Most shop owners say they want a great team. What they actually build, without realizing it, is a team of people they're too afraid to hold accountable. This episode is a candid, unscripted conversation with two veteran owners who both hit that wall, blew up their teams, and rebuilt them the right way.
In this episode of Maximum Octane, Jason Patel sits down with Woody Howard of Simpsonville Automotive in Kentucky and Fred Gestwicki out of Canton, Ohio, both with nearly 30 years in the industry. Neither of them came in with a list of talking points. They just talked shop, which is exactly what makes this one worth your time.
The conversation covers the failure philosophy both owners live by and why letting your people fail on purpose is one of the most important things you can do for their development. They trade stories about teams that quit on the same day, techs that plateaued and couldn't grow, and the hard calls that turned out to be the right ones. They get into hiring for initiative over intelligence, why you should always be interviewing even when you're fully staffed, how to handle extended warranties as a payment method without losing margin, and a simple productivity hack Fred uses every few months that costs nothing and reveals everything.
Tune in to episode 144 of Maximum Octane if you've ever held onto someone longer than you should have, struggled to get your team to perform without you standing over them, or wondered why your shop never seems to produce as much as it should. Woody and Fred have both been there, and they are not shy about what it actually took to get out.
Episode Takeaways:
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