process look like for you?
Speaker 2:So I think I practice a lot at home the same type of thing. So I think, like the flux capacitor and back to the future, how they put garbage in it and then it makes speed come out the other end.
Speaker 1:So I'm kind of like a flux capacitor, I guess.
Speaker 2:I take in all the garbage.
Speaker 1:That's a superpower.
Speaker 2:Now comes good stuff.
Speaker 1:They made a whole movie franchise out of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, obviously it's not been all like rainbows and unicorns for me. I have had to work around heavy lifting and different personalities and some people not agreeing with certain things, and I guess it's just been practice, like anything else you do, whether you're playing guitar or you're painting or you're doing your thesis on microbiology practice and learning it pays, and I would say that, yeah, things would bother me a lot more a long time ago and I've just learned how to process it. I think my body has its defense systems, just like everything else, and I forget a lot of stuff. If it's something that's negative that I have to kind of work around and turn it into a positive or find the little door to get that positive out of that slightly negative cloud, I do it and then it's behind me.
Speaker 1:And I let it go. It's great, just got to let it go. Yeah, that's great. I mean. So many people's success lies right behind that ability.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, just literally right behind that ability. It's like you figure out that ability and you're successful wherever you're placed. So I think for the audience listening to this or somebody that's coming up in the business and doing that, it's incredible to hear that just by figuring your obviously in a massive amount of hard work, but figuring your stuff out, the rest comes slightly more aligned and slightly easier. Is that be accurate?
Speaker 2:I mean I won't lie Like I get passionate about something and then it gets stomped, it hurts, you can feel it really hard, and then I get it behind me and then I have to kind of tell my team or whoever helped me come up with the idea that here's what's going on now, and then I have to help them go through that process that I did, because some might not be where I'm at in that evolution, in that development and your own personal way to just digest and then keep moving forward. And it's funny because I had a little something recently and I had my moment alone.
Speaker 2:And then OK, I'm OK, now we're going to make it work. And then I had to deliver it and I was ready for that, for them to have that. You have to know that everybody's going to take it differently and maybe even harder, and I had to be there to help them get through what I got through by myself, but it's part of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that speaks so much about leadership To understand the contrast of both of those things. It's like, hey, I am me and then I'm also part of a larger system and my reaction and how I present to that larger system is going to have a huge influence on how that system takes it.
Speaker 2:And I have to preserve them, because I want their ideas and I don't want them to be afraid to come forward and have to go through those situations and not be able to deal with it, because you have to be able to break through it, because some of them are really great and some people, even our executive leadership team, may not see it and OK, so we get pushed back and then we have to come back at it again in a different way. But I don't want anybody to get snuffed. I don't want to lose that fire, because that's what I think makes us very strong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the courage of doing it again, even if you got your. It didn't work this time. Let's regroup and let's do it again, because if you have 100 ideas of which 30 get implemented, and then five are successful, those five are so worth it because it creates such a monumental change in the organization. That's that, Wow, that's yeah. So what would you recommend for somebody that's coming up, and especially women coming up in the business? What would be some advice from somebody that's been able to figure it out?
Speaker 2:Well, I would say definitely lean on some people that you know you can trust, that are there for your well-being and you're good, which hopefully you're in a company that you can find, that I think every company probably has. Some are quieter or harder to find. So look hard and don't give up. That's another one of my last words is that I don't ever quit Good.
Speaker 1:Resistance yeah.
Speaker 2:Don't quit. Do not quit, don't give up. Look for somebody to lean on to help you through it, someone that's been there, someone that you can build some trust and build a relationship with that'll guide you. Because I took my path was 37 years to get here where I am today.
Speaker 2:I'd love to do these podcasts and do my keynotes and try to deliver the opportunity that saved somebody 10 years maybe, or 15 years. It'd be great. I mean, I'm not complaining, I love my journey. My journey's been amazing. I have learned enough and paved a really strong foundation for what I want to do. But definitely I think that the current emerging workforce that we're dealing with now they may not have the patients At least they don't think they do Just because of the way they were grown up and the information that they had growing up was way different than the availability of information that I had growing up. So I would say that the patients is harder, so they shouldn't have to wait that long. I don't think they can wait that long and so for that, leaning on some people and understanding you're no-transcript where you need help.
Speaker 2:I think is your speed lane to getting to where you wanna go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that the perspective of women in the automotive business brings such great texture and like a counterweight to the kind of the traditional view of it, because there's just so much depth and contrast that needs to happen there because the car business traditionally been how do I put this? Slightly Rough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I grew up in it. My 1986 was my first car job. Yeah, yeah, and I was not only a female, I was 16.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, geez yeah.
Speaker 2:But I learned. I learned, yeah, it's a lot different now and it's great, and you know the compliments that both male and female have together, what we can do together, it makes it really special and work. We have male and female customers, I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely yeah. I've seen just like this blossoming over the past couple years or like the past 10 years of like just understanding that this is if the machine is working, you can put kind of people from all different backgrounds. Some of people's best hires come from Chick-fil-A, you know, some, like technicians, come from the military. Like you have all these backgrounds and you have people doing great jobs and you know there was, you know now that the workforce has become a little bit more flexible. There's this story of this woman that I know and mother of three was in a dead end job. You know kind of trying to like, days away from getting evicted, got into the car business, got into the BDC and just became a lion.
Speaker 1:And that story is like is so inspiring to me that the car business you know the car business to me is always an industry of second chances.
Speaker 1:You know of like of the misfits right and of the great stories. You know the success stories and you see these deal principles out there that were homeless and had you know had you know substance abuse issues and you know we're in rehab and then they own six doors and they've been sober for 35 years and you know religious or you know whatever that looks like, but like you know her coming into the story of like I was in the situation I worked my ass off and I created my life and I was an internet manager getting recruited by some of the best dealers in the country. Because she got in that trusted group of people that were able to pour into her and watch her grow and everybody like cheering her on. It's like one of the most inspirational stories that I see and when I see you know, dad, and your guys as a organization, I'm like man. This is something that needs to be celebrated and needs to be recognized and it needs to be amplified as many people as possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, for sure, yeah, that's a great story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm just like you know, like when you're I don't have a dog in the fight, but I'm just like super excited to be an audience to this, to that journey. You know it's like and I think that's some of the best kept secrets of our industry is that people have the chance and the ability to be able to do that, you know.
Speaker 2:Yes, and that's what we really are continuing to try to do, like you know active with women on automotive and just having the message out there and it's. You know, I love women to succeed, I love everybody to succeed. But again, like you know, our workforce is flexible now and to just look for one type of person in one spot it kind of limits our ability to diversify and to really find that perfect person for this or that perfect person for that job or that career path. You know, it really just opens things up and makes us even better as a team.
Speaker 1:So are you seeing some more opportunities opening up with people that maybe work from home, that can add to the team from that dynamic, or can you know? Because we've seen warranty administrators that moved to Arizona and then he's like, how do we deal with this? And the IT guys are like, hey, it figured out and we're like, okay, we're gonna do this and this and this and then. But you know, broadening the what I like to call like the topology of the dealership, not inside the walls, that you can do it in a more, you know, technology enabled environment.
Speaker 2:Well, I think so far, with my experience, I don't see a lot of opportunity just yet with remote workers. We do, you know, make a very small exception right now. It's, and I think it works really well with people that have more of a autonomous position where there's not a lot of collaboration necessary, but it can work. I think there are definitely exceptions to it and I'd love to see more, because that would even just give us more opportunity to find more talent. But right now, I'm gonna say that we're really wanting to pull back and have our teams on the ground with us. There is nothing that replaces that togetherness. It's very hard to connect, even via Zoom.
Speaker 2:I mean, we do all the things we possibly can to help our couple of remote workers stay engaged with us and, you know, stay motivated as a team member. Being in front of a screen is definitely some people. That's what they do all day and that's okay. Like you said, warranty Clerk, that we tried that. We almost got to do that with one a couple years ago. It didn't work out, but it wasn't because of the plan to do it, it just was an individual and a company. You know, lack of connection, I can't even explain it. But yeah, I would definitely say that more so now is just to get the word out to people that don't even think it's a possibility to have a wonderful career in the industry. I think we're in a big shift right now of letting our leadership teams understand that we need even more flexible schedules. It's just a fact. Male, female, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ding-a-dong seven days a week is unsustainable.
Speaker 2:I don't think. And everything I read every day is work less, work, more, work better. And all the Harvard Business Reviews is constantly. I read one that really struck me. It talked about how burnout is a real thing and how, if you say you love your job or it's not work if you love it, I kind of say that all the time about me. But in the article it said that's an excuse and it's a path to burnout. I don't just agree with it. I mean I guess it could potentially it could get away with somebody. It could just run away with you and you could end up with burnout. But I would definitely stay focused and my push is a slow, soft push to saying, yes, this is a real thing.
Speaker 2:Closing four days a week, working every single Saturday. I mean you have kids that are in leagues that nobody wants to miss every single one. They don't want to miss any of their kids' football games. I mean, if I had my own sales department and nobody would, I didn't have to collaborate, I didn't have to ask if this is OK. If I didn't, I would.
Speaker 2:Then we would all talk about what our schedules look like. What do our personal schedules look like? Ok, you have a 14-year-old son that plays in Pop Warner OK, so he needs Saturdays and he needs to leave Whatever OK, so he can't be there all day, because if you're a parent of Bob, it's at 3 am in the morning and you have to stay till all the ages are done. Oh wow, they want you there all day. I did it, but I don't want to lose. I don't want to lose John's ability to come to work, but also he can't miss his kids' football game. That's a big deal to see your kid run a touchdown or your daughter hit a home run in a softball game or whatever it is. So I think it's really important that we take a look at that, because that quality of life, that recognition that our teammates, they have a family, they want to do great at work, but they also want to succeed in their family.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just like enabling the whole person concept, just like making sure that you're keeping in mind all the pieces. Somebody was talking we were talking about this on those rooms right, those rooms that I get in the morning. It's like if you have to stay open until midnight on the last day of the month, you're doing something wrong. If you're that there's just something holistically wrong, maybe you do that once. But if you're doing that consistently and that becomes part of the culture and then it becomes a culture burnout, it's just unsustainable.
Speaker 2:It's irresponsible. I think they're chasing their tails at midnight every single day that doesn't have to be that way.
Speaker 1:It doesn't.
Speaker 2:And customers don't want to be there at midnight either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those deals. When you come in at 5 PM and then you're leaving at midnight, it's just like what are we doing? What are we doing, guys? You know just that's. I think the evolution that we've seen after COVID has been that people want to be met where they're at at the time, right. Digital retailing is becoming a huge thing. That flexible kind of schedule or whatever that looks like. You can have a BDC that can be almost full hog delivery of a vehicle. There's a lot of people that are doing some innovative stuff out there that are starting to look at the problem from a completely different perspective.
Speaker 2:For sure. Yeah, we actually have a digital startup right now. One of our VPs she's got her own company. It's called Carbuckets and it's a digital retailing solution as well as an identity fraud kind of solution as well.
Speaker 1:Oh nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so she's been working through that and it's just another way to obviously, like you said, to meet our customers where they want to be met and if they want to start at home and finish at the dealership, or start the dealership and finish at home or never come to the dealership, we're trying to find that path to just give our customers what they want when they want it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what do you see the car business being like in the next five years?
Speaker 2:I see it similar. I would say I would see the hours probably reducing Open hours, the actual physical open hours. I don't see it. I just don't see people happily doing it. For the next five years, I would say that the business will probably quiet down a little bit. We're not going to see 2021 again.
Speaker 1:No, which is the steroid errors that would come. Yeah, sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire hitting home runs, mark.
Speaker 2:McGuire. I love Mark McGuire. Oh my god, he was my favorite, absolute favorite. Yeah, I would see that. I would also say that I think our manufacturers are seeing changes, so we're going to see less In between then we used to carry two years ago or three years ago when things were before. So I would say that it's going to continue. It's going to be a fruitful industry to be a part of, but I think that it's also going to take innovation and changes to what we think we saw 10 years ago or five years ago. It's going to be a lot different in the way we get to it, but I think we're going to have great results.
Speaker 2:Again. We have also emerging successions in the dealerships. You have the next generations that are coming up.
Speaker 2:I had a really interesting opportunity to go to Washington DC two weeks ago oh, really, and yeah, and NADA was having their it's some sort of a legislative summit that they have there and then they had a next gen kind of sub-conference within it, which is next generation dealers.
Speaker 2:So I had a chance to spend some really great time with a few next gen dealers and they're the kids of legacy dealers, such smart people and they see it. I mean they're somewhere around 30. So they've got a different perspective than their parents do, just like all of us. We all have a different perspective than our parents and we bring new and innovative things. We bring some of the great things that we learn from our parents. Those stay with us, but then we kind of push into this new stuff. So we're experiencing that in our stores where we have our next gen that's actively involved in our leadership, our decisions. But being in DC with them was really cool and we had the opportunity. I just recently got appointed to the FADA, to the board for the automotive dealers association, and was invited to go with them.
Speaker 2:Thank you, yeah, it's really fun. And there are those next gen's are on the board and they're great. So we had the opportunity to go to Washington and meet with some of our congressmen and congresswomen to talk about some bills that are on the table for our industry, which is, that's, talking about our future of our industry. We are in a little bit of a flux with our executive branch of our government and them kind of dictating what our consumers buy. So I had some really cool, colorful experiences with a few congresspeople and their perspectives.
Speaker 1:Man to be a flying owl? Oh my god it was.
Speaker 2:I mean our asks were so, to me, reasonable. I mean I would say we don't get into too much into politics right now, but they were just right down the party, right down the center stuff, stuff that made sense Like. Here's a really great example and I'll keep it short. But Toyota, we have one electric vehicle. We had it on our lot for five months.
Speaker 2:It was in our showroom all fancied up with it. We put a charger on the wall next to it. You can see it in your garage, kind of thing. Five months, it's that. Nobody wanted it. Too much money, I mean, it's out of the affordability range for our demographic and our Toyota customers, but we had to take it. We had to take it and we had to put it on a display and try to sell it and it didn't do well and our Hyundai store has like 19 of them, 19 electric vehicles that have been sitting. We want to sell them. We want to sell anything we can sell right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. So this bill is on the desk of congress to something about dictating what our consumers can buy, that they have to buy all of EV by a certain time yeah, so the pitch was like let this happen, you're going too fast. We understand environmental concerns, we understand all that stuff, but you can't force it, and I have real life experience here. So I go see one congressperson and he's like I'm like we don't hate electric vehicles, and he's like I hate them.
Speaker 2:And I'm like well we will sell cars that run on pineapple juice if our customers want to buy them. And he said the most incredible thing. He said they didn't shoot all the horses when cars came out. Yes yes, it happened naturally. Naturally, and I think we're in the same thing and I wish I came back and I see another one of the EVs in my Toyota showroom. I'm like what's going on? We got the same color, we got another one. They're like no, they returned it, they traded it in, they didn't like it.
Speaker 2:It didn't charge fast enough, they couldn't find it to recharge it, blah, blah, blah. So they got rid of it. I wish I knew, because I would have been able to put that at the end of my pitch. Although everybody, we pitched, we did great and the bill actually the bill was in our favor, they voted it and it was done. So it's moved on through its process. So it was very satisfying.
Speaker 1:Wow I mean especially Toyota and Lexus of how I'm a Kaisen fan, like the whole continuous improvement. There's two Toyota's on our I mean the company vehicle's not Toyota, but that wasn't my decision. But we drive we're a Toyota.
Speaker 2:Yes, us too, I love.
Speaker 1:Kaisen, I love the concept, I love lean, I love that concept. But, you hear, I usually keep an eye on Toyota to see where the market's going to go and what the lasting strategy is going to be, and PHEV, the hybrid of both things, seems like it's going to be the future. You can't go to Marshall, michigan, or you know, seabring, florida, and expect it to have the infrastructure to support what you know downtown Miami, can, or New York, or San Francisco, for that matter. For Tesla, you know, just doesn't have the infrastructure, is not there yet, and the majority of America is in between.
Speaker 2:Right, Absolutely. Yeah, I mean in my, in my district, uh, my PMA it's there's a lot of apartments, there's no plugs, there's not even even to put a slow charger. They don't even have an, and if they plugged them all in, the whole apartment building would go down. Like there's, it's, yeah, we're, we're still a ways from that that type of thing and mandating it artificially or any kind of artificial like um funding to this, to this um initiative. I, I just don't think it'll, it'll, it'll succeed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean we were. We were talking to one of my customers and they were saying that they were going to put the fast charging stations in there. Talk about a project. You have to have liquid cooled like it has to like, just for you know the rare chance that you're going to have this and it's part of your trunk money and it just just becomes this cumbersome. You know, um, and not only that, the technology is evolving and the technology hasn't landed in where it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1:You know, like that 50 year mark like planes, cars, trains have all been the same thing for the last 70, 80 years. Right, they all have. They are on the same principles. The technology hasn't landed there yet. If, like, if you have, if you find a balance between the hybrid seems like that balance 100% Plug in HEV, you know, PHEVs, or whatever, the, the, the, the, you know, whatever everybody considers now is like oh, our whole line of electric because we have a plug in a hybrid. But uh, you know, it seems like that's going to be. The flexibility is the thing that has the most amount of flexibility seems going to be like the winning strategy.
Speaker 2:I agree, 100% yeah.
Speaker 1:Did they see that in DC? Is that? I mean, was the pushback just ideological or was it practical?
Speaker 2:Um. So yeah, like the conversation also that I had in that same, in that same, you know, to try to get them on board with us, was like so our manufacturers say here's, here's, 20 EVs. You got to sell 20 of these to get 20 of those, and 20 of those would be my pickup trucks, my, so I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to illustrate to our lawmakers hey, my plumbers, they can't run on EV. Yeah, your constituents, your voters, your air conditioning repair people, your people that need to be on the street all day long, are not going to have the, the luxury to sit somewhere in a charger. They got to go.
Speaker 2:Um, so that made it really simple to think about it like that. Like I mean, our manufacturers are obviously getting pressure from from the government, with with all the, you know, with all the EPA stuff, but I mean I don't know at what point who pushes back or fights back on that end to say wait, wait, wait a minute. So I think we are in the right direction by convincing our lawmakers directly so that we can kind of start, you know, just getting a more realistic um path that has the right, the right timing and it gives, it gives the time for the innovation, it gives the time for the adaptation so that we have a successful you know transition at some point, whether it's little by little or however it goes. And obviously I think it's going to be a very slow, little by little trickle of of just getting it done and moving over, and whether we move all the way over or not, I don't think I'll see that in my lifetime.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me neither. I doubt it. Yeah, I doubt that my kids will see it, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Even, yeah, even your kids too, our kids yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's um. You know I was reading an article about like a few hydrogen cell technology leapfrogging electric and you know Toyota's leading the the charge on that. It's like and it has. You know, it's like this happy medium between the two things like oh, this is really interesting, and then we're going to spend billions of dollars on creating infrastructure for fully electric vehicles. One hydrogen vehicle might leapfrog the my, leapfrog the technology. You know we all thought that those mini discs were going to be the best thing in the world and everybody's carrying iPods.
Speaker 1:You know that just technology advancement has that, that ability to kind of leapfrog when a better, more sustainable more. It's like it's like, it's almost like the speed of the innovation is the speed of the boat itself that it's in. You know, if there's not an infrastructure that can support it, then it's. You could have the best. You know you could have the cure to cancer, but if you don't have a way to market it, it's not. It's just going to die in some garage somewhere.
Speaker 2:I drove. I drove a hydrogen car. I went to a like a fleet conference in. California for Toyota about maybe it was eight years ago, excuse me, and it was incredible. It was like I think it was like a highlander or it was. Either I think it was a RAV4 or a Highlander. It was a small SUV and it just, it had that pickup just like an electric car, and then out the exhaust pipe comes water.
Speaker 1:That's incredible.
Speaker 2:And it's kind of just sitting, I mean, I know they're working with it a little bit and you know, obviously hydrogen infrastructure is another investment and another, another leap that needs to be made, but it is, I think, definitely a better solution than EV.
Speaker 1:And Toyota does have a hydrogen car. Right, there's a I can't really it's like, and so does.
Speaker 2:Honda or Honda did. I don't know where they're at with it, but they were because Honda is not real big into fleet. You know Toyota's got more of the fleet share and fleet companies do have their own you know their own filling stations. Yeah, yeah, a lot of municipalities, I think, out on the, you know, on the West coast, have have their hydrogen.
Speaker 1:You should just send the congressman a picture of a pool cleaner to Toyota Tacoma. Think the Toyota Tacoma has a market really. No, every single one, every single one is a pool cleaner.
Speaker 2:Or even my husband. He's not a pool cleaner, he's got a Tacoma. I love Tacoma, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's, you know, there's one in our, in our, in our driveway right now. So I mean, it's, it's, it's a I I do love the concept. I read them. I was reading this book called the lean, the lean startup, and this guy, you know, the chief engineer for the Toyota Sienna, spent a year driving all 50 states in the United States in a minivan. Oh, wow. And he, they said, you're pet. The people that own this car do not, are not on the passenger seat, you know, like the driver's seat and the copilot seat, the people in the back, and then designed the whole vehicle based on that concept. It's just like that innovation concept of understanding those things from that perspective is one of the reasons why I have so much respect for you know the company like Toyota, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know I did it right, I had. I had my my first, my only child, and Sienna, 99 Sienna.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, they let. I mean that's, that's, that's. You know. There's something to be said about what you know the company's doing and what that company's setting the pace for, and that's why I kind of look at at Toyota and Toyota dealers as well, because Toyota dealers for the most part are really happy as as manufacturers or, like you know, manufacturer relationship have really good. It's a great product you don't have. You know you don't have. You're not, you know, plagued by a service, you know a service bay that's full of warranty work.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, no, they're, they're a great product. Great support for sure. I mean, I can't say enough good things about Toyota and SET and the people that support us. They they hire professionals, they're business partners, they're, they're responsive and they come to have a great product.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So, Judy, how do people get a hold of you if they, you know, want to pick your brain about something? Or you know, I know you're you're a leader in this industry and a leader for, for women and a role model for women that are coming up. If they would want to get a hold of you or ask you a question or pick your brain on something, if that's something that you're, that you're open to, how would they do that?
Speaker 2:I think the best way is probably LinkedIn, because I do. I do check all my messages inbound on LinkedIn. Another way is my email is Judy at headquarterautocom. That's probably the two best ways to reach me.
Speaker 1:All right, perfect, yeah Well. I'm really happy that we did this. This has been an awesome conversation. Thank you so much for for being here and hopefully we can do one soon.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it was great. I appreciate it All right.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Judy Bye.