Ep.#202- Beyond the Repair: Turning Soft Skills into Your Shop's Ultimate Advantage- w/Sheryl Driggers

Episode Notes: 

The difference between a good collision repair shop and a truly exceptional one often boils down to one critical factor: how people feel when they interact with your business. 

Join us this week as Sheryl Driggers, former MSO owner and now lead CSR trainer for Mike Anderson's elite Spartan Groups, reveals the science and strategy behind creating meaningful connections that transform both customer experience and employee satisfaction.

Here are three effective actions collision shop leaders can take from Sheryl’s insights:

1. Cultivate a Positive Environment: Focus on creating a positive workplace atmosphere. Encourage a culture where positivity is the norm, as it enhances decision-making, creativity, and productivity. This can be achieved by recognizing and celebrating small wins, offering support, and fostering open communication among team members.
2. Enhance Emotional Connections: Train your staff to prioritize emotional intelligence in customer interactions. Encourage them to go beyond standard service protocols by making customers feel valued and understood. Simple gestures like personalized follow-ups or remembering customer preferences can create memorable experiences that enhance customer loyalty.
3. Implement the "One Degree" Concept: Encourage your team to consistently perform small, thoughtful actions that exceed customer expectations. This could include personalized thank-you notes, unexpected discounts, or simply going the extra mile in service delivery. These minor enhancements can significantly impact customer satisfaction and lead to increased referrals and repeat business.

Taking these actions, rooted in positive human interactions, can transform both your customer service and employee engagement, driving long-term success for your business!

GUEST CONTACT

Sheryl Driggers - sheryl@collisionadvice.com

CollisionAdvice – www.collisionadvice.com

Shawn Achor Ted Talk: https://youtu.be/GXy__kBVq1M?si=robDiWbKpUVOTuaA

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: https://w

Chapters

• 0:00 Maya Angelou's Wisdom for Business
• 3:37 Introduction to the MindWrench Podcast
• 9:13 Meeting Cheryl Driggers: Customer Experience Wizard
• 16:29 From Shop Owner to Elite Trainer
• 25:23 Building Trust and Communication
• 38:15 The Science of Positivity
• 43:34 Going the Extra Degree in Customer Service
• 49:34 Final Thoughts: The Impact We Make

Transcript

Rick: 0:00

There's a very famous quote from a well-known author and civil rights activist, maya Angelou, you may have heard before that says people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Now, if you run a collision business or really any kind of business where you're dealing directly with other people, other humans, both internally and externally, there is not any other message that is more important to remember than that it applies to everyone in your company.

Rick: 0:37

Welcome to the MindWrench Podcast with your host, rick Sellover, where minor adjustments produce major improvements in mindset, personal growth and success. This is the place to be every Monday, where we make small improvements and take positive actions in our business and personal lives that will make a major impact in our success, next-level growth and quality of life.

Rick: 1:04

Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to the MindWrench Podcast. I'm your host, rick Salone. Thanks so much for stopping in. If you're a returning listener and haven't done so already, please take a minute and click the follow or subscribe button and then rate and review the show. When you rate and review the show the algorithms for Apple, spotify, google Podcasts, iheartradio, amazon Music and all the other platforms we'll see that it's valuable and show it to more people that have never seen it before, and hopefully it can help them too. I would really really really appreciate your help, sharing this word with your friends and family as well, and if you're a brand new listener, welcome. I hope you find something of value here that helps you in your personal or professional life as well. Please make sure to click the subscribe or follow button so you never miss another episode. If you've been listening to the show for a while or been on the receiving end of my daily quote of the day emails, or maybe just catch my posts on Facebook or LinkedIn, you know I'm all about the quotes, right. By the way, if you'd like to start receiving my quote of the day emails, there's a link in the show notes to sign up. It's free and you can unsubscribe at any time. Anyways, there's a very famous quote from a well-known author and civil rights activist, maya Angelou, you may have heard before. That says people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel, will never forget how you made them feel. Now, if you run a collision business or really any kind of business where you're dealing directly with other people, other humans, both internally and externally, there is not any other message that is more important to remember than that. It applies to everyone in your company, from your CSRs and estimators all the way back to your detail department at the back of the shop, as well as every customer that walks through your front door or reaches out to your business via email, text or a phone call. This also applies to everyone in your personal life as well. This little statement from Maya is not only 100% true every single time, but it's something that should be a culture within your business culture within your business. My guest this week is going to provide some context, some clarity and some science behind why the right kind of communication, human connection and the customer experience can make or break your potential for a successful, thriving business that not only attracts customers but employees as well. This week's conversation is with Cheryl Driggers from Mike Anderson's Collision Advice Team, where her expertise in the soft skills side of business and customer experience helps her train and coach the elite Spartan 300 groups to award-winning levels. Let's get to that interview. Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the MindWrench Podcast. I'm your host, rick Solover. Thanks so much for stopping in and spending a few minutes with me today. So this week I'm your host, rick Solover. Thanks so much for stopping in and spending a few minutes with me today. So this week I'm super excited.

Rick: 3:48

I've got a great guest coming on this week. My special guest is not only a former 3Shop MSO owner, but also a dynamic keynote speaker, a performance coach. He's now the lead CSR trainer coach for Mike Anderson's Spartan Groups. I'm sure you've heard of the Spartan Groups, right, helping some of the top performing shops in the country excel at their front office or front of house operations. Now, don't be fooled by the gentle voice. She is a true badass in the soft skills arena. So please join me in welcoming an amazing coach and customer experience wizard, cheryl Drager's, from Collision Advice, to the MindWrench podcast. Cheryl, welcome to the show.

Sheryl: 4:30

Rick, thank you so much for having me and such a generous welcome.

Rick: 4:35

Oh, not a problem, I'm happy to do it. I'm happy that you're here. You know what's funny is, for the longest time I'd seen your name and I really didn't know who you are and what you did, right, I just knew you were part of Mike Anderson's group. But then I met you at his Spartan conference and we got a chance to talk and get to know each other a little bit and I'm just blown away and amazed by how much you know about this particular and extremely important piece of the collision shops business. Right, I mean, you can lose a customer before they even get halfway through the parking lot, let alone, you know, done talking to your csr. So excelling in that piece of the business, I think, is just it's phenomenal and I'm excited to share how you managed to do this and how you're helping chops today.

Sheryl: 5:21

So absolutely well, it is you, anyone who interacts with our customers. They are representing a brand. I always say that we are the director of first impression If you're the first person that interacts with the customer, whether that is on a phone call or maybe they come into the shop, and so really equipping everyone you know not only the customer service professionals, but everyone who's going to interact with our customers to be that extraordinary director of first impressions.

Rick: 5:50

Absolutely. That is probably job number one for anybody sitting north of the entrance to the actual production area, right.

Sheryl: 5:59

Absolutely.

Rick: 6:00

Good, well, listen, why don't you just for the guests and so everybody knows? I'd like a little bit of your background, how you managed to go from a shop co-owner, shop owner, to working for Mike Anderson and Collision Advice and being, you know, his main coach and mentor and instructor and trainer in the soft skills arena. So how did you make that transition?

Sheryl: 6:28

Absolutely Well. So my story in the collision industry started back in 2001. My husband and I had been married for one year and our first year of marriage. We were just traveling in different directions and really didn't see each other, and so we were looking for a business opportunity both of us, you know, we were in in our 20s, we both had college degrees and we're looking to be entrepreneurs, and so we opened our first shop in Tallahassee, florida, back in 2001. Actually, it's one week after the 911. It was September 17, 2001.

Sheryl: 7:04

We opened our first shop with a business partner, and so we then grew from one to two shops from 2001 to 2004. We opened our second location and then also Jason my husband and I, we had our first child, and so that was a busy year for us had two kids, barrett and Madison. They're both 19 and 20 now, but then we waited a little bit before we opened our third location, and we opened that in 2017. So, did that? We love this industry. We absolutely loved our team. I absolutely had a growing process, you know, in real time, not only just learning a new industry, but learning how to be a leader, and we had the opportunity to sell in 2021. And we did.

Sheryl: 8:05

And you know, over the years we had worked with Mike Anderson right, we were part of his business council group and we had worked with him, also as a consultant, having him come into our shops, and so once we sold, it was a natural transition for me to join Mike and Tracy Dombrowski, tiffany Driggers and the Collision Advice team, and that's what I've been doing since 2022 now, Wow, that's awesome.

Rick: 8:34

That's awesome and it's cool the fact that he was actually one of the people that helped your business when you were still a business owner. So I think that'll be a continuing trend with Mike. Some of the best people he's gained, I think he's gaining from former shops that said, hey, this guy's really good. I want to do what he does with him every day, right.

Sheryl: 8:53

Absolutely. He is. He's amazing at what he does, but he is also, you know, just one of the most humble and genuine people that I know. So great combination.

Rick: 9:06

Absolutely. Yeah. The people that haven't seen his his true side, they just think he's a very passionate and excited and driving guy, you know, in front of an audience. But man, a dude is so humble, so nice, so laid back in in person, it's just's just. It's such a cool contrast. So, anyway, so you joined his collision advice group and did you come in as someone that specialized in the CSR or the soft skills role, or did you just come in as a general coach and go, hey, where can I fit?

Sheryl: 9:43

So when I first started, I was doing weekly coaching calls with Spartan members, so part of the Spartan group. One of the things that Collision Advice offers is we do one-on-one coaching with our Spartan members, and so I had taken on some of the Spartan clients doing weekly coaching calls. But my passion is around people, and so, whether it is the customer experience or the employee experience, one of the things that Mike and the team allowed me to do was work and start creating. Well, really, they had already had things created, but start updating the customer experience content, and so then we launched a pilot class and then I started doing all of the customer experience training from there.

Rick: 10:34

Awesome. So what was one of the first things you really grasped onto and try to get the shop owners to understand? So I know there's a big connection between who's in the back and who's in front, isn't there?

Sheryl: 10:51

Yeah. So I think one of the most important things as a shop owner really is to understand that how you are impacting your team right, how you are impacting your team right. So when we walk into a room, you know, even without saying anything, we are impacting the people around us. You know whether we are coming in with this negative attitude or we're coming in with a positive mindset of okay, here is an opportunity for us to get better. So, for me, one of the things that I love to talk about is how can we impact the people on our team in a way where they thrive in their positions right? How can we create that environment? How can we protect that environment? Right, it's the leader's responsibility to really protect those cultures, these work environments where people are spending more day at work you know, more of their time at work than they are with their families so, really working to create that healthy culture.

Sheryl: 11:58

Now, every single person on the team impacts culture, but it starts with leadership. It starts with leadership when we have a healthy culture. When we create that not only creating great relationships with you know leadership and team members, but also facilitating that among the team that's when we're going to have better results. That's where we're going to. We're going to see that on a profit and loss statement. That absolutely impacts, you know, impacts our financials. It impacts our performance, and so a lot of times, we separate this. Well, this is soft skills and this is financials. Yes, there is a separation, but one impacts the other.

Rick: 12:38

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Rick: 13:47

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Sheryl: 14:48

with their customers. You know, mike has. The people that are involved in Spartans are really the elite. You know of the elite, right? So I would say that there's, you know, there wasn't a huge disconnect necessarily in how they interacted with their internal customers versus their external. I think all of us have blind spots and one of the things that I love about working with all of our Spartan members is that they want people to help them in their blind spots. Right, they are welcoming hey, if I have a blind spot, please tell me, and they don't get defensive. And so being able to work with some great Spartan members, you know, having these conversations going on site, doing employee engagement sessions, you know, with their team members and then facilitating some of those hard conversations right, maybe not conversations we want you know to hear, but then the impact after we have these conversations is just impacting the business tremendously.

Rick: 15:48

Right, yeah, and the only reason I ask that and I've met many of Mike's clients at different events and stuff and most everyone I've met has been just so high quality and so laser focused on making improvements and stuff and it's great.

Rick: 16:05

But I come from a background of being of service to hundreds of collision shops for many years and I'd say the predominant thing that I would see in the dysfunction of most any shop I dealt with because I was always there trying to solve problems and help where I could help but that huge disconnect between you know, the shop manager, shop owner going back yelling at his employees you know, come on, get that done, clean that up. You know versus they would come up and they treat their customers almost the same way until they would like catch it, and then they, you know, or someone in the office would catch it and kind of take over the conversation. And to me that just seemed like such, a such a gap that I didn't know if anybody actually taught how to overcome that and how to, how to transition that Right. So that's what I was really. I was really drawn to our conversation just with all that in the back of my head from from my experience.

Sheryl: 16:59

Well and and and complete transparency. That was who I used to be at my shops. You know when, as I mentioned, my husband and I when we opened our first shop, we were both, you know, mid twenties and I, you know, my experience with leadership at that point was everyone I had ever worked under was command and control. I mean, that's what I knew and so that's what I thought leadership was. And you know, going back to, you know what you were talking about of. You know, I don't think sometimes we realize the impact that we have on people in that style of leadership. And you know, I had an awakening of the impact that I was having on the people that I worked with, and not only the people that I worked with, but then, you know, also my husband, my kids.

Sheryl: 17:48

I read the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

Sheryl: 17:53

One of the first things that he asked the readers to do at the very beginning of the book is write out what people would say about you at your funeral.

Sheryl: 18:04

And when I did that exercise, I mean it wrecked me when I realized the impact that I was having on people. See, because in my mind, you know, I'm getting things done right, I'm the one making things happen. I go in and I bulldoze and I figure out a way, and then being awakened to the impact that that was having on other people, and that was really the start of, you know, my journey on this is not who I want to be Right, this is not the kind of impact I want to have on other people. And really then you know, digging in whether into you know John Maxwell books and other leadership books that that journey then took me to you know, the John Maxwell leadership training and some other leadership training, in order to become that person who was having a positive impact on the people around around me instead of just that negative. Oh, I can't, you know. Know, I can't do this anymore. That's and that's awesome too.

Rick: 19:06

Uh, uh, cheryl, because I you know, I often refer to mindset in in my episodes and what I talk about with people, about and that's you know. There's so many people I think they're stuck in a mindset that may be negative or fixed and they just assume or they believe that they can't change that. Now you took a fixed or a negative mindset somewhat right, recognized it and then made proactive actions happen to get past that and get into more of a positive mindset, and that's just further proof that everybody has that capability to make those changes and change their life and change their environment and how the world reacts to them, and that's awesome. I'm glad to hear that.

Sheryl: 19:52

Yeah, absolutely, and we do so. We all have a natural communication style where we feel comfortable, and so one of the things that I learned is through the John Maxwell organization about the discommunication theory. Right, it's just, the discommunication theory was developed by American psychologist William Marston back, you know, I think, 1920s, when he was writing his book the Emotions of Normal People the emotions of normal people, and in this what he found as he was doing his research is that as humans, we're different, but we're predictably different, and there are a number of different communication tools out there. But this seems to be one of the most simple ways to learn to understand number one, our own communication style, and then start to understand the communication style of the people around us.

Sheryl: 20:46

And I was naturally what is called a dominant and conscientious communicator. So the dominant is very aggressive, you know, they want to win at all costs, they want to be in control. The conscientious communicator is a perfectionist, very much data, systems, processes, and so my natural communication style is focused around task outcome, processes and people or not people. What I had to learn was is to be intentional, to develop relationships with the people around me, versus just spewing data and results and systems and processes at people.

Rick: 21:29

Right, yeah, disc assessment, that's an interesting tool. I've been through that a couple of times and throughout my career, so I know that, doing the research for you before we talked, I know that you know you facilitated a lot of seminars, you are a keynote speaker and I know I've seen you speak a couple of times and which you know. Obviously that that takes a lot of training, it takes a lot of confidence, it takes a lot of things to get up in front of a group and and speak on a subject, to get up in front of a group and speak on a subject, but to further that and go and do these seminars that you've been doing, from what I understood, you did seminars in CSR, in customer service representative training. You've done leadership, you've done culture building and even financial best practices. So do you do those within just Mike Anderson's collision advice, or is that something you actually do in another part of your own business?

Sheryl: 22:29

So, yeah, everything I do within collision repair is with Mike, tiffany and Tracy and the collision advice team. I have had opportunities to, you know, do some nonprofit speaking and some speaking outside of our industry, and because I love to talk about culture, about leadership and about my faith, and so I've had opportunities there also.

Rick: 22:55

Oh, that's awesome. So if you really want to work with Cheryl, then got to get on Mike's team, so it's a small little plug for collision advice. So anyways, I'm glad to hear that. I know you've been involved in a lot of stuff in your career and you're making a big difference with the shops that you're working with now. So can you go through maybe a couple of things that you know, those outside of the Spartan 300 group, some of the things that they should be aware of, some things that you can help with, some things that you think that you know shops kind of missed the boat on, and a couple tweaks and they can be right back in the game.

Sheryl: 23:32

Yeah, absolutely so. You know customer experience for sure. I think a lot of times we as shop owners and I was guilty of this also is, you know, we send our technicians to training or we send our estimators to training, but we're not sending our customer service professionals to training to help them be equipped with everything that they need to deliver extraordinary to our customers and so really equipping your entire team with everything that they need to be successful. So I do the customer experience training with Collision Advice. We do virtual and we do it in person. I also do the employee experience where I will go into a shop and I will facilitate employee engagement sessions. A shop and I will facilitate employee engagement sessions.

Sheryl: 24:27

I'll do surveys, sometimes before we go, where we are giving the employees a survey that they fill out beforehand, and then I go in and I facilitate some conversations around that, and then sometimes it's, you know, I'm just going into the shop having these conversations one-on-one with each team member and not doing a survey before, but really working to fill in the gaps of communication, really working to identify. Okay, do we have any blind spots? Have we, as leaders, made any promises to our team where you know we have a lot of things going on and maybe something fell through that we didn't follow up on and really that's been eating away at someone. Well, in these conversations, you know, some of that stuff has come to light and we can have some healthy conversations and resolve those issues, Because one of the most important things in any business, whether collision repair or any business, is a foundation of trust.

Sheryl: 25:23

I mean you business is a foundation of trust. I mean you have to have a foundation of trust within your organization if you want to have a healthy workplace, and so that's really some of the goals that we go into when I go into shops is number one making sure that we fill in the gaps of communication. There is that foundation of trust where we can have healthy conflict. You know, sometimes people think that all conflict is bad and it's not. Conflict, if it's done in a healthy way, is where growth happens. That's where we're going to come up with ideas that we would never come up with before if we don't hear each other's perspective in a healthy way.

Rick: 26:01

Yeah, it leads to growth on both sides of the conversation too, doesn't it?

Sheryl: 26:04

Absolutely. But so many times, as human beings, we avoid hard conversations with the, whether it's of you know, I don't want to make them mad, or I don't know how they're going to respond or react, or whatever the reason is, and then we just don't have the most productive environment because we can't have those conversations Right. I mean, have you ever read the book the Speed of Trust and this is by Stephen Covey's son? I think his name is also Stephen.

Rick: 26:40

No, I don't think I've read that one. I think I've seen it as I'm going through and looking at books that I'm going to buy and I know I've seen it. Just I don't think I've read that one.

Sheryl: 26:49

Well, it's a great one also, and it talks about when there is a foundation of trust in any relationship, whether a working relationship or a personal relationship, the speed of what can get done is so much faster Because, if you think about it, if there's not a foundation of trust in a relationship, so let's just take. You know, in a work relationship, we're choosing our words wisely it's taking longer to get things done because we are not, you know, interacting in a way where I can just put an idea out there without worrying if I'm going to offend somebody or if somebody's going to get upset. Instead, when there's that level of trust, we have each other's back. I can have good, hard conversations and know that, hey, when we walk away, we still might not 100% disagree, but we have each other's and we still have the best of the team in mind.

Rick: 27:42

Right, and boy, I completely agree with that. And I know with the groups that you're working with and you know ownership's at a great level and the mentality and the mindset of those folks running these shops is stellar. But you bring in employees, right, that from came from other shops and I will tell you, just based on my own previous experience, most of those people have huge distrust for the leadership of of any collision shop. Just based on previous experience, right, I don't know how many conversations I because I'd get back in every shop and talk to painters and I'd talk to the body guys and the porters every time I was visiting shops as a vendor and I'd always hear that phrase well, I don't want to piss him off, I don't want to make him mad. Boy, he's rough on us when he's mad and there was always that type of dynamic going on in a lot of the shops.

Rick: 28:45

Or you know, they just they didn't feel safe really to voice their opinion for fear of retribution, uh, or they didn't trust what was going on up in the front office, which is horrible. I mean, as an employee, you should have great trust in wherever you're at that. Hey, they're taking care of me, they're looking out for me. I'm going to be okay. I should be able to say my opinion on something if it's valid, right? But the shop culture, as you probably saw as a three shop MSO, those employees, you know they're timid, they don't want to say anything. They got a lot to say, they bury a lot but they don't want to say it, right? Yeah?

Sheryl: 29:17

Well, and so a couple of things there. Number one that's why I love the engagement surveys, because then, when we did an engagement surveys, we got more feedback and those surveys than just sitting down with people one on one or even, you know, communicating on a daily basis. And we got this feedback from people that we were close to. We had close relationships with a lot of our team members. We had a number of team members who had been with us almost since we opened, and so we felt that we knew each other well.

Sheryl: 29:53

We did things outside of work and I remember a specific survey that we did where we got feedback on that survey that we had blind spots, right, and so, yeah, and most people are going to feel more comfortable giving you feedback on a survey and then having a conversation about it versus just coming and having that conversation direct. And so really looking for ways of you know how can I make sure I have systems, not only just systems and processes in place, but looking for ways to fill in the gaps of communication. Looking for ways to fill in the gaps of communication. So for us, that was one we also one of the things that we did when we, you know, realized we had gaps in communication. Was we started a company newsletter which sounds you know, you know, a company newsletter, really.

Rick: 30:43

There's always three people in my shop.

Sheryl: 30:45

Well, but that really helped everyone feel like they were part of what was going on. Because one of the things that we found was, you know, our team did not feel that they were kept informed of the direction of the company. And you know, for us we thought we were doing a good job with that. But we were just doing a good job with that, for example, with our location managers, and it wasn't always just naturally getting to every team member. So we really looked for ways of, okay, how can we fill gaps in communication? But then also, it can't just be lip service that, hey, I want you to. You know, we have this open door policy and we want you to give us feedback, Because how you respond to someone when they give you feedback is going to determine if they're ever going to give you that feedback again.

Sheryl: 31:35

And I remember, you know, we would have, you know, leadership meetings with all of our location managers, and we might, let me preface this by my husband and I are both what's considered dominant communicators and so that D-style communication. And so we felt we were asking the right questions, but no one was necessarily giving us feedback or saying they didn't agree with us. So we thought, okay, everyone's on board with whatever the situation was, but what we really found was we weren't creating that safe place for people to give us that feedback and us not be defensive or us not correct them.

Sheryl: 32:21

Yes, not critical of what they're saying to us. Yeah, and so that was one of the things that we had to do, just with our natural communication style. Number one is scale back the aggressiveness and really make that safe place for people to give you feedback that they disagree with you and then, when they do, make sure that how I respond is, in a way that's number one, respectful and that they'll want to give me feedback again.

Rick: 32:46

I think that's really important.

Rick: 32:48

You know, in today's climate, there's a lot of talk about culture and building better cultures in the shop, because the traditional body shop culture was never great, it just wasn't.

Rick: 33:08

Let's build a better culture for our shop and I see great examples of that out there. You know, working with all the folks that I've met in this industry that belong to something like you know, like Mike's Collision Group, his Spartan 300s and even the ones before that that were part of his original performance groups that he would do for Exalta and DuPont, that you know they started understanding at a higher level. Yeah, we need to have better cultures and I think that message still needs to be driven today because there's still a lack of culture in a lot of shops. But with today's shortage of technicians and the ability to get quality people man, listen, you can have the best equipment in the world, you can have the nicest looking shop, you could have the biggest, brightest sign out there, but if you don't treat your people right, you're going to end up with no employees because everybody aged out or moved on to someplace else.

Sheryl: 34:03

Right, yeah, so I was just reading a report that SCRS did. It's an industry report where I believe they interviewed and don't quote me because I was just reading it and I haven't gotten through all 10 pages but they had interviewed, I believe, over 800 technicians in our industry and one of the things that they found in this report, this survey, was that most technicians when they leave a job, it's because they don't feel appreciated in a work environment, and those are things that if we focus on, okay, how can I make sure my team feels appreciated? One of the things that Mike and the Collision Advice team did was brought in Dr Paul White, who is the co-author of the book the Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, brought him in December of last year where he did an all-day seminar and then I was able to then do some additional training with him and be certified to teach that content. And that's one of the things that we offer at Collision Advice, because what we have found is that's part of the culture piece, right, Is being able to show appreciation, but everyone receives appreciation differently.

Sheryl: 35:25

Right, there's some people that you know they would be mortified if you were to recognize them publicly, versus someone who would love that morning meeting shout out. Some people want quality of time, Some people want help. They just want help. They're overwhelmed and so just really understanding that showing appreciation to your team is not, you know, buying lunch right, it's getting to know them as individuals, understanding their appreciation language, how they receive appreciation, and then communicating that authentically.

Rick: 36:03

Nope, spot on, spot on. And to your point about the survey I was talking with Jay Gonan from Wrenchway and he had done a technician survey the past two years in a row and I think this last one he did in association with ASA. But pretty much the same sentiment was you know the real reason. You know these guys are leaving the shops and stuff is it's not just technician pay. These guys are leaving the shops and stuff is it's not just technician pay, but it's other things that you know how they're treated, how they're, if they're appreciated or not, and if they feel that the ownership has, you know, their best interests in mind or really cares about them. Right? I mean, we're emotional beings, people are emotional beings.

Rick: 36:52

I think sometimes in the workplace, people that run the workplace forget that they just treat them like, hey, you're just here to get something done, please go get that done, right?

Rick: 36:57

Not? You know what's going on in your life and I've seen it just talking at the backside of shops and dealing with people that are going through, you know, divorces and breakups and their kids are being pulled away from, and all these things that go on in a human's life affects every person, right? So it doesn't matter if that's your A-Tech or that's your wash guy. There's going to be things that go on in their lives that are going to affect them emotionally, that's going to affect their performance. You know, being a shop that at least communicates and understands that stuff will hold on to that guy once he pulls his stuff together, once he gets through the hard time or whatever, as opposed to the guy that just hey, I don't care what your problems are, get to work, get that done. I need that out by five. You know those types of things drive people out and they'll look for someplace else.

Sheryl: 37:46

So absolutely 100%.

Rick: 37:48

All right, let's shift gears a little bit. So, absolutely All right, let's shift gears a little bit. One of the things you said is, which I really love, this was there science to being positive, science to positivity? Can you explain that?

Sheryl: 38:00

Absolutely so. I watched a TED Talk and of course now my mind is going blank right now, but the statistic is and I learned this from a TED TED talk, and I'll have to try to remember his name he is an author and Harvard professor and in this talk he talked about that we are 31% smarter in a positive frame of mind, and that's backed by neuroscience. So if you think about it, when you are in a negative frame of mind, you're not productive, you're not creative, you aren't making good decisions. Right, If you think about those, those high emotions, when you're in that high pressured situation or you have these high emotions, these negative emotions whether it's anger, stress, frustration you're not making good decisions, You're not creative, You're not productive.

Sheryl: 38:52

But when we are, when we can reframe things and I'm not talking about, you know, unicorns and rainbows right, when we can reframe a situation and say, okay, here I have an opportunity. Number one and number two I have control to manage my emotions. Two I have control to manage my emotions. My emotions do not control me, I manage my emotions. And so, whether it is, you know, pausing to, you know in a conversation, if it's, if it's getting heated for everyone just to take a few breaths or, you know, whatever the situation is, it's when we can learn to manage our emotions and remember hey, we're 31% smarter in a positive frame of mind. I don't know anyone who doesn't want to make good decisions and be creative and be productive. And so it starts with one of the most important things that anyone can do, no matter your position, is to manage your mind and manage those emotions.

Rick: 39:50

You're talking right in my wheelhouse here, so I appreciate that. I know personally I make horrible decisions when I'm mad. There's not one single time I go glad I did that when I was pissed off because that worked out really well. It doesn't work out in relationships, your home life or your work life ever. It's tough to control that stuff. It really is, and there's some people that are kind of hardwired to be hot-headed, quick draw on the angers or the swear words or whatever.

Rick: 40:20

But spending some time working on your own self which I've been promoting for years understanding why you work the way you work and then finding ways to manage that and control that, can make a massive difference. You know, in how you treat your employees, how you treat your spouse, your kids, your neighbors you know that jerk that keeps letting his dog crap on your front lawn. You know there's a lot of benefits to positivity and I know, speaking of positivity, we both know Dave Luer right and his uh, his positivity summit he does every year, which is freaking awesome. I love that thing. But you were on there a couple times, weren't you?

Sheryl: 40:57

yeah, I was. It's been a number of years ago, but yeah, I believe I was on two of the positivity summits, uh, back in the day of, because this is something as I, as I mentioned. So my natural communication style part of that is a perfectionist, and so perfectionists tend to be negative, because nothing is ever perfect and nothing will ever be perfect on this side of heaven. So, like, we always see what is wrong, and so that's one of the things that I have really been intentional to work on over the years is of okay, yes, I'm going to strive for excellence, but perfection doesn't exist, and so I have to work on, you know, reframing, you know whether a situation, or working on making sure that I'm keeping that positive frame of mind. And what am I consuming? Right? Am I consuming things that are stirring up negativity in me or am I putting into my brain things that are going to help me become the person who I want to be?

Rick: 42:06

Right, and what Cheryl means by consuming. If anybody didn't catch, that is the things that and I've studied this extensively the things that you allow in. So, through your eyes, through your ears, through your surroundings, you know your body and your mind takes in. You know senses from, you know several areas, but the stuff that you consume you know the TV that you're watching, the news that you listen to which I would say if I could get anybody to do anything, it'd be stop watching the news 24-7, because all that does is poison your mind with negativity. They thrive on that, right.

Rick: 42:42

But, like I said, the music you listen to, the shows you go watch, you have control over that and you can make a difference just by changing your surroundings, changing what you do. Take in what you consume and start making some positive improvements, whether it's starting to read some self-help books or personal development books, or watching a couple free courses on YouTube or on the internet, or just putting yourself in a better surrounding, putting yourself outside, where nature is, where it's nice and peaceful, take a walk, or just, you know, putting yourself in a better surrounding, putting yourself outside, where nature is, where it's nice and peaceful, take a walk, or whatever you know, stay out of the high stress situations. There's tons of things you can do to improve that. Sorry, I didn't mean to hijack the conversation on positivity.

Sheryl: 43:23

You're absolutely spot on. I love it.

Rick: 43:27

You know you had a couple other things I was going to talk to you about. We've still got a few minutes here. So you had said something about nobody notices normal. You know what. I've heard that before but I never really thought about that. But do you want to expand on that a little bit?

Sheryl: 43:40

Yeah. So if you think about it, you know, if you've been to a fast food restaurant recently and you went through the drive-thru a fast food restaurant recently and you went through the drive-thru and if you got what you ordered, you didn't go back to work or go back home and just tell everybody oh my goodness, they got the order right, right, you just don't go talk about something that is normal. And so one of the things that I talk about a lot is we have to be extraordinary, we have to be remarkable. Is we have to be extraordinary, we have to be remarkable? And there was someone that I worked with a number of years ago at Universal Collision. He was one of our estimators. He gave me a small book called 212, the One Extra Degree, and in the book the premise is you have 211 degrees of water. That's just really hot, right, it's pretty much pointless. And then you have 212 degrees of water. That's just really hot, right, it's pretty much pointless. And then you have 212 degrees of water. Then is creating steam to power a massive machine because it's boiling now, and so it's just that one degree difference going from useless to now we're powering a massive machine.

Sheryl: 44:48

And so if we give everything that we do, whether it's in conversation, whether it's in our task, everything that we do, with one more degree right. One more degree that is going to create all of these little extraordinary moments, whether it's for our internal customer or our external customer. Right, and we should. I should want to deliver extraordinary to my internal customer just as much as I do my external, and so when I start looking for one more degrees, that is what is going to create extraordinary and that's what people talk about. And so if you want to, you know improve, you know your.

Sheryl: 45:30

If you're a collision repair shop and you want to improve your customer experience, or your customers who are referring you to other people or who are coming back to you you know they've been into another accident you want to create extraordinary experiences all throughout the journey, because it's all of these little wows, it's all of these little one degrees that, by we get to the end of the repair process, has created this massive, extraordinary, remarkable feeling for that customer of oh my goodness, they have provided this extraordinary service. They made it radically easy for me to do business with them. They always went above and beyond, and then that's what the customer remembers, even if there has been hiccups along the way, because we all know that we live in the real world and things are going to go wrong. But it's, you know, it's how we handle things when things do go wrong. Is that creates that extraordinary?

Rick: 46:27

So, cheryl, give me a couple examples of what that one degree would look like. What's some things you've seen people do in the collision center that are the equivalent of that one more degree for the customer?

Sheryl: 46:40

Right. So let's talk about external customer first. So one more degree for an external customer might be okay. I have a customer who's calling and maybe they have. Okay, I have a customer who's calling and maybe they have. Let's say, they have State Farm insurance and I need to have an assignment sent over. I'm not asking the customer to get State Farm to send that assignment over. I'm doing one more degree and saying, ms Smith, if you can give me your claim number, I will contact State Farm on your behalf and I will ask them if they can send what's called an assignment over to us and then we can get the process started.

Sheryl: 47:15

But what I see most of the time is shops are putting that back on the customer's to-do list. So that would be one more degree Now internally. Right, because I wanted to deliver that one more degree internally just as much as I do externally. So maybe that is you know. Maybe we have a customer come in and let's just say they're coming back because their AC stopped working.

Sheryl: 47:41

You know what one more degree internally is that I'm getting as much as the information from the customer at the very beginning with the customer. So when I go back to talk to my technical person. I'm not just dumping something on their lap. I'm getting as much information as I can to then provide them with the information that they need to then take over versus just what I see a lot of times at shops is we have the front of the shop and then the back of the shop, and usually I see people pointing fingers. Instead, what we should be doing is collaborating together, doing that one more degree of okay, how can I make your life better? That should be my mindset and everything that I do internally and externally.

Rick: 48:25

Oh, that's awesome. That's exactly what I was looking for too, so thank you for sharing that. Listen as we get close to wrapping up here. Is there anything that you want to share that I didn't ask about yet, because I know you have so much in your background, cheryl, and so many things that you do, and I know you're parts of a lot of different things, but is there something else you wanted to make sure the listeners knew?

Sheryl: 48:54

I think we covered most everything. The thing that is most important to me is just communicating that we all make an impact on people, right? It's either positive or negative. There's no neutral, and so my question to everyone would be what kind of impact are you having on the people around you, whether it's your family, whether it's your teammates, whether it's the complete stranger that you run into at the store? Because we all are making an impact. So the question is what kind of impact are you making?

Rick: 49:32

what kind of impact are you making? Excellent, excellent. I ask myself that every day, that's part of my mantra in the morning is making sure I'm making an impact, a positive impact on the industry and on anybody I serve that day. So I love that. That's perfect. I'll ask you one more question before we go and I didn't prep before this, but if you had to take two seconds and think about it, what is the greatest lesson you've ever learned? One that sticks with you more than anything else that you refer back to?

Sheryl: 49:58

The greatest lesson I've ever learned is to listen more than you speak. I tend to react versus respond, and you know. Going back to the impact that you have on people, I want people to feel heard, valued and seen when they interact with me, and so listen more than I speak.

Rick: 50:20

That's why God gave you two ears and one mouth right.

Sheryl: 50:23

Yes.

Rick: 50:25

I love that. Well, listen, this has been so good. This is such good information. I really appreciate you spending the time with me today, really thankful that you're out there doing what you're doing and that our paths did cross. I'm sure we'll talk a lot more after this but, cheryl, thank you so much for coming in and spending the time and sharing a little bit of your wisdom with us. I really do appreciate it.

Sheryl: 50:49

Thank you so much for having me. It was absolutely an honor.

Rick: 50:52

Well, I hope you enjoyed my interview with Cheryl Driggers from Collision Advice and learned a few things that you didn't know before about the importance of honest communications and authentically connecting with not only your customers but your internal team as well. I'll leave Cheryl's contact information, as well as links to the book Cheryl mentioned in the show notes. Well, that's all I had for you today. Thanks again for tuning in. I really appreciate your support and I hope you have a great week. I can always be reached at wwwrixelovercom, where you can find all my social media links podcast episodes, blog posts and much more.

Rick: 51:27

My wretch whispers truth, so clear Tits that drive away the fear. Rick. Rick's voice cuts through the noise. Blog posts and much more.