Dr EPISODE 79: DISTRICT MANAGER? THE EXPECTATION REALITY (C-STORE TRAINING)
Hello everybody, my name is Mike Hernandez, and I spent 27 years in the convenience store industry. I started off like most people do on the graveyard shift and moved up through the ranks. In 2015, I decided it was time to have a bigger impact. In those 27 years, some things just never changed, and turnover was the biggest issue. I started the Drive series specifically for district managers because we spend so much time driving between stores, and this is my way to give back to the community.
I know a lot of people listening have a massive amount of experience. I am not going to tell you that everything here is brand new to you. Sometimes this is just a refresher to help you refocus and recalibrate. We get inundated with everything going on. If you are a district manager, or a store manager aspiring to move up, you know how it is. You sit in those district staff meetings, everybody is exhausted, and the boss demands to know what you are doing about staffing and who is going to run your stores. It is a constant issue.
I experienced those exact struggles. You intend to spend time developing a manager that desperately needs the help. You pull into their parking lot, and your phone rings. It is your boss telling you to drop what you are doing and drive across the territory to solve an immediate crisis. Or human resources calls, or legal calls, or there is an environmental spill. There is always something going on. The time you set aside to develop your manager gets canceled. You have to tell them, "Hey Tom, I'm sorry, we have to reschedule." And you never really know when you will actually get back to it. You are incredibly busy, and I want to take my experience and education to help you fix that.
Between 2013 and 2015, I was working 60 to 70 hours a week. I had taken over a group of 11 stores in Tennessee, with six managers and two assistant managers. Usually, it takes me about six months to get a district moving in the right direction. This one took a year and a half. I couldn't go anywhere on the weekends. I was out in the field doing paperwork and running from store to store because we were missing the staff we needed. I didn't have an instant solution.
During my first week, I rode stores with my boss, Jim. At the end of the week, I told him exactly what needed to happen to fix the district. He told me to slow down. I told him I wasn't going to fix it overnight, but it was his problem because Jim told me I was the fourth person in two years to take that position. I wasn't intimidated. Somebody even asked me if I wanted to move to that district just to get fired, because everyone who went there got fired. I ended up going, and I didn't get fired.
Once I got the district stabilized, I started hiring people. They were eager to work, but two days later, they would quit. I actually drove to someone's house to ask them why they quit. They told me the store manager was badmouthing them in front of the customers. Another employee told me she would cry because she was so afraid of her abusive manager. I had to clean all of that out. The company's average turnover was 117%, but that specific market's turnover was eight times higher. Turning that around took a massive amount of development, and I was working on my MBA at the exact same time. As I went through that, I started formulating this plan to help other leaders.
Before that, back when I was a store manager in San Antonio, I was getting groomed for multi-unit leadership. I would run multiple stores when other managers went on vacation. I made sure my employees got the experience of running my store while I was gone. My district manager, Tony Rodriguez, and his boss, Steve Castillo, would use me for special projects. Steve would call me personally to check on things. One time, he sent me to audit the invoices of a highly tenured store manager because he suspected she was padding her inventory to have a good audit. Back then, we calculated retail costs manually. I found out she was artificially increasing her inventory numbers. She played completely ignorant. It was a test by upper management to see how I would handle the situation. She was the go-to person when a good audit was needed. Somebody higher up would call her up when they needed some good numbers. I learned a lot of hard lessons that way.
When I finally got the opportunity to be considered for a district manager position with CoastalMart, I was excited. The district manager, Gus, hired me because one of my former employees recommended me. Gus told me I was hired, and I immediately asked him where the stores were so I could go inspect them. He told me to slow down. Eventually, a mini-territory was going to be created. There were two other people in the running for the promotion. I knew I had to handle every single detail perfectly, because the slightest mistake will completely ruin your chances. Both of the other candidates had bad audits and operational issues, so I worked even harder to ensure my performance was flawless.
We had a massive panel interview. The Zone Vice President, the Senior Vice President of Operations, the Senior Vice President of Marketing, and the lead auditor were all sitting directly across from me, asking intense questions. Mark Jagger, a senior executive, looked at me and asked, "Mike, how would you feel if we didn't choose you?" I looked right back at him and said, "Shocked." He started laughing and said he knew I was going to say that. Some people might think that is overly confident, but I knew my exact value.
I got the promotion. A week later, Mark Jagger and Jerry Godwin visited my store to congratulate me. Mark looked at me and said, "Don't look like you just got run over by a train, you ought to be excited. You should celebrate." I told him, "Mark, getting the job is the easy part. Keeping it is going to be hard. Give me six months to gain complete control over this district, and then I will celebrate." I had to focus entirely on the business first.
That mindset led me to complete my education. After my Coastal Mart experience, I was told I couldn't promote me further because I didn't have a college degree. I had started taking classes in the spring of 1987, but work and life always interrupted. Later, I took a general manager job at a Flying J travel plaza in Joplin, Missouri. Flying J was the absolute best company in the industry at the time. I took the job because it gave me a stable schedule, which allowed me to finally go back to school. I started taking online classes in 2009 and finished my degree in 2012. It took me 25 years. I went on to get my Master's degree, and then a second Master's in Teaching and Learning with Technology.
I realized that adult learning is mostly informal. We learn through conversations and reading, not just by sitting in front of a computer module. I used to rely on my own energy and initiative to get things done. Now, I rely on infrastructure and leverage. That is why I am using technology, AI, and avatars to build this massive training platform. It is too large of an undertaking for one person to do manually.
You get thrown into these multi-unit positions and you are not prepared. The transition from store manager to district manager is brutal, especially when it comes to financials, P&Ls, and quarterly business reviews. You have to stand up and present your numbers, and if you are not prepared, you get harshly criticized by the executives in front of everyone. You see district managers making up their answers just to get the executives to stop asking questions. I want to help you close that gap and prepare your team.
I have built resources for every level. Dive is for sales associates learning the business. Survive is for assistant managers, which is the toughest job because they are trapped in the middle between their former coworkers and a manager who dumps all the work on them. Thrive is for store managers; we want them to earn their bonuses and establish a real work-life balance. And Drive is for you. A lot of the content I create comes from my own memories of having to drop everything I was doing to drive somewhere and fix a problem because someone didn't show up.
I want to help improve your work-life balance. I didn't have one for a long time. I used to cover the Navajo Reservation, which is 27,000 square miles. One store was four and a half hours away. I wasn't allowed to stay overnight. I had to drive there, work, and drive back the exact same night, getting home at 3:00 in the morning while dodging horses and cows on the open highway. I have been down that road, and I know exactly how hard you work.
Share this with your employees. It gives you immediate talking points when you walk into your stores. The best performers will always reveal themselves when you give them the opportunity to learn.
For the original, real-life experience version of this story, catch the full video version at C StoreCenter on YouTube. If you can relate to this journey and want to join the network, text your first name to 9 5 6 - 8 9 7 - 9 1 9 2.
I close every episode the same way — 'Happy Learning.' Those two words aren't filler. They represent everything I believe about development. Learning shouldn't be punishment. It should feel like possibility.