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Join NABR in partnership with Corp! Magazine for our CEO & Executive Thought Leadership Series, where Jennifer Kluge sits down with C-Suite Leaders to get their insight and expertise.
NABR is a service organization igniting greatness in companies and their people.
Hello, everyone. I am Jennifer Klug. Welcome back to another episode of CEO Thought Leadership. Today, we have Jim Strack. He is the vice president and general manager of Enterprise of Milwaukee.
Jennifer:Jim has a long career in the automotive industry with over 35 years at Enterprise, and Jim is also also currently serving as the board, on the board for the Greater Milwaukee Urban League. Welcome to the program, Jim.
Jim:Jennifer, thank you. It's a pleasure to be
Jennifer:here. It's wonderful having you. So so let's get started. Give us a feel for key endeavors that are happening at enterprise. We all think we know the brand.
Jennifer:I'm sure most of us listening have rented from enterprise before, but give us a feel for what's happening now.
Jim:Yeah. A lot has gone on, obviously. Now Enterprise, the brand, is known for the car rental brand, obviously. And, what a lot of people don't know is we changed our name in October of 23. Ownership, sadly, decided to change the name to Enterprise Mobility.
Jim:And mobility falls into the lines of everything that we do. You know, a lot of people know, some people felt that Enterprise, the car rental brand is also incorporated with Alamo rental car, natural electric car. Those are also owned by the Taylor family out of St. Louis. Got a lot going on just with the rental car brands.
Jim:But if you look at our fleet management division throughout the country, that's a company car type of situation where our fleet department meets with CEOs and businesses, and that target niches between 10 and call it a 100 automobiles for company cars, things like that. So long term leasing. We have a truck rental division. We have car sales division. We have a commute division.
Jim:So we have multiple, different operations. So the mobility change was a good one. We went from enterprise, to enterprise holdings, which is the financial arm to mobility now. So a lot of change there. A lot, you know, a lot of really exciting things to all of them with stuff, advertising and things.
Jim:So a lot a lot more to come on on all of that as well.
Jennifer:So Oh, that's fun. I I think I have used almost every one of your services.
Jim:Well, we do appreciate that. We, so love your brands. That that's outstanding. That's that's that's what we love to hear. So
Jennifer:so let's chat a little bit. You know, I I don't like to look backwards because, yes, leaders, we're like, okay, we got through it. Let's be done with it. But there have been some monumental moments in the past 5 years and decisions were made, lessons were learned. Give us a feel for some of the decisions that you had to make as a leader and and you lead the whole Milwaukee division.
Jennifer:Correct?
Jim:Yeah. We'll stay. Yep.
Jennifer:Yeah. So so give us a feel for what decisions you made and what lessons you learned from it because we we do wanna capture this for future generations.
Jim:Yeah. Obviously, COVID brought on some enormous changes, right, to to the industry, which, you know, it's all documented and well laid out. What isn't is our new CEO, who is a family member, our founding, our founding father, did his granddaughter, Chrissy, took over as our new CEO in January of 2020. So that was just prior to the pandemic. Right?
Jim:Next thing you know, this pandemic thing is coming around, and a lot of things change. Right. So we we know all about the manufacturer issues with the chips and things like that that occurred. All of a sudden, availability for vehicles to rebuild the business became very difficult. We had to anticipate some pretty significant losses early on in the pandemic.
Jim:Really, really difficult of March, April, May. This has started to bounce back a little bit in June of 2020, but still we had the fleet deficiency. Probably the toughest decisions we had to make were, some cutbacks. So some head, head count reductions, things like that that we had to go through, which was really, really difficult. We tried to assemble, you know, our team, kept the best people that we could in the business, with very low volumes.
Jim:And then we had to figure out ways to capture new business. For those who don't know about our business, we basically have developed this market, the home city market share through replacement, meaning insurance companies, body shops, dealerships utilize our services. That's why we have these locations throughout the state of Wisconsin. And I do manage all of the locations within the state. So some cutbacks.
Jim:We cut back about 26% of our customer facing employees initially as production started to improve. And we're not quite there yet. It's it's getting there. Refreshing our fleet decisions we had to make, on individuals and holding our fleet for a much longer period of time. We used to hold under our cars, so that 20, 30000 miles.
Jim:We made that shift to about 60,000 miles over time because we just did not have the ability to refresh the fleet. Now that is something that is changing rapidly today, but we basically had to rebuild this business. And when we think about getting back to basics and what has made us successful prior to the pandemic, it was rebooting our leisure business because we weren't really taking a lot of that on because of the replacement. That is our priority. Our largest customers, the progressives, Geicolette, State Farms of the World, they are our priority.
Jim:So we had to turn off some of our retail establishments and business in order to make sure we were accommodating that. And then we're we booted, the whole leisure environment and, that that has, helped us push our business through, post pandemic at this point. So
Jennifer:Well, thank you for being transparent with that because I think what people are trying to do now is kinda get past it. But it it it's 5 years later, we're still dealing with the markets and conditions and long term effects of literally, industry shutting down for a long period of time. So, thank you for being transparent there. You know, in your career, and and, not everyone chooses to lead. So why did you lead?
Jennifer:Why did you choose leadership, and why do you lead? Why do you like it, or why did you choose it?
Jim:Well, I take it back to childhood. So I, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, I was one of 8 children. I had 5 older brothers that I grew up with. So, of course myself being 5. So 4 older brothers, I was always able to sports, and my brothers were very active in a different time.
Jim:Right? And watching them grow up and my sisters and family, they were all very good leaders on and off the field. Those types of things of the military kids. So I was moving around all the time too. Let's say, Air Force brat.
Jim:And I think probably what got me into the leadership piece was certainly high school captain of the football team, wrestling team, doing those types of things. Sports drove a lot of what I did. Went to college as an athlete, played football, you know, got involved in a fraternity in college that required some leadership. You know, 2 years as a as a fraternity president was not easy, but, made it through all that. But, yeah, when I came onboard with enterprise, I really didn't know what I was getting into, but, I initially took that lead role.
Jim:I had a little bit of experience prior to enterprise in the liquor and wine business, and I knew that I was a effective salesperson. I became very effective. When I went into enterprise, I started just like everybody else does is management training and just time to talk from there. I had some opportunities throughout my career to jump into some other businesses, which I'll talk about a little bit. But, the leadership piece drove me The being able to get people promoted and see promotion, see people making a better lifestyle for themselves is really what drove me to to stick with this leadership piece.
Jennifer:And that really is, what motivates a lot of leaders is seeing those, that you can mentor and bring up with you, which is a wonderful thing. And and thank you and your family for the military If I'm sure you had some college experience, but, you know, I ran, I wasn't in college. If you have some college experience, but, you know, I ran. I I learned a lot from being part of a team at a young age. And, the the rules of sports and the rules of business are very similar.
Jennifer:And, I would encourage anybody listening that if you have young ones, get them into some sports. It it helps to have those outside, mentors and rules to learn from. So thank you for sharing that.
Jim:Absolutely.
Jennifer:Back to to you and your role as a leader, you know, I always like to ask this on these interviews. Each industry has different leading indicators, and it's always good to hear what you forecast or what you trend out based off of what you know in your industry. So for for those today that are planning and putting their strategic plans together, their 2, 3, 5 year plans, some some are 10 year plans. What do you see in the future as it relates to markets and conditions?
Jim:Well, transportation's ever evolving. I mean, you can talk about autonomous cars. You could you could certainly talk about electrification. Those types of things. And and we're right in the middle of it.
Jim:Right? So I think over the years, the ADAS, the safety, options, not really options, requirements on automobiles for safety have grown tremendously. Now along with those safety requirements, you have cameras all over automobiles and those types of things. And, they'd be count 3 to 4 times more expensive, and 3 to 4 times more expensive to repair as well for every little camera that could be off filter or something like that. So it's become, the the expense over the last 4 or 5 years have been interesting.
Jim:And it's a progression within the business that we're dealing with and learning a lot about, to have a technology understanding, in this industry is really important. We have a company that helps us with that, called Integral, which is based out of Madison, which, basically does a lot of the automotive repair industry work and timelines and things like that teaches us a lot about the business. The interesting thing, you know, I said get back to basics when we realize, you know, the goal of getting back to basics is with the people that we've hired over the last 5 years, we need to realize that a lot of the latest folks, as you know, Jennifer, come out of school and getting back to basics. They don't really remember what it was like in 19. So, we're having to repeat people to get out in the market place and build relationships and do the types of things that we did as we were coming up within the organization.
Jim:But, really, when it comes to the indicators, you know, there's a lot of documentation about some of our competitors and what they've done and bought a 100,000 Teslas. I think that what I've learned from our leadership is that, it's an evolution. It's not a revolution. It's not something that you wanna jump on right away because the customer pays may not be there. For example, the amount of times that we get asked for electric vehicles from our customer base is just not very Austin.
Jim:It just does not occur a lot. Does it happen? For sure. But, it's not something that I think that we're completely ready for yet. We're preparing for the future.
Jim:That might need other things like hydrogen and other measures. Autonomous cars is coming I mean, that that is a reality future. So, there's so much to to try to grasp on too, but we we've taken it up at a slow pace. Not super aggressive. I think that's the the right way to go about it because of all the changes, how quickly they come.
Jennifer:Yeah. And and you are a large entity in in taking it slow and and seeing it through and waiting for the trends to solidify is a smart decision. Yeah. And and the infrastructure for electric might not be there yet. And quite honestly, when people need a car, they need a car to go a long way, and we haven't quite figured them all out yet as as a market.
Jim:Yeah. I, Chrissy, our our CFO, she made it clear to all of us that she wanted us to water it right? So I am driving an electric vehicle and some of the challenges with it, you know, anxiety of driving up to a Packers game and being able to get back on a charge, there's a little anxiety there. What do you do? How do you deal with it?
Jim:But we're learning from it, and I think there's a lot of positive in it too. But, yeah, we have to we gotta we gotta walk a little bit before we run.
Jennifer:Yeah. Well, I know your company has been, really good and famous for hiring young people right out of school. And you all did career path planning before it was a thing. You you've been doing that for for years years now, bringing people in. How do you engage them?
Jennifer:So so you have all these young people that you're bringing in. There's some sort of path for them. How do you engage them? And then how do you retain them? Because it's it's pretty famous, your brand, from taking somebody right out of school, and they can be a VP one day and and putting them on that path.
Jennifer:Walk us through that. And for all of us trying to retain our young people, give us some key elements of the retention piece.
Jim:Yeah. You know, we brought 20 interns in here about a week ago, and that's probably the the level that all stuck with here. And, you know, these interns are coming to us from university. They've got another year to go. They're gonna learn about this.
Jim:And when they come in the room, I make it clear to them why I do present to the intern classes. And I said, here's what you're going to get out of this summer after they tell me what they're going to learn from or hope to learn much this summer. But it really is learning the basics of the business. You you gotta be able to take care of the customer base. We only have really 4 core areas to our business and that's customer satisfaction, that's employee retention, that's growth.
Jim:I mean, profitability comes when you do the other things really well. But we dive into statements, performance statements, analyst, you know, revenue, latest cost, latest expense. We teach everybody everything they need to know. And what I really loved about when I started and when I try and, encourage in our culture here is that you know what? There's not a lot of companies that you work for whether your HR or starting as a management trainee to be able to be tested, learning the business well enough and we're gonna hand you the keys in 9 months to take over a store.
Jim:You're paid off at the bottom line. So, you understand what those statements look like. For the bold you can be and successfully you can be in the core areas of our business takes you on that management path. Now, that's one way to go about it. But you think about all the other folks that support our business.
Jim:We have auto detailers. We have drivers. Cars don't move by themselves yet. But Many sharp quality dealer. Right?
Jim:And it's an auto detailing became a much more difficult job for a lot of people. And you think, wow. It's just cleaning a car. Right? But if you think about how customers' perceptions were during COVID, it became so much more difficult.
Jim:Atlas cars had to be spotless. We had to create a career path for those individuals as well. They don't have a degree. For example, they can work their themselves or their way up into, like, an automotive tech position where they're working on vehicles and learning how to do maintenance on vehicles, changing tires, things like that. That improves their revenue stream with the more important positions that they obtain within the organization.
Jim:So I just think culturally, we do a really good job teaching, training, developing what has made this company so successful over the last 65 years to, 6 there's no real magic to it. It is really the culture that is being developed on the ground within each of the operating groups around the country.
Jennifer:And the expectations are very clear. The expectations are very clear is what I'm pulling out of what you're saying. And then you, it's not micromanagement, but it's teaching, you know, teaching every little aspect of customer care to cleaning the car, washing the car, what whatever it may be, that's really unique to you all. And to be able to make a a fast career path is basically saying you put in the time, you put in the energy, you put in the work, and you'll get the results. We'll make sure we you get the results, which is what I call old school.
Jennifer:That's that's that's right. Old people. Old school mentoring.
Jim:Yeah. It's great. I mean, we we're not afraid to have in in the management team largely. You have to be able to have difficult conversations. You have to be able to have coaching conversations.
Jim:You have to listen to your employees and how they're interacting with customers. And we're not afraid to, correct each other and and address things and and redeposit and move people forward in that.
Jennifer:Yeah. Well, let's keep talking about generational differences and communication styles and the wants and needs of each generation. Sometimes we talk a little too much about generations. But in your case, because you have such a young workforce, let's talk about, I don't know, mentorship collaboration. Let's talk about some of those communication styles and how that actually happens.
Jennifer:Can you go a little deeper on that? Because there are a lot of people talking about this again, with so many generations in the workforce where expectations at the top might be one thing in in how younger people are perceiving and doing things might be misperceived. Walk us through some scenarios there and how you all navigate that or you personally.
Jim:Well, yeah, that's that's a tough one because with each culture, we'd be you know, we've got the new generations and and put the waves of different things and and thought processes about those generations as well. And I think the company does a really good job of educating us and and helping us along. Certainly, you know, from a D and I standpoint, we are looking to enhance our leadership there and make sure that our business has the right number of females, the right number of minorities. We're mirroring the community. We're developing those individuals.
Jim:One of the key things that I think we focus on is mentoring here. Now mentoring, can be a challenge because people naturally will wind up with a mentor versus a a sign, and we've kinda played with it. And, so what we're doing nowadays is is is really digging into future leadership. Like, we'll we'll try and pick, our top performers from a performance standpoint, who's performing at a high level, and what does their future look like, and how can we enhance them in their engagement and teach them more about the business than they know today to make them successful future leaders within the organization. So we've picked out a team of individuals.
Jim:We have actually have a program that starting tomorrow. We'll they'll present us with a SWOT analysis on themselves, and, we'll we'll go through everything and anything there is to know about what makes us successful in leadership. Now we also and our team also is educated on the fact that we need leaders in every division. So, I've talked about fleet management. I've talked about truck.
Jim:I've talked about car sales. This building that I work in, we have a team of Business Management Accountants. We have Human Resources. We have talent acquisition, we have talent development, we have risk management, we have vehicle repair, but there's so many I mean, like, we got gentlemen or ladies that sell our cars once once they come off of their their life. We have a large, dealer presence in the state, of Wisconsin, and we sell a lot of cars back out into that environment.
Jim:So the graduation point, we we kinda test people, and then they have the opportunity to jump into whatever their career choice may be. Example I'll give you is I had a phone call recently from a friend of mine down in Illinois. I said, hey. My daughter just got a HR degree from University Iowa. She would love to come to Enterprise.
Jim:You know, all about Enterprise. I said, that is all well and good, but, she'll have starters of management training. She's gonna have a lot of business. And then when she graduates and when she has a knowledge of the business, when my HR, team needs an individual, they're gonna find the best and brightest. So we we continue to level people up into leadership positions, and I think that that's really monumental in some of our success.
Jennifer:Yeah. Well, speaking of the best and brightest, enterprise has been a winner for many years of the best and brightest companies to work for, which means that your culture must be something fantastic to receive that honor. And as the leader of your state and your brand, what is your role to uphold the culture? What what actions do you take related to culture, and why would somebody wanna work for you?
Jim:Oh gosh. I each of us as general managers, we all take responsibility to the culture we develop. Now we have rules, regulations, all those things, and have a brief people about being smart with their decision making. Now, that's just cultural. Right?
Jim:And and I am involved in just about anything and everything. I mean, brought up the mentoring example. I will be involved in that. We have a diversity and inclusion team, that I am involved in. We get together for many different events out there within, whether it be the Urban League because I proudly support and and work with them.
Jim:My time, we we give employees days off in order to serve anything in which we live with them. It's a free day off. And if you go out and you can do a food drive or you can go pick weeds or you can do whatever it is out, there and do it with a group of people that you like to be around in your work with. So we have multiple different things that we're doing, to the point where it's hard to keep up with it all sometimes. Some some evening events, some day events, but, you know, culturally, we we try to bring it all back full circle.
Jim:And, again, the thing that that motivates me and drives me is the promotional piece. I'm very, very proud of the individuals that I've been able to get promoted out of Wisconsin. It was, a a difficult task for a long time, and and I'm proud to say since I've been here over the last 4 years, I've I've been able to get, 3 employees promoted to level 4 positions, which is a vice president position. One was in in Nashville, one's in Saint Louis, one's up in San Francisco. They're running large operations for for a company.
Jim:And, that that's the excitement and and the culture we bring. We we always have people, in most cases, have people in interviews and and working to get get themselves ahead, and and we work to support them in those initiatives.
Jennifer:That's wonderful. That's wonderful. And it just goes to show leaders need to walk the talk, be present, be visible. And and I think that whole theme of this interview and you you as a leader is this mentorship and being able to take someone that's very green and turning them into VPs, changing their lives, putting food on the table, really taking them to the future for them and their families. And I think that's your motivator, but I also think it's the company's motivator.
Jennifer:So, thank you for sharing all that. I do want to shift gears. We do this with everyone that's on the show, so forgive me. These are rapid fire questions.
Jim:Okay.
Jennifer:Sometimes, you know, if you look at people entering our places of employment in our cultures and in your situation, many of them are right out of school. The title's scary. Well, you know, Jim's in charge. Oh, I gotta act a certain way or be a certain way in front of in front of you. Let's demystify that, and let's talk about you as a human.
Jennifer:Let's humanize you and take the title away. Do you have any daily rituals that help you with motivation or focus?
Jim:Yeah. I am, still got a little bit of that athlete name, a little slower than I used to be, but I do a ton of, every morning, without fail, I get up, and I do some type of workout. Stretching, working out. I'm an avid swimmer. I spend a lot of time in the pool.
Jim:I enjoy that. I enjoy the thought process and being by myself and doing that and through work working out relieves stress. That's something that I'm pretty religious about. I sure there's days off from time to time, but I think that keeps me in the right frame of mind, right mindset. I've been tracking ridiculously tracking it for years like, you know, 4 days a week, 5 days a week.
Jim:And, I was a little nuts about it for a while, but, certainly, it keeps me focused. It keeps me motivated. I go into each day with a clear head Right. Out. So that that's that's
Jennifer:So you start your day working out. Some people end their day working out.
Jim:I do. I do. I was in the pool this morning about 6 AM. So 6 AM. Alright.
Jennifer:Is there a book or speaker or person, who has left a lasting impression on you? Who who motivates you?
Jim:Yeah. Watson, preparing, I was thinking about books specifically. There was a book that came out by a gentleman named Steve Holiday in 2016, and it's called Ego is the Enemy. And, I took that to heart and, basically helped me. I was going through some challenging times in my career, and I looked at it and say, okay.
Jim:Let's let's make sure that we're making better decisions for the people and not necessarily for myself, looks in my ego. And I think that that's something that has bode well for me. I'm not really overly concerned with where I'm at. I'm certainly very competitive about my team and my team's performance and driving my team's performance. I, made it clear to myself that I won't let my ego get in the way of our teamwork and our success.
Jim:So I I think that's what I took out of that book. I I do, follow quite a few little, small, blockers and things like that on different things for for self help and religious mode motivation, things like that, to support family needs to. So
Jennifer:That's great. That's great. You know, Warren Buffett says something similar to this. It's you remove yourself from it. Remove yourself from it and remove emotion from it, and that's the best way to make decisions.
Jennifer:Remove you or the ego. So it's similar but a little different Hidden talents. Well, I, I'm
Jim:Hidden talents. Well, I, I've been an avid wine collector for a really long time. So I do love that. I've I've gotten away from it. My palate's changed a little bit.
Jim:So that's something that I really do enjoy. And,
Jennifer:what what's your favorite vineyard?
Jim:Probably, a a small vineyard in Napa called, Sherwin Family Vineyard. And, unfortunately, they burned down a couple years ago.
Jennifer:Oh, no. Oh, no.
Jim:We built it. I I got to know them when I when I was a younger family, former construction guy in, California. At least completely rebuilt. But, I I love them. I love everything about them.
Jim:That's probably my favorite. The other the other things I have a couple dogs that keep me really busy. A couple of doodles. One's a Burmese Mountain Dog doodle and the other one's a a goldendoodle. And, they keep me on my toes and and they're a wise one to be around, whether it's around the water or just, you know, walks, things like that.
Jim:They they they keep me entertained for sure.
Jennifer:Pets are so important to us. But but but but but you the 2 dogs that you have are are just the friendliest, happiest dogs I've ever seen. You are that. In your in your personal life, what decision did you make that would that you considered the game changer?
Jim:Yeah. I embarked in, 2,000 and, 15. I was approached about an opportunity in Germany. Oh, man. I never thought in my mind that I would work in Europe, but, the gentleman who had worked over there prior and made a decision to come back to States.
Jim:They were looking for a leader to go over there and help the German operation. That, took a lot for me to, analyze it, look at it, figure out a way for, you know, my wife's and children to live there and go to school there, all these things that were blockers, but made my way. June June 16th at twice 15. I embarked on a leadership role for enterprise in Germany. We were just acquiring the Alamo National Brands in Europe at the time as well.
Jim:Didn't know the language very well other than you know the few curse words I learned from my grandmother. But went to to Germany with my family. Ran the country for 4 years for Enterprise, and it was monumental, I think. And I tell people that I learned more in that 4 years and probably the 31 years that I worked for InterContinental. It was just an incredible experience to learn new business, new ways to do business, new cultures, new ideas, and and and and building friendships in in Germany and then being able to, come back and land here with shots.
Jennifer:That's great. That's a great story. Lastly, how do you define happiness?
Jim:Well, that's a tough one. I think happiness for me with the many lands with my family and the friendships that I've been able to build and the lifestyle and culture that we've lived in. I just spoke about the German deal and that comes back to me because I mean, my children living their 4 years in Europe were able to go places that most people will never be able to get to. You talked about that, you know, Dubai, South Africa, and some, like, you know, you name it. We we tried to get as much of that in as we possibly could in balancing the work life, but, I think the happiness that I've been able to create for my family and the friendships that we've been able create through Enterprise and outside of Enterprise have been fantastic.
Jim:And, you know, I've looked at 12 places in my life that I tell people all the time, well, what's your favorite one? I I always say Wisconsin. I just I just love being here and people that I work with. And, yeah, so, we're pretty happy overall.
Jennifer:That's great. Well, congratulations on your success. Thank you for being on the program today, and just keep shining bright, Jim, and spreading that positive energy.
Jim:I will do my best, Jennifer. I promise.
Jennifer:Alright. That's a wrap. Thank you everyone for joining us today. We'll see you next time, and, again, thank you, Jim, with Enterprise for being on the show. Bye bye, everybody.