industry. He said, “I met R. Bruce Deardoff socially. He asked me what I did and said he had a project he would like me to do. I did it, he asked me to do another project, and I did that one, too. Then he asked me if I would be interested in managing the Central Florida Lincoln store in Orlando. Travel wasn’t glamorous anymore, so I said yes. That was seven years ago. Working at the dealership has been wonderful and rewarding in many ways. I enjoy the people, there is always some kind of action in the dealership, and Bruce is a great guy to work for.” We asked how his career benefited him as a general manager. “I have been exposed to many concepts, philosophies, products, people and situations. One of my early mentors taught me to reduce all operations to the lowest common denominator.” Since he mentioned his mentors, we asked him to tell us more about who had mentored him. “Bruce has been my mentor at the dealership,” he explained. “In the trucking industry, my mentors were Ed Randolph and Al Labinger. And in the container business, I learned from Malcolm McLean. He is the father of the containerization industry because he was the first guy to load a truck trailer on a ship. Malcolm was faster with a pencil on numbers than anyone else with a calculator, and his mind seemingly never slept.” Still on the subject of mentoring, we asked him what would be the three most valuable career suggestions he would tell someone he wanted to mentor? Well, he didn’t have three; he had four: “Number one: dream,” he said. “Have a life goal that makes you happy while you are working on it. Second, choose significant challenges that have the potential for home-run success. If something fails, one must remember that anything worth doing is worth doing wrong, so learn to accept failure. Failure allows you to experiment and see what works. If you don’t fail, you don’t gain any experience.” He moved on to number three: “You’ve got to work hard and be persistent.” And his fourth and final suggestion was, “It is very important how you treat people at work. If you aspire to grow, you will need to be incredibly considerate of other people. People want to do what is expected of them, they want feedback about their performance, and they want to be respected. I tell those I work with every day that I want our customers and other employees to be treated the way I want to be treated, and I want to be treated damn well.” We wanted to know his feelings about the pandemic, how it has affected everyone and whether it will have a permanent effect on the industry. “The biggest effect is on customer dynamics and how we sell products,” he told us. Especially to younger buyers. Amazon is showing everyone how commerce can be implemented, and other industries are adopting the same ideas. All auto manufacturing companies are taking orders now. People tell us what they want, and we place an order. Soon, they will be able to order a car at the breakfast table, wire in a down payment, and wait for the car to show up.” Based on how the pandemic may or may not have changed things, we asked him his opinion of the biggest If something fails, one must remember that anything worth doing is worth doing wrong, so learn to accept failure. Failure allows you to experiment and see what works. If you don’t fail, you don’t gain any experience. 28 Pub Yr 2 | Issue 4
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODQxMjUw