Taking Advantage of the Power of Group Programs

Episode 319: Group training and coaching can be great for not only learning more about a specific topic but also gaining perspective by hearing other’s experiences.
Learn about Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation's remote group training programs which foster knowledge-sharing and mentorship in the truck parts industry.

Our host Jamie Irvine also interviews Curt Westphal, Director of Program Development at HDA Truck Pride, as well as Allen Nicks, Director of Service at Betts Truck Parts & Service. They discuss the value of HDA Truck Pride's 20-Group Program at their Annual Meeting in Grapevine, Texas.

Show Notes: Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com for complete show notes of this episode and to subscribe to all our content.

Sponsors of this Episode

Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation: Find out how many “fault codes” your heavy-duty parts business has. Meet with us today. Visit HeavyDutyConsulting.com

Hengst Filtration: There's a new premium filter option for fleets. If you're responsible for a fleet, you won't believe how much using Hengst filters will save you. But you've got to go to HeavyDutyPartsReport.com/Hengst to find out how much.

Diesel Laptops: Diesel Laptops is so much more than just a provider of diagnostic tools. They’re your shop efficiency solution company. Learn more about everything Diesel Laptops can do for you today by visiting DieselLaptops.com today.

HDA Truck Pride: They’re the heart of the independent parts and service channel. They have 750 parts stores and 450 service centers conveniently located across the US and Canada. Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com/HDATruckPride today to find a location near you.

Disclaimer: This content and description may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, The Heavy Duty Parts Report may receive a commission. 

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Transcript

Jamie Irvine: 0:39

You're listening to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, jamie Irvin, and this is the place where we have conversations that empower heavy-duty people. Welcome to another episode of the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. In this episode, we're going to talk about how training programs are better, with group membership and coaching. We're going to talk about something called the 20 Group Membership Program offered by HDA Truck Pride to its members, and we're going to talk about what it means to be a castle keeper and why that's not heavy duty. Let's get started.

Jamie Irvine: 1:17

Training is one of the most important things that heavy-duty parts and service companies have identified as a major need in 2024. In-person training is expensive. Remote training is far less expensive. To have people take the training, but the production cost of remote training is still relatively high, and there also is the issue of time. Most of the heavy-duty parts and service companies that I talk to have a problem where they need to train their people, but their people are so busy on the counter or in the shop that they find it very difficult to take them away from that work to provide them with the needed training. Unfortunately, though, that creates this situation where people need to be trained but there isn't enough time. But then is there not enough time? Because people are being trained and you get into this feedback loop that is anything but positive. To make things more complicated, training isn't just needed for frontline workers. We have seen with many of our clients that there is a need to train managers, there's a need to train the leadership, so the entire company is really in a situation where training is an important objective. They've identified it as a need, but they're struggling to get it done, and that's why, at the Heavy-Duty Consulting Corporation, we have started to build training programs that can be delivered remotely but also are accompanied by a weekly group call where the employees who are taking the training can all come together. It's only one hour a week and this gives them the opportunity to discuss what they are learning, to ask questions and to be coached by one of our consultants. Now we have found that this combination of remote learning with this group call is the best way to help employees to really rapidly take in the knowledge on their own time, when they have time, and then have that opportunity to ask those questions and get that coaching so that they can start applying what they are learning immediately in the business.

Jamie Irvine: 3:32

These group programs are available to you. We have courses that we have built that are ready to go, but we also do custom courses for our clients. So some of our clients have come to us and they've said, look, we need a specific training program built just for our needs. So we build those custom training programs for our clients, but we still do the group calls and the coaching as their employees start to take the custom training program. This is such an important piece to the puzzle. Regardless of whether you are working in one of our pre-existing training programs or you've had us create a custom training program for you, it truly is amazing how much employees get out of coming together for that one hour a week to receive that coaching, to ask their questions and to learn from each other. That's a big part of it as well. Many companies have employees in different departments or divisions, or maybe regionally. They work in different areas and when they get an opportunity to share what's going on in their specific division or region, the other employees benefit from that sharing of knowledge. This also allows employees who work in those different departments and to work in those different regions to take what they've learned and try different things to see if they can get better results in their given area within the company.

Jamie Irvine: 4:58

If you'd like to learn more about our consulting and training programs, you can go to heavydutyconsultingcom and check out our services. Drop down where we have a training page, or you can download our brochure. Go to heavydutyconsultingcom slash brochure. This gives you an overview of all of our services, including our training programs. Take a look at that. That's heavydutyconsultingcom slash brochure. Links will be in the show notes. We're going to take a quick break now, and when we get back from our break you're going to learn about a unique membership group that HDA Truck Pride is facilitating for its members. It's called the 20 Group Membership Program and I found that it was really fascinating what they're doing there and I think you're going to see a correlation of the power of coming together and sharing knowledge. We'll be right back.

Jamie Irvine: 5:52

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Jamie Irvine: 6:51

We're back from our break and just before we meet our featured guests for this episode, I wanted to mention that we are looking for a parts distributor to join a special beta program that we have reserved exclusively for listeners of the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. So if you want to provide your customers with unparalleled parts visibility and you want to reduce the number of phone calls your counter has to take, then you should enroll in this beta program. In order to enroll in it, all you have to do is book an appointment with me. Head over to heavydutypartsreportcom slash Jamie. That's heavydutypartsreportcom slash Jamie, and you can book a meeting with me. We'll discuss the details and get you enrolled in this program. We are looking for parts distributors that are forward-thinking, that want to be ahead of the curve with technology, that want to challenge the status quo. If that describes you. Book a meeting with me. Heavydutypartsreportcom slash. Jamie. Okay, now it's time for our featured guests.

Jamie Irvine: 7:55

Have you ever heard of the 20 group membership program? Neither had I until I attended HDA Truck Pride's annual meeting in Grapevine, texas, this year. Now listen into my conversation with Kurt Westfall from HDA Truck Pride and Alan Nix from Vets Truck Parts as they explain what the program is, how it works and what they get out of both operating and participating in this 20-group membership program, and pay particularly close attention to the value of sharing information and coming together in this membership group. We're in Grapevine, texas, at HDA Truck Pride's annual meeting in 2024. Hda Truck Pride brings together over 140 heavy-duty parts and service companies who serve the trucking industry in both the United States and Canada. Now, being a member of HDA Truck Pride brings with it some serious value, and in this episode we're going to talk about one of the things that HDA Truck Pride does for its shops, something called the 20 Group Membership. And to help me with that, I have Kurt.

Jamie Irvine: 9:00

Kurt Westfall is the Director of Program Development for End Users at HDA Truck Pride. Kurt, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having me. One question I'd like to ask you a little bit is to have a better understanding is the role that you have at HDA Truck Pride. So you're the director of this program development for end users. So just tell me a little bit about that role.

Curt Westphal: 9:21

So it's anything you can think about in connecting the member to their customer and even going as far as connecting the member to their customer and then their customer's customer right. We're trying to find that to wherever we can do to make that connection in there, and in some cases it's that it's also wherever I can find to help the industry, the industry as a whole. We feel that we are offering this in a way that we can really help everybody else in the industry as we're doing it. So we always have not just our membership in mind, but the industry in mind and what we can do to help them and get them moving in a better direction and get them the training and the education that we think that they really deserve to have in front of them.

Jamie Irvine: 10:06

So can you tell me a little bit about what the 20-group membership program is all about?

Curt Westphal: 10:13

So it's about bringing a group of non-competing members together, bringing them in and getting them to talk openly and honestly about how their business is operating, their efficiency levels, how they're performing in all different aspects. We're really genuinely looking into the service side of what's going on in this 20 group Right now. We will expand it further than that as we go, but trying to figure out how they're running their shops and comparing them with each other so that they can see what they're really doing, Because a lot of times they don't have anybody that they can talk to about it. And this is putting them together in a platform where they can open up and honestly speak about how their business operates.

Jamie Irvine: 10:56

Yeah, one of the I guess things about running a business is oftentimes you are kind of on an island by yourself, and to be able to compare industry numbers, to be able to understand how your business is performing relative to others in the industry, I can imagine that for a business owner that would be a unique experience, but also one that would be very valuable.

Curt Westphal: 11:16

It is. It's very valuable. They're also very nervous, right, because we've been really talked about. We don't share that information open and honestly. We always kind of give a generic number right. So it gives them so much insight into what it is. You know I like the saying is so much insight into what it is. You know I, I like the saying is you don't know what you don't know. Right, when you look at it and you look into that, it basically just um gives them that openness and like Holy cow, you're doing what? And when they get to have those conversations, they, they, they make changes. You know, we had our first meeting the other day and about a month, about a couple of months ago, and I had one of them that's made some very simple changes and it's increased that segment by five or six percent. It wasn't selling more, it was literally just by looking at the operational thing and how they're running their business, making those changes.

Curt Westphal: 12:06

And they're there, have already made some very good increases and and that's money that goes directly to the bottom line, so that enhances the the business's profitability and to be able able to, in just a month, be able to increase your net profitability by 10 to 20% first year in just by being open, being willing to walk in and have these open conversations. You're going to learn so much by just this group camaraderie of what we have and they're able to just find these little things they didn't realize they weren't doing. And it's each and every one of them will be able to find those things to be able to increase their profitability. And it's not selling more, it's literally just making small tweaks inside of the backside of their business.

Jamie Irvine: 13:03

So tell me the origin story of like when you decided that this was a program that was needed, like what was going on and why now? Now?

Curt Westphal: 13:12

honestly.

Curt Westphal: 13:12

We have a TSE program that works really well and one of our members of our TSE program brought it to our attention.

Curt Westphal: 13:19

They utilize it in the automotive group and he has a little bit of an automotive side business, but there's nothing in the heavy-duty side for this. So we decided to really look into it and find out how to do it, and from that it took us a couple of years to be able to find out how to do it and from that it took us a couple of years to be able to figure out how to operate it, how to run it. We actually hired a consultant to come in and help us, because this is what he's done for the past 20 to 30 years of his life is run 20 groups not on the heavy duty side but he understands what we're supposed to be looking for. So having him and his insight in there is able to help us really figure out how to make it work and make sure that when they come to these meetings that we're having that it's 100% worth their time to come out of their business and do it, because they're going to turn around. It's going to be very profitable for them.

Jamie Irvine: 14:08

Yeah, and I know myself from my experience running a business like you have the thing that you know how to do. So maybe you're a technician or you're a parts person, so what do you do? You start a shop or you start a parts business, and that's the business that you know. These skills that you have to uh develop to really be a successful business owner aren't necessarily skills that you have completely yourself, and so to come together into a group and have this ability to share information and learn from others, you can very I can see how that would help you to very quickly level up maybe areas of your business management skillset that might be a little bit lacking.

Curt Westphal: 14:46

Yeah, and you get to really learn like this guy's going to explain how he's running it and why he's doing it this way, and you get to be able to learn how this guy's doing it over here. And from those two different things you get to figure out how it can work inside of your company and what you can do in that aspect. And you know, we've only had one on-site group meeting where we're doing it. We're still moving into the early side of it, but we just met here today real quick for an hour before doing this and they were asking about ERP systems, they were asking about alignment tools, they were trying to get each other's opinions on all of that stuff because they're starting to build that relationship and that network that I hope lasts a lifetime. Right, that's what we're doing. It's them running this group. They're doing it. We're just facilitating and helping steer them down the path.

Jamie Irvine: 15:36

Yeah, and that mastermind kind of idea, like I can see how to your point very quickly, you would move beyond just the financial numbers and you would get into all of the different aspects of the business and you know, if everybody who comes to that group just brings one idea, that's a lot of really great ideas that everybody can benefit from.

Curt Westphal: 15:53

It is, and we actually, as we move on, we actually have best practices and we have best idea thing. Where we compete, we throw some money in the pot and whoever comes in has the best idea of how they were able to bring some more profit into their stuff. So we have some games we throw into this stuff. We also have a green monkey. So you don't want the green monkey? The green monkey is for that shop. That's just not performing as well. Right? What are we going to incentivize? You know, if you get the green monkey, you got to display it in your building at somewhere in your building, right? Those fun little things that we do just to kind of like yeah, you don't want that. No, let's, let's move it over here.

Jamie Irvine: 16:27

well, and that makes a lot of sense to me too that you'd want to create that competitive environment, because usually if you're a business owner, you are competitive by nature, right, you want to win, and so that would definitely push people to kind of go to that next level, maybe step outside their comfort zone a little bit, but then get the benefit from that Exactly, and it's all about how can we help each other grow our businesses and be here, be where we need to be in 10 years, 20 years, down the road.

Curt Westphal: 16:55

It's to help everybody make sure that they're still there and viable and very profitable in what they're doing.

Jamie Irvine: 16:59

Yeah, and this is just one way that HDA Chark Pride helps its members, and it really, to me, highlights the value of being a part of a group like this, because where else would you be able to get access to all of these resources if you were just independent on your own?

Curt Westphal: 17:14

Yeah, I mean. The best part about it, right, is we do charge for this. It's an extra fee on top of the membership fee of what it is, but it is at least 60% to, if not 80%, cheaper than if we were to go outside and get into one of those automotive groups or one of those. We looked at the comparison of it. It's not a much. It's literally just to cover the expenses to be able to host the meetings and do what we have to do to make sure to go through it, yeah, and really at the end of the day, that is going to create return on investment.

Jamie Irvine: 17:44

It's going to be high, so you're not actually spending money.

Curt Westphal: 17:51

No, you're not spending anything. You put into it back and then some it wouldn't be worth your time otherwise, and we want to make sure it's worth everybody's time when we're doing it.

Jamie Irvine: 17:59

Well, kurt, thank you so much for taking the time to discuss the 20 group. We're actually going to have one of the members of this group come on next and we're going to learn about their perspective of the group and the involvement that they've had and the benefits that they've got. So I really appreciate you taking the time. Hey, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. So now that we know what the 20 group membership program is all about from Kurt, I'd like to talk to someone who's actually enrolled in the program to find out what they think about the program. So I'd like to introduce you to Alan Nix. He's the vice president of fixed operations at Betts Truck Parts. Alan, welcome to the Heavy Duty Parts Report. Thank you, sir, glad to have you here. So Kurt was just explaining to us this program that they've put together, the 20 group program. From your perspective, what would you say is one of the immediate benefits that you've received by enrolling in that program?

Allen Nicks: 18:51

So it's honestly, it's the ideas and the sharing. So we're all in the same business doing the same type of thing. Our customer bases might be a little bit different, um, but there's no one way of doing this and no one person has all the answers Right. So one of the benefits is is definitely sharing those experience. Every store does it a little bit different depending on our background. Um, you know what our life experiences are and it's taking those nuggets that you can that apply into our business and and rolling with it so.

Jamie Irvine: 19:21

so be honest. When you first went to the program, Did it feel a little strange to be sharing so much of your business?

Allen Nicks: 19:27

So a little bit of my background. When I started in the industry many years ago at a dealership, I was a part of a 20 group.

Allen Nicks: 19:34

I was a very young service manager at 24 years old and going to them was eye-opening Instead of just seeing what we had at our store to being able to share that information. So coming into this 20 group, I kind of knew what I was expecting and what it what I wanted to get out of it. So it's just it's meeting everybody that's involved. You know, sharing those numbers. I know a lot of people like we don't want to do that, but the only way to get better is to see what other people are doing and sharing numbers, having them all in the right spot, having consistency and seeing who's up and who's down. And if you want to move forward you've got to compare yourself against your peers. It's not stories, it's the numbers and the facts that are going to tell that story. So analyzing that and getting better.

Jamie Irvine: 20:15

So when you first enrolled in the program and you shared your numbers, was there something that kind of jumped out at you that surprised you a little bit, that you were like wow, I think we need to make an adjustment here.

Allen Nicks: 20:31

So some of the things you know, just location. So with us being in California, some of our personnel expenses and benefits are higher than some of the other stores. Um, and again, it's just it's part of doing business in California, so there's some of that. Um, some of the things I found, like our parts margins on the stuff that we sell was a lot higher than some of the others. There's reasons for some of that and you know you have to filter that out too.

Allen Nicks: 20:47

So some of the people in the in the 20 group do a lot of engine work and you'll see their part margins are lower. But to be able to share those and talk through it is really what the advantage was. So right now we're still doing a lot of setup, kind of laying all the groundwork and the rules and making sure on everybody's financial statement that we're putting the same stuff in the same categories, right, okay. So you know every business owner has a way that they've always done it and they reported on the financial statement, which is fine, but it's different across. So I'm really moving those personnel expenses so it's in the same category when we report it. So we're really looking at comparable apples to apples.

Jamie Irvine: 21:22

So what would you say, um, as you look forward for the next, let's say, quarter. What would you say? That you are looking forward to working on the most with the other members to improve your business?

Allen Nicks: 21:37

So in the next month we have a visit to Ohio and we're going to go do a facility tour and everything else and honestly, it's just open mind in that and observing and seeing what they're doing. It's just open mind in that and observing and seeing what they're doing, like to be able to go in there and being able to talk to employees. We're going to do a little bit of interviewing kind of with the employees and see how things are going and my expectation is just to find a couple things Like there's no one specific thing I'm looking for. I just want to see how their process is, how it flows, how their people react and what of that can I bring back is how it flows, how their people react, and what of that can I bring back.

Jamie Irvine: 22:11

It's funny as I listen to you talk about this the open-mindedness, the open viewpoints, that just being willing to learn and improve. I think this is such a critical part of getting better over time and when you're a business owner, a lot of times you have the tendency to want to keep all this to yourself. You're the owner or you're the manager, or you're in that leadership position, so you're expected to know the answers and really, at the end of the day I like what you said None of us have all the answers, and so learning from others is such a great way to get your business to that next level. Is that how you feel?

Allen Nicks: 22:48

A hundred percent. I mean theory. Theory is one thing, and everybody lives and makes decisions based off of their life experiences.

Curt Westphal: 22:54

Right.

Allen Nicks: 22:54

But if I can learn something through something that you went through that I don't want to go through like you paid the tuition, right, but I'm going to get the benefit and I think that's a lot of it. We have people in the industry the whole time I've been here that you know. This is how we've always done it. But customers change, expectations change, the vehicles in the market changes, right, so you've got to be willing to continue to change along with it, to always get better.

Jamie Irvine: 23:16

Yeah, so I know how busy everyone is, especially in the service side of the business, and there's also the constant challenge of having enough people. How much time is this taking for you to participate, and do you feel that that time is well spent?

Allen Nicks: 23:32

So it's definitely well spent. When it comes down to anything, without the people, we don't have a business right. There's AI that's coming in, there's a lot of automated processes that we're interjecting into our business, but in the end, we still need people to run it. So I think, when it comes to people, it's setting those clear expectations and then letting them know what's expected and then the path as far as how to get there.

Jamie Irvine: 23:55

How much time are you spending on a weekly or monthly basis actually in the group?

Allen Nicks: 24:01

With me and my position, reading reports and communicating with our service managers a lot and our branch managers as far as trends and what's going on is what I do. Okay, we've spent a lot of time in the past putting that development plan together. So if we have a new employee that comes in as a driver right at some point, where do they want to go and how does that transition look like? Right? So we've included in those steps a lot of like hda training that's available to us to work through and develop that. And again, we work with our managers on onboarding. We show them where the bathroom is, we show them how to turn on their computer and everything in one week. It's not over at that point.

Allen Nicks: 24:37

Onboarding is something that should last a year, right? Do we make sure they have all of the websites, login information that they need to look up parts? Do we make sure they actually know how to use those? Do login information that they need to look up parts? Do we make sure they actually know how to use those? Do we come back and follow up? I mean so many of us if we're not doing it and using it, it's out of sight, out of mind. So just to give them everything and say, here you go, tiger, go get them.

Allen Nicks: 25:03

It's how we did things 30 years ago. It's not super productive for most people, so it's putting that path together. Make sure that the managers in charge of them have checkpoints. It's putting that path together. Make sure that the managers in charge of them have checkpoints right. At one week. You need to make sure that they know all of this. At one month, you need to review all of this and really taking the time to stop, because we're all busy, but we've got to invest that time and do what's right for our people Right.

Jamie Irvine: 25:19

So, for you, though, to participate in the 20 group, is this something that you do? Your participation, is it weekly, is it monthly? Like, how much time do you spend there?

Allen Nicks: 25:28

So with the 20 group stuff, you have the numbers that you're pulling and putting into the group and we are having meetings every three to four months.

Jamie Irvine: 25:35

Every three to four months.

Allen Nicks: 25:36

So, we're going to get together and we're going to have a meeting, we're going to do a facility tour and everything. We're going to compare numbers and at that meeting then you're taking maybe areas that you were down on and what you want to focus on, right? So when you come back to the store from that, like, what are we going to put in place to improve those numbers, get the team to understand that's what we're doing, and start, you know, inserting those, and then you're measuring it and you're working on it. So. So the time in the 20 group is limited, but when you were taking that information we're getting back from them. We're really working on our business, but it's from the stuff we learned in the 20 group, yeah.

Allen Nicks: 26:07

So, again, it's constantly you're going to that next meeting when you're looking at your numbers. Did you make the improvement you wanted to? Yeah, yes, awesome. We want to continue to do that. What's next? Right, what's next? And it's just it. The 20 group really is a continual improvement process, with people that have ideas, and a lot of them are really good yeah.

Jamie Irvine: 26:25

So when I was talking to Kurt, he was mentioning how not only is this like a mastermind, where you bring everybody together and you can learn, but there's a competitive side to being part of the group as well. What is a green monkey?

Allen Nicks: 26:36

So the green monkey is something that nobody wants Like. It means the worst performance in our key categories that we're looking at. So you know, the goal is to be above average, yeah, and as long as you're above average, everything is good. But you definitely don't want to be the one that's trailing the pack.

Jamie Irvine: 26:52

And from that competitive side, like when we're in business, we're all competitive, right? How have you felt personally? Has it maybe given you a little extra push or motivated you because of the fact that, hey, I'm going to have to show my numbers here and I want to make sure that I'm leading the pack Right? So how, how does that impacted you as a leader in your company?

Allen Nicks: 27:13

So for sure, I'm a very competitive person, so when we come back and we have the items that we're working on, it helps you keep focus. There's so many things that come up and get thrown at you at a daily basis and it's like identifying what we really need to work on and focus on and what's just noise out there Right, so it it just helps revalue on a daily basis, like that's our goal, that's what we're working towards. We don't want to lose sight of that and we want to keep making improvements on that.

Jamie Irvine: 27:35

That's fantastic. That's fantastic. Well, you've been listening to the heavy duty parts report. We are here at HDA truck prides annual meeting in grape, texas, for 2024. We had Kurt Westfall, director of Program Development for the end users, earlier, and Alan Nix, vp of Fixed Operations at Betts Truck Parts. If you'd like to learn more, first of all, you can learn more about HDA Truck Pride by going to hdatruckpridecom, and if you'd like to learn more about Alan's company, bettstruckpartscom, links will be in the show notes. Alan, thank you so much for being on the show. It was really great talking to you, nice talking to you. Well, I hope you enjoyed learning about the 20 group membership program as much as I did. Again, whether you're participating in our training programs and our group coaching or you're participating in a program like the 20 group membership program, the most important part of it is coming together and sharing information. And now it's time for our segment that's Not Heavy Duty. In this edition of that's Not Heavy Duty.

Jamie Irvine: 28:31

I don't have a video to share with you, but I do have a story I want to tell you when I was first in the business. We're talking like 1998, new to not only the heavy-duty parts industry, but it was one of my first real jobs and I was working in a remanufacturing facility. I got a chance to be mentored by Alan Felling. Now, alan Felling was the co-founder of Canadian Brake Supply, which later became CBS Parts, a very dominant parts distribution company in Western Canada, specifically in the Vancouver area and up and down the West Coast in British Columbia. Okay, so Alan had sold his shares in that company and now he was the general manager of Contact Products, the company I was now working for, and he was teaching us young guys the parts business, and he used to use the expression don't be a castlekeeper. So what is a castlekeeper? Well, he explained it to us this way when he was young and he was trying to learn the parts business the old guard would keep all of the information they had to themselves and he likened it to a big castle with a moat and the drawbridge up, and you would come to the edge of the moat and you'd yell out to the keeper of the castle hello, hello, hello. And the keeper of the castle Hello, hello, hello. And the keeper of the castle would come up onto the wall, look down and inside of the castle was all of these treasures, right, the treasures of the kingdom. So all of this knowledge that they had, all of this value that they had, and they would basically say, like go away, figure it out for yourself.

Jamie Irvine: 30:04

And I think that that might have been the way it used to be in heavy duty, but that's not heavy duty in my opinion, and Alan Felling taught me that. He said I will not be a castle keeper. I am going to teach you everything I know about the parts business. I'm not going to keep all of this valuable information to myself, and he did that. He was an excellent teacher and excellent mentor, and all of us young guys who worked with him really really benefited from that. He was an excellent teacher and excellent mentor and all of us young guys who worked with him really really benefited from that, and I think that is the way that we should be moving forward.

Jamie Irvine: 30:35

We don't want to be an industry that eats its young, as it were. We're so fortunate when we do get a young person to join the industry. The last thing we want to do is keep this valuable information from them. The times have changed. The way that we consume and distribute information and knowledge globally has been radically changed by technology and in addition to that, I just think our attitudes need to be one of sharing information, and we saw the value of that. So at the beginning of the episode, we talked about our training program and the group coaching that we do with employees. You learn from our featured guests about the 20 group membership program and you heard Alan Nix talk about the benefit of sharing knowledge, even with other companies that compete in different regions around the country. But just getting those best practices and understanding where you are in relation to other people in the industry, and certainly when we're trying to impart this knowledge to the next generation of heavy duty people, we want to freely give that information to those people. You can even take it one step further as a company, you want to freely give away the knowledge that you have to your customers, because all of that knowledge transfer leads to strong relationships. It leads to employees making advancement and being able to take care of the customers, and it provides the customers with what they need to know to do business with you. So don't be a castlekeeper. That's not heavy duty. You so don't be a castlekeeper. That's not heavy duty. Let's freely work together as a group to make this industry as strong as possible. That's the heavy duty way.

Jamie Irvine: 32:14

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, jamie Irvin, and if you haven't already, head over to heavydutypartsreportcom, hit the follow button and sign up to our weekly email. We send out one email a week. That's it. We're not spamming you. One email a week tells you everything you need to know about the upcoming content that we are making on the show. In addition to that, if you are listening on your podcast player of choice, hit that follow button for free and if it gives you the option, give us a five-star rating and a review. I've heard that that helps us with our reach. And if you watch the video version of the podcast on YouTube, hit the subscribe button and the bell notification so you never miss out on new content. Thank you so much again for being here for this episode of the Heavy-Duty Parts Report and, as always, I want to encourage you to be heavy duty.