The Gearbox Podcast

Jimmy Purdy [00:00:13]:
Welcome to the Gearbox Podcast. I'm your host, Jimmy Purdy. On this podcast, we're not just exploring the latest trends and technologies in the automotive industry. We're also getting real about the journey. Yes, the bumpy road of mistakes and lessons learned hard along the way. This is the Gearbox Podcast. Cecil Bullard, the man, Myth, the legend.

Cecil Bullard [00:00:37]:
Mr. Purdy, how are you doing?

Jimmy Purdy [00:00:39]:
We're hanging in there. Day three, last day at Apex, man, the world went on.

Cecil Bullard [00:00:44]:
I'll be glad to go home and have a weekend.

Jimmy Purdy [00:00:47]:
Yeah, I mean, that's the big thing about these trade shows. It's nice to go home.

Cecil Bullard [00:00:52]:
I don't think if you. I don't think if you've not been to something, like, in a position like you or I are, you know, people understand that being here as a presenter or, you know, having a booth or doing podcasts is different than being here, like, hanging out, having fun.

Jimmy Purdy [00:01:15]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:01:16]:
Because you're kind of on all the time. I go in class and, you know, I'm already like. I don't know if I'm a high energy guy, but I'm definitely a, like, wired guy. And then I go into class before I teach and I get more wired, and during class I'm like, I'm so pumped up when I'm teaching, and about 20 minutes after, like, all the energy leaves my body all at once.

Jimmy Purdy [00:01:42]:
The crash.

Cecil Bullard [00:01:43]:
Yeah. And yet if I go out to the booth now and stand at the booth, I can't do that. I have to keep. Try to keep the energy level up. So when I get in my hotel room at the end of the night, it's like, oh, man, it's like I've been wrestling bears all day.

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:00]:
It feels that way, doesn't it? Especially in Vegas, man, the air is dry.

Cecil Bullard [00:02:03]:
Yeah. It's cold this year, but, yeah, and it is. I wanted some warmth, damn it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:09]:
Yeah. Not to say I don't have fun. I mean, this is fun.

Cecil Bullard [00:02:11]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:11]:
I have a lot of fun with this.

Cecil Bullard [00:02:12]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:12]:
You can hear the enthusiasm in my voice.

Cecil Bullard [00:02:14]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You look a little tired.

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:16]:
I'm just having a great time.

Cecil Bullard [00:02:17]:
Yourself?

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:19]:
I feel like I work a little bit harder sometimes when I'm here having in quote, unquote, fun when I'm, like, walking around and. Because you're trying to get to everything. And like the first couple of years when I came here, it was like, I gotta see everything, I gotta talk to everybody. I gotta be everywhere. So, you know.

Cecil Bullard [00:02:33]:
But you can't. There's no way. Right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:35]:
I'm dragging the Wife out of bed at like 6:30 in the morning. Let's go, let's go, let's go.

Cecil Bullard [00:02:38]:
We gotta go.

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:39]:
Yeah, we can get to SEMA at 7. By 9:30 we can be back at Apex and this and that and the other thing. It's like, it's supposed to be fun.

Cecil Bullard [00:02:45]:
Right now I haven't even been over to SEMA at all. Probably won't this year. No, no, just been here, you know, doing classes and talking and doing podcasts and whatever.

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:57]:
So yeah, I feel like I like Apex a little more. It's a little more intimate, better conversations.

Cecil Bullard [00:03:05]:
I don't know. To me it seems like SEMA right now is much busier. Obviously as a vendor or a, you know, consulting company. We'd like it to be busier because we'd like to have more contacts because we'd like to have more people in our programs, blah, blah, blah. But I'm enjoying it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:03:23]:
Okay. Yeah, we'll back the train up a little bit and go back into that. Okay, so your program, the Institute, tell me a little bit about it. Where do you start off?

Cecil Bullard [00:03:37]:
We have multiple programs. I started working for another company many, many, many years ago as a consultant when I first decided to do this. And they had a program that was, this is how we do it. And it was, in my opinion, it was limited, limiting, and it was only. It wasn't as effective as I needed it to be. So when I started my company, I wanted to have more flexibility. So we did two things. We did groups, like 20s groups coaching groups, and then we did one on one coaching.

Cecil Bullard [00:04:23]:
And it would depend on where you were at, who you were, what level your business was at, whether we would put you here or put you there. Over the years now we have, I think, seven different programs that we do. So we do one on one coaching, which is where probably about 60% of our clients start and come in. Because that's the. That's kind of like, let's get you from wherever you are up to a certain level. And when you're at that level, then we'll consider whether you go into say a performance group, a 20s group, a high performing group. And then we needed our clients needed, like, how do we train our service advisors? So we have a advisor program that we do. We have a manager program now that we do.

Cecil Bullard [00:05:23]:
And then we have an M and A program which is mergers and acquisitions for the guys that want to have 25 shops or be part of something bigger. And there's a lot of opportunity right now in our Industry in that area with consolidation and the average guy being 58, 59 years old running a shop. And so we do varying things and what we've tried to do really is have kind of a varying program. So we could say, okay, you're here, this is going to help you best right now. And then as you grow and learn, then we can move you over here because now this is going to help you better. You're going to be read better, better able to, ready to move in the next direction. I don't know. Four years ago, several of my really high end clients, I mean the guys that really are the drivers, shakers, et cetera, joined together to create an M and A on their own with now a partner.

Cecil Bullard [00:06:26]:
I brought in the company and five of them sold I think 32 shops for about 10x and they're busy building that. Well, I didn't have that in my company so I wanted to help the guys that were going to grow multiple shops, etc. So we created that and brought that person in that helped them do that into our own company so we could have the MA and the high performing stuff. Also you hate to lose clients, hate to lose anybody, frankly. It's tough, it's hard. So we, our mission is better business, better life, better industry. And the vision behind that is if we help you have a better business, then you and your family will have a better life. Also the people that work for you so often we'll come into a shop, they're underperforming, probably they're not making the kind of money they should.

Cecil Bullard [00:07:33]:
We'll help them define things, change things. I can't come in and do it for you, but we can teach you what to do and then they'll do those things and then they have more money, which in a way more money often gives you more time. And so you're having that better life that we wanted and you can pay your people more. So they're having a better life. And I think it raises our entire industry, which is our mission statement.

Jimmy Purdy [00:08:02]:
Yeah, it's like the rising tide, right?

Cecil Bullard [00:08:04]:
Yeah. And we need it lifts all boats up and we have a lot of room to grow in this industry. I wouldn't say we're a fledgling industry because we've been around for a long time. Our roots are blacksmiths because when automobiles came on the scene, there were no shops, there were no roads, there weren't gas stations. Sure. And blacksmiths would fix the cars. And so we've come a long way from that.

Jimmy Purdy [00:08:35]:
Long ways from that. Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:08:36]:
But we have a long way to go because the technology keeps advancing, the government is changing the regulations, the, you know, back in the day when I started, taxes were a lot less. Workers comp. Was almost nothing. You know, these things that have come along now that cost us and drain our pockets, those things, you know, we need to be prepared for those and we need to be prepared for the future.

Jimmy Purdy [00:09:08]:
Right? Yeah. I mean, just trying to match the rate of inflation is a big one. Right. So obviously it's easy to come in and sit on here and just tell people to raise their rates and adjust their margins. And I feel like that's the entry.

Cecil Bullard [00:09:21]:
Level stuff, I think.

Jimmy Purdy [00:09:23]:
And a lot of that stuff you can kind of find online. You can, you have podcasts out, there's podcasts everywhere that just tell you where to get, what's your vision or what is it that you're trying to attract to your company? Like what business owner is it that you're actually targeting?

Cecil Bullard [00:09:38]:
We. We want. Oh, man, it's, it's tough because you're looking at the market. And so one of my partners wants us to work with only the top 1%. And ultimately, if we were all the top 1%, this would be a different industry. Right. But in order to survive as a company, the top 1% is only 1% small market. Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:10:02]:
And if you believe the numbers, that's about 24,000 shops, which again, if I worked with all 24,000, okay, great, we're all fine. But you're never going to do that.

Jimmy Purdy [00:10:14]:
And does the top 1% need your help?

Cecil Bullard [00:10:19]:
I think we have a lot to offer the top 1% because of. I don't know that. I don't know too many guys, if any, that really get it all, even myself. I don't know everything. Right. I know a lot. I've been working hard at it for a long time. But the industry changes, the public changes, the vehicles change.

Cecil Bullard [00:10:43]:
You know, we need to keep up with it. And by the way, we're way behind as an industry in what we charge, in how we, how we see ourselves, how we market ourselves, all kinds of things. So who am I trying to attract, really? We're probably looking right now at the top 40%. And so our marketing is focused around that, our programs are kind of focused around that. I mean, we have a lot of stuff online that's just free. And so if you're in the, you know, if you're in the bottom 40%, go take a free class and learn about your labor rate and how you should be Charging or learn about gross profit margin or gross profit dollars per hour or, you know, productivity. Things that you may not have thought of. So years ago, thousand years ago, my dad and I.

Cecil Bullard [00:11:38]:
I'm young right at the time, a lot of hair, definitely darker, a lot skinnier. My dad and I go to our very first event. It's an ASCCA event. They used to have two events in California. It's about an hour and a half away from where we work. And they're having this event and it's an Apex, but not as big, right?

Jimmy Purdy [00:12:02]:
Okay.

Cecil Bullard [00:12:02]:
And so we go to look at equipment and that kind of stuff. But there's a guy there named Mike Lee. Or not Mike Lee. Oh, Jim. What's Jim's last. What was Jim's last name? Just kills me. Just getting old just drives me nuts.

Jimmy Purdy [00:12:17]:
I couldn't tell you.

Cecil Bullard [00:12:18]:
No, you wouldn't. You're way too young. But so we sit in this guy's class, he's up there telling us about all this stuff that we don't know. And we're done, right? We get done. A four hour class, whatever it is. And dad and I are. We're at Disneyland Hotel. And we're at the bar.

Cecil Bullard [00:12:37]:
Dad's having a beer. I don't drink. And we're eating nachos together. And we're talking about what we just heard. And dad and I are like, that guy was an asshole. No, seriously, right? I don't think I liked him. He was very. A little pushy.

Cecil Bullard [00:12:56]:
He knew it all, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:12:59]:
He was that guy, they call it direct.

Cecil Bullard [00:13:00]:
Yeah, right. Which, by the way, now I'm that guy. Right? But my dad and I are like. Well, he told us we could raise our labor rate. We never thought about it. Really? We never thought, you know, if you're doing. I don't know, at the time, we were probably doing 300 hours a month. And if you raise your labor rate five bucks, that's $1,500 that you have that you don't have now.

Cecil Bullard [00:13:28]:
And so we were like. He gave us, in a way, he gave us permission to do some things that we weren't sure we could do or we weren't confident to do or whatever. So we're talking about it. Yeah, but he was an asshole. I mean, seriously, we were both like. But he told us we could charge shop supplies. We've never thought about that. If we do shop supplies at the time, I think it was like 2% or 3% up to, I don't know, probably like nine bucks or something.

Cecil Bullard [00:13:57]:
Wow. We could make another thousand dollars and we weren't starving to death, but we weren't eating steak every night, Right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:14:05]:
You were going to the seminar for a reason.

Cecil Bullard [00:14:06]:
Yeah. Right. So we went home and we made three or four changes, and at the end of the month, we had another three or four grand, which back then was like, holy smokes, this is amazing. And by the way, the whole way home, we're like, you know, he told us we could do this, and he told us we should do this and et cetera. And I think in a way, I don't know that I knew any of that. I was pretty young, but part of it was I didn't know that I could. Right. I never thought about it that way.

Cecil Bullard [00:14:37]:
And all the way home, dad and I both. But he was kind of an asshole, right? So then we go home, and the next month, I got another three grand sitting in the bank. And by the way, there was ever three grand sitting in the bank. And so we're like, I wonder where Jim hunts his name. I wonder where Jim's teaching next, Right? So I wonder what else he's doing. So we start. I start looking for stuff like, oh, he's doing this thing. I'm going to go to it.

Cecil Bullard [00:15:05]:
So I go to this thing, I learn some more, I come home, I make some more changes and adjustments. My business gets better. Not perfect, but better. And there's now there's five grand extra a month. And so now I've got, you know, after six months or so, I've got 20, $25,000 set aside. And I'm looking at one of those scanners, those new. At the time, this new giant sun thing that had all the leads. And it took you 25 minutes to hook up to the car.

Jimmy Purdy [00:15:35]:
Yeah, the one that would smoke out of the.

Cecil Bullard [00:15:38]:
Right. And so I was like, I could afford one of those things. Oh, my gosh, I'm going to go buy one of those. And that's where some of the money went, was equipment. You know, we bought a wheel balancer. We bought an alignment machine. We paid ourselves more. We bought a truck, a newer truck instead of the 1927 truck we'd been driving since 1927.

Jimmy Purdy [00:16:04]:
All the things you should be doing when you're profitable.

Cecil Bullard [00:16:06]:
Yeah. And by the way, we also started to make a real living where I could think about, oh, I could buy a house, I could raise a. I could send a kid to college, Right? And then my dad worked, I don't know, 18 hours a day. My dad Was that guy got up at 6:00 and got home at 11. And you know, he just worked, work, work, work, work. Because in many cases he was working to pay the bill, right. To make sure he had payroll, to make sure that he could pay the rent. Until we started working with Jim Hunt.

Cecil Bullard [00:16:43]:
And at the time it was esi. And then I became a junkie for education. So I took the sales training stuff and then I took the leadership and management training stuff and then I went and saw Bob O'Connor and then I went and saw Mike Lee and then I went. And so I just started taking all this stuff because I wanted to learn all of it because I wanted to be the best at what I was doing, which at the time was running an automotive business. And it's. And then. And I had a, you know, a vision again, I was probably 24 at the time, you know, of I might be able to be that guy and I could help guys like my dad have a life outside of their shop. Because my dad did not have a life outside of his shop.

Cecil Bullard [00:17:31]:
He never. I played basketball in high school. I lettered him basketball, track and football, and he never attended any of my games. I sang in the choir, the Madrigals, which was like the top singing group. I even sang in college. And he never came to a concert.

Jimmy Purdy [00:17:50]:
You know, that's where the voice came from.

Cecil Bullard [00:17:52]:
Yeah, well, I don't know. It's. It. I think it came from my mom, basically, but. And so I have a vision for an industry where the average shop owner is making a good living, goes home at 5 o'clock, enjoys his family, spends his weekends doing something else, has hobbies, can buy the equipment he needs. I have a vision for an industry where a tech coming into our industry can make 30 bucks an hour, not necessarily putting out eight hours a day to start, and where a master tech can make 150 plus. That's the vision I have for our industry because we're a professional industry, because we act like professionals, we treat each other like professionals, we demand professionalism from the people in our industry and from our customers to treat us that way. And so for me, this is like a lifelong battle to bring the industry into the current century and create something of real value for everyone in the game, including the customer.

Jimmy Purdy [00:19:11]:
Yeah. The whole reason why you opened a open a business, right, Instead of just being a shop owner, you want to own a business. That's the idea.

Cecil Bullard [00:19:18]:
Yeah. And I think that there are a lot of guys, and God bless them, like my dad, who had an opportunity to start a shop, didn't want to work for the dealership anymore, didn't want someone telling him what to do. Started a shop with no understanding of what really took, and thought, if I can just work on cars, I'll make money. And that there's so much more to it. And when you understand that, the more you understand, the better you get, the better your results get, you can look at yourself as an example of that. You know, I don't know when you came in, when you first got your shop, but over the years you've learned certain things, You've changed things, you've raised your labor rate. I know that for sure because I beat you over the head about that at one point. You looked at our productivity's not enough, how do we fix that? Et cetera.

Cecil Bullard [00:20:07]:
And now you have a better business that runs better, it provides more. Customers are most likely happier. If they weren't, they wouldn't stay with you and you'd fall, you know, obviously fall apart. But. So my vision for my business is to attract the best people into my business as coaches, consultants, et cetera, to attract the best partners, marketing phone systems, whatever it is that I don't provide point of sale data, etc. And to use all of that to help as many shops as possible become as excellent as they can be, you know, and that hopefully will raise our industry so that there'll be fewer kids whose parents don't attend their games and support them in a way that they should be supported as kids and give them the opportunities they should have.

Jimmy Purdy [00:21:18]:
Yeah, yeah, that's. That's the goal for everybody.

Cecil Bullard [00:21:21]:
It's funny, my dad was, you know, he. He worked his butt off and dad did good for what he knew. He always wanted more for us and, and he wanted us to have more opportunities, but some of the stuff that would have been more for us would have been to have my dad as a part of my life. And if I hadn't to work, work for him, I wouldn't even know who he was. Yeah, it was a time that I worked for him, that I got to know him really well.

Jimmy Purdy [00:21:52]:
That's the story that a lot can relate to, right? Especially for your generation.

Cecil Bullard [00:21:56]:
Yeah, yeah. And I think the. I think the younger generations are more likely to look for more than what my dad did or what I was taught. But I'm not sure they know how to get there. And we're the company, or at least we believe we're the company to help them understand how to get there. Yeah, right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:22:17]:
So one of the motives I had for having you come on today is because we were a client. Right. So I obviously wanted to dig into that a little bit.

Cecil Bullard [00:22:25]:
Okay.

Jimmy Purdy [00:22:26]:
And get real uncomfortable in here.

Cecil Bullard [00:22:27]:
Okay. I'm good. No worries.

Jimmy Purdy [00:22:31]:
So, yeah, I can't sit here and say that there was absolutely no movement in our business. Right. It's been about two years, so we moved pretty quickly from your initial program up into the coaching program. But I want to go back a little bit because I've been following you for years. And in fact, about four years ago, I remember coming to one of your classes here at Apex, and it's a little surreal to actually be sitting across the table from you now, having you on my podcast.

Cecil Bullard [00:22:54]:
I'm just a normal guy. Well, always have been.

Jimmy Purdy [00:22:56]:
And I'm saying this because you come to these events, you meet some of these trainers, see them online. Right. And it's just wild how if you just keep chomping the bit, if you just keep being consistent and persistent, then eventually the things happen, and it's just kind of wild to go from the point of being in your classroom and listening to what you say and following you around the country to all your seminars, hiring your company, and then now on the other side of it now I have you, you know, on the podcast. So it's. It's. It's just wild life.

Cecil Bullard [00:23:29]:
It's fun, ain't it? Isn't it fun?

Jimmy Purdy [00:23:32]:
It is.

Cecil Bullard [00:23:32]:
It's great.

Jimmy Purdy [00:23:33]:
So we, like I said, we quickly moved from the GPG group into the group process. And I want to bring that up because I feel like we weren't really ready for that.

Cecil Bullard [00:23:43]:
Probably weren't.

Jimmy Purdy [00:23:43]:
Yeah. So you're the facilitator there. And then it abruptly ended about two weeks ago. Okay. So it's pretty recent. So I just kind of want to dive into that and kind of get your process. Obviously, you don't. You want as many clients as possible.

Jimmy Purdy [00:23:54]:
Right. I mean, that's. That's the goal. You're running a business. And so there was just some things that I don't think were clarified or the expectations for us weren't exactly spelled out. But, of course, I'm ignorant, and we don't know what we don't know, but here you are, and here we're talking. So anything that we can clarify on those points?

Cecil Bullard [00:24:15]:
Well, you know, first of all, I'm not involved with every client we have today. If I were, I don't know. If I were, maybe my clients would get more, because I'm really great at What I do. But also, I couldn't affect as many people, so I would have real limitations. And I think that's. The shop owner who's working on cars now needs to become the shop owner that runs a business that works on cars. Okay. And so I still have clients, and I still work with clients.

Cecil Bullard [00:24:51]:
And one of the things we've tried to do to mitigate the loss of. Maybe Cecil's not your coach. Is bring resources into our clients when they need resources. Hence, I don't know. Three months ago, I spent some time with you and your lovely wife having meetings, and it was no additional charge to what we were already charging you because we believed you needed certain help that I could give you. Okay. In the. In the.

Cecil Bullard [00:25:29]:
It's. It's. We bought a company called Arlo Training about three years ago. Two and a half, three years ago. And I don't know if you guys came in through that or if you came in after that.

Jimmy Purdy [00:25:40]:
It was. It was targeted towards the Institute.

Cecil Bullard [00:25:42]:
Okay.

Jimmy Purdy [00:25:42]:
Maybe my expectations was that of having Cecil be the coach. Also, I have to trust that your team is going to do the right job, just as if I do, too. Someone came into my shop. They. And I'm not going to work on their car. Right. I do a radio show. I do the podcast.

Jimmy Purdy [00:25:58]:
People want to come and they want to talk to me. Where's Jimmy? I don't want him to rebuild my transmission. Yeah, well, he's not going to be able to do every transmission. Right. Just like you said, I want to affect.

Cecil Bullard [00:26:06]:
And so there's a. There's a thing that I teach. You have to understand if you're going to have. Like, when I was working on cars, I was the best guy working on cars. Right. When I'm coaching, I'm the best guy coaching. I know more about this industry than anybody else, in my opinion. And I have a high opinion of myself.

Cecil Bullard [00:26:26]:
I'm pretty sure some people would.

Jimmy Purdy [00:26:27]:
Well, it's called an ego.

Cecil Bullard [00:26:28]:
Right. So. But you have to understand a minimum level of. I call it a minimum level of incompetence. So if you're not going to be the guy working on the car. Because I'm always going to fix your car. Right? Right. Because I know more than blah, blah, blah.

Cecil Bullard [00:26:45]:
And I've heard this from owners all the time. And they get in the way of their people, and they don't let their people make mistakes, and so their people don't grow. And then they wonder why they can't grow their business because they have to have their hands in every single pie. So you create a minimum level of incompetence. Right. And also you have a training system, if you're correct, that trains your coaches up in this instance. All right? And so we have, now I think I have 10 or 11 coaches that are facilitators and, or coaches that work with our clients. I still have clients of my own, but I'm trying to have less because, you know, I don't know, three months ago I had 38 or 39.

Cecil Bullard [00:27:32]:
And I can't be a CEO or run or talk to vendors or do podcasts if I've got 39 clients I got to deal with.

Jimmy Purdy [00:27:39]:
Sure.

Cecil Bullard [00:27:40]:
So you hire people, you train people, and you have an expectation of what they're delivering to your clients and you put your fingers on the pulse of your business. So do I expect my technicians never to make a mistake? No, I don't. I expect mistakes to happen. I expect that when they happen, we drop everything and we work hard with our clients to solve whatever that problem is. So if my guy put brakes on your car and the brakes don't work right, we're going to do everything we can to solve that problem. And 90% of the time, 95% of the time, we're going to solve the problem and the client's going to love us. And 5% of the time we're going to solve the problem. The client may not love us because we made a mistake.

Cecil Bullard [00:28:29]:
All right? And maybe there's 1% of the time where we can't solve the problem because the problem's not solvable. And the problem might not be the brakes. The problem might be the client. Okay? They have an expectation that's not a reasonable expectation of what the shop should provide. And I'm not, I'm not leading anywhere with our situation. Okay?

Jimmy Purdy [00:28:49]:
Oh, you can. I have extremely high expectations, so I've been known to be unreasonable.

Cecil Bullard [00:28:54]:
So. So we have facilitators that facilitate our groups and we have had ups and downs mainly because the people that came through RLO had a different expectation and in my opinion felt like the Institute was the devil because we bought RLO and brought them in. And so Cecil's the devil and didn't necessarily give us a fair chance.

Jimmy Purdy [00:29:17]:
And that's a great correlation to a lot of shops that take over shops. Right? That has an $85 an hour labor rate. And now all of a sudden the big bag of owners coming in, it's 150 an hour. But that's also a situation as a coaching company. That needs to be mitigated. Right. So if you had a client purchase that shop, they need to understand, they need to provide value for that, right?

Cecil Bullard [00:29:36]:
Yes, absolutely.

Jimmy Purdy [00:29:37]:
And they should be able to retain those clients and then working through those problems.

Cecil Bullard [00:29:40]:
Absolutely. And so we have a, we have a one on one program where we work one on one with clients. And we don't have a. I mean, don't get me wrong, there is a very, it's very much systematic, but it's not. Here's the five things we're going to teach every shop. It's what's going on in your shop, what do you need the most that's going to get you the biggest bang for the buck. And we're trying to get you to a level where you're making money, you're consistently making money. You have enough staff that you could get away for two or three days to go to a group meeting.

Cecil Bullard [00:30:15]:
And we're trying to work with you on systems, processes, things that you need. But that progress is probably slower with you at that point because you're smaller. It's harder. It's harder to get your time and it's very difficult from the coaching side to convince somebody to do what you need them to do. Okay.

Jimmy Purdy [00:30:39]:
I can appreciate that.

Cecil Bullard [00:30:40]:
And you're constantly doing that. All right, now. So you go on from there, you get to a certain level and we're saying, okay, we believe you're ready for a group and we're going to put you into a group. And group expectations. Really hard to manage all of that, frankly, from our end. The group process is supposed to. The group is supposed to be there to support you as the coach or the facilitator. You would like everybody to do what you tell them to do.

Cecil Bullard [00:31:12]:
Right. So I had a guy, I ran the smart groups for OPAC for, I don't know, 21 years or so and had a guy in there that had been in for 10, 12 years in one of our groups who wouldn't put a parts matrix in place. And he was broke all the time, always complaining about money. Right. And a really nice guy. And he would come to group meetings and when it came time for us to talk about him, we were like, your parts margin sucks. Put a matrix in. Well, I'm not going to do that.

Cecil Bullard [00:31:44]:
Okay, you know, what do you do at that point? Do you. Do you fire him and get rid of him because you can help him in other areas? Do you beat him up? Do you publicly shame him? Do you shoot him in the head? What do you do.

Jimmy Purdy [00:31:58]:
So is this in the group process?

Cecil Bullard [00:31:59]:
Yes.

Jimmy Purdy [00:32:00]:
So obviously, I would expect that you would have the other clients hold that certain shop to a certain extent.

Cecil Bullard [00:32:07]:
And how do they do that? Okay. If you don't want to do something, I don't care if you've got 20 people in a group telling you to do it or one coach telling you to do it. If you don't want to do it, you're not going to do it. And I don't have any power over you. None. Okay. So you and I had a conversation about working on RVs.

Jimmy Purdy [00:32:27]:
Correct.

Cecil Bullard [00:32:28]:
All right. And what was my advice?

Jimmy Purdy [00:32:30]:
Don't do it.

Cecil Bullard [00:32:31]:
Okay. And you aren't at this point, to my understanding?

Jimmy Purdy [00:32:36]:
No, definitely not.

Cecil Bullard [00:32:37]:
But if you decided to go ahead and work on RVs, what control or what power do I have over you.

Jimmy Purdy [00:32:41]:
As your coach to not work on RVs? Because it's a bad decision.

Cecil Bullard [00:32:45]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:32:46]:
In your opinion? It would be a bad.

Cecil Bullard [00:32:47]:
But if I tell you that and I try to help you understand that and I show you all that and you still decide to work on RVs, then how do I hold you accountable to that as your coach?

Jimmy Purdy [00:33:01]:
Conversations? I would feel like it would depend if. Whether you had one on one coaching or. So you're in a group process, the.

Cecil Bullard [00:33:08]:
Group cannot hold you accountable. Things you don't want to be held accountable to.

Jimmy Purdy [00:33:11]:
Well, we could debate on that, right?

Cecil Bullard [00:33:14]:
Well, yeah, sure. I could. I could kick you out of the group.

Jimmy Purdy [00:33:17]:
Correct.

Cecil Bullard [00:33:18]:
Okay.

Jimmy Purdy [00:33:18]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:33:19]:
So basically, that's the only real control.

Jimmy Purdy [00:33:23]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:33:24]:
I guess I could get your permission to fine you if you don't do what the group tells you to do. But here's the other thing.

Jimmy Purdy [00:33:31]:
I want to back up on that, too, because it feels like we're getting to the nitty gritty here, and that's.

Cecil Bullard [00:33:37]:
You have to be accountable for yourself.

Jimmy Purdy [00:33:40]:
Correct.

Cecil Bullard [00:33:40]:
And everybody grows and learns at a different rate.

Jimmy Purdy [00:33:43]:
Oh, yeah?

Cecil Bullard [00:33:44]:
Nobody. Biggest complaint I have. If you look at any data analysis, any data, it's all a bell curve. All right? And so you throw the data on the bell curve, and if you look at the bell curve, there's always the top, you know, 5%, 3%, you're supposed to throw that data out. There's the bottom 5%, 3%. You're supposed to throw that data out, and you're really judging on that middle 80% or so. Right. If you're in the top 5 or 10%, if you're one of the guys that is intolerant of other people's failures.

Cecil Bullard [00:34:22]:
Okay. And you think they should be better than they are. You're going to be frustrated in a group.

Jimmy Purdy [00:34:31]:
I'll agree with that.

Cecil Bullard [00:34:32]:
Okay, I can agree with that. And yet nobody listens to everything Cecil says. If every one of my clients would just do what the hell I told them to do, they would have much more money in their bank. They'd have a much better shot, blah, blah, blah. Now by the way, I said that that way on purpose. It's not what I really believe, okay? But I cannot tell you how many times someone has come up to me and said, cecil, I finally did blah, blah, blah. And I should have listened to you when you told me, okay, I'm not always right. I'm not the guy that knows absolutely everything.

Cecil Bullard [00:35:11]:
But usually when I give advice, it's good advice. It's based on experience, it's based on knowledge, it's based on banging my head against the wall, making mistakes, etc. But if I hold everybody to a Cecil standard, I have no employees, I have no clients because nobody can be held to Cecil standard. Cecil holds for himself.

Jimmy Purdy [00:35:35]:
Now, if you were looking for the top 1% or 2%, wouldn't you want them to be held to a CECL standard?

Cecil Bullard [00:35:43]:
So we have a high performing group that we move people into when they are getting in that place, okay? And frankly, there are people that think they should be in a high performing group who don't belong in a high performing group. Okay? And so how come I can't be in that group? Well, you haven't achieved X, Y and Z. You're not there yet. Okay? And there are some people probably in the high performing group that don't belong there. They're not ready yet. And you put them there because you think either they're almost ready or that you think they can learn what they need to really quickly. But I could be wrong, or Jennifer could be wrong, or Aaron could be wrong, or Fred could be wrong. Right? We hope.

Cecil Bullard [00:36:28]:
My father wanted him to have a life outside his shop, wanted him to enjoy other things. Besides, I'm at work and I'm miserable because all I do is work. So I bought him golf clubs, I took him out to play golf, I got him a golf instructor, etc. He hated it. And what I learned from that is you can't want more for people than they want for themselves.

Jimmy Purdy [00:36:55]:
I can see that.

Cecil Bullard [00:36:56]:
One of our coaches, who I respect a lot, friend of mine who in this industry has the saying, why do I want it more for them than they want it for themselves? Okay? That's his he says it all the time. I want every one of my shops to be stellar. I want every one of my shops to put up 20% to the bottom line. I want every one of my shops to be home at 5 o'clock with their kids. I want them to have weekends off. I want them to be able to go buy a truck if they want to buy a truck. I want them to be able to send their kids to a good college, all of that. But if they don't want it, I have no control over what they actually do in their business.

Cecil Bullard [00:37:37]:
And if you're going to put a group of people together, you're going to have some people that are frustrated with what the other people are or not doing, and the other people can't hold them accountable.

Jimmy Purdy [00:37:46]:
Now, do you think it'd be valuable to have this exact conversation before you let a client out of the program?

Cecil Bullard [00:37:55]:
I believed I had that conversation.

Jimmy Purdy [00:37:57]:
Okay.

Cecil Bullard [00:37:58]:
Okay. But not with you. And the other thing is, let's say that you have a client come into your shop and you, you do a good job, but maybe the job isn't up to that client's expectation. I used to work on these wonderful little old ladies cars. Now they're my age, they would be, but they'd bring their car in the shop and we would do the tune up and adjust the carburetor and all kinds of stuff. And then I'd take that car and I'd drive the crap out of it to blow out all the exhaust because they never went over 40 miles an hour.

Jimmy Purdy [00:38:33]:
I think they call it the Tijuana tune up.

Cecil Bullard [00:38:36]:
So I would, I would do that. We'd put plugs, wires, points, condensers, whatever. And I'd send them home with a car that ran like a champ. And three days later they'd show up and they'd go, cecil. And they put their little arm on my hand, on my arm. They go, you know, it's just not right. And I'd say, hang on just a minute, I know exactly what I gotta do. And I'd go out and I'd open their hood and I would put my hands on their car for two or three minutes.

Cecil Bullard [00:39:05]:
And then I'd shut the hood and I'd go in the office and I'd go, I made an adjustment. I know it's gonna be perfect for you. And they would leave. And then inevitably I would get a call 20 minutes later. Oh my God, Cecil, the car's never run better. Okay, so what was their expectation? What can I deliver? Am I Always clear about what I can deliver. Maybe not. But we do have, I don't know, 280 clients or so, and we have very few complaints about from those clients.

Cecil Bullard [00:39:41]:
And probably the biggest complaints we get from clients is, well, so and so is not blah, blah, blah. The other guy. Yeah, Focus on your own first before you focus on the other guy.

Jimmy Purdy [00:39:54]:
Now, on that, on that topic, in a group process, isn't that the feedback that you would find valuable? If everyone's trying to hold each other accountable to a standard, wouldn't you want to know if someone was not?

Cecil Bullard [00:40:06]:
When you are in a group process, the group is trying to hold you accountable because the group's coming into your shop, looking at your shop, or you're going to someone else's shop and you should be learning things. And problems that that shop owner, maybe problems that you also have. Now, whether or not that shop owner decides to act on those. I have a real frustration about wasting my time with people because they don't always listen to what I have to say.

Jimmy Purdy [00:40:30]:
You and me both. Maybe a lot of other listening right now, and maybe some of them are relating to that as being the ones that are frustrating others.

Cecil Bullard [00:40:38]:
But you again, if I have a Cecil expectation for everybody, then I'm miserable all the time. And that doesn't change what they do. All right? Now, I try to be inspirational. I try to be educational. I try to use knowledge, logic, experience, numbers to prove that you should do xyz. But let's go back to my guy who wouldn't put a parts matrix in. And I would have other group members go, I don't understand this guy. He won't put a parts matrix in.

Cecil Bullard [00:41:09]:
Never once did I have somebody say, let's kick him out of the group. Never once. They all said, you know, we love him. And he's doing some other things in his business that are good for him, and he's making some progress. He's not making ultimate progress because he's not doing ultimately what needs to be. And about, I don't know. I don't know, five, six, seven years in probably seven, maybe even eight, one day he comes in and his parts margins are good. And he made an extra, like six grand.

Cecil Bullard [00:41:37]:
And you're like, warren, what happened? He said, oh, I put a parts matrix in, matrix in place. And you're. You're like, holy crap. And you know what he says? I wish I'd have done it sooner. Cecil. Right? And by the way, the same thing.

Jimmy Purdy [00:41:53]:
They all say when they finally.

Cecil Bullard [00:41:54]:
And by the way, he was Still a member of the group who was at a different level than some of the other group members. Now, by the way, if we had people in there that were disruptive, if we had people in the group that were harming other people or giving people really horrible advice, first of all, I would hope that the facilitator that's in the meeting saying, no, wait a minute, that's not necessarily true, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because that's how I would do it. But I'm also not sitting in that.

Jimmy Purdy [00:42:23]:
Personal meeting about why we shouldn't open an RV business.

Cecil Bullard [00:42:26]:
Right? Right. Okay. So I got a call, said, these guys are going to do something stupid. Maybe, Cecil, they need to talk to you. So I'm like, hey, we need to meet. And then I spent. We had three meetings, which I don't mind. I love it.

Cecil Bullard [00:42:43]:
I love that probably more than any other part of my job. But if the reason that you're unhappy is that you haven't gained everything that you think you can gain, it's not necessarily because we haven't given you everything that we think you can take. Okay? And if the other guys are the reason you're unhappy because you're going there and you've held them on a pedestal, but they don't belong on that pedestal, I'm going to tell you, grow up. Because nobody's on a pedestal.

Jimmy Purdy [00:43:14]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:43:15]:
Okay. When I worked with my dad, I got very disappointed and very unhappy because my dad was not the man that I thought he was. I held him on a pedestal When I took him off the pedestal and I created him as a human being. I had a great relationship with him for many, many, many years. I don't hold people on a pedestal. They're not perfect. Group members are only going to grow as fast as they can grow. The qualifications for a group member are, if I remember right, you have to have a certain amount of revenue because you have to be able to afford certain things.

Cecil Bullard [00:43:49]:
We don't want to charge you when you can't afford it. You need to have a service advisor. I'm a little iffy on that because I brought people in with no service advisors who actually closed their shop for two days, came to group meetings and made exceptional progress. Seiko would be one of those. When Seiko came in, it was just him. Now he has a killer business. And by the way, he's been in a group for 10, 12 years, and he's not perfect. And he knows he's not perfect.

Cecil Bullard [00:44:18]:
And occasionally I get a message from him. Hey, Cecil, I Need, hey, what about this or what about that? Or should I, should I rent another space? Should I grow the business? What should I do? And I'm the first guy to go, well, here's how I would do it. And probably the good news about him is about 90% of the time he's going to do what I tell him to do. And he's had great success because of that. And I'm happy to have more conversation off the mic with you for a few minutes when we're done here.

Jimmy Purdy [00:44:49]:
Sure.

Cecil Bullard [00:44:50]:
But you also have to look at the success overall of the program. And our program has almost 300 people in it. And I don't get a lot of complaints.

Jimmy Purdy [00:45:01]:
And I'll back up a little bit. And I'm not, I'm not coming here to hold your feet to the fire and say that there was absolutely no progress made. And maybe it was a little bit of the pedestal thing going on. Maybe it was just maybe thrown in a little quickly. Obviously, going from the one on one coaching into a group process in less than 10 months. We were obviously doing everything that the institute wanted us to do. Right. We went from $600,000 to on track now to do 1.3 and we're gone for a week at Apex, not to mention the other group.

Cecil Bullard [00:45:30]:
And you spent some time up in Alaska too, right?

Jimmy Purdy [00:45:33]:
We did all the group meetings. It was something like $30,000 we spent in traveling to go to the group. I mean, so. And I'm not saying that as a negative thing. I'm saying that we're making the money to still be.

Cecil Bullard [00:45:42]:
You can afford it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:45:42]:
That we can afford it and we can still pay the guys we have.

Cecil Bullard [00:45:45]:
But you also would have liked to have other people take it more seriously if they're going to be ones who might be giving you advice, Correct?

Jimmy Purdy [00:45:53]:
We were. I mean, we're grow like we're chomping at the bit, right?

Cecil Bullard [00:45:57]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:45:58]:
Leanne and I. And she can, she's my wife. But you also, you also have it, right?

Cecil Bullard [00:46:03]:
Yeah, but you and what I would tell you to Leanne and Leanne is like, I probably have met, I don't know, 5% of the people I meet are like, Leanne. The biggest frustration that some of our group members have is like, Leanne is like, these guys aren't moving fast enough and they're the ones telling me stuff every day.

Jimmy Purdy [00:46:23]:
Trust me, I know.

Cecil Bullard [00:46:24]:
You know, blah, blah, blah. And what I would tell Leanne is calm down, work on you and yours.

Jimmy Purdy [00:46:31]:
Definitely don't tell her, calm down. I would. I've made that mistake.

Cecil Bullard [00:46:34]:
I would. But I don't have to. I don't have to sleep with her and I don't have to be around her that often. But. But I've. I've literally had that conversation many, many times over the years with. With these people and. And these people.

Cecil Bullard [00:46:49]:
What do you mean, these people? With people like. That doesn't matter. Right? Doesn't matter. Someone that has contact with me that I respect because they're making the effort, because they care, because they're driven. I love those people.

Jimmy Purdy [00:47:04]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:47:05]:
By the way, that's me. But one of the things I had to learn was that if I hold everybody to a Cecil standard, then I'm miserable and alone, and I can't do that. Even my own children, I can't hold to my standard. And Kent, who is a part of my business, is amazing. He's one of the most amazing people I know. But I can't hold him to my standard. He's better in different ways than I am in certain ways. He's better than me in a lot of ways.

Cecil Bullard [00:47:36]:
Okay. And that's what you want for people. And then there's another piece of this that I don't know that you understand. I have people coming to me who want. They want to be the best and they want to be driven, but they have no patience. And I could tell you 10 names, and they go in and do something that puts them at risk. And then they're like. And I told them clearly not to.

Cecil Bullard [00:48:09]:
I said, don't do that. You're not ready for that. Blah, blah, blah. And they still go do it. And some of them are successful at that point, but most of them, it hurts them and they struggle because of it. And you'd like to just choke them, you know, I mean, holy shit.

Jimmy Purdy [00:48:26]:
Do you think it's like your kid. If your kid went out and, you know, you told him not to go drink and drive, you told him not to take the car out, and he does it anyway.

Cecil Bullard [00:48:33]:
So if you go. If you go.

Jimmy Purdy [00:48:34]:
The same emotional contact, you know, I.

Cecil Bullard [00:48:37]:
Don'T know what we promised you. Right. I don't, because I wasn't the one that had all that conversation. What we should have promised you was we're going to work hard to help you. We're going to get you the resources you need. We're going to. If we make a mistake, we're going to fix it. You should see more profit in your business.

Cecil Bullard [00:49:03]:
You should have more time for yourself, et cetera, et cetera. Et cetera. I don't think we promised you that it wouldn't be hard. I don't think we promised you that the other group members would all be perfect and get it all done. I didn't even think we promised you that. Some of the advice you might get from group members, you need to maybe shift it out a little bit. What drives me nuts. So I have a marketing company that I work with and I know the person who runs it.

Cecil Bullard [00:49:28]:
We have a couple, and I like them. Both companies that we work with, I like both of them and I know them on a personal level. And I have one of the marketing companies I work with and they were in one of the groups and they were doing really well. The statistical data, the numbers are showing how well they're doing. They're growing, they're making the phone ring. These guys. Businesses are growing fairly dramatically, blah, blah, blah. And in comes another marketing guy who is not trustworthy, who's doing things that Google doesn't like, and actually got three shops shut out of Google for more than a month because of what he was doing.

Cecil Bullard [00:50:12]:
But this guy comes in and flaps his mouth in the group about how great this other guy is and how well he's going to add more cars to your business, blah, blah, blah. And so some of the group members go over there against my recommendation, okay? And it pisses me off that that happened because some of them are still happy with this guy because they haven't had their shop shut down, but some of them have had their shop shut down by Google. And I can't. I mean, I can go in and go, don't do that. Don't, don't go to this guy. I don't have this guy come to our events. I don't support this guy. I don't like.

Cecil Bullard [00:50:54]:
I haven't published an article that said this guy's a crook and a thief because I choose not to do that when I believe someone's a crook and a thief. But I don't support them. But I have a group member who got some result that he thought was great, by the way, it isn't. It wasn't better than what was being done. But whatever his perception of it is, that it's better and it hasn't helped him in the next three years. But I can't put a muzzle on that group member completely because they might come in and say, hey, this guy works for me and it works great.

Jimmy Purdy [00:51:30]:
Sure. And I mean, I know exactly what you're talking about. Right? And we won't we won't drop names.

Cecil Bullard [00:51:35]:
We can't. We'll just. We shouldn't.

Jimmy Purdy [00:51:37]:
Okay, so we'll keep it amicable right now, but I think just this conversation you're having now would be setting an expectation for everybody. Right. So in the same group process, there's also other businesses that are recommended that really fell short for us personally. Maybe others had really good success with it. Right. But there's other businesses that were recommended, and they really, really. I mean, we lost thousands of dollars and got no results out of it. That is nothing on the Institute.

Jimmy Purdy [00:52:03]:
Right. That's a recommendation. Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:52:05]:
We don't. We vet anyone we would recommend. They have to have worked with our clients. They have to be successful working with our clients. We have to believe that they're doing the right thing, that they're honest, that they're trustworthy, that they're. What do you call it? That they have morals and standards and ethics, etc. Or we wouldn't put them. But frankly, I can't guarantee anybody.

Jimmy Purdy [00:52:33]:
No, absolutely.

Cecil Bullard [00:52:34]:
Not at all.

Jimmy Purdy [00:52:35]:
No. That's not the direction I was going.

Cecil Bullard [00:52:36]:
Right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:52:37]:
It's just then you have also have other members that have success with other ones, and you just assume because they've been in the process longer than you, then they know the rules. Right. And so as a fellow group member, you just take that as, oh, well, they must be in the same recommendation. Right. So I guess what I'm saying is difficult, and this is great because it sets expectations for anyone listening and decides to go with any coaching company or with the Institute, what they should expect and what they need to be aware of, because this is a huge learning experience for the both of us. And, like, there's no hard feelings here.

Cecil Bullard [00:53:13]:
Right. We're friends. No problem.

Jimmy Purdy [00:53:16]:
It's a business decision. It was a decision that we were probably going to come to anyway, because it was. I think it was time for us to try to find something else.

Cecil Bullard [00:53:22]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:53:22]:
We weren't really getting the results anymore. Right. And you have to make that as a business decision very quickly, which makes.

Cecil Bullard [00:53:29]:
Me really sad because I see it a little differently.

Jimmy Purdy [00:53:34]:
Always. There's two sides of the story, and that's why we're talking.

Cecil Bullard [00:53:36]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:53:38]:
My reality is not yours and yours isn't mine.

Cecil Bullard [00:53:40]:
I know what we do as the Institute. I know that. I know that we have standards. I know that we have lots of skills. I know that when the time came that I needed to get involved with you, that your facilitator brought me in to get involved and have those conversations, I Know what we do. I know what we did. And we've had lots of people come and go over the years. When I look at the list of people who are no longer clients, it makes me really sad because it just makes me sad.

Cecil Bullard [00:54:18]:
And it's not about the money. It's not like, oh, well, we lost this revenue or whatever.

Jimmy Purdy [00:54:22]:
It's just another shop, or I see.

Cecil Bullard [00:54:24]:
Another client, it's like, what the hell's going on? Right. You know, but. But, you know, sometimes you need to go out there and see what else is in the world. And I don't think there's anybody that's gonna. But also, I don't think everybody fits with our coaching model. Yeah, I'm not going to run discount coupons. I'm always going to be like, don't do that. I don't even think that, frankly, you should be selling oil changes in today's world.

Cecil Bullard [00:54:53]:
And we talk about that, but I have a lot of clients that still sell oil changes. And then I have people that hear that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence and they run over the other side of the fence. And what usually happens, they find out the grass really isn't greener.

Jimmy Purdy [00:55:07]:
Sure.

Cecil Bullard [00:55:07]:
Right. So I, I want everybody to be successful. I take it very personally when someone's not satisfied with what we're doing or someone doesn't feel like that, or there's. There's issues that abound, and sometimes on the other side of it, you have to go, okay, you got to let them go, and they got to see what's out there and maybe they'll come back. Right?

Jimmy Purdy [00:55:30]:
Yeah, that's. I guess. I guess the main thing was having that decision taken away from us was kind of an odd situation. And I don't think I'm alone in that thought process, especially considering it was only two years and we only recently started having issues with communication with the group.

Cecil Bullard [00:55:48]:
So let me ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. You run a shop, customer comes in, you do a really great job, and the customer complains about their car. Now, I just had a shop owner that said, hey, Cecil, we just did breaks on a car, blah, blah, blah, and it came back two days later, and the check engine lights on. It's got nothing to do with the brakes. It has to do with the cylinder one three. Whatever. And what, what do you think I should do? Well, it's not the same thing.

Cecil Bullard [00:56:16]:
We didn't do that. We didn't fix that. So if that customer comes in and says, well, you need to fix my car because you touched it, and they make you crazy and they drive you nuts, and they have an expectation that, you know, you cannot meet. Do you keep that customer or do you let them go?

Jimmy Purdy [00:56:35]:
That's a great question. I mean, it's definitely about who that person is and what the value of that to your shop to keep them there. For me, if it was someone that had come in previously for years, I take care of it. Right. And short of putting an engine in it.

Cecil Bullard [00:56:52]:
So if you did that and then you had an agreement that you thought that, okay, we're all, okay, we're gonna move forward. And then the next day or two days later or five days later, a message got sent. All the other members of the group that was complaining about some of the stuff that you had supposedly cleared up. What would you do?

Jimmy Purdy [00:57:13]:
Well, if it was the misfire that was back then, it's definitely on me to make sure I warranty that misfire problem that I took care of for him.

Cecil Bullard [00:57:20]:
I think there's a point where you have to go, this is someone who I don't think I can make happy, and I need to let them go.

Jimmy Purdy [00:57:27]:
And the analogies are making it tough when you're talking about a situation and trying to relate the car to the. To that business practice. But the main thing, I guess, and just cut to the meat and potatoes of. Is trying to hold other people accountable in the process. And when we have a conversation with our facilitator and it says, I'm having a really hard time keeping everybody in line, and I say, hey, I'll give you a hand with that. And I try to give them a hand with that, and then the next day my hand is slapped. That's when I'm like, wait a second here. I thought you needed help with this.

Jimmy Purdy [00:57:54]:
So that's why my reality and your reality are definitely different when it comes to this situation. Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:57:59]:
Well, I had conversations with the facilitator, multiple conversations. I trust the facilitator, obviously, or they wouldn't be right. When I have a.

Jimmy Purdy [00:58:10]:
And I'm not saying I'm right, I write 100% wrong in this situation. This is my.

Cecil Bullard [00:58:17]:
And when I have people that work for me, the first thing I have to do is create standards and make sure I hire good people, etc. The facilitator that you're talking about, probably biggest problem they have is they care too much. Okay. Probably the biggest problem. Okay. And I know the results because I've worked with this person for a long time.

Jimmy Purdy [00:58:42]:
I know them as well. I mean, they're okay.

Cecil Bullard [00:58:44]:
And I know the results of our groups and the results of our programs and our products for people, which are fantastic. We beat industry standards by miles. Our average repairs are higher than any other coaching company, Our margins are higher than other coaching companies, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And by the way, probably if you talk to five different guys that own coaching companies, they're going to tell you the same thing, but it's not true. All right? And I know that. And so when my facilitator comes and says, here we are again, like just a week after we had the conversation, what, here's what I think I should do. What should I do? And I don't want to lose a client. I certainly don't want to lose a high profile client that might pull me in a podcast and have a conversation about it.

Cecil Bullard [00:59:33]:
But on the other hand, but on the other hand, I can't have someone disruptive for the other members of the group.

Jimmy Purdy [00:59:40]:
Sure.

Cecil Bullard [00:59:41]:
So I make a decision based on what I think is best for the majority of the people that I have. And I have to support my people that work for me because I trust them, because I've trained them and they know how to come to me and they come to me when they have an issue, et cetera, et cetera. And so a decision was made. I personally hate it. Hate it. It's personal to me. Anytime we either don't have success with somebody or anytime somebody doesn't like us or somebody complains or we lose a client, I can't even figure it out. I have, I have clients that literally for years and years and years told everybody how we, I saved their marriage and I saved their business.

Cecil Bullard [01:00:28]:
And they went from a little three base shop to a big giant shop. Now they're on their second shop. And then they all of a sudden one day just left and went to another coaching company. And when I had other clients that I, I, they were in my groups and I was, I was working with them and I told them, quit smoking and you want to be around for your kids and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I even flew them on my dime to classes that I didn't charge them for because they needed the help a couple, three times. And all of a sudden they go to one event, they get in front of one tent show preacher and they, they leave. They call me up crying and say, I'm sorry, but I'm going to leave because I think this guy and I Said, I just have to ask you why? Why? Because I need to know, is it something I could have done differently or better or whatever? And what they said is, well, he really cares about us. You're kidding me, right? Have I not demonstrated that in what I've done and in my actions, in my.

Cecil Bullard [01:01:40]:
Everything I've done for you? Have I not told you quit smoking, you're going to kill yourself? Have I not told you how to be home more? Have I not made you money in your shop? Have I not, when you were hurting, actually took money out of my pocket to help you get the education you needed to be better? Have I not done all of that? Now, I didn't have that conversation with them. I said, I understand and let them go. But, man, when I lay awake at night, it's that stuff that gets to me.

Jimmy Purdy [01:02:09]:
Yeah. And I think having the podcast, having this platform, gives me the opportunity to actually have this conversation because there might be a lot of other clients of yours or other coaching companies that might be put in that position, and they're never given this or afforded this opportunity. Right. So this is important for me to make sure that we air it out. Right. I mean, it helps a lot others.

Cecil Bullard [01:02:29]:
And I'd love, I'd love to have you guys back, frankly. On the other hand, maybe it's time for you to go look and see what's out there and then you might appreciate what you had.

Jimmy Purdy [01:02:39]:
Yeah, I can appreciate that.

Cecil Bullard [01:02:41]:
Right.

Jimmy Purdy [01:02:42]:
And so the last thing I wanted to ask you about that situation was one of the things that led up to it was part of the process was having your one on one coaching meetings and one was having composite partner meetings.

Cecil Bullard [01:02:53]:
Right.

Jimmy Purdy [01:02:54]:
That's part of the. Is that not part of the group process?

Cecil Bullard [01:02:57]:
It should be, yes.

Jimmy Purdy [01:02:58]:
So we're paying for a product and that product is obviously to be in with the Institute, but it's also to have those composite partner meetings.

Cecil Bullard [01:03:05]:
Yes.

Jimmy Purdy [01:03:07]:
Are those standard to be one month, two a month, three a month?

Cecil Bullard [01:03:11]:
So we, we would say that once a month you should have a composite partner meeting with your composite partners.

Jimmy Purdy [01:03:16]:
So if we are consistently so, if we looked back at our data, we had about five composite partner meetings throughout the entire year. So is that held to the Institutes to make sure that you fix that, or do we hold accountable to the group members for them missing our meetings?

Cecil Bullard [01:03:33]:
I think it ought to be both. Okay. Frankly. And I will also tell you that, you know, we have people in the Institute who would like to, if someone misses any meeting, they'd like to get rid of them, like, you don't attend your meetings, you're out.

Jimmy Purdy [01:03:51]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [01:03:52]:
Cecil, on the other hand, is. I'm the guy who says, okay, well, they had. Their sister was sick or, man, they. Their mom is dealing with cancer or whatever. And I'm more likely to be the guy that says, okay, what should have happened and did not happen, frankly, and it's what I thought was going to happen, was let's put you in a different group of composite that's going to have their meetings. That's not what happened, I guess. And the email and the letter went out and that's what led to. Okay, you know, if you.

Cecil Bullard [01:04:28]:
If you guys had come to me, it should have. If you should have went to your facilitator and said, hey, I don't want to be in this group because they're not meeting, then that should have been handled either by the facilitator, by myself.

Jimmy Purdy [01:04:40]:
Oh. And that was. That was the conversation. That was the first conversation we had that. Which led to the second one. And also, it wasn't one of those things that I wanted to raise the alarm and go straight to dad. Right, that. Right.

Jimmy Purdy [01:04:52]:
So. And I just want to see if you agree with my thought process on this, because this is a good learning experience for me. You have a lot more experience than I do. So my decision, after seeing as many composite partner meetings that we had fallen through the cracks, we get our too many. Well, we get ourselves schedule prepared. Right. Like if you came here for the podcast and I was like, hey, you know what? I decided to drink last night and I'm sleeping in a little bit, like, you're not gonna be happy because you cleared an hour of your schedule.

Cecil Bullard [01:05:14]:
I would be upset.

Jimmy Purdy [01:05:15]:
Right. And so after that happens for so many times, I said, okay, well, the rest of the year, let's go ahead and just cancel them all, because holidays are coming up. I can't set aside time in my mornings if you guys aren't gonna show up. So just to clear the air as far as that, that was my decision to drop out of the. Which seemed to be the drop out of the composite partner meeting. So I just. That's my side of the story and my thought process.

Cecil Bullard [01:05:39]:
Well, I'm not sure I got that part of that. I mean, obviously, obviously it doesn't. Again, I can't hold you accountable. I can say, yeah, no, if you're not going to make composite partner meetings or if you're not going to make the meetings, then there's no value in this for you. So you shouldn't be here.

Jimmy Purdy [01:05:58]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [01:05:58]:
Right. And if it's your fault, that's one thing. If it's someone else's fault, that's another thing that the Institute should be dealing with.

Jimmy Purdy [01:06:04]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [01:06:05]:
Okay. And so maybe we didn't handle that perfectly, and maybe we need to handle that better moving forward.

Jimmy Purdy [01:06:12]:
That's why I think it's important that I aired this out to you so you know my side of the story and understand it. I mean, like I said, we all make mistakes.

Cecil Bullard [01:06:20]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [01:06:20]:
And my guys show up a minute, 5 minute, 10 minutes late every once in a while. I'm not gonna. Like, you guys got a family.

Cecil Bullard [01:06:25]:
You know, it makes me really crazy.

Jimmy Purdy [01:06:27]:
So a lot, probably.

Cecil Bullard [01:06:29]:
Oh, yeah. All kinds of things, man. Dude, you don't even know the half of it. But. But. So I'm Cecil Bullard. I'm one of the top guys in our industry. I've worked very hard to be that guy.

Cecil Bullard [01:06:43]:
And I'll have a meeting with somebody, and they. They'll show up 20 minutes late or 30 minutes late to a meeting. They don't even have the courtesy of, hey, I'm going to be late, or I got to miss this one before the meeting. I'm online waiting for them, and it makes me insane. It makes me just absolute nuts. And it's not. I would like to say that I would hope that people respect me enough that they would be like, oh, I'm going to do something with Cecil. I know how valuable his time is, man.

Cecil Bullard [01:07:15]:
I'm gonna. I'm gonna make it to that meeting. Or if something did come up, they would, like, text me or let me know. Yeah. It just makes me, like, a lot of things make me crazy, but that's.

Jimmy Purdy [01:07:25]:
One of them, is what really irks me. If you let me know the day before. I'm fine. But that was one of the things.

Cecil Bullard [01:07:30]:
Like, the morning of.

Jimmy Purdy [01:07:31]:
Yeah. That half hour before. I'm not gonna make the meeting. Like, oh, cool. Because I'm not.

Cecil Bullard [01:07:34]:
Just, like, my understanding, though, which you had more than one person in your composite, so you could have had a meeting, but, no, not with everybody.

Jimmy Purdy [01:07:41]:
They both would cancel.

Cecil Bullard [01:07:43]:
Okay.

Jimmy Purdy [01:07:43]:
That's what was really irking me.

Cecil Bullard [01:07:45]:
Like, and we should have. We should have moved you guys when we had the conversation a month ago.

Jimmy Purdy [01:07:50]:
Yes. And that's what we were trying to do. And so I guess at that point.

Cecil Bullard [01:07:54]:
Though, having brought me in, you really should have came and tattled to dad.

Jimmy Purdy [01:08:00]:
Yeah, I just. Not that. I mean, I just assumed that you. And there's the assumption Thing. I assume that you knew more of the story. Maybe.

Cecil Bullard [01:08:07]:
I can't. I can't do it all. I can't do it all.

Jimmy Purdy [01:08:10]:
And I have to say, I'm not.

Cecil Bullard [01:08:12]:
Stand behind my people.

Jimmy Purdy [01:08:13]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [01:08:14]:
I mean, we probably screwed up, and I just.

Jimmy Purdy [01:08:17]:
I feel like I made that decision to drop out to raise that alarm bell.

Cecil Bullard [01:08:21]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [01:08:21]:
I felt like that was the only way to get your attention and everyone's attention.

Cecil Bullard [01:08:25]:
You definitely got my attention.

Jimmy Purdy [01:08:26]:
Yeah, that was the idea. Right. So I have a different way of doing things. But.

Cecil Bullard [01:08:31]:
But it would be not. It would have been. It would have been nice if my attention was gotten a different way.

Jimmy Purdy [01:08:35]:
Yeah. That's fair.

Cecil Bullard [01:08:36]:
Okay.

Jimmy Purdy [01:08:37]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [01:08:37]:
And so the way I looked at it was we're gonna have. Someone's gonna complain always. It's. It's gonna be the 80, 20 rule.

Jimmy Purdy [01:08:45]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [01:08:45]:
And I can't deal with that.

Jimmy Purdy [01:08:49]:
I can 100% wholeheartedly stand behind that. I think a lot of other people listening right now can understand that client that comes in and. Hey, you left a little grease mark on my carpet again. Hey, you left something on my headliner. Okay, that's qc. I get it. We kind of screwed up.

Cecil Bullard [01:09:03]:
Let me fix it.

Jimmy Purdy [01:09:04]:
Hey, so now the radio is not working after you did my oil change. Hey, now the AC doesn't feel as cold as it used. Like, we all have those.

Cecil Bullard [01:09:10]:
There's kind of a point where you just go, I. I mean, these are nice people. We can probably really help them, blah, blah, blah. But if it's gonna constantly be an issue. Yeah, it's. It's too disruptive for the rest.

Jimmy Purdy [01:09:23]:
But then there's also the technician that's jumping in the car that's constantly got the greasy hat on, but that's messing. He's messing with.

Cecil Bullard [01:09:29]:
That would be the guy that. That. When I figured it out, that would be the guy that I would terminate.

Jimmy Purdy [01:09:34]:
But you get the point. I'm getting across. So sometimes it is the client, sometimes maybe it is someone else that's really just messing with the AC when they shouldn't be, messing with the radio when they shouldn't be.

Cecil Bullard [01:09:43]:
And we do have rules.

Jimmy Purdy [01:09:46]:
I'm not saying that's what's going on.

Cecil Bullard [01:09:47]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [01:09:47]:
But it also falls back on the owner of the company, owner of the shop, make sure those processes are in place.

Cecil Bullard [01:09:52]:
I'm glad that we had the conversation. I don't mind having it online because I'm an open book. I want you guys to be successful. I hope you find what you need. If you don't find what you need. I'd love to have you back.

Jimmy Purdy [01:10:07]:
We're going to keep going up, et cetera, et cetera. You're going to watch us?

Cecil Bullard [01:10:10]:
Yeah, you know, I will. And I'll be like.

Jimmy Purdy [01:10:12]:
And we'll watch you guys.

Cecil Bullard [01:10:13]:
I'll be like, damn it. So. But. And I'm also glad that we can be friends.

Jimmy Purdy [01:10:19]:
No, this is awesome. And this is great because it shows if you have a conversation because you know what it ends up being with when it comes to business and everyone says, oh, it's just business, it's always personal. And you brought it up. You brought it up multiple times. And even though I like to sit here and say, oh, it was just business, it's always a little personal. Right.

Cecil Bullard [01:10:33]:
It hurts.

Jimmy Purdy [01:10:34]:
And so it's good.

Cecil Bullard [01:10:35]:
It should.

Jimmy Purdy [01:10:36]:
It should.

Cecil Bullard [01:10:36]:
Right? It should hurt a little bit.

Jimmy Purdy [01:10:38]:
And you should sit down and have a conversation and have. Have the cajones to like, bring someone.

Cecil Bullard [01:10:42]:
And say, hey, well, when we have. Talk about this, when we have our. We have a bi. Monthly meeting with our facilitators, coaches, and these are places where we talk about stuff like this.

Jimmy Purdy [01:10:53]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [01:10:54]:
Right. So we will definitely be discussing, well.

Jimmy Purdy [01:10:56]:
Whether whether it's internal with your own company, whether it's with a vendor, whether it's with a coach, whether it's with communicating about that, with everybody and everything about. And it's easier said than done. Yeah, right. Like, and everyone said, you know, last night after, like, wow, you're going to. You're going to interview Cecil? I'm like, yeah, why wouldn't I?

Cecil Bullard [01:11:13]:
Why not?

Jimmy Purdy [01:11:14]:
I mean, I've been trying to bring it up.

Cecil Bullard [01:11:15]:
I get a chance to grill him a little bit.

Jimmy Purdy [01:11:18]:
Let's be walking around and talking to him all the time here. We haven't had a moment to sit down and actually hash it out. So, like, absolutely.

Cecil Bullard [01:11:24]:
I got no.

Jimmy Purdy [01:11:24]:
And if he doesn't want to, then that's fine, but I'll. I'll talk to anybody about anything, dude. That's why I do this.

Cecil Bullard [01:11:30]:
It's going to be the. Here. I'm going to be here doing the podcast. No problem.

Jimmy Purdy [01:11:34]:
Yeah. Yeah. So this is. So this is good. Talk to the people that you feel you've been wrong or you may have wronged or maybe no one's wrong, and maybe it's just an amicable decision and to move forward with your life.

Cecil Bullard [01:11:44]:
And sometimes you're wrong and you still have to move forward.

Jimmy Purdy [01:11:47]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [01:11:47]:
It's just how it goes. I. People ask me, like, they have this employee that they've ruined. It's my fault. The guy ruined the guy. Right? You know, whatever. And they're like, cecil, what do I do? Fire them. You got a ruined person in your business.

Cecil Bullard [01:11:59]:
You can't keep them whether you ruin them or not. Now, the trick would be, don't ruin the next guy. Yeah, right. Make sure your systems, your processes, your, you know, creating the right expectations, and.

Jimmy Purdy [01:12:10]:
I feel like we can do it, blah, blah, blah. The whole firing someone, like that's a whole, but for a different. For a different.

Cecil Bullard [01:12:17]:
Another podcast.

Jimmy Purdy [01:12:18]:
That's right.

Cecil Bullard [01:12:19]:
Right.

Jimmy Purdy [01:12:19]:
Thanks, Cecil. I really appreciate your time.

Cecil Bullard [01:12:21]:
All right, brother, I appreciate yours.