What You Can Learn from Michael Jordan that Helps in our Service Departments

Video Transcription:

Hey everybody, Chris Collins here and my trusted sidekick Mario. (Hey, everyone.) We are here to talk about what we learned from Michael Jordan that can help us be champions in our dealerships. Mario knows a lot about champions because he’s a San Francisco 49rs fan; they went to the Superbowl last year and then just lost to the Seahawks this week. (We had to bring that up? Now, we had a bet and I’m supposed to wear jersey so I had to make that up to Chris on the next one.) Mario wanted to bet that the loser has to shave his head. That was the bet he proposed, which makes absolutely no sense. (That was a win-win for me.)No sense there for me.

The Seahawks play the 49rs later this season so I don’t wanna talk too much trash because there’s a lot of season and the Seahawks are way over high favorite and I love them to death.

So, the Jordan thing came up because Mario’s huge Jordan fan and he even named a son after Jordan, correct? (Correct.) Huge Michael Jordan fan and he’s thinking about getting a tattoo on his back of Jordan’s spread holding the ball, all the way across your back, right? (Yeah, either that or San Francisco, I haven’t made up my mind.)

We have three things here that we pulled out of Jordan’s book and things and stories that we know about Jordan from reading other books. The first one is talking about what Jordan lets into his mind or lets into his head. And his mom talked about in his book that she didn’t let him watch TV except for once a week on Saturday. Something to the effect of had she not instilled values and discipline in him from an early age, he would just have sat on the couch and watched TV all the time. And so it starts with what you let in your mind watching TV.

We just came in from our Top Dog event with the best service advisors in the country that we invited to this event and they workshop. It was funny to me when we went around the room and we’re asking them different questions, the really top guys in the room don’t watch TV at all, whatsoever. (Yeah, they’re more, mostly readers.) Yeah, and most of the time it’s funny to me too. I rarely watch TV. People ask me ‘Hey, have you seen the show ‘Breaking Bad’ or this show, this and that?’ No, never seen it, have no idea what it is, don’t care. I’d much rather be reading a book and try to figure out how to get better than sitting there like a drone in front of the TV, letting all that noise and negativity in my head. So, the first characteristic is, be careful what you let in your head and protecting yourself.

The next one is plying up in life. Jordan played up in life in many situations. He talks about in his book how he would wait to play with the older kids and even though he would sit in the sidelines, eventually one person wouldn’t show up in a pick of game and he get to play with the older kids and so he was playing up and he was learning to play with the bigger, faster kids at a very, very young age. Right? (He actually enjoyed it. He would really go out there and just wait for hours until he has his chance. Sometimes he wouldn’t play. But he wanted to beat at the next level so he go and challenge himself everyday.

You can play up in life by managers that are better than you and surrounding yourself with people that are achieving things that you aren’t achieving, like getting in my mastermind or one of my coaching groups. It’s always amazing to me when guys join my coaching group how literally takes us a couple of months to figure out how to make their department profitable and how to get them performing in a very high level. It doesn’t take any time at all but, it’s just them getting in, a group of managers that support them, that have the idea and have the track record of success that they can instantly just plug in, like plugging into a switch. And they instantly can get results. So, playing up in life and surrounding yourself with higher performers.

And the third is the drive and bulldog mentality. Never say that you can’t, right? (Right, there was actually a good part in the book where it actually spoke about Michael Jordan’s family slogan. It actually said – How do you know, if you don’t try? That was his theme, if he ever mention ‘I can’t’ in front of his family, they would always say, how do you know if you don’t try? The thing they used to say at that time was – If you try, then you can’t fail, if you don’t try, then you already failed pretty much. That’s one thing that he lived by, and everyday, he would never allow his mind to say ‘I can’t.’ So he’s always, I could, I could, I could. And showed them that he did.

It’s powerful. It’s that if you think you can, or you think you can’t, either way you’re right, right? So, drive and bulldog mentality. And with that bulldog mentality comes a lot of hard work. It’s funny, it’s happened to me many times in life, when people where people say, “You are lucky, or you have the golden touch.”  But, they’re not there with me when I’m reading books and they’re watching TV. They’re not there with me when I’m staying four extra hours or when I’m tracking down somebody to learn something or figure out what I’m missing or surrounding myself with the people that are going to help me get to where I want to go.

It’s easy to just say that people are born lucky or you know, they’re chosen. But really, that isn’t the case. For Jordan, they weren’t there 7 am when he was lifting weights and they were sleeping. They weren’t there in the offseason when he was practicing harder than he did during the season, trying to get an edge, trying to increase his free throw percentage, trying to learn a better jump shot and all those weapons that we have. Those were all created over time in the offseason by constantly practicing and never giving up.

The funny thing is Michael Jordan actually used to get picked up by his coach. At six thirty in the morning, he would go and practice in the gym for an hour before showering and going to class. The funny thing is, he still, all that work he did for a year and a half, he still didn’t make the varsity team. But he was still determined and he didn’t give up. So, even though you’re doing all that work, you might not get your accomplishment or your goal. But by not giving up, you eventually will. A lot of people, when they don’t see the fruit of their labor right away, they just put their hands up and give up. Jordan showed you didn’t gave up, keep your goal, keep your eyes on the prize and you will reach it. And that’s powerful.

Just in a kind of conclusion, you deserve to be successful; you deserve to achieve great things and to perform to your full potential and live up to your full potential.

And I’ll tell you, the best day of your life is the day that you accept responsibility for your results and you look yourself square in the eye and you decide how to go get it and no excuses. Bulldog mentality; go after it, and achieve everything that you can and run a healthy department, and run a healthy dealership and live up to your full potential.

Thanks for watching.