What Are You Reading?

 

Those of you who have had the (pleasure?) of interviewing with me you probably had to come up with an answer to that question.  And if you are currently working for us, you probably came up with a good one!

I ask this for several reasons:  First, I’m genuinely interested in understanding what makes a person tick, what they’re interested in and how they occupy their mind in quiet times.  Second, I have found that the smartest, most creative people I know tend to be life-long readers.  Third, I believe that you have to continually challenge and inspire your mind if you expect to keep it sharp over the course of a career.

By the way, it doesn’t matter so much WHAT you read, just that you DO read.   Business books, novels, magazines – they’re all valuable.  While I subscribe to about 15 magazines, The New York Times, the local paper and several online magazines that are personalized for me, I also try to have one or more books going at the same time.

So, I’m adding a new feature to the blog that will hopefully inspire you to pick up a book of your own (maybe even one I’ve described).

What Am I Reading?

The Last Greatest Magician in the World by Jim Steinmeyer.  This biography of Howard Thurston, who at one time rivaled Houdini but today is all but forgotten, is a fascinating look into the worlds of illusion and show business in the early 20^th Century.

“I Choose Not to Participate In That!”

Our Vice President of Agency Development, Marty Walsh, is becoming well-known within GWC for his quick wit and snappy comebacks.  My favorite of Marty’s golden nuggets is a response he learned years ago whenever someone complained about the tough economy:  “I choose not to participate in that!”

What a great and self-fulfilling attitude!  And it’s worth keeping top of mind as we all continue to grapple with the ongoing “Great Recession.”  In fact, more than a few of GWC’s Dealer Consultants have done just that.  In a market that on a year-to-date basis has seen used vehicle sales by Independent dealers increase by 5% (or well below the 12+% forecasts we saw at the beginning of the year), many of our Dealer Consultants have “chosen not to participate” in the doom and gloom:

·         Cindy H. has taken her sales in a market where we added several DCs up by almost 75%!

·         Becky E. has grown her “mature” market up by almost 50%!

·         Dominic L. moved into an underserved territory and has expanded it by about 45%!

·         Jim J., Ruthie S., Sal R. and Kent N. have all taken their existing markets up by 30+% this year!

I could go on and on; in fact, these high performers are among a large cadre of top sellers who are successfully demonstrating to dealers across the country that GWC’s products and people add tremendous value to their businesses.

The next time someone tells you that the economy is tough, think about our great GWC sales team, including the champs listed above, and tell them “I choose not to participate in that!”

Thanks, Steve, and Godspeed.

Steve Jobs’ passing yesterday is a reminder of our fragility and the fleeting nature of time.  Steve’s life, however, is also a reminder of how awesome it is to be alive, brimming with ideas and making the world a better place. 

As Steve’s health waned over the past few years, I found myself becoming sadder and sadder over what appeared to be the inevitable:  That we would lose an inimitable cultural icon who had touched our lives in a myriad of ways.

Stanley Bing’s column in Fortune a few weeks ago was prescient in capturing why we will miss Steve and could serve as a great eulogy:   The Bing Blog: Thanks, Steve.

On a personal level, I will never forget watching my young son fall in love with his first iPod in 2003, cradling it under his pillow each night as he went to sleep.  As a confessed music geek myself, the iPod transformed my travels by allowing me to take 25,000 of my favorite songs with me everywhere I went.  And, after forcing myself to hold off until the iPad2 came out earlier this year, I walked around for days telling everyone in earshot that I was in love with that amazing gadget.  In fact, it’s 8 months later and I’m still doing it!

What can I say?  I love Steve Jobs and Apple in a way that is hard even for me to understand.  But my life and the lives of millions of people around the world are cooler, richer and more fun than they would have been without Apple, Pixar and all the other miracles that Steve Jobs envisioned.  And for that, I can only humbly say “Thanks, Steve, and Godspeed.”

The Art of Compromise

The recent spectacle in Washington D.C. over raising the debt ceiling leads to some obvious questions:  Why have we let compromise become such a dirty word?  Why is it acceptable for powerful people to demonize their opponents?  And why have graceful negotiation tactics (sometimes known as “win-win”) all but disappeared from our political scene?

These are not just idle musings.  The ramifications of the recent debt ceiling fiasco are significant to all of us who invest or borrow money (i.e., all of us).  In fact, GWC’s financial advisors were even sharing regular updates on the possible impacts of this on our very conservatively invested reserves.   This simply illustrates just how deep this issue cuts across our financial universe.

Everyone in business knows that it is very rare that one side gets everything it wants.  In fact, those of us who lead businesses know that we cannot demand everything we want (at least not for very long) from customers, suppliers or employees without running the business into the ground.  GWC is constantly managing the delicate balance of providing for our Dealer Partners, looking out for the best interest of our customers, and supporting our employees.  We understand that no business is healthy when one of its key segments is weak.

Perhaps that’s a lesson that needs to be clearly articulated to those we’ve elected to lead our country.

Are you a Hedgehog or a Fox?

by Rob Glander, GWC President and CEO

One of my neighbors, in the process of packing for a move to Florida, asked me if I wanted any of his business books.  I quickly grabbed his copy of “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, which I last read when it was published in 2001.  Hard to believe it’s been 10 years since this groundbreaking work came out, but the lessons it shared still ring true.

One of my favorites is Collins’ appropriation of the ancient Greek parable:  “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”  Companies that go from Good to Great understand what they can be the best in the world at and then focus single-mindedly on that.

In the midst of a continuing tough economy, it’s easy for all of us to be distracted by the day’s challenges, false hopes and fads.  Instead, we at GWC are rededicating ourselves to focusing on what we do better than anyone else:  Deliver the “No Worries.  Just Drive” service contract experience to our thousands of dealers and end customers across the U.S.

Thanks for the 10-year reminder, Jim.