SPEAKER_01 0:00

If you create an environment where you have a revolving door, if you create an environment where it's not a positive environment, if you create somewhere where people aren't happy to work there, you're 100% just shoveling money into the boiler to keep things moving along.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

You're listening to the Ground Transportation Podcast with Ken Lucci of Driving Transactions and James Blaine of PAX Training. Learn how you can build a thriving transportation business with real profits, repeat clients, and enterprise value. And now for your hosts, Ken and James.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Hello everyone and welcome to the Ground Transportation Podcast. What I want to do today is I want to show you guys some of the things that I haven't had a chance to talk about. I want to go over some of the things that I don't usually get to do in my talks. Long story short, I've been on the road. It has been a long, long time since I was here in my office, just sitting down getting to reflect. But that's exactly what I got to do this week. As part of that, I went back through a lot of the presentations I've given, and I really put together the parts I didn't feel like I got to talk enough about, and the parts that I wanted to be able to kind of go over more in depth. So I've put together a special compilation that really touches on all the big things that I wanted to be able to hit on every single talk I've given that I either ran out of time or I had multiple talks to give, or it just didn't really fit. So that's what we're gonna do with today's episode. I'm gonna run you guys through that. Some of it as listeners, it's gonna be a little bit of review, but I think it sets the stage for a lot of what I want to be able to cover with you guys. And as I kind of reflect and think about a lot of what these are and what they look like, I think the biggest thing that comes through is a lot of the themes that we've talked about on the podcast are already show up here. So let's dive right in. First off, I get to jump across all kinds of industries. Now, I know this has had some jealousy before on which show I go to or what event I do. It's very hard for me to spread the love, and I try to do as fairly as I can. But I work with everything from the black car industry to the motor coach industry, shuttle, school bus, NEMT, taxi, you name it, I work with everything. So what that does is that gives me this really unique perspective. And when we've seen that kind of shine through in our episodes, you will see times that we'll have, you know, Derek Barrett's the administrator of RefMCSA talking about the motorcoach space. We'll have guests from the NEMT side, we'll have guests that run shovel operations, we'll have guests from the Lemo space, we'll have all of these different areas that we're trying to hit. And a big part of that is for me personally, that's a reflection of the industries I love and the industries that I work in. Now, what's really interesting, and I don't talk about it a lot on the podcast, is through the work that I do with PAX training, through all these companies I visit, I get to travel all over the country. So this is a scattering of our members, kind of shows you guys all of the different members we have across the country. But what's really unique and what I really like to talk about when I give a session or I'm on the road is just how reflective this map can be of what it looks like in the US, Canada, and even other parts of the world to actually see how ground transportation is spread out. So if you look kind of up in the Northeast, New York, Massachusetts, all the way down into DC, you have this massive pocket and it kind of extends, ironically enough, all the way over to us in Kansas City. There's this imaginary line right before you get to us where things start to thin out as we start moving towards the West Coast. You hear this a lot when you hear associations, you hear a lot of times that they're overly focused on the East Coast and they're worried about the East Coast. White Blake, a big part of that is that's where a massive part of transportation lives. Now that said, when you start moving out to the west coast of the United States, you start seeing Denver, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and then you've got Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco. You start seeing these pockets, but the density is not as high as it is on the East Coast. Right? I want to make one thing very, very clear. I think that in our world, we have to focus on everywhere. Now, does that mean that the conversation might be a little more East Coast because there's more people there? Sure. But we need to be just as worried about California. We need to be just as worried about Denver. I think the most important part for everyone to keep in mind is that transportation is a larger conversation. It is a larger conversation that's going to encompass everything. Because what we see start in New York often ends up other places. What we see in California can actually make its way over and affect things over there. And each of them has their own unique things that they're dealing with. So I think one of the big things that always comes up for me is I am always trying to look at what's going on across the country. Everywhere I'm going, every single trip, I'm trying to learn something that's valuable and figure out how to bring it back. Now, there's two major things going on. We have really hit on these quite a bit on the podcast. You guys have probably even seen these sets. The first is the safety and insurance crisis. The biggest thing here, and this is the thing that comes up, doesn't matter if I'm talking to brokers, doesn't matter if I'm talking to carriers. Everyone I talk to, everyone I interact with on the insurance side, makes one thing really clear. They are pricing based on severity, not pricing based on the number of accents. I'm going to say that again because I feel like this is something a lot of operators are not gravitating and latching onto.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

All right.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

And I think this bottom part here sums it up best, right? Because losses remain elevated, carriers aren't betting off frequency, they're betting on severity. What this all boils down to, and I can read you everything on this slide. Again, this is one hopefully everybody's already seen on the podcast before. But basically, what's happening is it's not the number of accidents that's the problem anymore. The problem is the cost per accident. Parts are more expensive, plaintiffs' attorneys are more aggressive. Every single time that you have any kind of accident or incident, it is usually multiple times bigger than it has been in the past. So what that means is that they're now having to price on severity. The bad news for the industry here is that we are expecting in 2026 to see 14% or more increases across the board. Now, I recently read the ADA Foundation study they did on insurance. And I gotta tell you, it's not pretty. We are seeing companies that are seeing huge parts of their revenue have to get reassigned into how do I pay for insurance? How do I take care of insurance? We're seeing that in black car, we're seeing that in taxi, we're seeing that in Paratrans, we're seeing that in all these places. Now, what's really unique, and one of the things that I see happen, and people might not be aware of this, is when you're in the bus side, when you're in the limo side, you have got mandatory minimums, right? 1.5, 5 million. You're stuck there, you don't have a choice. What I've seen a lot of the taxi, a lot of the paratransit, a lot of that space, they are not set at those minimums. So they have much more control over what they're doing there. However, what I am seeing across all of them is rates seem to be increasing across the board. We don't expect that to stop. Now, this pairs right up against a customer service crisis. Customer service has been in decline three years in a row. Again, a slide I think we've had on the podcast before. That comes to Forrester's Recharge. I will tell you, that's outdated. I'd say it's probably five years now, six years now. I know we talk about COVID a ton, and we're all sick of hearing about COVID, but I really think this decline starts around 2020. We talk a lot about AI. I think AI had a lot to do with that. You really can't call any major business now without getting an AI assistant. They never understand me. Same thing happens across the board. We're seeing chatbots online, we're seeing chatbots on the phone, we're seeing all of these instances where companies are trying to replace human interaction with chatbots. And in some cases, if you have a quick question, it's not bad. The problem becomes we are seeing more and more barriers to getting to a real person. Vegas has had kiosks for a very long time. But now we're seeing kiosks even more and more of hotels to check in. We're starting to see, and we've already seen the plethora of self-checkouts. Now, these do come with their pros and cons. In the self-checkout space, Walmart, Target, a lot of these major retailers have realized, hey, we've opened ourselves up to theft. Notice how it's not about service. Notice how it's not about customer experience. It's about their losses, right? Customer service, customer experience is taking a backseat. I don't care what part of the industry you're in. I don't care if it's shuttle, I don't care if it's taxi, I don't care if it's black car, school bus, whatever that might be, you have a customer service type experience. It's going to happen, whether that be directly with your clients, whether that be directly with your passengers, and even your eternal customers, which I'll talk about in a little bit. The customer experience is something that is not being looked at. In my opinion, there's two major things to be learned from the two things we've just talked about. One, on the insurance side, you have to work harder than you ever have to completely and totally avoid accidents and incidents. And I know there's people right now that are going, ah, it's part of the business, right? You get enough miles, don't care. You have to work harder than you ever have to avoid accidents and incidents. To have them as low as humanly possible, to have them as close to zero as you can possibly get them. On the customer service side, this is your opportunity. When you're talking to your staff about how you talk to clients, how do we create a customer experience? How do we provide for them what they don't get anywhere else? When you're talking about passengers, how do I provide passengers with an experience that's going to go above and beyond? I don't care if it's an airport shuttle. I don't care if it's giving students the right environment to get to school, right? How do I make sure that every student that gets on my bus gets to school ready to learn? They absolutely enjoy their bus driver. If you're in the motorcoach space and you're doing tours, how do I make sure that after every single tour, every single person on that bus absolutely loves that driver? If you're in a black car, how do I make sure that every executive, every pastor, everyone that gets in feels better when they get out and they get in? Looking at these aspects throughout your company will frame almost every conversation you should be having. It is what we have talked about on this podcast now, the entire year of 2026. These are the keys. Now, couple things. All these talks I've given, I've gotten to hit some of these. Today I'm going to hit all of them. So it's going to be a little long, but I'm going to try and get you guys through it. I want you to get value. And personally, for me, it's always tough. Because when I talk, I gotta pick what I'm leaving out, what I'm putting in, do I have enough time? Guys, we're gonna keep going on this episode. If it runs a little long, it runs a little long, but I'm going to hit every single one of these topics because I think it's important. And if we have time, I do have a bonus topic I want to touch on that's really important too. So let's start with the foundation. The foundation you set at your company is key. Alright? The biggest threat to your company is failing to invest in the people responsible for its growth and success. I want you to think about that for a second. The people responsible for its growth and success. I would argue that you could apply this to every single person in your company. They're all responsible for growth and success. If you have someone in your company that is not responsible for its growth and success, something's wrong. You need to evaluate whether or not you move them into a position that is more important and eliminate the position they have because every single position should be responsible for growth and success. So the way we frame this at PAX is something that Bruce came up with, and that's the CBO model. The CEO model is really simple. Now, a lot of people when they think about the CEO, oh yeah, the chief executive officer. We're gonna turn that a little bit on its head. It starts with customers. Customers are the reason that the business exists. No customers, no business. Then you have your employees. Somebody has to interact with the service and help the customer. That's your employees. If you are doing it all by yourself, you don't have a business. You are the business. So to have a business, you have to have employees and you have to be working through them. Now that leaves you as the owner, as management. Now notice in this model, the customer comes first, the employees service that customer, they're directed by owners and management. Without the owner and management directing the employee, you have no direction in your company. Without the employee servicing the customer, you have no company. So that's the CEO model. And the reason that we frame it this way is that every single one of these elements has to interact with and touch every other element. Now, let's jump right in and look at this model. No one role is more important. Right? Owners, management, you are no more important than the employees. Because without employees, guess what? You're the one servicing the customer. There's no roof. Employees, you have the exact same weight as an owner of management because you have to service the customer. And the customer has the same weight because that customer has to be there, it has to come to the business to be able to have a company. So all of these roles are going to share the same importance. Now, when we start talking about them individually, your customers are not going to remember every single interaction. There's this beautiful quote from my Angelou that we have used at PAX since the inception of PAX. People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. People will never forget how you made them feel. This is a very powerful concept because ultimately what you are creating for your customers is experiences. People are going to remember those experiences. The bad news for you is a negative experience is going to hit twice as hard. They are more likely to tell five to ten people of a negative bad experience versus one person on a good experience. So you have to keep in mind that your whole goal is to create exceptional experiences for your customers. They're evaluating based on how they experienced it, not how you intended it. They are the reason your company exists. But in so many companies, it's easy to forget this. Remember where we started this conversation? The customer service crisis. How many times are there companies that have this viewpoint of, I'll just go get more customers? Oh, it's no big deal. They'll just deal with it. Exceptional experiences create stickiness. They're what keep people coming back. But keep in mind, it only takes one bad experience to break that. So you have to really put your customer first. You have to truly focus on what you're delivering to that customer. What are you doing for that customer that only you can do? Then you have your internal customer. Your employees are your internal customer. They're just as important as your external customer. They're the ones that are providing those experiences. If you're an owner, if you're a management and you're listening to this podcast, the experience you create for your employees will be directly reflected in the experience they create for their customers. I can't overstate that. The experience you create for your employees will be reflected in the experience they create for their customers. When I go to companies that have a bad company culture, when I go to companies where the owner views their employees as replaceable, where they view it as, hey, it's a revolving door, it gets reflected in the customer experience. When I go to companies that have an incredible company culture, that truly care about their employees, that care about the trading, that care about everything they're doing for them, that gets reflected back to those customers. Those customers see that coming through the employee, they see that there. So you have to be intentional, not only about what you want for your customer, how do you create that for your staff? How do you create that for your employees? Now, if you are an owner, if you are a management, you have to keep in mind before we even start talking about you, you are not the representation of the company. In most cases, unless it's a huge client, unless it's somewhere where you are interacting, unless it's somewhere where you stepped in, they're not going to see you. There is one person that represents the company better than anyone else. And depending on your industry, you might call them a driver, you might call them a chauffeur, you might call them an operator. Whatever you call them, it is your frontline staff. It is the ones behind the wheel. It is the ones that pick up the phone, it is the ones directly interacting with the passenger. A lot of people like to think, hey, that's the brand. The brand is the colors. The brand is right there in front of you. It is the employee. They are the brand, the company, the culture, the level of professionalism, the reason to trust you, the reason not to trust you, the way they look, the way they interact. They are your brand. They're going to represent that to the customer. Don't get me wrong, I love a color match tie. I love the branded shirt. I don't know that I've ever come on the podcast without a branded piece of PAX clothing. Why? Because I get it, it's branding. But I know that for me, my team, we are all brand ambassadors. Because it's not the color someone's going to remember. It's not the black, the white, and the gold. It's the way I make people feel. It's the way I make my employees and my team feel, and they make our customers feel. You have to lead by example if you're an owner, if you're a management, but then you have to treat those employees as your internal customers so that that's reflected through to your external customers. You have to do that. Now, we've talked a lot about what that means, but the reality here is that you are setting the tone. It is you at the top, it is you as an owner, it is you as management that does that. One of my favorite things to talk about is what happens when you have a bad day. I will tell you one of the neat things about every single vertical I work with is we all have a little bit of firefighter in us. Shout out to one of our members, by the way, Mike Rose, who is an actual legit firefighter. But all of us have a little bit of firefighter in us because we are always going out and looking at what is most on fire right now. Where do I see smoke? Where do I see flames? And so what can happen is a lot of times you will find yourself in a situation where you are trying to put out what's most on fire. And that can weigh on you. That can mean you become short with people, that can mean that you don't give explanations, that can mean that you don't really set the tone. One of the hardest parts about being a management is that even when everything is on fire, everyone is consciously looking at you. They are looking to see how you react to the pressure, they are looking to see how you react when something goes wrong. They are looking at you to see how you respond. And that gets directly reflected through. It is one of the toughest parts about leadership in management. And one of the hardest things that I had to learn from then until now, and I'm still working on, is how do you always give a calm demeanor on hey, we're gonna get taken care of. Even if we gotta jump up, even if we gotta do some work, even if we gotta stay late, whatever that is, we have to take care of it. And most importantly, I'm gonna borrow a phrase from Charlie Graham with Bach you have to make a deposit before you can make a withdrawal. If I want my employees to be willing to work late and go the extra mile, I need to be making deposits. I need to give them reasons to be willing to do that. I need to go above and beyond for them before I ever ask them to go above and beyond for me. Same goes for your clients. You have to be willing to go above and beyond for them every single time because when you make a mistake, that's going to be your withdrawal. You're going to ask for grace. So as management, you have to keep that in mind. Now, this is a little woo-woo, but here's the thing. But the math on this literally checks out. Businesses that focus on meeting the needs of customers, employees, and themselves as management have some pretty serious financial advantages. According to Harvard Business School, they're going to increase their revenue four times faster. Their job creation is usually seven times greater. Owner equity usually grows 12 times faster. And the hardest one for me to get a grasp on because the number is so huge, profit performance was 756 times greater. That's a massive, massive leap. The other thing, if we want to just make this as intuitive as possible, people stay where they feel valued. When you work for an employer that values you, when you work for someone that understands you, when you work for someone that is truly going to go the extra mile and cares about you as an individual, you are way more likely to stay there. One of my favorite all-time quotes is people don't quit jobs, people quit bosses. If you are the type of company, you're the type of owner, you're the type of place where everyone is valued, where everyone is important, where every single person feels like they belong, your turnover is going to be extremely low. Now, that said, one of the early lessons I had in management is that you have to hold people accountable. I always go back to a specific lesson that I learned. I had an employee where we were working a job that we had a monthly quota we had to hit. And one of the smartest things I ever did was I said, hey, the company gives you each your own bonuses, but I'm going to take a portion of what I did as my bonus and I'm going to tie it to you guys. And if as an entire team we all hit the goal together, I will take a big portion of what I get and I will put it towards you guys. One of the things that happened was I had an employee who just wasn't putting in the effort. She just didn't have a heart in it. I watched my team mentor her. I tried to help and mentor her. We all tried to pull together to raise this person up. Unfortunately, ultimately what happened is they just weren't in it. It just wasn't the right place for them. They didn't want to be there. Instead of having to do performance reviews and let this person go and all that, they figured that out on their own and they left. And when she left, it was a really tough day for me because I felt like I had failed her. It wasn't until after her exit interview was done that I came back to the rest of my team that I realized what I had actually done was created an environment where they were weeding themselves out. I had created this team at the time of roughly 15, 16 people, and this is early on in my career, I'm in my 20s, where they had set this bar, and people that weren't willing to meet that bar knew they weren't going to fit in. Later on in my career, I learned it's not always that easy. Sometimes there will be the ones that you have to help find the right role or help find the door to go on to the next role. But when these people felt valued, when they knew that I used to invest in them, they consistently, month after month after month, with a top performing team in that company at the time. It's a huge company, but by valuing those people month after month after month, we were able to come out on top. So never underestimate how much culture and making people feel valued will do for your company. Most importantly, when you start training, when you start teaching, when you start building out, you have to understand where roles live. We've been talking about the different roles, customers, employees, art to management. Once you start figuring out how you're going to implement this, now you start having to break things into how you're operationally going to do it. One of the things I always love to talk about is standard operating procedure versus a checklist versus training. Your standard operating procedures, your policies, all those things. That's how you handle situations like a no-show. That's what your drug policy is. Those are your framing of how we handle different situations. Then you get in your checklist. This is my step-by-step. How do I actually do it? Think of things like a pre-trip. What has to be checked on the vehicle? I don't care if you're in an industry where you're not mandated by law to do a pre-trip. Every single person that is driving for a living should have a checklist they run through every single time they get ready to take a vehicle out. It is the step-by-step, what do I check? What has to be there? And then you have your training. It's the knowledge, it's the tools needed to bring all of this together. It's that simple. Those three key things are where I spend most of my time. It's what I've built the past 10 years of my career on. Understanding each one of those roles is key. Now, let's talk about policies because these are the foundation. You should be using your policies to drive the behaviors that you want. They shape your culture by shaping your decisions. What does that mean? You are using your policies to drive what they're doing by defining what decisions should be made. You have to go in and determine what your policies are. One of the hardest things I see is people go, I don't know what to make my policies. I'm going to copy and paste all these things. You need to decide what type of company you want to have, and then you need to develop policies around that. Now I'll give you a great example. One of the things that I see that varies widely is in the tenants policy. What is considered an excuse to tenants? What is considered unexcused? Are you going to have PTO? A lot of these are going to be framed by do you have 1099 contractors, right? Are they independent contractors or are they employees? But it's also going to be framed by what do you consider to be a good reason not to come to work. If you're a smaller business, your tolerance might be lowered. You might really need those drivers. If you've got three to five people in the company, you don't have a lot of flexibility. However, when you get to a couple hundred people in your company, you can run into the same problem. Because if you have too many people out at once, you still can't cover. So you have to figure out how you're going to use your policy to drive behavior. So here's what your policies are for. You want to set the expectation for what good looks like. You want to drive accountability. You want to be fair. You want to make sure it's applied. And then the last thing, if you're watching this on video, you'd see the slide I've got up. If not, I'll read it to you. The last thing is protect you in court. Notice how that's the very last thing. The gaps in your policy, the application of your policy, which we'll talk about in a minute, is usually more important in court than trying to put something in there for CYA. Covering your assets is usually not as big a deal as how you apply it when you don't put it. So what does that mean? Your policies are not for covering those legal loopholes. This is not one of those things where you're gonna put something in there and it's just gonna magically cover you. It's not just, hey, something went wrong. We need to go pull the policy. It's not, hey, I'm gonna hand this out and we're gonna sign it. Right? We're gonna give it to you in trading and you're never gonna see it again until you do something wrong and then we're gonna use it against you. If you heard me say any of those and you went, hmm, that sounds familiar. You're doing it wrong. And that's okay. Most companies are. Again, when I was early on in my career, I was lucky enough that I didn't understand HR. The bad news is, like a little kid in the principal's office, shameful of vision, that was me. I spent a good amount of my time in HR. The best part about it though, is that I had someone in HR, Pam Mirardi, I will never forget her, she was one of the influential people in my career. She taught me HR. Instead of letting me become her nightmares of trying to figure out how to get rid of me, every time something would happen, she would explain to me the HR need, the HR perspective, why it matters, what this is for. I'm talking about someone that hasn't been in my life now, other than occasionally running into her, which is great, for probably close to 15, if not 20 years, but that is still framed the way I think about HR. One of the things that I learned is that when it comes to these policies, these procedures, they have to be realistic. This has to be things that you can apply to everyone. It has to be a reflection of how your company actually operates and should be operating. You have to have documents and processes and pieces that people don't fear. It's just how we do things. It is what keeps us moving forward. It is the frame of reference that we use. It is the mindset, and most importantly, it's something that has to apply to our best employee and our worst employee. Yes, that employee that absolutely is adorned by dispatch, that never misses a day, that you absolutely dread the idea of them ever leaving, has to be just as applicable as the employee that you wonder why you hired in the first place. As the one that you know you probably should get rid of, but you haven't. As the one that is the headache, as the one that misses time, as the one that you wonder why they still work here, you have to have policies that you are willing to apply to both of them. If you have a no-tolerance texting and driving policy, if it is a one strike, you're out, guess what? It doesn't matter which of those two, you have to be willing to apply it to them. If you have a 10 mile over, hey, if you ever get caught speeding 10 miles over the speed limit, it doesn't matter the situation, you're out, doesn't matter which of those employees it is. All of your policies are in your control. You get to write them. And the legal consideration is exactly what I was just telling you about. If it says, hey, we're going to check this on every single vehicle daily, if it's, hey, from a maintenance standpoint, once a month this gets inspected. If it says, hey, we have zero tolerance for this, you have to follow that to the letter. Because you create more legal risk when you don't follow that than if you didn't have that policy. If you don't think it's going to happen once a month, don't put that in the policy. If you can't live with zero tolerance, don't write that into your policy. You have the ability to write and define these policies. So if you're not thinking that's what's going to happen, or if you know that's what's not happening, it's time to change the policy. Because if you have that in your policy and there's an accident, an incident, a claim, a problem, they are going to try and set you up for a negligence claim. They're going to say, well, you know what? They didn't really care. It didn't really matter. It was all about the money. They wrote the policy to look good and they didn't follow it. And they're negligent. And those are the claims that tend to get out of control. Those are the times that you are backed up in a corner. Because once they open that door, you're in trouble. Now, one of the other massive problems we've got right now is AI. AI is great, except for when you blindly have it right. Policies. I see this happen all the time with people that go in and they say, hey, I got this great policy from one of the guys in my 20 group, or my broker gave me this policy, or I didn't have a policy for this, so I got this policy. Great, tell me about it. What do you mean tell me about it? I put the policy in place. That's wonderful. Explain to me the policy. Most times they can't. Because they didn't read it, they didn't go through it. This is probably the single most dangerous thing that I see right now. People that are adopting policies, people that are adopting driver manual, chauffeur manual, whatever you call it, and just putting them in place, having people sign off on it, and thinking that because they had them sign off on it, they are good to go. You don't have to be an HR expert. You don't have to be a lawyer. You don't have to be any of these things. What you have to be is detail-oriented. Read every policy you have. If you take one thing from this podcast, this episode, if you've made it this far and you don't know your own policies, I want you to pause this podcast. I'll be here when you get back, I promise. Pause the podcast, go read your policies, go through them, and then talk to the people responsible for implementing them. Ask them about the policies. Find out if they're actually being applied. Because if not, what's going to happen is it's only going to take one accent and one plaintiff's attorney. They will get a hold of every policy you have. It's called discovery. They will go through every policy you have. They will find where you didn't apply the policy. And I can tell you right now, if they find it on the same person that was involved in the accident, if you had someone that was your absolute best driver, and you caught them texting and driving one night on your telematics, and you didn't let them go because that's your best driver. So we gave that little warning, right? We said, hey, we're gonna give you a warning, don't ever let it happen again. And they had an accident later on, and that's the one the plaintiff's attorney is going after. Guess what their new claim is? This person shouldn't even have been working there. Per their own policies, per their own rules, that person had a zero tolerance for tax new policy. They knew this was an unsafe driver. Guess what? It just snowballs from there. You've built the argument for them. So if you haven't checked your policies, go back, check those down. Alright, last one. Variations and policy interpretation. One of the other things that I see is that policies become inexplicably complicated. I just mentioned AI. AI loves to be verbose. It will take a three-word sentence and make it a five-paragraph paper. Now, here's the thing. You need to have things simple. Always think about KISS. Keep it simple, stupid. You want to have policies in a way to where they can be applied by anyone in your company at any point in time without any issue. Anyone can read it, anyone can understand it, anyone can apply it. That is the goal of a policy. The policy is the framework. The policy is the rule on it. You don't want to go in and make your policies checklists. You don't want to go in and make your policy the training. Your policy, again, is guiding behavior. You're using your policies to drive behavior. How it gets done is training and checklists. And most importantly, write policies you can live with. You have to write policies you're willing to enforce. If you don't think that you would want a zero-tolerance policy, don't write it. If we catch you testing and driving, we will go ahead and take this action up to an including termination based on the situation. Don't write. If we catch you testing and driving, we'll let me do it. Write it the way you want to write it. If you want to have leeway, give yourself leeway. If you have a policy right now that is too strict, pull it back. If you have a policy right now that's unclear, rewrite it. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes. And most importantly, keep in mind, you might have policies that don't exist anymore. You might have a policy you put in place because you had a client that required something. That doesn't make a ton of sense if you don't have that client anymore. Review these regularly and make sure you can live with them. Those are the foundational key elements. Most of the time, when I get to training, if I find a company doesn't have the foundational elements, they are going to be ineffective at training. They're going to be ineffective on everything else, no matter what I do. So the goal is a continual training system. It develops people, builds good habits, catches bad habits early, and helps good employees keep growing within your company. That's the goal. That's what you want. I don't know if I've done this on the podcast before. This is one of my favorite examples. It's how winning teams train. I don't care if it's SEAL Team 6. I don't care if it's your favorite sports team. I don't care who it is. If there is a winning, high-performing team, there's a very good chance that they follow this process. Step one is practice. Practice, practice, practice, practice. You look at NHL teams, you look at NFL teams, you look at pro baseball teams. They literally have training and practice facilities. They have entire facilities they've built around practice. The same is true of the armed services. I don't care if it's the Rangers, I don't care if it's Top Gun, I don't care if it's the Navy SEALs, I don't care who it is, all of the top performing teams, Delta Force, pick one you like. They all have training facilities, they all have practice facilities, and they practice, practice, practice. If their goal is to be the best, they put massive emphasis on practice. Then they go perform the mission, they go play the game. They practice ten times, if not more, than they play or they perform. One of the big things, there's a wonderful book called Top Guns Top Ten by Commander Guy Snagras, former Top Gun Naval Pilot. One of the things he talks about that is massively important in the real life Top Gun is the debrief. It's what separates good from great. It's something in the business world that gets forgotten and lost. If you look at top performing teams, they're gonna go look at the game tape. They're gonna go look at how they actually play, they're going to look at how they perform. And then they're going to use that to change how they practice and how they train.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

Alright?

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These words change a bit in our world, but it's the same concept. For us, it's our training, it's our driving our customer interactions, and typically instead of a game day tape, our review in most cases is built around telematics reviews, what we can see, what we can get. What most people don't realize is this is your proactive to reactive spectrum. Training is one of the things that in business is very hard to quantify. It's very hard to put a number on. Because what happens, especially in small business, is we see companies put training in, we see things get better, a year, maybe six months, a time goes by, and someone looks at the balance sheet and they say, hmm, you know, I was looking at the books, we've got a big training budget, but we don't have a lot of accidents, we don't have a lot of incidents, we might be overspending. The problem with that thinking is it's the same thinking that happens in January of every year. You know what? It's New Year's resolution, want to get swole, want to get built, want to get buff, I'm gonna go to the gym, I start lifting the weights, I start looking good. Man, I'm spending a lot of time in the gym. I stop spending time in the gym, it doesn't fade overnight. It takes time. Next thing you know, starting to look a little flabby again. The same thing happens with training budgets. Because it's proactive, because you're preventing things from happening, a lot of times if that budget gets cut, if that gets pulled down, because it's proactive, it takes a while to show up on the other end. Now, at the opposite end of the spectrum, right? That's on the training side. On the telematics side, it is very much a reactive space. Telematics with AI can sometimes help you identify, hey, you've got a driver that's following too close. But it's still reactive, even though it might help you identify a driver that might have a large accident later. A lot of people like to argue that's proactive. It's not. Because every single one of those behaviors has already happened. Telematics can only show you what has already happened. Now that might help predict future events, but it's everything that's already happened. The goal of training is to never see those behaviors. The goal of telematics is to catch the behaviors so that we can fix it with training. However, what happens in our industry most often is that this gets overlooked. We start with Training, then we send them out to do the driving, then we use the telematics, and then we go right back and we use the telematics and we tell them how they're driving poorly or how they're doing something poorly. And we skip that training, we skip that ongoing development, we skip that continual improvement, right? Remember what we talked about. All of the best performing teams that we know of have massive investments in training, massive investments in development, massive investments. Pick your favorite athlete, whoever it may be, the most famous athlete of all time. Ken loves to talk about Derek Jeter on the podcast and how he would go in and he would start batting earlier than anyone else. Incredible player, still in there early, still constantly developing. So you have to break that cycle and say, hey, I'm gonna use that telematics, I'm gonna use the reviews, I'm gonna use the customer feedback, I'm gonna use what I'm getting, and I'm gonna apply it back to training. I'm gonna apply it back to what they're doing. And here's the thing the reason most training doesn't scale in most companies is it's usually trainer-based. I cannot tell you guys the number of companies I go to and say, I'd love to see your training. Show me what you got. Oh, it's all up here. Steel trap. I got it all unlocked. Well, great. You have a checklist to use your training. No, no, no, I've been training my guys forever. I see it from owners, I even see it from dedicated trainers. The way they train is based entirely around how they feel, how they're doing it, what they've got. Well, most people don't realize that there is no trainer store. The way that traders get picked is not typically based around how good they are at being a trainer. When I survey trainers and I talk to traders, I ask them how many have an education background, how many have a developmental background, how many have formal education in learning and getting people up to speed. I can count on one hand in 10 years the number of trainers that have had that background. I can see them in my mind right now. It's that few. Most trainers come from the best performers. We think that because they're our absolute best of the best, they're gonna be able to get other people to be the best of the best. They've got great driving history, they're always on time, they're the ones that dispatch loves, but that doesn't mean they effectively know how to train. And in most cases, we don't teach them how to train. This is the part where if you have a trainer, have them pick up from here. Because I'm gonna give you guys some of the top things that every single trainer should have been taught. Starting with, you want a coach, not a trainer. You do not want a trainer mentality. Most trainers think that they're supposed to demonstrate and show people how to do it. That is the worst way to teach people. A coach walks you through something. A coach talks you through something. I want you to think of coaches. Some great, amazing coaches cannot perform to a level of their athletes. And the Kansas City guy lived here now 26 years. I can tell you right now, I have watched the Chiefs go from a team that was good and did alright to where they were winning Super Bowls. And I can tell you right now, no one is under the illusion that Andy Reid can go out on the field and perform like the guys he's coaching. He is coaching them. He is not going out there and demonstrating the plays. He's not going out there and saying, all right, now let me show you how I would have ran that play. He's putting together a game plan, he is having them go through it, and then he's talking them through. Here's what you did great, here's what we improve, here's what worked, here's what didn't. He's a coach, not a trainer. The coach's mentality is all about we want them doing it. We want to ask questions that are going to get them to get to the right place. We want to give feedback, we want to follow up. I get people all the time that say, yeah, well, we're training. We have key locations that we deal with, or we have key clients that we deal with, or we have key things that we do. So I take them off the vehicle and I have them watch me do it. Tell me about when they do it. Oh, well, after they watch me, I have them do it and we call it good. So you don't come in the next day and say, hey, you did it yesterday, I want you to do it again cold. Let me see it. Because that's what happens on their first day of work. They have to do it cold. So that coach's mentality is what sets it up. And here's the thing: most people were taught this concept of 10,000 hours. I was as a kid. To master anything, it takes 10,000 hours. And you learn by doing. But almost every training program is cram and master. Nobody ever has a 10,000 hour training program. Most people don't have a 100-hour training program. And most people are watching learn. Hey, watch this and learn. Go ahead. Watch how I do this, and then you should magically be able to do it. Cramming doesn't work. Anybody who is in college or even in high school, taking a test where you crammed all the information, you spent all night going through it, you studied and studied and studied, then you took the test, and then it came back on the final, and you're going, oh god, I know I passed that test four or five months ago, but now that it's on the file, I remember none of this, understands why Cram Mastery doesn't work. All it does is put things into short-term memory storage, they get replayed, and then your brain goes, Great, I don't need this anymore. I'm gonna delve it. And that happens in training programs across the country. Watch and learn doesn't work for the same reason. Watch and learn is very similar to Cram and Naster. There is no checks that you actually understood and can apply what you saw. It is purely just I saw it, I apply it, I move on. You're not doing it. You're not committing it to memory. And how you actually learn is completely different. Because we all work on something called a mental model. Go read the book, make it stick. It's thick, it's academic, but it's one of the best alerting books I think I've ever read. Your mental model is built around what you know, what you have right now. All of your experiences, everything you've ever done, your mental model is how you experience that. One of the great examples I give is imagine you've hired someone that worked at a hotel and they come to drive for you. Doesn't matter really what type of driving you do, but we'll use motor coach. They come into your operation, whether it's a shuttle, whether it's bus, doesn't matter. But they come into your operation. You say, I know you came from a hotel, so I want you to kind of tell me how you see this going through. What they're gonna do, and even if you didn't say, if you just say, Hey, I want you to explain to me kind of how you see this working, there's a very good chance they're gonna relate it to what they know of the hotel. And they're gonna say, Well, you know, from what I understand, that role is really kind of a mix of a lot of roles at the hotel. When they're getting on the bus, I'm the bell man at the front. I'm helping load their luggage, I'm helping put her through the vehicle, I'm welcoming them and saying hello. Then they're getting on the vehicle. At that point, I really kind of act like I'm the front desk. I'm welcoming them on, I'm telling them about their stay with me, I'm telling them what's gonna be like. Then at that point, I'm gonna drive. That's basically their stay in the hotel room, is when they're in the back and I'm driving. And then when they get off the bus, I'm housekeeping. I gotta walk the bus, right? Or the vans, the shuttle, whatever it is. I gotta make sure I clean up everything. And then it kind of goes in reverse. Their mental model was based around the hotel, so they gave it back to you in that form. One of the things I see people do all the time is like, oh no, no, it's not a hotel. This is a totally different business. And they shut it down. What they're not realizing is that is their mental model, that is how they think. One of the things that comes with that is the second you shut that down, the second you say it's nothing like that, you are instantly invalidating everything for them, and you're not giving them a new frame of reference because they might not know anything about your business. So the better thing to do there is to go, yeah, it sounds like you're really close. However, what I would say is I want you to change the way you view it. Because you missed a couple steps. And this is really where it would kind of relate to that. Or, well, tell me more about why you think it's like housekeeping. Why you see that in common? Explain it to me. And then adjust their mental model into what you want it to be. My mental model is constantly expanding as I learn, and I have to tie it to other things. It's the same concept as something called a memory palace. If you want to remember something, you build a memory palace, you think of a room in your house, you say, Hey, I want to remember these five steps. So I'm going to go in this room in my mind, I'm gonna see myself walking in and I'm gonna see different things. You have to cater to learning styles, and you have to cater to their mental model. So I'm gonna give you four key things that actually work, but the first is retrieval practice. Retrieval practice takes what I've been saying about coaching and gives you real-world application. So, for most training, you're telling, you're showing, you're explaining. That's not how people remember. You want training to stick through recall, doing, testing. One of the easiest ways to think about this is walk me through it. Flashcards are another incredibly easy, excuse me, easy example. If you want to understand retrieval practice, think of flashcards. But in other words, walk me through it. Alright, great. You know how we do our pre-trips on vehicles. Walk me through it. Walk me through how you get a vehicle to grow. What are you gonna check? What are you gonna do? You got that is not retrieval practice. This is what leads to my favorite sayings. You never covered that in training. You never taught me that. I don't remember going over that. All of the things my owners absolutely love. Once you hit a certain point, the repetition stops working. I always use the example of golfing. It's really easy. If I take my driver and I go and I hit 200 balls in a row, probably after the 10th, maybe even the 20th, depending on how many I'm hitting, time I hit that ball, I am now just in replay mode. I might hit the perfect groove, I might do it over and over and over and over, it might be perfect, I'm completely for dead. If you have ADA procedures, another great example is securement. If I say, hey, I'm gonna have you secure this wheelchair 10 times, guess what? After the second or third time, the value's probably gone. Because at that point they're just repeating it. The big thing with air leaving is you're adding in different things. Okay? So great. We've done the wheelchair securement, awesome. Now let's go, let's do something else. We've done one wheelchair securement, now we're gonna go and we're gonna do a pre-trip, then we're gonna go and look at locations, then we're gonna come back and do a securement. You're mixing things together. This tends to frustrate people, so don't overdo it. But what you want is you want them to walk away from it and come back to it. There's a million different little pieces, but we tend to teach repetition. Mix it up, interleave it, mix all those pieces together, and all of a sudden their retention of it starts going up. Third thing that actually works space repetition. Saying it once isn't enough. It's not going to be enough. So, what you want to do is instead of doing four wheelchair securements in one day, space it out. There's something magical that happens when you go to sleep. When you go to bed at night and you go to sleep, you start processing everything throughout the day. You start mentally going through all of it. So going to sleep at night actually helps your retention. So instead of having them do four wheelchair securements in one day, have them do one every day. Four pre-trips in one day, one every day. Taking them to all of the locations, and then, hey, you're good? Have them do it one day. A couple days later, day later, hey, great. Why don't you go show me those locations? You don't want to physically go to the location, no problem. Have a picture of it or have Google Maps and say, hey, I want you to walk me through this. Again, you're using retrieval, but now you're spacing the repetition. It matters. Your brain, if you don't use space repetition, will not lock things in. Space repetition is what causes your brain to lock things in. I always give people the example of filing cabinet. If you are showing them something once, you're assuming they're putting it in the filing cabinet. If you never require them to go back to pull it back out and use it, their mind is never going to flag as important and be able to instantly go back to it whenever they want. Last thing that actually works, desirable difficulty. Desirable difficulty is when you actually make it hard. You don't want to make it so hard that they give up, but you have to have a level of difficulty. If you don't have a level of difficulty, they won't remember it. I want you to think right here, and this is one of my favorite examples. Think of a skill you learned as a kid, you had to work really, really hard to learn. Something that was really hard. Do you think you'd go do it right now? For most people, the answer is, you know, it'd take me a while, but I'm sure I can get it back. The reason is you put all that time, you put all that effort, you put all that energy into it. Your brain knows you worked for it. It flags it as important. So you want to make sure that you are making it difficult enough that they have to put forth effort, but not so difficult enough, they get frustrated. Because if it's too easy, they're not going to retain it. And then structure creates consistency. Those are the four things that work. But if you don't have a structure, if you don't actually create a plan, if you don't have somewhere where training lives, they're not all going to get the same training. And it's not going to be effective. Most importantly, when you're doing this, use the right tools. So always tell people there are key tools that you have. You have digital tools. This is where at PAX Training a lot of what we do lives. We have digital online courses they can take. That's the whole concept of our membership. We've created the digital toolbox for you. You have your facilitator, that's your classroom. That's what you're covering in terms of what is your actual alignment. You have a hearst, that's your role-playing. Great example of that. Companies where a driver has to call up and talk to a passenger, having them do that with each other, pretend calls to each other. That you have apply, behind the wheel, parking lot, range, you have developmental, coaching, mentorship. Now, we work all across this spectrum. I help people put together all of these different programs. What I see is that companies that are having trouble with certain problems or certain issues are not balancing and using all of these tools in this toolbox. Importantly, explain why. I can tell you right now, one of my favorite examples, and I give it and watch my talks is the mash red button. We had an intern that somehow gotten put in charge of regulation. And they said anybody who drives pastors for a living has to have a red button in their vehicle. Anytime you drive over 65 miles an hour, if that red button doesn't get pushed, the brakes come on. Full force. If you went to your team and you didn't tell them that, you just said, hey, we have a red button in the vehicle. I need you guys to push it every time you're going over 65 miles an hour, every 10 minutes. Alright, great. Just need you to do that. Thanks. You're probably already thinking of who caused the accident and who is the reason for your next safety meeting and the reason you're on the news. Everybody has that one person, like, okay, they're gonna be the one that won't push it. Now, if you take that messaging and you change, you say, hey, a new regulation came out. We have these red buttons in the vehicle. When you're going over 65, you have to push it every 10 minutes. If you don't push it every 10 minutes, the brakes are coming on full force. Like it doesn't matter if you have passwords, it doesn't matter what you're doing, they will come on full force. You absolutely have to push that button every 10 minutes. The number of times that you're gonna have an issue instantly drops because they know why. But there are so many times of training, so many times of policy. We don't give them the why. We just say, because I said so. What are the most dangerous? Because that's how we've always done it. So give them the why, give them the reason, and avoid the negative. So many people focus on. I got 10 videos for you from our dash cam of how they screwed it up. When you're skiing, they don't tell you to focus on the tree, right? You're going downhill skiing now, say, all right, it's your first time skiing. I want you to focus on not hitting the tree. All I want you to think about is the tree and how you can hit. I have yet to ever hear of anyone that's been skiing, and that's how they've been taught. It's always, I want you to focus on the gap between the trees. I want you to focus on the open space. I want you to focus on where you want to be. Yet, time and time and time again, I see training where trainers have tons of videos set up. Here's all the things we don't want them to do. But when I ask them to show me the videos or the reviews or the feedback that illustrates what knocking it out of the park looks like, they don't have those. Because it's so much easier to focus on the negative. So have it set up, focus on the positive. Okay. Small actions, big outcomes. It's one of my favorites. So if you have a clean uniform, it's gonna build trust. If you build trust, that's gonna be a better experience during the trip, which means smoother operations, which means that trip stays on time, which means you're gonna get a great review, which is gonna be repeat business. If you have a settled uniform, it's gonna build mistrust. That might cause to questioning that driver's ability. That might lead to distraction, that might lead to increased risk, that might lead to a stressful trip for everyone. Small actions, big outcomes. Focus on the little things that get the big outcomes. If you let the little things get overlooked, the big things go out of whack, right? Another one of my quotes I love is when I take care of the little things, the big things work themselves out. So, real quick, lightning round, the six key elements of successful training. One, it's gotta be specific. Two, it's gotta be accurate. Three, it's gotta be comprehensive. Four, it's gotta be consistent. Five, it's gotta be available. What I mean by available, since this one always gets questions, is they have to be able to come back to it. This is something that when we were building out PAX was absolutely huge at our training platform. We wanted you to be able to go back to any course you'd ever taken. If you create a course on stadium procedures or wheelchair procedures or anything that they might not need right out of the gate, they need to be able to come back to it whenever they want. And then finally, timely. You've got to get it taken care of now. You have to make sure you teach them before they need it. So training sets the stage. The whole concept here is you're using training to set the stage. Your whole goal is you're establishing what it looks like, what you want, and what the baseline is. The problem is those skills are going to fade over time. The longer they go without retraining, right? Remember what I said, you're coming back to training, you're coming back to practice. The longer you go without getting back to practice, the more likely those skills are to fade, the more likely you are to have problems, the more likely you are to have incidents because they're going to fade over time. So you have to build an ongoing structure. I always tell people I want you to think about it in this term. Weekly. Our world is easy, our platform pushes stuff out every week. So if you're a PAX training member, this one's an over-brainer for you. But weekly, what do you push to them every single week? Quarterly, what are you doing every quarter? Annually, what are we doing once a year? What's our big alignment? Your annual is your get everybody on the same page. What is your ongoing, your mentorship, your growth? Who can they go to for questions? Who's their resource? And then trigger. So trigger would be what happens where there's an issue. Hopefully, this is something that doesn't happen much. But when something does happen, they need some kind of retraining, they need something. What does that look like? These are your key times that you need to touch these. I will tell you training, coaching, mentorship, each one have their own different place they live at. Okay? So your training teaches everyone what they need to know. Coaching is where we're teaching them how to apply it. How do you apply it? How do you do it? What's the behavior? What's the judgment? And then reinforcement and mentorship. Your reinforcement, your mentorship, this is how we get them to actually apply what they've learned. This is how we get them to actually continually meet the standard. This is how we continually develop. The mentorship piece is something that gets overlooked at most companies. They get turned loose and they're done. Have a program for mentorship. Have a check in. Have a time that you're asking them questions. Have questions that will Whoever's doing the mentorship should be asking, hey, what's something new you encountered? What's something new you learned? Did anything unexpected happen this week? Did you run into any situations that threw you off? And make it guilt-free. Don't make it when they screw up, it's time for your mentorship. No, no, no, that's disciplinary action. Don't mix those two up. But have a time to check in with them. Have a time to work with that. Then having a team meeting. A couple keys to a team meeting. I'm going to give a shout out to Mike Rose at My Limo. Mike probably does one of the most effective team meetings I've ever seen. And what Mike and Jay, his partner out there do is Mike and Jay will have their meetings to where every single department gives their team an update. They're very methodical about the way they do it. It's very well thought out. So here's how that works. They will typically get a space, they will have breakfast for their morning group, they'll have lunch for their afternoon group, and every single department's going to give an update. Every single department. You want to talk about someone that gets it, they get it because they're using that to rally their team. They're using that to get them all on the same page. I've been lucky enough I've been asked to come speak with them twice. And every time they've picked a large area of focus as a team they want to work on. It is the single most effective way to do a meeting. And it's one of the most unique things because I will see their team members ask them, hey, what happened to this contract? Hey, what's going on with that work? They get involved from a culture standpoint. It's huge because culturally it brings them all back in line. And it covers their entire fleet. Doesn't matter if it's one of their chauffeurs, doesn't matter if it's one of their motor coach drivers. Everybody's brought in. It is one of the most effective ways to do it. Because what they're doing is they're bringing everyone in alignment. And most importantly, one of my favorite parts is when they do their recognition piece. They do awards, they give feedback, they talk about reviews that people are getting, and they stay positive. It's about what they're doing right, how they can do it better. I cannot say enough about how Jay and Mike run their meetings. It is the ultimate way that I would recommend you do it. Use it as a time to build your team up, have them focus and double down on what they need to be doing, and do it in a way that is going to keep them involved. If for no other reason, I love this slide because it's 100% true. If you can't see it right now, I've got my two sailors here which are shoveling money into a boiler, and it is literally being burned to drive the ship forward. But it's true. If you create an environment where you have a revolving door, if you create an environment where it's not a positive environment, if you create somewhere where people aren't happy to work there, you're 100% just shoveling money into the boiler to keep things moving along. And turnover is costly. It's going to cost you advertising, morale, training. All of it compounds. You have to create an environment where people want to perform their best and they do perform their best. The thought that people are replaceable doesn't work in the long term. Now, that said, does that mean you keep someone on your team that is constantly dragging everyone down, that is not creating the type of environment you want? No, absolutely not. But you need to create a team where everyone is rowing the boat together and they're all pushing the same direction. Because you have to play chess, not checkers. You have to be methodical in what you're doing. The way that you avoid that environment is you create a plan. Your growth is going to come from actually having a plan, having a system. It's not about hustle. As Ken loves to say on the podcast, the only thing that grows for the sake of growth is the cancer cell. And the last thing you want is to create a business that operates in that way. You have to be consistent. You have to think about your policies, you have to think about your checklist, you have to think about your training. Alright, so that's it for the training site. Let's talk about the common pitfalls and mistakes because I want to hit the things that you might run into before you do it. Most failures are basic failures. They're overlooked fundamentals. They're things that should have been covered better. A lot of times it is the simple stuff. Very rarely is it the most complicated part. It's usually something simple. Keep that in mind. It's not the complicated things that usually cause you the biggest headaches. I can tell you right now, one of my favorites is backing into things. I don't know why. But there are certain people in certain vehicles that if you had the world's biggest parking lot and it had a single pole in it, they would find that pole with the back bumper. But I can tell you right now when I talk to companies like that, and we start looking at how much time they focus on actually doing safe backing and goal, get out and look at all these other things, they're not focusing on it. Again, failures happen at the fundamental. So let's go through the key ones. I'll take you through the top five mistakes. Number one, lack of documentation. It's not documented, it didn't happen. When did it take place? How'd you present it? What'd you cover? How long did you spend on it? Was there a test? What'd they score? Those are the key things. Now, again, PAX members listening to this. I guess you covered. If they do it in PAX, it's gonna do all that for you. And in the future, we will be adding a new way for you to actually be able to track all the in-person stuff you do in there. Because I can tell you right now, the biggest thing that I'm seeing in the world right now is a lack of traffic. If it's not documented, it didn't happen. If you have to go to court and they ask you about your training program, and you just say, Yeah, it's in my trainer set, it's not gonna go well. Never goes well. You have to have it laid out, you have to have it documented, you have to keep track. Second one insufficient or inadequate training. Do not rush it.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:05

Okay?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:06

Most people know this famous quote, right? Fail, prepare, prepare and fail, right? But I love this expanded version from John Wooden. I'm finishing a basketball guy. Right? But I love this quote from John Wooden, UCLA's basketball coach, right? Failure prepare is preparing and fail. Planning alone isn't enough. Your plan needs to evolve as you encounter new challenges. Because in the end, it's the consistent commitment to learning, improving, and adapting that leads to success. I cannot tell you how many training programs have not been updated ever, or have not been updated in 10 years, or have not been updated since the last time they get in trouble with an insurance company or someone required them to. You have to constantly be updating your plan. Onboarding an initial paperwork, orientation, right? Tell them your company mission, your vision, your values. Get them to buy in, get them excited. Fundamentals of safety and service. Don't assume they know. Don't assume they know what defensive driving is. Don't assume they know what safe driving is. Teach them vehicle specifics, real-world locations, follow-up. You have to document all of it. You have to have all of that in your training. Alright, third one. Fast tracking experience or urgently needed drivers. This is the cardinal sin of our industry. And when I say industry, I mean all pass regrown transportation. It's not just one. An increase through liability. There's inadequate skill development. There's a decrease in knowledge retention. There's higher employee turnover. The list goes on and on and on. But the most important thing is experience does not equal skill. We're gonna do another mental example. I want you to think of someone that has been doing their job for a very long time, but they suck at their job. We're not thinking this personal, we're not making it about them, but we're thinking about someone that has been doing their job for a very long time, but they suck at their job. It doesn't have to be someone in your organization. Could be someone at the coffee shop you go to. It could be someone at the grocery store, it could be anywhere, but I want you to think of someone that has been doing their job forever and sucks at their job. That's because experience does not equal skill. Okay? When you are hiring someone with experience and you're not training them, you are making a bet that one, they got trained, two, it was good training, and three, that their experience equals skill. That's three different bets that you are placing. And in most cases, one, if not all, of those bets is a surefire loser. Does that mean that if you hire them, you have to put them through training and it should take just as long as someone that has no experience? No. You need to check every single one of their skills. There is nothing wrong with saying, hey, I want you to demonstrate this to me.

unknown 1:17:09

Right?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:10

I need you to show this to me. It's the same reason I always push people to do a driving test before they hire somebody. Hey, demonstrate this for me. Walk me through this, talk me through this. You need to hit every single skill they would have learned in training. They need to either learn it, if they don't know it, demonstrate it if they already know it, and prove to you without a shadow of doubt that you can document that they are just as good as their experience and their claims say they are. Because what happens is if not, you hire someone, you fast-track them through training, you don't check their skills, two months later they get in an accident. Here comes the plaintiff's attorney. Show me your training for this person. Well about that. Yeah, about that. You made three bets, one or all of those bets failed, now it's time to pay off. Don't place those bets. Inspect what you expect. Trust but verify. Make sure they actually have those skills. Alright, next one. Insufficient customer service training. Customer interaction is key. One of the easiest ways to test and see if someone has an innate customer service ability is something my business partner Bruce calls a heart for service. He will knock a pen off the table. Now, you don't want to be comical about it, you don't want to send it flying, but he accidentally knocks a pen off the table during an interview. And then he has them pick that pen up. Now, he doesn't ask them to pick it up, he doesn't expect them to pick it up, he just kind of knocks it off the table and he watches. The reason you're watching is to see if they instinctively try to pick it up themselves. You want to know if they're gonna go for it or not, or if they're just gonna leave it there, if they're gonna watch you pick it up. This does not mean you don't hire them. This does not mean they're a bad person. But anyone that instinctively immediately goes, picks it up, and hands it back to you is innately wired for customer service interaction. That's just how they're wired. The other thing that comes up is uniform and personal grooming. Most people don't think of this as customer service. But I can tell you now, if I can smell you in a bad way, it's gonna ruin the experience for me. If they don't look the part, if they don't look well groomed, if they don't look well kept, if they don't look like I could trust them, that's immediately gonna ruin the experience for me. They need to look the part. They also need to understand that customer service and safety meet in the middle. Their attitude, their overall health. If I get someone that is driving me in the afternoon, and they're sluggish, and they're slow, and they're not moving real quick, they don't have the energy, they don't have the enthusiasm, I can almost guess what they have for lunch most of the time. And I've literally tested this up. Oh man, you know, I'm really hungry. I didn't eat lunch today. What you have for lunch? Did you have lunch? Oh man, yeah, that sounds good. And guess what? Double cheeseburger, milkshake, soda, all of these things. Because to be safe, you have to have reaction time. You have to be able to safely move the vehicle. You have to do all of these things that rely on your personal health. Yet I can probably count on two hands, the companies I know that focus on hey, part of customer service, part of safety is your attitude, your energy, your diet, how you take care of yourself, leaving your baggage, leaving your stress at home. All of these things are pieces that people don't think about that need to be part of that. Give them healthy ideas on what to eat for lunch. Give them access to benefits that will help them stay healthy. Give them tips on what to do. Give them the tools they need so that they have it at their disposal. Last one. The fifth mistake. Lack of follow-up and ongoing training. This is the most common one I see. You're not coming back to it.

unknown 1:21:13

Ever.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:13

You're not coming back to it. You think you're coming back to it, but you're not. You're not coming back to it. I cannot emphasize enough. I always hear a training. Well, you know, it's the offseason. They're not gonna be doing that kind of trip. They don't need to know that right now. I don't want to overwhelm them. And then what happens? They get put on that kind of trip anyway. Why? Because your dispatcher had to cover the trip. And that was the body available to do it. So I put them on that type of trip. You're not coming back to it. Ever. I cannot emphasize this enough. Now, you can reinforce things. That's great. That's what you should be doing. But in training, if you don't make it a priority in the beginning, you're not coming back to it. You should reinforce behavior, not think that you're coming back to teaching a skill. Teach them everything they need to know. Teach them every kind of trip they could be on. Teach them everything up front. Set the right and complete baseline. Those are the three topics. I have one bonus that I want to go through and hit. We call it the 72-hour rule. This is the most important self-psychology rule I can teach you guys. I don't know if we've covered this on the podcast before, but I really want to make sure that everyone's heard of this. I teach every single employee that works for PAX is familiar with this. Starts with zero. Your zero hour. This is your ground zero moment. This is an accident. This is an incident. This is screwing up on your best client. This is some sort of massive failure. Some sort of wake-up call moment, some sort of how did this happen? Okay? In that moment, there's a lot of finger pointing. Everybody's really emotional. This is the firefighting moment where we've got to figure out how to put the fire out. We've got to figure out how to deal with it. We've got to figure out how to take care of it. Leaders instinctively are looking to take control. What happened? Who was responsible? How do we get here? Why? Typically, they often identify well, didn't we train this? Didn't we teach this? Did we know better? This is the stage where change is going to be prime. We figured out something went wrong. We hopefully rightfully identified training. Then you have the 24 to 48 hour window. This is the decision-making window. A lot of times there's internal meetings. The bigger the problem, the more likely there is to be deliberation. There's ideas. How we're going to take care of it, right? What are the solutions? How do we prevent it from happening again? What do we do, right? We need to, or we should, or we're going to or we have to. Those are the types of things that come out, right? Vendors get calls. The 24 to 48 hour window is usually when someone on my team gets a phone call. They reach out to us either online or they call us. Hey, tell us about this. How could you help with that? The intention's there. But action may or may not have happened yet. Now we get to the 72-hour mark. This is the fork in the road. So what every team, when they get to the 72-hour mark, one of two things happens. If it's a good, happy, we made it, action's taken. Steps are put in place. You know, hey, we bought FAX training, or we finally pulled the trigger on telematics, or, you know, hey, we implemented this new thing, or we changed this policy, or, you know, this incident's a turning point. They fixed it. It's never gonna happen again. Unfortunately, I'd say roughly half the time, if not more than half the time, nothing happens. Inaction. Indecision. And you talk yourself out of it. It couldn't happen again. There's a new fire. We gotta take care of that now. We gotta take care of this. You've moved on. The urgency's faded. No decision becomes your decision. But what happens when there's no decision? Your mind can't live with an action. The human mind hates the fact that you did nothing. So it justifies. We see ourselves justify all kinds of things. Happens in your personal life, happens in your work life. Justifying is just something that happens in the human psyche. There's a flute. We were overdue. It had been too long since our last one. There's no way it's gonna happen again. Lightning never strikes twice. By the way, that's BS. Lightning does strike twice. There's a park ranger that actually held the record for being struck the most times by lightning to the point where people were afraid to be around him because it kept getting hit by lightning. So yes, lightning does strike twice. Wasn't really our fault. Right? You know that? That wasn't really our fault. That one's not on us. My absolute favorite and the absolute worst of all, it's just part of doing business. It's just part of doing business. The reason I teach the 72-hour rule, the reason it's such a key thing, is company after company, business after business, I watch this play out. If we rewind in this 24 to 48 hour window, they always have the best intentions. They're always looking to solve the problem. They're always looking to take care of it. It's always the best intentions. But this 72-hour fork in the road gets in the way because, like I said, one of two things happens. Now, there are exceptions to the rule, but a lot of times what I see happen is we hit 72 hours, no decisions made, and if we're lucky, next time it's not as bad, but it finally pushes them over the ledge and they do it. You have to understand this rule. You have to understand when you are giving yourself these justifications. If you find yourself saying any of these things, it was a fluke, we were overdue, there's no way it could happen again. It really wasn't our fault. That's just part of doing business. If you catch you or anyone on your team saying any of these things, it should be a trigger for you to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. Let's go back, let's talk about it. Because those sound to me like justifications, not reasons. We're not talking about why it happened and how we prevent the next one. We're trying to justify it. And when we justify it, it happens again. This one's super easy. You go to pacstraining.com slash defensive dash drive. And yes, it is really free. Yes, I am getting me two of them. They are on straight and they are on PAID, two of my absolute favorite acronyms that I think everybody should have hanging up in their office. I appreciate you guys sticking with me. Hopefully, you found it valuable. Like I said, most of the times when I do a presentation, I've got 45 minutes max. I don't think you have the time to really go through it like we did here. So I want to get feedback from you guys. What'd you like? What makes sense? Have you caught yourself in the 72-hour rule? Is there something I missed? Is there something you want to learn more of? Drop us a comment. And as always, thank you for listening to the Ground Transstage Podcast. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:13

Thank you for listening to the Ground Transportation Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about PAX Training and to contact James, go to PaxTraining.com. And for more information about driving transactions and to contact Ken, go to driving transactions.com. We'll see you next time on the Ground Transportation Podcast.