Author: louis

We just finished editing the latest Approved Auto Sales commercial which will begin airing later this year.  Felicia did an awesome job ad libbing with Sammy!

Have a great weekend! – – – Luke

Some of you may have seen this before as it has been around a long time. However, I thought it would serve as a reminder to all of us how important it is that that we strive to always do our best and give our best.

If 99.9% is good enough then….

• 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily
• 114,500 mismatched pairs of shoes will be shipped/year
• 18,322 pieces of mail will be mishandled/hour
• 2,000,000 documents will be lost by the IRS this year
• 2.5 million books will be shipped with the wrong covers
• Two planes landing at Chicago’s O’Hare airport will be unsafe every day
• 315 entries in Webster’s Dictionary will be misspelled
• 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions will be written this year
• 880,000 credit cards in circulation will turn out to have incorrect cardholder information on their magnetic strips
• 103,260 income tax returns will be processed incorrectly during the year
• 5.5 million cases of soft drinks produced will be flat
• 291 pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly
• 3056 copies of tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal will be missing one of the three sections

Rachel

I’ve had a topic in my mind for the past week or so that I thought would be good to blog about but everything changed when I sat down in front of my computer and looked at the date my next blog was supposed to be on – September 11.  Almost everyone has a story about 9/11.  I remember it like it was yesterday.  I had graduated from college the year before and was on my way to work.  As I rounded the corner of the building, my cell phone rang.  It was my boyfriend calling to ask me if I had heard the news.  I had not heard anything so I rushed inside only to find a small crowd already gathered around the small television in the partner’s office.  We all stayed there for most of the morning glued to the TV…in complete and total shock.  Little did I know that the next decade of my life would be shaped by that single day.  My boyfriend (and now husband) decided to go to officer training school with the US Air Force not long after September 11 so I have seen firsthand the sacrifices that men and women make on an everyday basis.  Just as we should honor the incredible sacrifice that many made on that tragic day, please don’t forget the service of our men and women who continue to be deployed overseas and those families who wait for them at home.

Rachel

Luke, Shane, and I will be traveling to Chicago this afternoon to meet with our consulting group, Leedom, for our buy here pay here car lots.  These meetings always come with a certain amount of  nervous anxiousness.  We will spend all day Saturday and Sunday reviewing numbers and sharing ideas with about 20 other dealers from around the country.  I look forward to seeing how our numbers compare against the other dealers and most of all look forward to finding out what areas we can improve.  I hope everyone has a good Friday and a great weekend.

Louis

My 5 year-old daughter, Holly, used to watch a show called “The Wonder Pets.”  If you have never seen the Wonder Pets, you are not missing anything.  However, I think it does have a recurring theme that applies to our day-to-day work environment.  In every episode, Lenny, Tuck and Ming Ming get a call on their tin can phone from an animal in distress.  Then, they fly away in their fly boat to be the heroes and save the day. At the beginning of each rescue, one of the three will try to save the animal all by themselves.   In the end, they always find out that they have to work together to save the day.  Holly is a “growing-up” now (as she says) so she no longer watches the Wonder Pets but I don’t think I will ever forget the end of the show’s theme song:  What’s going to work? Teamwork!  What’s going to work? Team—-work!  In a two to three person office, teamwork is essential.  If two or three employees in each office can’t work together as a team, achieving goals will almost be impossible.  To put it another way, there is a direct link between teamwork and the success of our company.  Remember there is no “I” in teamwork so let’s all work together and save the day!

TEAM = Together Everyone Achieves More

Rachel

  Yesterday, Louis, Shane, the Area Managers and I had lunch with the graduating class of our most recent Montgomery Enterprises Leadership Skills Course for new hires.  After lunch we enjoyed getting to hear what all they were able to take away from the class and also to see the projects they had been working on for the past few weeks.  Rubye Del, the class facilitator, does a great job in bringing out the best in the class participants and this class was certainly no exception.  Congratulations ladies! 

Claire Darty, Amy Alexander, Alise Dill, Elisha Hopkins, Juanita Smith, Rebecca Davis, Tiffany Walker

While some individuals try to get by doing as little work as possible, others possess a commitment that leads them to give it their all every day.  General George Patton once said “always do more than is required of you.”  This is a characteristic that I see in many of our employees as I travel from office to office, and I would like to applaud all of you for that.  Hopefully, the audit reports that some of you have already received are beneficial and will be a tool to help you in identifying areas that need improvement.  As I learn more, my goal is to continually find ideas and methods so that we can all improve.  The idea of “auditing yourself” is one concept I recommend that all of you do when time permits.  The benefits of performing an audit of your own store will help you to:

• Catch errors early
• Look for trends in errors being made
• Ensure compliance with state regulation
• Ensure compliance with internal policies

Some offices already do this and it definitely shows during an audit.  I will be happy to work with all of you on a system that you can use to perform a quick audit of your store.  Remember mistakes are to be used for a good purpose – to show us what we need to learn!

Rachel