The Relationship Makes The Sale, With John Milos

Jack talks to John Milos, an entrepreneur and founder of Stylin' Concepts, a specialty vehicle parts distributor. John explains the benefits of creating a company culture that helps employees understand and embrace that they are owners of the company, too.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Well, welcome again to another episode of Leadership Lounge. My Name's Jack Tester. I'm president and CEO of next door and I got the good pleasure of being here today with John[inaudible]. Is that right? From A, we're at our leadership spotlight meeting in Houston, Texas. And John, you just got off the stage. He did a fantastic job talking about, uh, your experiences as in business and some of the key things you focused on. You talked about, you talked about vision in your business, you talked about processes and procedures and how important those are. And you also talked about creating culture, right? So we're going to get to the Caribbean culture part. That's the part we're going to hang out at. But what I'd like you to do is just talk a little bit about your background and we'll kind of what brought you to next star today? Oh, what brought me to the next start? Well, interesting story. Um, well my background is, uh, I've been involved in businesses. My, I right out of college, I had a small business sold that got into a chain of parts stores, auto parts stores, working on the counter, still going to college. And uh, I was fortunate in that that company had a very unique culture. Uh, they treated all of their store managers as owners of the business, even though they weren't officially owners. And I learned a lot about culture. I learned a lot about process and procedure at that company through the two at that time, owners and I stayed with the company until it was sold and the two owners left. At that point I decided to go out and buy my own company with the idea that I could do some of the same things, maybe even on a, on a bigger scale. Okay. And, uh, I find a small little company styling concepts with the name was styling concept styling concepts. And we sold a truck accessories, all right. To the ultimate consumer retail, uh, through catalogs and eventually internet. Okay. And, uh, were probably the largest mail order internet company of truck accessories in the United States. Okay. So you had, I know you tell part of your presentation was you, when you bought the company, it was two and a half million and you consciously shrunk it down to about 700,000 or something and it correct. Right in that area just to get focused right. On your core business. Correct. So you shut down a retail showroom, you shut down and sound like a repair shop. Right? Right. You shut down a lot of stuff, right? So that's part of your focus presentation, right? And then you grew that business and uh, tell us about that story real quick. Well, you know, it's, it was really about just figuring out what was really going to make their company grow. And uh, the business originally was trying to do a lot of different things and not very well. Yeah. Uh, two things happened. One, I looked at the catalog, business catalog mail, or at a business, and I thought this was a perfect platform to launch the Internet side of the business. So that fell into place. And that was a big help. Yes. So the, but the biggest thing that contributed to our growth really was the involvement of the people. We were so fortunate to get people that were passionate about what we're doing. And when our customers called and talked to our people, they right away understood that they were talking to somebody just like them. Somebody who really wanted to solve their problem, passionate about what they did. Exactly. And if it came in and our customers, we're constantly comparing us to our competition and we were basically selling the same products. But when push came to shove, at the end of the day, they called us back. We made the sale because of that relationship. Um, the way they were treated, the knowledge that our people had. It was just a, we want every time. And your story was that, that you, you took this business will ultimately have a couple of weeks after you bought it was a$700,000 business. When you grow it to what level? I'm on to employees and you and you divested it, right? Or sold it. We sold it and bought the company for two and a half million dollars. And I actually, I thought I way overpaid for it. Okay. But, uh, anyway, um, within six years we had grown it to a$50 million company. Okay. We had 135 employees regulation and a, so we just had phenomenal growth and sold the company to an investment group. I stayed on for an additional four years and continue to run the company. Okay. And, uh, in fact, the investment group, which this is very unusual, the aggressive investment group never stepped foot in our company the entire four years I was there. They never even walked in the door. Right. Our people had forgot the company was sold. Okay. You must have been doing quite good. We were, we were still doing very well and continuing to grow the business and do the things we, we believed him all. That's awesome. Congratulations. Well, that's part of why we brought you in because you had a lot of business success and, and wanting to hear your message of kind of what you thought the essential is of, of that success. We're, and again, you know you talked about focus and we've touched on that a little bit and you talked in a lot here about processes and procedures. We're not going to hang out there too long, but I want to talk about the things you talked about as it relates to culture. And you said something that really struck me as it relates to culture because you know we talk about that all the time at nextdoor. I hear members talk about all the time we measure employee engagement. We talk about how to be an employer of choice and you said something as it relates to culture and leadership and I thought that was interesting. Tell us about that. Well, I believe that you cannot create culture itself as the owner, as the owner of, of an or of a business, of an organization. It's next to impossible to create a culture because culture and you think about it is really the sum of what's going on in your organization and how people are, how people think, how they interact with each other, how they interact with a customer. And you can't, you can't force people to be that way. Right. So fortunately I learned fairly early on that what I could do was create an environment that the right people would want to be part of. That the right things would happen, give those people the tools and we would grow the culture. The culture would, would kind of take care of itself if you had all the right ingredients in place. Okay. And so that was the model. That's awesome. All right, so you say you, you create a culture and, and used an analogy in a, in a, in our training here of a petri dish, right? That if you've got the right ingredients in a petri dish, whatever you put in there, we'll grow. And if you don't, it won't. Right? So if the culture is such that it won't allow a bad seed, so to speak, to expand, it won't, right. Right, right. And you know, the thing is, is that in just about any company, any entrepreneur you talk to, you always hear about there somebody in the organization that really should not be there. Right. And the problem with that is it's not just one person that is affected by that. It's not just one person. That's all the people that that person comes in contact with. And so when you put up with that, you're tolerating cancer, you're tolerating the likelihood, the probability that that is going to spread and it's going to affect other people in the organization. And ultimately what happens is the good people leave the good people don't want to be part of that. Yeah. So what happens, you're saying it was a good people leave and the people that you want to leave stay. Exactly right. It's exactly right. Oh Geez. Yeah, I, I understand. So you talked about, excuse me, that there's a kind of five things that you do as it relates to culture and these are intentional things that you work on to create that environment where you can get up high productive, fun, engaging culture that people want to be at work. Right? Right. First thing you talked about is get the people, so you talked about, you look for five characteristics, I'm sorry, five characteristics in people. What are those five characteristics? The first thing is we look for somebody that was, uh, can, can get excited that they really can, you know, when you started talking to them about something, there was passionate, okay. Talk to them about art. You could talk to them about music. So we look for passion. All right? We look for a history of leadership, some kind of leadership, and that's kind of the unique thing. Um, because even if they're not going to be a leader in your business, all right, tell me about that. Because we define leadership as somebody who was willing to step up when they need to step up. Okay. That's really what we define as a leader. We're not talking, we're, I call it everyday leadership. Okay? It's not the, it's not the formal leader star ship structure, although that's okay too. But it's the kind of thing where in their life experiences, they stood up, they took responsibility and did something that not everybody would do. Okay. It could be something as simple as organizing the paper drive of the church, or it could be the guy that got his buddies together and created a rock band. Got It. That's leadership. All right. Very cool. Then what else did you look for? Oh, so we, um, we looked for, um, uh, creativity. Okay. And we had some unique ways of, of discovering whether that resourcefulness and resourcefulness. Yes. Uh, and we call that a resource for, for less creativity. And I'm, my mind is drawing a blank now. Let's see the uh, uh, oh, a hunger. Hunger. Yeah. I mean, you know, everybody runs into this when you're looking for people, you know, they come in, why do you want a job? Well, I need a job. Why do you need a job while I'm running out of an appointment or something like that. So we really wanted somebody that wanted something more out of a job than trust. Some additions, some, we call it a strong line, learn something. I want to make more money, I want to get a position, I want to get recognition. Anything other than the old typical, I need a job. Yeah. And so that was pretty much a, if you said, I just need a job next door. Yeah. It was pretty much a no brainer that that was the, uh, um, and then the ability to connect with people. I mean, that was, uh, uh, you know, that's something that's really hard sometimes to bring out an interview because people get so good at doing an interview. Uh, but he called professional interviewers correctly. Exactly. But we had different, um, different test, if you will, different, uh, situations that we would put people in. Okay. Um, sometimes for example, with a call center person, we might create a scenario, do a role playing with an irate customer. Okay. See how they would act or with that, how would they interact with, they get defensive, would they stay calm? So there were a number of things we did to, but the bottom line at any positions, we wanted somebody that liked to be around people as opposed to somebody that rather be sitting in a cubicle heads down, leave me alone. Even if that was kind of their job. Right. Still want people that they could relate and, and, and be part of a team. If you're building a team and you're building an organization that is growing, you've got to have more than just as right as silos. Got It. So this, so the first ingredient for creating the right environment for a great culture is to get the best people, right? So you got these five characteristics you look for, and I'm going to summarize those again. Somebody who's excited, somebody who gets passionate about something. So they, they, they know that there's somebody that's can get engaged and excited and what they do. You talked about a history of leadership and it doesn't have to be a manager position. We just somebody that you sense in their background and what they do that they step up when required, they don't shrink, right? Correct. And then you talked about hunger or I want to, or a design, you're wrong. Why or however you call it, that they're just not there to get a job because they should, but they have some purpose in their life beyond a paycheck. Right. And then you talked about ability to connect with people. And then finally you talked about resourcefulness, right? Which is the ability to find out how to get something done when maybe there's not a way to do it that's right in front of them. Is that fair? Exactly. Awesome. And the interesting thing about this that when you start bringing those kinds of people into the organization have these characteristics, they want to be around the same kind of people they know the same kind of paper. So before you knew it, they're bringing their acquaintances, the people that are like them to you, and you get to the point where that's all that's being put in front of you as job applicants. So it's, it's, it's a really cool process. Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, the second thing, um, yeah, so as it relates to the cultures you had, you called it bring out the best in your people. Talk about that for a minute. You know, most companies make it, uh, you know, their, their job they think is correct. Everybody's weakness. And so they, you know, performance reviews are all about guilty of that. By the way. We all do it. I mean, it's, it's almost built into the training. So almost built into our educational process. And so you start with with figuring out what somebody is weaknesses and trying to change them. Example I like to give is, you know, if you've got a great engineer and a lot of companies do this, it's great engineer and they say, okay, we want you to go out in the field and start selling cars. She really know the product. You know you're an engineer, he really knows the product, gets passionate about the product to our thing. We're going to have you go out and sell. Well, most engineers are not really good salesman, so they send them off to salesmen school when they try to get them trained to be a salesman and they don't like it. They hate it. They want to be engineering, they don't want to be selling. And this is the mistake that we make. A lot of times in organizations, we try to make people something they're not. So our focus was figuring out what people's strengths. We're identifying the weaknesses so we could get them to a level that they could function in the role that they had, but really capitalize on what they were really good at. People want to work at what they are. That's where they feel the most success. You don't feel success overcoming weaknesses. Yeah. I mean, you do, but it's not the same way as like, man, I'm really good at this. I know I'm good at it. Yeah. And I want to do more of it. Right. That's awesome. You know, when you're doing something you love, it's like the, the clock. I can't believe where that, where that two hours ago. Exactly right. When you're doing something that's torture us, it's like every minute is well, when you're doing what you really love, it's less like work. Yeah, it is. Right. So that's awesome. All right. The third thing you talked about is you want it a learning organization. Tell me about that. Well, we were committed to training our people absolutely. Every single day. And it goes back to the reason why we got involved. I started, uh, or style and concepts as I really wanted an organization where people having been part of the organization would be better as a person for being part of it. Okay. And so part of that commitment was making sure that people were involved in some aspect of training. Absolutely. Every single week. No exceptions ever. And um, we, the interesting thing about our training program is as I described this to a lot of people, they get hung up on the idea of how do you do all that? How do you create all this training? Well, the unique thing that we did at styling concepts as we involve everybody in this process. So if you are in a certain department and you are particularly good at some activity, you know, somebody that that really was good at putting in uh, uh, uh, solar water panels or hot water tanks or whatever, a train. The other people show me your tricks of the trade. They get a kick out of it. Their peers are saying, wow, I didn't know you know that much about this particular, whatever. Next thing you know, you've got the person doing the training. Who's getting a kick out of doing it. Yeah. And now there's a new respect from their peers, right? Saying, well, I didn't know Joe knew so much about how to put a circulating pumps in a, in a house to get water moving through. I, wow. He's a genius on that. And so it's a win win for everybody. You know, funny thing we've, where that's true is that when you have to teach something, you learn it at a deeper level and then if you tell people how to do something, there's kind of an expectation that you better be doing it too. So there's a double, there's a, there's two or three other benefits to what you just talked about. Right. Which is awesome. That's awesome. The fourth thing you talked about was excellence must be everywhere. Right? Tell me about that. Well, you know, it's, we're really good as managers and owners of businesses telling people what they should be doing. And I, the one of the examples I always like when I was growing up, my parents sometimes would say to me, do as I say, not as I do. Okay. And you know, at four years old I knew that was baloney. You know, you know, and, and sometimes that happens in organizations too. We talk about going out and delivering excellence to our customer and yet we come back to a shop or we come back to an office that is less than excellent. Okay? So excellence has to be of, it has to be in the trucks they drive. It has to be in the facilities. They use the tools, they have the training. You're doing all of those things. If you want to deliver excellence to your customer, you have to give excellence to your internal customer. You can't talk out of people know it's bs. If you had, you forget about that because you know what's happened behind the screen is just as important was happening in front of the screen. Right. That's, that's a great reminder. And I'd see that, that a lot of people, I encourage people listening to this, sometimes you can, you, you've been in your facility so long, you forget that it's ready, you don't see it anymore. Right? And then you guy like you comes in and goes, what are you doing here? Right? And I've done that as a business coach and Mcginn is that we'll ever seen a coat of paint. Right? And you know, they have more modern file cabinets now I'm looking at right now, which was in the 1950s you know, can we upgrade this and what does that tell the employees? Right. Right. So I think that's a great point. And you can, you can become snow blind to that stuff varies on business. Right. Um, and then the last one you had is a set high standards. What, tell me about that. Well, you know, a lot of it was simply the goals and the objectives that we had with our people. But what it really meant was that inner organization, there was no, for whiners, there was no one for complainers that we had. We wanted in an environment where people were positive, they were looking for the best in people. They were looking for the best in situations. They were trying to be creative. We work, we didn't want to have an organization where people were putting down ideas. We wanted support for ideas. Uh, we had a whole process for, for generating ideas. Uh, but anyway, that's, that's what we meant by, uh, by that, cause I have high standards and then our meeting, you really talked about the kind of the infectious nature of comp watercooler whining. This is called Pat, right? You know, where, you know, they don't come to you with an idea, but they'd go to their coworker and they complain about something and it's just, and then what happens is that coworker complains about it to you and, and used a very colorful metaphor for that. And I mean I'll repeat it here, but it was basically that you're basically taking a bag full of excrement, right? Saying here it is. You're giving it to somebody and if you, if you think about it, complaining in that way, you don't indulge in it. So I like the metaphor that you created in the mind of employees that when that's occurring, that's what they're doing. And when you participate back, that's what you're giving. Right? Right. And of course we want people to, to tell us their ideas and if someone is truly upset, we want them, we don't want to have a, uh, a resource for them. Right. They need to come to the people that could do something about it. Right. Right. And you know, in the presentation, I didn't have time to do, to get into that deep into that part of it that deep. But I will tell you that we had a very, very robust process to help people bring out the issues that were going on. And we talked, I would use examples, I'd say, you know, this complaining when you're complaining to Joe about not being able to get time off to go to a rock concert is ridiculous because Joe can't do anything about it. Yeah. You know, you need to, if you have an issue, you need to talk to the person that can do something about it. So let's identify who can do something about whatever it is you're not happy about. Right. And then let's work through that. Um, so we would, we would have examples and we would have processes and ways to, to deal with that. Yeah. Cause you did you want to hear it, but, uh, exactly. It's gotta be in the right format and that's healthy for the right person. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Well, John, thank you so much for your participation here at leadership spotlight and for our time together. Um, if people want to know more about you, how would they find that out? Well, they can just contact me at my email address. A. J A m I. L. O. S. Okay. At JC m m. G. M. T like JCM management. Got It. All right. Well thank you so much. We sure appreciate your time and thank you again for listening to another episode of Leadership Lounge. Is Jack Tester signing off? Thanks so much,

Speaker 2: 20:31

Christine.