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Power does not always come from pushing harder. Sometimes in life and in business, the smartest move is to slow down so you can move forward with control, clarity, and intention. Just like a great driver, growth means looking ahead, preparing for the climb, and knowing when it is time to change gears.
Michael Smith [00:00:00]:
Motivation can never come from outside. And again, people will roll their eyes and go, that's not true. Bonuses and motivate. No, they don't. Genuine psychological motivation only comes from within the individual. It's an internally driven thing. Externally, you can put pressure on people, you can coerce people, you can manipulate them, you can force them, you can threaten them, you can do all that stuff. You can bribe them.
Michael Smith [00:00:21]:
That's not genuine. Motivation only comes from within. Welcome to Downshift with my sis, Anika Haynes. We all know as shop owners, sometimes you gotta slow in order to speed up. That's what this podcast is all about. It's time to downshift. Great. I'm great.
Michael Smith [00:00:46]:
How are you?
Tonnika Haynes [00:00:47]:
I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm excited about this.
Michael Smith [00:00:49]:
Me too.
Tonnika Haynes [00:00:50]:
Yeah, we got a lot of words in yesterday, but we're gonna get those. Those words recorded today.
Michael Smith [00:00:57]:
We should have recorded those yesterday, huh?
Tonnika Haynes [00:00:59]:
We'll have good covers. No, we'll. We're going to have good conversations. We're going to do this more than once, I'm sure.
Michael Smith [00:01:04]:
I hope we do. I hope we do like.
Tonnika Haynes [00:01:08]:
So I guess we got to start over for the audience. I think by now everybody should know who I am. Tanika Haynes, Browns Automotive Downshift with Tanika Haynes podcast. And I'm going to give you the opportunity to give us the Cliff Notes version of who you are.
Michael Smith [00:01:24]:
Who I am. Great question. Michael Hertzberg Smith. I'm with the Institute, a partner, chief strategy officer. I came, I've been 45 years doing what I do in industry. Been in this industry about 10 years. Came into it to help a friend with three shops and got to know it and fell in love with it and the people in it. And I just am compelled by the business itself, but also where the industry is headed.
Michael Smith [00:01:51]:
And it's a privilege to be here now and just share some of my background. I grew up in the big consulting firms, Fortune 500 service type of a thing, and just brought some of that thought process here. Spent a little time in the private equity world, so understand how the money moves out, out beyond us and just. It's a privilege to be here and triangulate and kind of share what I have. Tanika. And some people want to hear it and some people don't. You and I are talking about that, right? Everybody wants to know, so nobody want
Tonnika Haynes [00:02:20]:
to hear that, Michael. I'm just letting you know. So, I mean, I've already told you that. So I think this is why this is an important Conversation because I think I met you two years ago, maybe three, but two to three years ago at the Connections for ast A. But here's the thing. I hated everything you had to say, but you already know that. So the audience is like, we've had these conversations because it's so much and it's so new. So the first time you were talking about acquisitions and making sure that your shop is ready to sell.
Tonnika Haynes [00:03:01]:
And I'm in the audience and I'm not by myself when I say this, I'm in an audience thinking, man, ain't nobody want to hear this. I'm not selling my shop. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it. But fast forward, I understand the conversation, why it's necessary, because you do want to make sure your business is scalable, profitable and looks good to someone else, just in case you don't have anybody to pass it on to and you're ready to get out. Am I going to be able to sell it for what I think is worth? Because what you think is worth and what the marketplace thinks is worth is two different things.
Michael Smith [00:03:38]:
And the other piece of this too is I have a client this afternoon. We talked to. The goal is to have 250 shops and hold it forever. Forever. It's not to build a monster and sell it. It's to say, look, I want to build a generational, impacting, generational wealth building organization. And I'm not turning it over. My, my kids are rising up into it and the kids after that can decide what they want to do with it.
Michael Smith [00:03:59]:
But that's what we're going to build. So it isn't just about private equity. But I guess I, you know, and I, in, you know, you're giving me the grace to have a little bit of a space to say this. I'm not selling people into this as a good idea. It's going to happen to the industry because it's happened in, you know, 50, 60 others before us. It's just a matter. I want people to know what's happening. And you make a decision right from a place of information.
Michael Smith [00:04:24]:
It's like, what do you, what do you want? What do you want for your, your legacy? What do you want for your business? What do you want for the people who work for you? Your customers, your family? And just know, know the options. And then when you know the options, you make a decision that's right for you and then you play it out and hopefully you win. And that's, and that's the point of it. Right. Not everybody likes the business. The big picture. I don't like the big picture. I don't like where it's going to go.
Michael Smith [00:04:45]:
I don't like the CVsing, you know, of our industry. No offense to the drugstore company, but you know what I mean? Used to be mom and pop pharmacies on the corner, and now that's where we go to get our cold medicine. And it's like. And that's not what I think would be fun for the industry to go through. But it's kind of like the writings on the wall. So I just need to share it. Right? Let people not like it, but hear it and think about it.
Tonnika Haynes [00:05:08]:
And we didn't like it, man.
Michael Smith [00:05:09]:
From there. Right? I know, right?
Tonnika Haynes [00:05:11]:
But here's the thing. Got a little echo here. So that was the first time that I looked at you and rolled my eyes. But then a second time, I've got feedback. I hope that can be fixed. I'm sorry for everybody. With the feedback. I don't know what's happening.
Michael Smith [00:05:29]:
Well, I can't hear it. I can't.
Tonnika Haynes [00:05:31]:
Okay, good. So the second time that I went to a presentation was a couple months ago at L and M with Lucas Underwood. And that was the leadership intensive. And that was a lot of leadership, and that was a lot of intensive. And I remember telling you that I didn't like that because I thought it was too much, it was too quick. It was a lot of information. But you were gracious and you actually had a conversation with me. Afterwards, we met again, like we're meeting now.
Tonnika Haynes [00:06:05]:
And. Whoa. That Michael that I've met is the Michael that's sitting with us now. So that was a great conversation. It was a hard conversation, but it's a great conversation. And the leadership part didn't bother me so much because that's something that I have learned that I'm just going to have to bite in. You're gonna have to chew that up little bit by little. It is what it is.
Tonnika Haynes [00:06:26]:
Tanika. You're gonna have to deal with this. This is part of who you are. But nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants to feel those feelings. Nobody wants to deal with that reality. But one thing that I do know is that you can't lead what you're not aware of. Like, you think we, as a shop owner, we think grinding hard, getting all the hours.
Tonnika Haynes [00:06:46]:
Your right KPIs, making sure your numbers are right. But when we're going through that process, we have to ask ourselves, what are we becoming? We have to be self. Aware. Nobody wants to be self. Aware. No, you gotta be real, honest and open and vulnerable and have feelings and stuff. Michael.
Michael Smith [00:07:07]:
Yeah. And you might not like what you find. And I gotta say, right, you and I were talking about this. Leadership is different than management. You need management and leadership. In a healthy organization, you have to have both. Somebody's got to run the numbers. You got to make sure everybody's on their goals, they're driving from within all that.
Michael Smith [00:07:23]:
But leadership. You've been through the leadership intensive. My perspective on this is that leadership comes from inside of us. It's not little formulas and it's not little lists of things and just check boxes and you get it done for me and you know how I feel about it. We've talked about, talked about it. Leadership comes from character, and leadership comes from purpose. And I'm a big fan of saying you've got to figure out what you're doing on the earth in your life. Why are you here? And then who are you wanting to be while you're here? And it falls in the context, as we talked about, of the four great existential questions that the Greek philosopher's been asking and we've been asking ever since.
Michael Smith [00:08:01]:
Where do we come from? Right? Origin questions. Heaven, evolution, mom and dad, sex, whatever, right? It's what's the origin? Where does it begin? Where does it end? Is the end question. Where am I going after this? Do I disappear? Do I go someplace? Do I come around and do it again? Right? The inside two questions are what am I doing here? And who should I be? And those. For me, that is the greatest challenge, in my personal opinion, in leadership development is getting a person to stop and honestly ask those questions of themselves and say, who am I and what am I doing here? And facing what they see. Because I gotta say, everybody's got closets with little shoe boxes with history in them. And not everybody. Nobody wants to open them all up. The reason they're in there is because they weren't things that we wanted to deal with or they're ugly and we all have them.
Michael Smith [00:08:53]:
And so this idea that, you know, leadership as well, I'll just show up and run a meeting and I'm going to run it this way, and my leadership personality is going to look like that. That's all surface level stuff. Where it comes from heart and, and, and the meaning. The meaning comes from, right, that purpose and character. And meaning, by the way, is what grounds championship, companies, teams, Rockstar. The more mature you get in your walk, the more meaning becomes important to us as human beings. And so if you want to set up a company that attracts rock stars and champions, have it be a meaning based company. And that's not, we're just not making that up philosophically.
Michael Smith [00:09:31]:
That's tried and proven in business, industry after industry over and over. Sports, I mean it works everywhere. And that's kind of what I want people to know is you can be a really good leader. You got to open the closet of ugly shoe boxes and start digging in. Called on the shadow things that you have to deal with to be able to come clear and walk out into your, into your gifting if you will. And the shadows get in the way. Shadows can be, can be just self deceptive. They can be blocking.
Michael Smith [00:09:59]:
It's, you know, the biggest ceilings are over each of our own heads. It's not what somebody else puts over us. And it's all, it's not psychology. It is and it isn't right. That's not really what it's about. It's about self discovery and being willing to face yourself. And that's, you know, I was thinking, driving today about talking to you tonight and thinking about the special forces training and they take people to the edge of their belief in what they can handle and then they take them a little further and all of a sudden you realize that the defeat that you're going to suffer if you quit is in your head. Your body can go further.
Michael Smith [00:10:31]:
Your head saying I don't like this, I want to stop. And it's like, well it's the same thing with this. Keep digging, keep, keep going and find out who you are and challenge your demons and slay them and get them out of the way. And then all of a sudden it's funny because like then you become free to stand next to somebody else who's bound up and just be there. And that's to me that's the greatest form of leadership is just that right there, right. Standing beside somebody as they figure their st.
Tonnika Haynes [00:10:57]:
Figuring yourself out isn't easy. It's not comfortable. As for me like the last couple years figuring out, okay, so I've been super mom but the kids are getting grown. I've been at the front desk and micromanaging my shop but of course my coach Jennifer has gotten me away from doing that. So I'm like, okay, what am I supposed to do now? Well Tanika, you're supposed to lead your team now. Like what does that mean? And so like I said, in the last two years that's been the it word Leadership schmedership. Right? Everybody's talking about leadership. And then again, I didn't want to hear it.
Tonnika Haynes [00:11:29]:
Nobody wants to buy into the here we go, new buzz word leadership. But it is real, because I know that right now I have to figure out, okay, what's your next chapter? What's your next why? And during the intensive, I know there's a time that you say, okay, I want you to write down who do you think you are? So if everybody had to write down who they think they are without their shop, without their home, without their husband or wife or kids, who are you to your core? That's a hard question to ask, and I really had fun answering that. And once I answer that, it is not what I wanted to see or hear, because I don't have it in front of me right now, but it's telling me, and God's been telling me, and I'm gonna say God. So if you don't like it, on my podcast, I'm gonna say God, because I believe he know I could be cussing and stuff, but God know that I. He still loves me. He told me so this morning. He's just sitting there, and it's like, you are faithful, strong leader. I can't say it word for word.
Tonnika Haynes [00:12:31]:
And I'm here to encourage others. And I don't want to be a faithful, strong leader. I just want to go to work, come home, and watch Netflix. But you and I talked about it. That's not for me to determine that. It's already in me. I have to do and use the gifts that the Lord has given me. Right? But even.
Tonnika Haynes [00:12:53]:
Even though it's uncomfortable and even though I don't see the path clearly, it has made a big difference in the shop and my team. Like, right now, I'm hiring. I don't want anybody working for me that just wants a job. I want someone that wants a career, and I want to lead them, and I want to know their why, and I want to encourage them to do better things. You know, I want their job to be more than a paycheck. So when I'm 80, or actually 89, when I'm 89 and it's time for me to be laying on my bed, I want those people that came across my business to show up for me at my funeral or say something nice and obituary, you know, on the tribute page. I want to make a difference in people's lives. And if I do that through cars, then so be it.
Tonnika Haynes [00:13:41]:
But I think I was in a one of my 20 group meetings. And we said, we're not in the car business. We're in the people business, whether it's your employees or the customers or the community. And so as much as I want to roll my eyes at that, and as much as I've rolled my eyes at that in the past, that is the truth. No matter how uncomfortable it is.
Michael Smith [00:14:00]:
No, it is the truth. And the sci, the human science backs that up.
Tonnika Haynes [00:14:04]:
Right?
Michael Smith [00:14:05]:
And I'm a psychologist by training. That's not what I'm here to make everybody else psychologists. But then the fact is the greatest satisfaction in life comes from a handful of things. And it's not managing right. It's not holding people accountable. It's the things that have to do with personal achievement, like trying something hard and learning it and mastering it. Conquering is being able to be recognized for making a contribution by somebody else. It is the chance to grow and to learn and to.
Michael Smith [00:14:39]:
And to become, in a way, fearless in learning so that you're not intimidated because you don't deserve it or because it's scary or because you don't think you're smart enough or any of those things that we use to, you know, the excuses to stop in Special Forces training, right? It's like, oh, I'm tired. My body can't do. Yes, it can. Keep going. It's your head that we have to break, right? We have to get through that barrier. That's what makes. That's literally. That's what science shows, gives people the happiest lives.
Michael Smith [00:15:06]:
So in, you know, what we're up against in our industry is that this is a lot of. And I'm not knocking technicians. I love technicians. Don't take this down some weird road, you know, anybody who hears it, but hear what I have to say. Technicians who grow up fixing cars and having the fix finished at the end. And it's very definable and it's very, you know, it comes in broken, you fix it, it drives out, you've succeeded. That's great stuff. And the issue is, when you think, think of your business as a car to be fixed or something, to just turn at night and turn off and go home and leave it there.
Michael Smith [00:15:37]:
It's so much more than that. And the challenge we have in our industry is for each of the individuals who are in our industry to stop and say, go to the existential satisfaction stuff at the end and back. Back up into what we're doing. And that's what I always do with owners. When I sit down, they say, well, where do we start? And I said, well, if you ask me where to start, we should start what it looks like after you're done. And they're like, what do you mean? And I said, what's the legacy that you want to le? And I mean, I did this Cecil, if he was here, I'd say it right to his face. That's the questions I asked him. And he was like, he's looking at me saying, that's an interesting way to come at it.
Michael Smith [00:16:11]:
And I said, if you don't think about the legacy that you believe you're here to live for, by the end, how do you know you're going to get there from here? Right. Any road will do if that's all you care about. But if you stop and think about number one, what's the legacy? Back up a step from that. What's the life I lead after I'm done doing automotive service? Then you back up a step from that and say, what is the end of my life in automotive service life look like if you're an owner, I sell my company, whatever, right? When do I retire if I'm not an owner? You back back up. And then it's like, okay, if that's the future that I've been come clear on now, I come back to today and I say my as is. Today is what? I'm a service advisor, I'm a technician, I'm an owner, I'm a whatever. It doesn't matter what service role you're in. You go back all the way out to the future and see what the end looks like.
Michael Smith [00:16:58]:
And then I was raised in consulting. The process then is the future is here, the current is in your hand. And now the SEC phase three, how do I close the gap? How do I get there from here? And you just start making changes and you start making improvements and you start leaning into the future, the legacy that you think you want to lead. And you refresh this as you go. You know, you stop, you set goals that are short term, you have these long term visions, shorter term goals, as you approach them, you look back up at the vision, you revalidate that, then you reset a further set of goals and you keep moving. And that is the consulting process. That's continuous improvement. It's continuous growth.
Michael Smith [00:17:35]:
It's also what life is all about. And you go back then to the science and Maslow's pyramid, which people get sick of listening to me talk about. But it's like as you climb the pyramid, you go through the basics of safety and survival. And you get up into these issues of learning how to belong to a group and love and be accepted. And not everybody has a family with that background. So you start off with a, with a disadvantage. If you came from a rough start and you didn't have that, how do you join a company and function well? How do you work well with people? How do you, how do you get through difficulties? Because in your household maybe that ended in violence. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm being brutally honest here.
Michael Smith [00:18:10]:
You get to work and what do you do when things escalate? How do you de. Escalate? How do you solve problems? Next step is esteem. How do I feel about myself? How do others feel about me? How do I feel about others? Can we graciously support and build up each other in a positive way? Then you jump to self learning and it's like, you know what? I want to learn some more stuff. I want to be more powerful in my life. I want to be more educated, I want to be more thoughtful, I want to be more wise and all that. And then you finally end up at this last level of the climb. Maslow style and transcendence, which is this idea of what's the meaning in my life? Which is exactly what we were just, I just said the legacy question. It's like you're working your way toward what kind of a difference am I here to make and what's the purpose of my life anyway? And if we grab everything, because that's
Tonnika Haynes [00:18:55]:
what we do with the financial forecast. Okay, so you want to get to 2 million, what does that look down? Do you break down every month? What do you have to do? Like, like that's all, it's all the same. But I think people live day to day and don't think about the future because you're like, oh, I got to live one day at a time. But you also have to think of the future so you don't end up saying, what did I do with my whole life? Yeah, like nothing's promised us. Right. But you still can make a plan.
Michael Smith [00:19:21]:
And it's easier to take a technique, technical tool and hook up two leads to it and take a measurement and write a number down and turn a screw and have change. It's easier to do that than it is to stop and say, hey, I want my life. I want my life to connect well with other people. And, and that's intimidating to a lot of people. And that's like, what are we doing here? You and I are talking about leadership. What is leadership? To me, it's standing next to somebody wherever they are in the, in their life, wherever they are, for better, for worse and a good moment or a bad moment, and saying, how can I, how can I help you? What do you need right now? What can we do together that's going to do something that we're both interested in doing? And leadership is no more difficult than that. And I know people with great big long, sing songy, you know, keys to leadership and great big lists and all that stuff. And I, I've got all the lists that have been generated historically in all the research.
Michael Smith [00:20:14]:
I got shelves full of books of the development of leadership study over 250 years or whatever, all set all that stuff aside. There's people on the earth needing to move forward and leadership is for me standing beside them and saying, what do you need? How can I help you? What's standing in your way? What can we do next? And if you can get that discussion going inside your company and your people trust you and you trust them and you have their best interest in mind and they want to serve first self, right? It's okay if somebody gets up and comes to work because they're trying to build a safety net for their family, they're trying to put a roof over the head of their kids or whatever. That's a good thing. That's what I want everybody to have. And then I'm here as an owner and they show up and it's like, what are we doing? We're fixing cars. Okay? How can we make this as, as good a process as we can to get all of us as much as we can out of it and do it in a way that we serve as many people as we can in the process. And again, that's not typical thinking in any industry. It's not every shop that rolls that way, but the ones that are the champion shops, that's the way they roll.
Michael Smith [00:21:18]:
And if you ask them, the people who just love where they work and why do you love it? It's like, because I wouldn't, I can't find what I have here any. These people I care about these people, these are my friends, this is my work family. I like being here. And a lot of people, I'm telling you, will listen to this and roll our eyes and go, I was trained a long time ago. You can't be friends with your employees and all that. Like, I would not disagree more with the science even says that that's not true. Right?
Tonnika Haynes [00:21:44]:
So, but the thing is, I think that's the mentality, I'm gonna do my job and I'm going home. Do my job and going home. But you're here 10 hours a day, you're here 8 to 10 hours a day. Why would you want to be here 8 to 10 hours a day and not build? And so do you find that for shop owners that actually grab on to what you're teaching and start to implement this stuff in their lives and business that naturally all the other numbers kind of fall in place?
Michael Smith [00:22:11]:
Yes. I mean, this is not an exaggeration. The highest performing companies from a financial standpoint, from a production standpoint, are these human centric high performance championship teams. Based on the stuff we're talking about, they are the top performers in any industry. And that's, you know, for me, I grew up outside this industry, I grew up doing this in other industries. And all the top players play this. The kind of, the kind of game that we're talking about here. The kind of human centric that, you know that there's a reason Fortune magazine does the hundred best places to work every year.
Michael Smith [00:22:47]:
That conversation has been going on for 30 years at this point. You know, the top companies know that when they set up the kind of a workforce that meets the needs of their people in a better way than their competition, people want to come work for them. And see, the secret is this right motivation. And I'm not trying to teach leadership on this podcast, I just want to say this motivation can never come from outside. And again, people will roll their eyes and go, that's not true. Bonuses and motivate. No, they know genuine psychological motivation only comes from within the individual. It's an internally driven thing.
Michael Smith [00:23:20]:
Externally, you can put pressure on people, you can coerce people, you can manipulate them, you can force them, you can threaten them, you can do all that stuff, you can bribe them. But that's not, that's not genuine. Motivation only comes from within. So the idea in having a top performing workforce is to say, okay, how do I get, how do I get people to turn themselves on? And then the answer to that question is, I gotta understand them and find out what's important to them. And so then you have a real conversation with your teammates and say, what do you want to be when you grow up? You know, in 10, 15, 20, 30 years, you're young, you're middle aged, you're old, whatever. What do you want out of our relationship together? How can I help you get what you want and need in your life? And then when they start working with you and you with them to meet the needs of the individuals in the context of the business. Meeting the needs of your customers in your community. Now they're bought into it and then they bring all of the energy that a person can bring to their job and say, I like this place, I like you, I like our customers, I like what I'm doing.
Michael Smith [00:24:18]:
And by the way, part of the reason I like you is because you're taking care of me and you're doing the best of any place I can think of to work, of helping me to achieve my needs. I'm going to give you the best I got. And that right there is the turning point of being a champion versus being like everybody else. Because we have all these discussions across all industries about, well, people don't like to come to work and they really just want to punch a clock and go home and do a, get a paycheck. And so then we have to treat them like they're chattel or like they're a gear and a machine. And we have to, you know, we threaten them and we, we bribe them and we do this, that and the other thing. And, and at the end of the day what it's really all about is if you can get them turned on and excited, they will bring you so much more voluntarily and then you will you blow doors on your competition. So the answer to your, the financials go up, the performance numbers go up and my, the clients that do this and embrace it and as it gets traction and sticks over time, I have these conversations on a regular coaching basis.
Michael Smith [00:25:17]:
They're like, we're having the best numbers we ever, the months we've ever had. This again went up again. Again it went up here. Somebody was a troubled employee. We applied all this stuff. They've solved their problems in life and you can't believe how they're producing now. They're so grateful. They said they're never going to leave this place.
Michael Smith [00:25:31]:
And it's like. And I'm, I'm. Say it this way, we're all wired for this as humans. We're terrible at knowing how to give it to each other and then institutionalize it in a company. And I just.
Tonnika Haynes [00:25:42]:
Attic, right? Everybody wants that. Everybody wants a well done.
Michael Smith [00:25:48]:
You give me a bonus or give me recognition, I will. Psychologically, I will every day I will take recognition over an extra, a couple bucks in my paycheck every day.
Tonnika Haynes [00:25:56]:
And it doesn't cost anything.
Michael Smith [00:25:58]:
It costs nothing. It costs energy. It costs, it costs energy. A change of mindset that you can sit back in your office and let people suffer out there doing the grunting work that they feel like they're doing. And then, you know, you can make them feel better with a couple bucks in their paycheck. It's a non, it doesn't satisfy. It get. That's what we all expect.
Michael Smith [00:26:17]:
It's what gets us by. And it doesn't, it doesn't work humanly. And that's what you and I connected on. It's like, I wanna, I'm gonna keep saying this and like you and I were talking about, it's like some people will look and go, you have no idea what you're talking about. I don't like what you're saying. This isn't true. I, it's fine. I'm gonna keep saying it.
Michael Smith [00:26:34]:
And every once in a while somebody looks up and goes, ooh. And then when they do it, they go, ah. And then it's like, okay, don't listen to me, listen to them and watch this go. And it begins to get traction in the industry. We have traction with this. There are so many people I know that are doing so many parts of this and doing more and more of it and it's changing a lot of lives. And again, I'm on a mission 45 years into my career bringing all of this that I know, making it voluntarily available to people to take a look at. Don't like if you don't want it, leave it there.
Michael Smith [00:27:04]:
If you do like it, try a piece of it. If you want to dig in further. We got entire system set up around it. But you don't have to do it all, but just get familiar with it and know about it. It's like the industry stuff, right? Here comes private equity. You want to play? No, I don't, I don't like it. It's like, well, what if it happens all around you? Don't you want to at least understand it so that you know what's going to happen to you and how you can defend you? Well, yeah, okay, I guess I need to know that. So it's like, okay, so I'm not advocating that any, any of that.
Michael Smith [00:27:31]:
Right. I just, it's. I want to make it, I want to put on the table and say to people, come learn and see how you feel about it. And then, and then go from there, See where it takes us.
Tonnika Haynes [00:27:39]:
All right, I might get in trouble for this question. Do you think that men or women, who has a harder time buying in because there's a lot of emotions involved and I'm hard headed. So I don't think I even count.
Michael Smith [00:27:52]:
I don't, I, I don't see a gender line here. And I'm not being politically correct. I think there are things that women are nurtured and allowed to do as, you know, traditional upbringings, I guess, that help with some of this stuff. It' like seeing somebody in pain. I, you know, I, I'm being raised a guy and being, you know, on a young and boomer, if you will. My dad's favorite thing to say and he's in heaven looking down on me, saying, this is like, you know, suck it up, buttercup. Life is hard, right? And it was like, okay. And so I'm like, you know, I don't expect a hug from me.
Michael Smith [00:28:24]:
I know you're in pain. Just go figure it out and get stronger. Okay? I, you know, the women that I know in life, their moms would throw their arms around them and go, honey, I know that's terrible, right? So then you marry somebody. And my wife's like, like, all you need to do is tell me you feel pain right now. And I go, can I just solve your problem for you? She's like, no, I just want you to give me, I just want you to listen. Exactly. So I do think there are differences in the way we're nurtured. And you can do the nature nurture question.
Michael Smith [00:28:50]:
I don't know about the nature part. Right. The genes and all that. I know nurture wise were raised differently. So I'll say this. When you say we're going to build a human centric, compassion based, you know, I mean, there's compassion in it, there's truth in it, there's integrity in it. There's all kinds of pieces to it. There's parts that women are nurtured to be more comfortable with, and there's parts that men are.
Michael Smith [00:29:12]:
And, and so I think, I think there's a lot of things that we can pick up on, but it requires us to lay down prior thinking and, and generational prior thinking about, especially in our industry. What's this industry supposed to look like? This one, it's like, well, here's how shop's supposed to run, right? And you're just like, yeah, exactly. I mean, your, your body language is exactly what, what you crime. And, and it's the bravado and it's the, you know, I'm not gonna let you see me sweat kind of a thing. And it's like, you know what? We all sweat, so how about we just take it down a notch and get real and let each other sweat and be okay with that and have more fun.
Tonnika Haynes [00:29:50]:
Because if you show your brother that you're sweating, you show your brother, your sister that, listen, I'm having a hard time. I know social media said that this was easy and I did this. And yeah, maybe you got your 20, maybe you got all your KPIs, but on the inside you're about to die.
Michael Smith [00:30:05]:
You know what imposter syndrome, Tanika posture syndrome is in everybody's lives, right? All of us are sitting in a job thinking, geez, I hope some people don't find out what they think. I know that I don't really know and welcome to humanity and welcome to life. And it's like, okay, so why don't we just say that I, you know, when I started consulting and my first boss, I was young guy, right? 22, 23 years old. And I got clients and I, and I leaned into my boss one day and I'm like, what do I say if they ask me a question I can't answer? I'm supposed to be the answer man, right? He just laughed and he goes, tell him you don't know. And I'm like, how do I do that? They've hired me for my expertise. I'm supposed to, he said, tell him you'll find out, nobody knows everything. And I'm like, oh, okay. And that, that's easy to say, hard to absorb, right? We all now, now make yourself an owner.
Michael Smith [00:30:54]:
You're a top master technician by training. You have a company, somebody walks up to you and says, I can't solve this problem, boss. The pressure is great in our industry. You're supposed to come up with the answer. You're supposed to be the person who has all the answers, right? And that's just not, it's, it's, I guess it's extra human. It's not, it's not reality human. And the part of the whole human centric thing is that when you become a real relaxed, I want. It's not relaxed.
Michael Smith [00:31:22]:
It's not a good way to say it because I'm thinking people are going to take it in a funny way. It isn't relaxed. It's as intense as it ever gets when you do a human centric championship based company. But it's driven from within the individual individual, not outside. The pressure is not between us and systemic on us from within. The idea is I want to be the best I can be. And I mean I genuinely do. And I'm not afraid of seeing what my limits are because I'm going to go when I find one, test it and make it stronger.
Michael Smith [00:31:48]:
I want to know what my limits are. So now imposter syndrome starts to fade because it's like you asked me to do something and I, I don't know how. And if you're a great leader, you're going to look at me and say, well, do you want to try to figure it out yourself or do you want, want to put a team right now? Let me go do this one on my own. And you smile and walk away. That's leadership. Because now it's mine. And I'm gonna go figure it out. Why? Because I know if I figure it out, it's going to be the most meaningful thing I did today.
Michael Smith [00:32:12]:
If a team helps me, it's okay if you tell me the answer. It's a non issue. It's like, I just go do it. I've learned nothing. I have no impact on my soul whatsoever. And it's like, what really is satisfying is for me to go learn something else and climb a little higher and mastery. And then I go to bed and I smile at night. And we don't have any idea how this works, right, psychologically in, in normal industry.
Michael Smith [00:32:36]:
And that's what I just want everybody to hear. It's like, let's just relax a little bit, put the bravado down. Let's admit that we don't all know everything, and let's figure out how to be better people while we serve harder and do more. And then all of a sudden, we look up and go, damn, this is fun. I, like is fun.
Tonnika Haynes [00:32:53]:
It's fun. I mean, like what you just described. I have a young tech. I'm not going to say his name, but I adore all my texts. But this particular one just came to me a year ago with not a lot of confidence. And so I was like, okay, how can I get this kid's confidence up? He's not a kid, young man. But I know I would challenge him with something, something that he hadn't done before, and say, hey, this job is supposed to take five hours. According to the books, you got all day.
Tonnika Haynes [00:33:20]:
This is what you're going to do tomorrow. I need you to go home, get ready, set, go. What do you need from me? Okay, go ahead and charge your vape pen, whatever your poison is. Get your good oatmeal in today. You got your old data, you got your YouTube, you got your identifix, you got everything in front of you. You got your brothers over here, your brother Mechanics that can help you out, no pressure, let's go get it done. And then when he'll come to me in four hours and say I got it done in four hours. Fist bump, Ms.
Tonnika Haynes [00:33:49]:
Tanika. And I'm just like, that's my dog. But it is so rewarding. It's not the fact that got it done before, it's the fact that he got it done and he's smiling about it. And I know that six months ago he would have been throwing wrenches or beating himself up.
Michael Smith [00:34:03]:
If we had a perspective that, you know, I, I, I, I've been doing this a long time. And a long time ago somebody asked me the question, what's the main purpose of business? Is it to make money or you know, to develop people? And the business school training traditionally would be to say, well, it's to make money, of course. Right. And if you can serve people along the way, that's made the proposition in, in the conversation, if you develop people first, they will bring the best of themselves and the performance will go up beyond if you chase performance. And so, and that was their, the science backs that up. Which is kind of crazy, right? Because they think that what we're talking about here would be more embedded in all industries and more, more of the sort of the standard conversation among leaders. But it's not. And how to count the beans.
Michael Smith [00:34:56]:
First we gotta, it's, it's the, yeah. And part of it has to do with publicly traded companies and shareholder reports on regular bases and the numbers got to be there. And it just, you know, humans become cogs and machines and it happens at industry to industry and we're just not, we do the same thing. And I don't want us to because I know better than that.
Tonnika Haynes [00:35:14]:
And it becomes satisfying. Like it wears you out. How many cars can you fix? How much money can you make? Okay, it's all great. Car count is great, great. KPIs are great. The money at the end. Now y' all know I like me some pretty stuff. Vacations are great, a nice steak is great, that wine was great.
Tonnika Haynes [00:35:35]:
Everything is great. But at the end of the day when you have to lay your head down and you have to answer to whoever you praise at night, do you, don't you want to hear the whole well done thing? Right? So that's important to me. So it's going to change from chapter to chapter. So this what we're talking about, that first two, one or two year shop owner, he's probably rolling his eyes like, dude, ain't nobody got time for that, that. But I know that if you implement it and if you just start to just bite little chunks off of it, it trickles down. It trickles down into production, Increase production, increase revenues. It trickles down to your customers. The customers feel it.
Tonnika Haynes [00:36:12]:
The customers can feel it when they walk in your door. And that brings more customers. Right? So it does work. It works amazingly. But I guess you just have to. You have to buy in. And if, like you said, if you don't want to, you don't want to put all the ingredients in, whatever your favorite, let's gonna say your lasagna. You don't want to put every ingredient.
Tonnika Haynes [00:36:31]:
Ingredient in your lasagna. Just try a couple and see what the changes are. Because I know that's how grandma made the lasagna. That's what. That's grandma's recipe. But that recipe is 80 years old. Maybe you can try something a little different that makes it a little better. But if you try something and it doesn't make it better, just take it back out and try something again.
Tonnika Haynes [00:36:51]:
Like, people are so stuck in their ways.
Michael Smith [00:36:53]:
Here's a couple of lasagna flavors, right? What. What if something. What if a person said, I'm gonna put some effort into saying, I appreciate you today? What if that was just a new thing to add to the vocabulary that you went out and occasionally sprinkled around? Maybe you never did that before, right? Do you just find somebody and ask them what they're doing, see what they're doing, say, you know what? I just want to tell you I appreciate you today. I'm glad you're here. Thank you. And then turn around and walk away, right?
Tonnika Haynes [00:37:18]:
And then a text is going to look at you like. Like, is he dying?
Michael Smith [00:37:21]:
At first, no.
Tonnika Haynes [00:37:21]:
What happens?
Michael Smith [00:37:22]:
They do.
Tonnika Haynes [00:37:22]:
They go at first.
Michael Smith [00:37:23]:
They do, huh? But after a while, they can't wait for you to come by. And they're kind of like, ask you
Tonnika Haynes [00:37:29]:
if you're okay too. Hey, boss, how you doing today, huh?
Michael Smith [00:37:33]:
Yep. And then all of a sudden you're like. And then. And then you sit down with them at some point, take them to coffee one on one. Like, well, we don't do that here. It's like, well, wow, what if you did? And the first time they're like, okay, am I getting fired today? It's like, no, I just want to get to know you better. And then they walk out and they go, that was weird. Weird, right? But the third or fourth one of those, they're kind of looking forward to sitting down with you and you know, you talk about.
Michael Smith [00:37:55]:
You just talk about. So how's. How's life? How was the weekend? How was that sports thing you were gonna do? Did you guys make it to that show the night you were racing to get there? Did you get the tickets to it? That kind of stuff. And all of a sudden there's a human connection being made. And it's not. Again, it's not typical in any industry, but. But when you have those kind of friendships, start internally. Then people will lean into each other and the most beautiful thing, like, then they'll come and say, hey, can I ask you a question? Sure.
Michael Smith [00:38:22]:
What do I do with this? The typical person would say, well, why don't you try this? Like, that's the worst thing to do. The best thing to do would be to say, well, what do you think you should do? And they're like, well, I came to ask you because I don't know. Yeah, no, I know that. But what have you tried so far? And what are you thinking at this point? Well, I tried this and it didn't work. And I've been thinking about that. And then you're listening and you go, well, okay, can I throw out one more thing? And they'd be like, sure. And they go, what about if you twisted this first? And they were like, okay, I got it. And then, boom, they're gone.
Michael Smith [00:38:51]:
You know what? That's their idea in their head. That's not your idea. You didn't pulled it out. And you're building resilience and you're building this creativity, and you're turning them back to their own creative thought processes. What you're doing is you're saying to them, you're saying to them without saying it. And at some point then you do say it to them, and they look at you funny. Then you say it to them again, then they don't look at you funny. Then the third time, they're actually doing it.
Michael Smith [00:39:14]:
Doing it. You say, if you learn to tackle and master every aspect of your life yourself voluntarily, and consider there are no limits to what you can achieve, if you would tack. If you would do that for yourself in your own life, you will have the most satisfying life of any life on the earth. Right. When you come to the end, when people are asked what. What was satisfying to you, the stuff we're talking about right here is the stuff that people look back on and appreciate. They don't care how much money they make. They don't care what kind of a car they drove.
Michael Smith [00:39:45]:
They're not going back to the car they passed over that they should have bought in their head. None of that stuff's deathbed conversation, none of it. And so it's like along the way, if you can teach them to have this idea that, look, there are no limits, in my personal opinion, there's not much of a limit on what humans can achieve. So if you take that, that cap off of the things that people told you were the way it's supposed to work, and you said, what if I could go further? What if I could do more? What if I could achieve? And then you have mentality, then all of a sudden, risk taking is not a scary thing. It's an exciting thing. It's like, all right, what am I going to try now? Or what new thing am I going to learn? Or geez, I got stuck on this thing a long time ago and I said to myself, I couldn't do it. Is it true that I can't do it? I'm going to take one more crack at this thing and then bam, you master it and you go, see, I can do anything. And it's, it's a mentality of self mastery.
Michael Smith [00:40:37]:
And we master our personal health, we master our spiritual life, we master our relationships with our significant other. We master parenting, we master neighboring. Right. We master the work topics, our work relationships. All of this stuff is masterable. And it goes apprentice, you know, it goes unskilled with no knowledge at all. Apprentice, journey, person, master. And it's a path that we all take in every aspect of our life.
Michael Smith [00:41:02]:
And in my life, I'm an apprentice in some things because I keep taking on new stuff because I like learning. So I'm like, you know what? Now I'm going to learn. And I pick some, some stupid thing that has no relevance whatsoever. But the learning of it, you know, makes. Makes more. Even, even more expansion. So does he. Yeah.
Tonnika Haynes [00:41:21]:
Yeah.
Michael Smith [00:41:21]:
And I've been just having fun too, right? Yeah.
Tonnika Haynes [00:41:23]:
Yes. So what are you doing now? Well, I'm gonna try to do this like dad, just hire somebody to do that. He's also, I know, like Mr. Like Mr. Brown. How do you know how to do so many things? Well, I just try them and if I don't do it right, right. Try it again. If I don't do it right.
Tonnika Haynes [00:41:39]:
Try it again. It's like, well, daddy, do you quit? No, there's no quit in him.
Michael Smith [00:41:43]:
There is no quit.
Tonnika Haynes [00:41:44]:
There's no quit. Daddy, please sit down before you lose a limb. But there's no quitting him. So that's like, you Know, that's, that's grit, right?
Michael Smith [00:41:53]:
That's resilience.
Tonnika Haynes [00:41:54]:
We got to make sure our grit, the male grit, the female grit, shop owner grit, the industry grit isn't stubbornness. And we think we've got to be gritty and we can't also be vulnerable and be leaders. Yep, you know, that's right.
Michael Smith [00:42:09]:
That's right.
Tonnika Haynes [00:42:10]:
So like, you know, being a leader is not about you laying down and let people walk over you. It's not about everybody going into the office and, and hugging it out and singing Kumbaya. It's actually being available.
Michael Smith [00:42:23]:
Look, I, if you're on my team and we're working together, let's. I work for you. Right? What I don't want you to do is to let me slide. I, and people ask me all the time, like, you know, we have an accountability problem in our company and it's like, okay, tell me what. I chase people around and they promise me they're going to do things and then I follow up and they haven't done them and people just don't do what they say they're going to do. We have a real problem in our company with that. I'm like, okay, so where do you think that starts? And they're like, well, I don't know, maybe it's the character of the people involved. They said maybe they're fault.
Michael Smith [00:42:53]:
Maybe you're trying to force something down their throat that isn't natural. And they're like, and stay with me, it's like, what do you mean? Mean? And it's like, if people don't hold themselves accountable, they're not going to respond well to you holding them accountable. So why don't we back up a half a step and try to figure out this connection for an individual between, between authority and, and accountability and, and, and responsibility. That three legged stool, right? If I'm gonna get. If you're gonna give me something, I want you to give me responsibility to do, do it. I'm also going to ask you to give me the authority to do it so that I don't have to have you being the force that lets me get it done. And then I want you to hold me accountable as well. Right.
Michael Smith [00:43:36]:
Why do I want you to do that? Because I want to have you look in on what I did and help me on my own path to mastery, if that makes sense.
Tonnika Haynes [00:43:43]:
But I want to micromanage, Michael. I know, micromanage my people because, because
Michael Smith [00:43:48]:
you're in the dopamine, right? The, the people who do that, whether they know it or not. This is their Facebook book version of managing. It's a little dopamine hit. When you have the answer, you're the answer man or the answer woman. And all of a sudden you get that dopamine hit. You walk away like this. And they walk away no better than they walked up. They just solve your problem.
Michael Smith [00:44:07]:
And that disengages them from their own problem solving. It makes them not resilient, all that. That stuff happens to them, right? Yeah.
Tonnika Haynes [00:44:15]:
I'm so guilty of that.
Michael Smith [00:44:17]:
Well, everybody is. Because we were raised to be micromanagers. How many people I talked to say, I only do it because if I don't do it, it.
Tonnika Haynes [00:44:24]:
It doesn't get done.
Michael Smith [00:44:26]:
It won't get done or it won't get done. Right? Right. If I want it done right, I have to do it myself. I'll give you a nickel for every time you give me a nickel for every time I heard that. I'd be a rich man. I'd be retired by now. Right? So. But it's all about this.
Michael Smith [00:44:37]:
Humans want to be empowered and they want to have control in their lives and they want to learn. We're wired to climb the Maslow ladder, right? I want to be part of a group. I want to feel good about myself. I want you to feel good about me. I want to be able to feel good about you and have that be meaningful goal. Then we want to learn some stuff together. And when we're learning new stuff and mastering, we're gaining resilience and power and satisfaction and fearlessness, and we're able to take risks and be successful. Now we're gaining confidence to do even bigger stuff.
Michael Smith [00:45:07]:
And at the end, you know, Maslow had five levels of pyramid, stopping at self actualization. And his team was studying self actualizing top players. And when they started studying them, they were like, something else is happening here. These people are becoming different now that they live in the, in the growth zone comfortably all day, every day. Something's different about them. What's happening is they're starting to ask different questions than they did before. And it was like, well, like what? And they're like, what's the purpose of all of this? I'm learning all of this. But why? Why should I do this? How does this.
Michael Smith [00:45:43]:
And they get into these, what they, what they termed. And they were secular scientists, not spiritual people, right? They were secular scientists. They called it transcendence. And they said, this is the version of human spirituality where we're seeking higher level questions to our existence. And they added a sixth layer to the pyramid because self actualizing people rise into this other higher level thinking. It's like, is there a oneness in the universe? Is there some central element behind it that controls it all? Is there something that ties it all together? The more learned people become, the more they begin and diversely learn it, right? Not, it's not a tiny little spike learning of I know everything about this and nothing else. But the more broad people, the more they asked those questions and they were realizing that, you know what, you know, there is some, there is a neuroscience now where they do brain scans on people when. And stay with me here, right? I'm not trying to convert anybody to any kind of spirituality, but I want to just you and I love.
Tonnika Haynes [00:46:41]:
They'll be fine. They'll be fine, right?
Michael Smith [00:46:44]:
You hook them up to, you hook them up to a brain scan and when the moment comes with them being studied, right? In the program that they're in where they say I am going to enter into a genuine spiritual seeking journey, it's sort of accepting the transcendent Maslow secular level and saying I'm going to open my mind to think about whether there's something bigger than what I can see with my own, you know, two dimensional, three dimensional eyes, right? That's the senses I have. The minute, here's the point. The minute that they make that mental decision to do that, an entire element of an entire brain space in your cerebral cortex opens up. That's never been turned on before for right? Isn't that it's. And I don't know if I made it clear in my description of it. It's like a part of your brain suddenly lights up that's never been active before and you enter into this search for a spiritual connection like the top of the Maslow stuff, right? And so it's sort of, it's this interesting discovery that the more complex we get and the more we rise in these searches for more interesting questions, right? The top of the mastery, top type level development, the more our brain opens up and becomes even more powerful. And so if you just sit back for a second and reflect on that, just you know, without being intimidated by all the science and whatever it's like it basically says if you sit and you're comfortable not knowing very much, you're not going to grow very much and you're, you'll stay the way you are. And that old insanity thing says, you know, how can you do the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome? It's like look, what do you have to lose if you try some of this stuff? Stuff, you might not like it, try it, stop.
Michael Smith [00:48:22]:
But then there may be something compelling that takes you back to try something else or try it again or whatever. And all of a sudden you'll find yourself on a journey where none of this stuff is intimidating and all of it becomes ever more interesting. And then you meet people who are also into it and they know stuff that you don't know and they start sharing it with you. And this happens shop owner to shop owner, right? I got a legacy program group, no sales pitch here at all. I have a legacy program group where this is what we do with owners. They spend time together and they share these brands breakthroughs that they're having individually as their teams with performance and their marketplaces and all that. And it's like it takes on its own life and it's like it enters into new realms above what they ever even knew existed before in terms of what their performance could be, their engagement could be, their employee satisfaction could be. And it's almost like they're sitting there with their mouths open going, we had no idea that you could get there from here.
Michael Smith [00:49:15]:
And it's like, I know because it's something most people, people are either afraid to attack or they don't even know about it. Right?
Tonnika Haynes [00:49:23]:
Incapable. They, they just are staying small. And I'm not just talking about the size of their shop. They're staying small because to grow you have to do that on purpose. And that's a lot of change. And change is uncomfortable and it's messy and then it challenges who you are, your identity and nobody wants to do that. That all we want to do is look at reals and laugh. But like you said, at the end of the day, if you want to get a well done and you're going to be laying on whatever your death water bed or whatever you're going to be doing and you're looking back over your life.
Tonnika Haynes [00:49:57]:
Dude, you can't, you can't miss out on this now. So like you said, we have to look at the future. Where do I want to be and how do I get there and when do I start?
Michael Smith [00:50:07]:
Absolutely.
Tonnika Haynes [00:50:07]:
And this is going to be uncovered to do. This is the most uncomfortable thing that I've been going through as a business owner and been running the shop for a while, but on my own for 10 years. This is my 10th year. But in the last, in the last two years and actually no, strongly in the last year as, as, like I said, my kids are Getting older, things are changing. The shop is running itself. It actually has the ability to not need me. So I can't micromanage anymore. I'm not needed by my kids as much anymore.
Tonnika Haynes [00:50:36]:
So I can't hide from who I was meant to be. Dag on it. And so I just have to accept, like, okay, like, I'm sitting in the back of the class and. And when we were there in Lucas's shop and Braxton's, like, I think you should have a podcast, Mr. Nigel. Podcast. Because that would mean I would have to do this and have conversations that are difficult. I don't speak well, I sound like the country's person in the world.
Tonnika Haynes [00:51:02]:
You know what I mean? But there is somebody that's going to listen to this podcast and they're gonna have a light bulb ding over their head. And whether I like it or not, I'm helping them. So I hope the things that we're talking about is going to keep people from running from their accountability. Don't run from your self awareness. Just drink the Kool Aid and if you don't like that flavor, get some great Kool Aid. But you got to start drinking somewhere. You have to. We have to be a better, better person.
Tonnika Haynes [00:51:33]:
We have to be better people. And I think if you turn into that better person, you're going to affect all your employees. It's going to positively affect your. That, your, Your community, your customers, your bottom line. It really would. And I'm still. I'm still drinking the Kool Aid, man. Like, sometimes I am rolling my eyes and I know Jennifer, who's my coach at the institute, I know she's just like her and her faces.
Tonnika Haynes [00:51:57]:
And everybody knows that I can make a fish face.
Michael Smith [00:52:02]:
We live for it. You know, we love those faces, by the way, right?
Tonnika Haynes [00:52:06]:
Oh, really? But then also, I do know that if I'm sitting at home and I'm playing on face space and I get a Facebook messenger message and it's from another shop owner, and they're asking me for an opinion or they're asking me for help, that feels so much better than any KPI that I could ever.
Michael Smith [00:52:24]:
Yeah.
Tonnika Haynes [00:52:25]:
Ever even think of.
Michael Smith [00:52:26]:
Yeah. Well, you know, if I. You didn't ask me this. I'm thinking, though, about people who might be listening. I. I will say this to whoever this might be able to reach. Give it a try. And, And.
Michael Smith [00:52:41]:
And if it's a little intimidating, go with it. Because these areas that we're talking about, I, I have no idea what they were until I started working on them, working in them, studying them. I've been studying them for a long time. The more I learn, the deeper, the richer, the more powerful it gets. But you got to start somewhere. And this idea that, you know, if. If you're willing to just get your feet wet and tackle one thing and the sort of the stuff that we've been talking about, dig into it a little bit, you know, have them reach out to you. They can find you on the Internet.
Michael Smith [00:53:14]:
They know how to find me on the Internet. Reach out and have a conversation. I'll have a conversation with anybody about this stuff because I love it and I'm passionate about it. And I'm here doing it because I want the world to understand it and do more with it for themselves. Right. I want. I want the world to be a better place, and this stuff will get us there faster if we do that.
Tonnika Haynes [00:53:32]:
And I definitely wanted to have this conversation just like what you said.
Michael Smith [00:53:35]:
Yes.
Tonnika Haynes [00:53:36]:
Just reach out to me because I wish that I had someone to reach. Actually, you know what? Let me rephrase phrase that I did have someone to reach out to, and his name was Lucas Underwood. And I remember didn't know Lucas from anybody. Saw him in ASOC group. He looks like a friendly guy. Let me start sending him messages. Let me ask him a question. Hey, Lucas, am I overreacting to this? So I.
Tonnika Haynes [00:54:04]:
I had an industry partner, a friend, and I want to be that for other people. Like, how do we. People. The shop owners are tired. We're so tired, stressed out. But what if the one thing that you're so exhausted from is avoiding the role that you're meant to be?
Michael Smith [00:54:27]:
Yes.
Tonnika Haynes [00:54:28]:
What if that's what's really wearing you out?
Michael Smith [00:54:30]:
Well, I want to give. Say one more thing. And you and I talked about this before. We've talked about this offline. But I'm going to say it now and kind of get us to that point. Point. This conversation we're having leads you to the other two existential questions pretty readily. Right.
Michael Smith [00:54:45]:
Because if you're. If you start to really get serious about what am I doing here? What is the purpose of my life? And you write down to fix cars. Right. If you said that to me as your coach, I'd say, go back and go deeper. And it would be like, but that's what I do. It's like, no, the purpose of your life. Right. My point of that is the deeper you go on the who am I and what am I doing doing here Questions, it makes you lean further out to the beginning, into the end questions.
Michael Smith [00:55:10]:
And I would also say to people, we have this. I'll tell you, I know how belief tapes work, right? Once we develop a belief about something, we will vociferously, toughly, strongly defend it because we want to make sure that our beliefs are right. Because literally the greatest drive in humanity is to stay sane. We will, we will die before we will let ourselves knowingly go insane. Sane. This is science, right? So the concept of it is that once I develop a belief about something, I have to hold on to that and I will really defend it because I need to, to stay sane. What I'm saying is these things I'm talking about are what science would call. I'm gonna throw one more term out there, metacognition.
Michael Smith [00:55:52]:
It means you're thinking about your thinking. And most people don't get far enough to think about their thinking. We think what we think because it's safe. Safe and it's inside our comfort zone. And anything outside is threatening and scary. And it takes a lot to step over and experience it and to step back. The more you do what we're talking about, the more you get into this place where science recognizes what the, what Maslow's self actualizers were doing. They were developing meta cognition, they were thinking about their thinking and in doing that it took them to a higher level.
Michael Smith [00:56:26]:
And what I mean by that is it's like it allows you to break through your belief tapes and to go on the other side it of, of any one of those and say, what if there is something else other than that that's either better or actually true? And so what I'm saying to people here that can listen, that can actually hear what we're talking about, you and I agreed on this before to be able to consider the two other questions. Where do I come from? Where do I go after this? Some people are highly intimidated by that question. Some people think that there is no answer to that question. And they believe it so strongly that if you challenge it that they'll, you know, they'll get upset. Some people have an answer to those questions. Questions I'm going to say to people, be open to considering those questions too. And people will not like that. Right? People who aren't ready are going to say, I'm not going there.
Michael Smith [00:57:12]:
If you go there, it begins to open up this metacognition, this, you begin to think about your own thinking. And that's where the real breakthroughs in life come from. Because you can face a belief that you have and say, where did it Come from? Why do I believe that way? Why is that a part of the structure I have? And then you can think back historically. Oh, because my parents and my coaches and my teachers said this to me. And then you say to yourself, is that really true? Does it need to be true? And if you can sit there for a minute and go, well, it may be true because I've believed it, but it doesn't have to be true. Now you're crossing over the border into this higher level of existence where now you can change pretty much anything that you put your mind to, to change. And the more people develop in this and the more they realize the ceilings in their lives, they. Every one of them, they've placed over themselves.
Michael Smith [00:58:01]:
And somebody suggested a ceiling and they grabbed onto it and stuck it over their head and said, okay, that'll be my ceiling in that. And what I say to you is go back and say, who. Who gave you that ceiling? And think about it. And it'll be like, well, coach. Coach Michael gave me that ceiling. It's like, under what circumstances? Well, and then it's like, does it have to be true? Well, no, I guess not. It's like, well, then take that sucker off and put it on the desk. And then say, have a ceilingless top over.
Michael Smith [00:58:26]:
Now what could it look like? And. And it's like, huh, now you're moving into a new realm. And this is the kind of stuff that. That leads people into this new, higher level of satisfaction. And again, I literally. I want shops to run better. That's what comes from this, is that when people do this, they perform better, they're having more fun, they do crazier, more wonderful things, and things go better and there's more money made and there's more performance and people are having. I mean, it's.
Michael Smith [00:58:51]:
It's nothing but a win. When this tornado takes. You gotta start with the doors locked and the windows closed. And you're like, I'm afraid of what's outside. I can hear the wind, but I'm afraid of those walls. It's like, damn it, open the door and walk outside and just get your feet wet. Just. Just get into the wind.
Michael Smith [00:59:09]:
And once you do, you see and yeah, it's like, woohoo. And maybe it's. Maybe it's Dorothy in Kansas, right? I don't think we're in Kansas anymore. That's okay, right?
Tonnika Haynes [00:59:17]:
Yeah, it's okay.
Michael Smith [00:59:18]:
And you may never go back. You may never go back. And that's kind of the point of it, right? You're going to find yourself in a better place than you spend started. And it's all there in front of us. And it's. We're here talking about shops, right? What's leadership in shops? Blowing through our ceilings. And how do we do that? This. This is where the challenge comes.
Michael Smith [00:59:34]:
Our own ceilings are what we have to blow through. And I want everybody to know how to do that because it's so much fun. And then we just go out and party together, right? In life, we just go out and make stuff.
Tonnika Haynes [00:59:43]:
Go out and party. This was. This is great, Michael. We're. We're gonna do this again.
Michael Smith [00:59:49]:
I want to.
Tonnika Haynes [00:59:51]:
We're gonna make people uncomfortable. Uncomfortable. Get them out of there. Like me. I do.
Michael Smith [00:59:58]:
Yeah.
Tonnika Haynes [00:59:59]:
I'm telling you, like, I wish we could have recorded that conversation a couple months ago. Because I was. I. Look, I don't like this, sir. And how dare you tell me. Talk about some stinking feelings. Feelings don't fix cars. And that.
Tonnika Haynes [01:00:13]:
Feelings still don't fix cars. I said that on carms podcast. Feelings do not fix cars. Facts fix cars. But we're not in the car fixing business business. We're in the people business. We have employees and family that we need to take care of. We have communities that we need to take care of.
Tonnika Haynes [01:00:28]:
And at this point in my life and ourselves, at the end of the day, if we just focus on that, everything else will take care of itself.
Michael Smith [01:00:36]:
Yeah. I love this. Tanika, thank you. Thank you so much, so much for coming on.
Tonnika Haynes [01:00:41]:
We'll see you again.
Michael Smith [01:00:42]:
Great stuff. I am looking forward to it.
Tonnika Haynes [01:00:44]:
I am looking forward to it. Downshift with Tanika is where we slow down long enough to have real conversations. Hosted by myself, second generation shop owner, Tanika Haynes. This goes beyond your car count, your KPIs. We want to talk about leadership, legacy, mindset, and the messy, beautiful journey of building something that lasts. You will hear stories from shop owners, technicians, and other industry leaders who are figuring it all out by themselves in real time. This is a space for growth, tough love, laughter, and leveling up.