Search.
Douglas Kershaw is the Executive Vice President of KAL Group, a freight and truck parts company with numerous divisions. Before joining KAL Group, Douglas had an extensive career in the tire industry, previously serving as President of BKT Tires in North America. With his diverse background spanning television broadcasting, the rubber industry, and various leadership roles, Douglas brings a wealth of experience to his current position at KAL Group, where he is responsible for establishing a new wholesale division focused on tires and parts for the agriculture, construction, and truck markets.
In this episode…
Launching a successful new wholesale division can be challenging, but it’s certainly possible if you follow the necessary steps and implement key elements.
According to Douglas Kershaw from the KAL Group, you should start by building a strong, committed team and empowering them to make decisions as if it were their own business. He stresses the need for integrity, clear communication, and continuous improvement, even when facing the challenges of starting a new division. Douglas’ five core principles — integrity, commitment, entrepreneurial thinking, teamwork, and never being satisfied — offer a framework for anyone to adopt as they seek to launch and grow a business or a career.
On this episode of Gain Traction, Mike Edge gets Douglas’ thoughts on launching a new wholesale division. Douglas shares his career journey, from a start in TV reporting to pivoting into the rubber industry and eventually becoming president of a tire company. He advocates for empowering a strong, committed team and how his diverse background has given him a unique perspective in the tire industry.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Highlights of Douglas Kershaw’s early career in broadcast journalism interviewing basketball legends like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson
- Why Douglas pivoted from TV to the rubber industry, taking a chance with Dayco Products
- Leading the launch of a new wholesale tire and parts division, Tires and Parts of America
- The importance of integrity, commitment, entrepreneurial thinking, teamwork, and continuous improvement
- Why Douglas empowers his team to make decisions as if it were their own business
- How Douglas leveraged his broadcasting experience to lead and communicate effectively in the tire industry
- The importance of building a strong, trusted team to achieve success
- Why Douglas remains committed to continuous improvement, even after achieving success
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Douglas Kershaw on LinkedIn
- KAL Group
- Tires and Parts of America
- Michael Jordan
- Clyde Drexler
- KNF
- K&N
- Stripes
- Mike Edge on LinkedIn
- Tread Partners
Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast, where we feature top automotive entrepreneurs and experts and share their inspiring stories. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Mike:
Hello folks, welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast. I am Mike Edge, your host. This episode is brought to you by Tread Partners and the ReTread marketing program. The ReTread Marketing program is the most effective and cost-efficient marketing program in the industry today, at least according to us. It is a customer re-engagement program using IP targeting to win back your best lost customers. It is a one-time, 120 day program that generates a guaranteed 10 to one return on investments. That’s correct, a 10 to one guaranteed ROI. No tricks, no gimmicks. These are your customers already in your point of sale system right now. So for example, if you were to invest $4,000 today, you will receive a return of $40,000 within 120 days from the list of best lost customers. Tread Partners works only within this industry. They specialize in tires and auto repair, and oh, did I mention it’s guaranteed? To learn more, visit treadpartners.com.
All right, folks, have you guys ever heard of The Veterans Trust? I had not until recently. I was introduced to them through Sonny McDonald with Toyo Tires. I had two of their guys on Gain Traction, Fred Roger, Executive Director, and Stephen Kantarze, Program Director. And to sum it up, The Veterans Trust organizes motor sports experiences for active duty, veterans, first responders, and their families. It is an incredible organization, I really, really had a good time on this interview, and just learning about what they do, but the fact that they take motor sports and tie it into veterans and they really try to help veterans seek help for whatever they need, whether it’s mental, physical, et cetera. But this draws them to locations where they can meet other people’s suffering, or going through whatever crisis they may be going through and it really does a lot of good. So I encourage you, if you want to find out more about it, it’s theveteranstrust.org.
Also, I was able to connect them with Black’s Tire in North Carolina, who is now supporting The Veterans Trust at their next event, which is in May at Fort Liberty in North Carolina. And I think you can find out all about it there on their website, theveteranstrust.org. To listen to the podcast, just go to gaintractionpodcast.com and you can learn a lot about just from our interview. Great time though. So today’s guest is actually one of the nicest guys that I think I’ve met in the industry. I had the privilege of talking to him a couple of weeks ago for over an hour. Douglas Kershaw, he’s the Executive Vice President at the KAL Group, former president of BK Tires in North America, and just honored to have him on the podcast. Doug, welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast.
Douglas:
Oh, thank you for having me.
Mike:
Yeah, so this is biographical in nature. We like to start out and get to know the guest, and I think our listeners like to get to know where you’re from. I’m going to give you the floor, and just tell us a little bit about where you came from and how you migrated to tires.
Douglas:
Okay, sure. Well, I mean, I’m originally, my dad was in the Air Force, so I’ve grown up all over the West Coast and ended up, after my dad retired, we ended up in Central Oregon. After graduating from high school, I wanted to be a television broadcaster, so I went to school to do that. I ended up graduating from Oregon State University back, I’m old, so back in 1986. I actually should have graduated in ’84. I took the five year, six year plan. But anyway, I graduated and started my career in television. I got an internship at Channel 2 in Portland, Oregon, and that lasted for, they actually cut it off short and hired me and as a grip/reporter. And my job was to cover the Trail Blazers and the Winterhawks and different people like that, so that was actually a ton of fun.
Mike:
So you got all the press passes and all that good stuff, huh?
Douglas:
Oh, yes, I did. Yes. Yeah, I mean, it was a trial by fire actually because my first assignment was to go to a Blazer game, and I’d never been to an NBA game in my life. So I’m 20, what? 25 years old I think I was. I was green as you can be, and scared to death, and all of a sudden talking to guys that are twice my height. Yeah, it was a little bit intimidating.
Mike:
Do you know what’s cool about your career? I just realized this, and I didn’t pick up on this a couple of weeks ago when we talked, but you were there when Bird and Magic were in their heyday.
Douglas:
Absolutely. Well, I’ve interviewed them actually when they came to town.
Mike:
So cool.
Douglas:
I’ve had the privilege of interviewing some really big stars, all the Blazers at the time. Clyde Drexler was on the team. Terry Porter, Kiki VanDeWeghe, and then a lot of the Boston Celtics when they came to town, the Chicago Bulls. I mean Michael Jordan, I’ve interviewed him. All the Lakers back in the day, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson. I mean, I have no autographs but.
Mike:
Oh, yeah.
Douglas:
I was able to talk to them, right? They were nice, all of them. Michael Jordan would come to town every year and say thanks for not drafting me, because the year that he was up for the draft, the Blazers had the first choice and they took Sam Bowie at the time.
Mike:
Oh, that’s right. From my home state of Kentucky, he came out. Yeah, that’s right.
Douglas:
Yeah, exactly. Which turned out to be another big man bust for the Blazers, which they’ve got a long trail of it, unfortunately. But they didn’t need Jordan at the time because they had Clyde Drexler. So you don’t need two shooting guards, right? Every time he’d come to town and school our team, he would always, “Thanks for never drafting me, “because he not wanted to come to Portland, but.
Mike:
That’s awesome. Well, I didn’t mean to sidetrack, but go ahead.
Douglas:
No, that’s the case.
Mike:
That’s a cool career start though, man. I mean, really.
Douglas:
It was a lot of fun.
Mike:
Yeah.
Douglas:
Didn’t make a lot of money, but then I got an on-air job up in Central Washington, and so I was considered to be one of the successful graduates. But then again, I didn’t make a whole lot of money. I shot, wrote, produced, and edited four minutes of sports two times a day, five days a week. But I had a lot of fun. I mean, then I covered the Seahawks, and covered a bunch of other local sports and things like that.
Later on, I mean, after going through a couple of rating books. Again, I told you that I grew up in, my dad was in the Air Force, so I literally went to four elementary schools and three high schools so I didn’t really want to move again. And in that career path, that’s what you had to do. I got offered a job in Boise, Idaho, and hopefully then later on, you would be able to get to Portland or Seattle or some of the other larger markets where you can actually make some money. I didn’t go to school for five and a half years to be an actor. I went there to get, but that’s how you’re treated as an actor and you have an agent and you have all that. And I’m like, “I had no clue what I was doing.” I was actually getting irritated because I thought, man, I can bag groceries at the local grocery store, make more money than I’m making here. And you needed-
Mike:
Was that true? Is that true, really?
Douglas:
At the time, anyway, it was true for sure.
Mike:
Oh, wow.
Douglas:
This was a long time ago.
Mike:
I know, but still, that’s brutal.
Douglas:
It is brutal. I had a couple of student loans that needed to be repaid, and back those days, it was nothing like it is today as far as the amount of loans you had to pay back. But I really thought to myself, you know what? And we went from being in last place in the market after three rating books to being number one. That was really cool. I mean, part of the whole team is they replaced the entire team except one person. The weather guy and I, they did it in 15 minute increments. The weather guy and I, we were number one across the board on all every night, and so we were proud of ourselves.
I remember I went into the station manager’s office and I said, “I’d like to have a raise because we’ve done a good job.”
And he goes, “Okay, why do you think you deserve a raise?”
And I said, “Well, look at the rating books.”
And he goes, “Okay, what do you want to make?”
And I said, “I really want to make,” literally $4,000 more than what they were paying me, which was around 15,000 a year. Now mind you, this was-
Mike:
I know, I get it.
Douglas:
1987, ’88, or something like that.
Mike:
Right.
Douglas:
He looked at me and he said, “Doug, you’re good. I like you, you do a good job. Yes, you’re very popular and you can’t go around town without being bothered, which is good because that’s what we want, but why would I pay you that much when I could pay someone out of your own school to come out here and pay them less than what I’m paying you to do it?” So that told me that there was absolutely zero value put into the employee. So I said to myself, this is ridiculous. I’m going to get out. And I did. I quit.
Moved to Seattle, and had a side job for a little while, and then I got hooked up with Dayco products, and this is where my entire rubber industry career started. I was literally 27 years old, I had nothing to offer, but this company took a chance on me, moved me down to the Bay Area. I had a territory with a book of business around four or something million dollars, and I was selling power transmission belts, hydraulic hose and fittings, industrial hose and fittings. You know how you got the vapor recovery hoses with the gasoline pumps? Dayco made a ton of those. I made a lot of money selling those. Well, they were paying me decently. I worked out of my home and with my background. After about three and a half years, they moved me to home office in Dayton, Ohio. Well, I was single, so no big deal. I moved to Dayton, Ohio.
Well, I had never lived anywhere else without mountains in my backyard, and so that was a big transition, but it was a great move. I got to be able to work in marketing where I got to do my degree because I was a host and producer of a quarterly video newsletter, back then they did the VHS. And so I was doing what I was going to school for, plus some other things in marketing so it was a great gig. Met my wife. We had two kids, so lived in Cincinnati, and then I was able to go on to GE for a short time, I got black belt trained and all that. That was a lot of learning experience. And then I went on to Camoplast, which later became Camso. I got into the agriculture business back in 2002 with Camso, or back then called Camoplast. And really, the company was in its infancy. I think it was doing $112 maybe million a year when I left there 15 years later, almost 15 years later, they were 1.3 billion.
Mike:
Wow.
Douglas:
It was a huge growth. I grew with that company a lot. I did marketing, I did sales, I did OEM sales, aftermarket sales, and all kinds of, I learned so much and grew a lot with that company. And then I had an opportunity to go to Trelleborg. I went to Trelleborg and was a eastern director there. They didn’t have a vice president title there, so we called directors. And then I had the opportunity to go to BKT, and I was with BKT almost six years. I was all in Ohio and had to move to Akron, Ohio when I took the job with BKT.
Mike:
That was the first real big move you had to make in a while then, is that right?
Douglas:
In a while, yeah, because I worked out of my house in Cincinnati for all those years.
Mike:
Yeah.
Douglas:
It was fun. I enjoyed working for BKT, but it was time to, I wanted to get back out to the West Coast. KAL Group was one of our customers. I knew the owners so I came out here and I said, “Look, here’s your opportunity. We can set up a wholesale group.” And basically what I like to do is I like to say I want to be the K&M of the West, because K&M is really, I admire that company a lot, and they were one of our customers at BKT.
So I’ve been very, very fortunate with my career. I’ve had every level of, I used to, when I was in college, I worked at Sears Automotive, so I was in the business already without even realizing it. But I’ve had every position on the sales side, every position on marketing and operations, and then I was fortunate enough to become vice president and later president of BKT. I just look at myself as being very fortunate. It’s odd that a guy that has a degree in broadcast journalism had this kind of a career I think. I didn’t go to business school, I didn’t do anything.
Mike:
But it’s interesting because people with good communication skills usually end up in some form of leadership, you know what I mean?
Douglas:
I suppose, yeah. I mean, I never looked at it like that, but I’m not afraid of getting in front of people and talking to people. Even I’ve never been afraid of talking to presidents and/or a janitor, everything in between, doesn’t bother me a bit.
Mike:
Yeah.
Douglas:
They’re all people. But yeah, no, it’s been a very good thing. And now we’re back up. My kids are grown, gone and off my payroll, thank goodness. Well, we do have one grandson, so I guess they’re on my payroll a little bit.
Mike:
Right, well.
Douglas:
Yeah, so it’s good to be back on the West Coast.
Mike:
Well, and the other thing is, I learned from you, I mean, being on the West Coast, ironically, you are already, you’ve been an LA Rams fan and LA Dodger fan for life, correct?
Douglas:
Pretty much, yes. It’s odd that I was because I’ve never lived in Southern California until now, but I don’t like the Lakers, but I do like those two other teams.
Mike:
Are you a Trail Blazer, or did you say loyal to the Trail Blazers?
Douglas:
I don’t really follow the NBA that much until they get into the playoffs. So I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’m a NBA, pick a team guy, I just.
Mike:
But the other thing everybody needs to know about you is your name, because the Dodgers have, I think he’s a Cy Young winner. I know he’s won the World Series now, but Clayton Kershaw. Same spelling and everything, right?
Douglas:
Yeah. In fact, my middle name is Clayton.
Mike:
That’s it. That’s what I’m getting at.
Douglas:
We share two-thirds of our names together.
Mike:
Yeah, I think that’s pretty cool then you end up back in LA and everything. Well, I mean, listen, they won the series against my Cardinals last week, or they opening week, I guess it was, so yeah.
Douglas:
Yeah. I don’t want to rub it in, but I think we swept you, didn’t we?
Mike:
No, I think we squeezed out one. We did squeeze out one, I thought.
Douglas:
Oh, did you get one? Okay.
Mike:
It was more luck than it was anything the way the game ended. But yeah, we needed just one. Yeah, but talk about where you’re at today with the KAL Group. Let’s dive into that a little bit and what you’re up to.
Douglas:
Yeah, so it’s unique. I mean, they’ve already got, the KAL Group is a parent company. It’s got five divisions underneath it. They’re a freight company primarily, and they have KAL Freight. The company’s owned by two brothers, a gentleman by the name of NP and his brother Kalvin, which is where KAL comes from. So they do freight, and then they also do trailer and truck sales. That’s another division. They also do brokering, so they call that KALWAY. And then they have KVL Tires, and they have KAL Partz. Now, KAL Partz is the heavy duty truck and trailer business, so they’re really in the truck and trailer business.
KVL Tires was their tire division, but they’re a dealer. They do all the tires, truck tires, they do construction tires, they do agriculture tires and all this, and that was a customer of ours at BKT. But they’re a dealer, and so they really are not structured well to really capture the market when it comes to the agriculture business and off-road. The idea that I had when I came in to talk to the brothers was is let me come in here and we’ll start a wholesale division. We all agree that we would call it something totally different from KAL or KVL because we don’t want customers within the marketplace to think that they’re buying from their competitors, because they’re not.
So instead of five divisions, Tires and Parts of America is the group name, and it is a total separate P&L, separate business, separate everything. We’ve been in the mode of setting all of this up since I started here back late fall. I am surprised at how much work it takes to get a division started, to be honest. I thought it would be a little bit easier, but it’s a great group of people, a lot of great people that I work with here in all of the different support groups. There’s marketing, the accounts payable, accounts receivable, all the finance guys, and the warehouse people, everybody here is very helpful to work with. And everybody’s excited about it too, because it’s not just tires where I come, it’s parts as well.
Mike:
Yeah.
Douglas:
We are going to be wholesaling both tires and parts within the market, agriculture, construction truck. We’re going to do truck too, industrial tires, things, and then also then the different trailer truck parts too, where it makes sense. What we’ve been doing the past several months now, gathering all the sales people, the sales team, they’ve got larger territories because we’re not going to sell to end users, we’re going to be selling to the dealers who will then partnering with us and selling out to the end users in the marketplace.
Mike:
Well, I was going to say, just for the listener’s sake, who’s your type of customer? Who would you sell to so that if somebody-
Douglas:
That’s a great question. Independent tire dealers primarily, I know that some locations of Southern Tire Mart are now interested in signing on to buy tires from us. I’m sure that as we grow, because we’re really, really hoping that maybe Pomp’s Tire would be able to buy from us in different locations. We’re only on the west. We go as far east as Kansas City. So really, we have Missouri, the Wisconsin Missouri line down, west of the Mississippi primarily. We’ve got sales people in Texas and Arizona and their territories are such where they cover the market. We got one up in the northwest, and we’ve got a couple down here in California too. We have seven different warehouses that we share the space with our other colleagues, but we rent for the space that we have, and then there’s a joint services where people will work on in and outs for the tires and other parts and things like that. So it’s really, all the divisions do these shared services throughout the company because we’re all in the similar location.
Mike:
Yep, I got you. Okay, that helps a lot. I’m just curious, would you sell to somebody like Nebraskaland or Kansasland? You know that group, 54 stores, Midwest?
Douglas:
Yep, we would.
Mike:
Okay, yeah.
Douglas:
Because as long as they’re not an end user, of course we would. I don’t know that group off the top of my head, but if they’re not an end user, they’re going to resell that tire or that product to another farmer or something like that.
Mike:
Yeah, that’s what they do. Yeah.
Douglas:
So yes, we would sign them, absolutely.
Mike:
What is the long-term goal of TPA?
Douglas:
Yeah, so a good question. One of the things that, when I think of the vision, because I really believe that in order for something to be successful, you have to have vision, right?
Mike:
Absolutely.
Douglas:
The vision here is to get things set up, make the market very clean. I’m not trying to say anything bad about other competitors or anything like that, but everybody knows that in certain markets, in certain areas, in certain ways, people are, they’ve done some underhand stuff, they’ve done some under the table stuff. I want it to be very, very clean because I really believe that we can do that. We are going to keep to our policy, we’re not going to sell to end users, period end of story. We will run it through either our own company on KVL side or another partner of ours that’s in the marketplace.
So the vision is we want to become, and I say this affectionately, if you look at the Midwest, K&M is a very, very strong distributor in the off-road, also on-road, but off-road business. Very, very successful, and very reputable, and there’s others out there, but I just really liked K&M guys. I want to be the K&M of the West. They have their own distribution where they take their own trucks and they take it from place to place within their own network. They will also deliver to customers. They will do will calls. They have sales guys that have key relationships with dealers out there, and they will work with them to find out, okay, the farmer’s in your market, you have these sizes for example, because they have these types of applications, be it cotton or corn or whatever the commodity is, there might be a different way of farming that stuff. We will work with them to get the proper tires into their networks so they can sell the customers.
The good news is this market’s very mature. Most of these dealers very well know what size tires and type of tires that they want. Our job is to make sure that we can provide them with the top tier and the value with integrity type suppliers. Yes, we’re going to carry BKT. Yes, we’re going to carry Mitas. Yes, we’re going to carry other brands out there in the agriculture world. We are going to carry, we’re going to have our own private label. CMA Double Coin is launching a new truck tire called Warrior. Well, they’ve offered it to us.
It’s not a private label, but they’re not offering it to, and we have it exclusively at west of the Mississippi. They’re going to help us launch this, we just put our order in for it, and so we will have a way to offer our customers a quality product, decent price, a fair price, so that they can turn around and make the money. The truck market is something that I’m not 100% familiar with. I’m still learning it, but there is a lot of money and a lot of a good business that you can do out there. Our own KVL Tires is very good at what they call the TBR market.
Mike:
Okay. Well, for the listener’s sake, if they want to get in touch or learn more about you guys, what’s the web address? What’s the easiest way to find you?
Douglas:
See, again, we’re jumping the gun a little bit almost by doing this because our marketing team is very busy at setting up our website. So if you were to go to our website today, you’re just going to see a landing page. You’re not going to see anything on there, but it does exist, and it’s tpawholesale.com.
Mike:
But they can also, the important thing is they can still sign up for subscribe to the future updates it says here as well as.
Douglas:
Well, they can. But I don’t know, I think marketing has got all that stuff set up. What I would let them do is they can reach out to myself, and I will, depending on where they’re located, is I will direct them to the regional sales manager because we already have them in place. We have product in our warehouses, and I can direct them to the right regional sales manager who can then talk to them about becoming a partner of ours.
Mike:
Love it, that’s perfect. Sometimes we get inquiries here so I’ll point them your way.
Douglas:
Yeah, that’d be great. You have my phone number, you have my email address.
Mike:
Absolutely.
Douglas:
You can send them my way. I have two email addresses here. It’s always dkershaw, but it’s either KAL Group or it’s tpawholesale.com, either one works.
Mike:
Perfect. Well, let me ask you a question that you’ve been in the industry for a while, and you’ve obviously got a ton of experience, just life experience. I think that’s really cool. Is there anything that you live by a mantra or words of wisdom that you can pass on?
Douglas:
Well, so throughout my years, I’ve had some very good mentors. Throughout the years, I’ve always grabbed a little bit from everybody that has shaped the kind of leader that I would like to say that I’ve become. I don’t think that anybody’s perfect, I definitely know that I’m not, but there are five things that I live by when it comes to business and in life too, but primarily business. I feel very strong about them, it’s not rocket science. But the very first one in everything is you have to have integrity, you have to tell the truth, hone up to any mistake you make, but you have to be trustworthy and tell the truth at all times and treat people with respect. Everybody, in my opinion, deserves respect no matter what they look like, where they come from, who they, I mean, if they’re a person, they deserve respect.
Mike:
Amen.
Douglas:
So I really believe in that, wholeheartedly. Second is commitment. Do what you say, and say what you do. It’s real simple. If you tell somebody, it doesn’t matter what level it might be. Yes, I’m going to do this for you, or I’m going to provide this service for you, you better deliver on it on the time that you said. Now, if there’s a reason why outside of your control that you cannot, just own up to it and go tell that person or that group, sorry, we’re not going to meet this commitment, but we will be able to do this, but here’s the reason why, and these are the action steps that we’re taken to correct it. I believe that people can respect that. Don’t try to hide it, because people do it all the time.
Mike:
Oh, yeah.
Douglas:
Just own up to it and take care of it. Third thing, and this is something that I did with one of my sales guys as early as this morning, within your realm of your responsibility, treat your realm of responsibility as your own business. And if you don’t know if you should spend the money or spend the time or make a decision on something because you don’t know, my question to you is, if it was your company, would you do this? So it’s called entrepreneurship. Think of your realm of responsibility as if it’s your own company, 99% of the time, if you don’t think it’s a good idea to spend your own money doing whatever that topic is, then it’s probably not a good idea to do it for the company.
I had a gentleman this morning just ask, “Hey, I have a customer that we’re signing up. He would like to be on net 60.” So it was a legitimate question.
I wrote back the email to him this morning and said, “Mr.” I won’t say his name, “if this was your company, would you give him net 60 if it was your money?”
He wrote back and said, “Yes, I would, because I think that the reputable,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I said, “Then I’m okay with it too.”
Mike:
That’s nice.
Douglas:
Because I don’t know that customer, right?
Mike:
Right.
Douglas:
But I want him to own up to it and say, “Yes, I’m standing by it. I want to give them net 60.”
And I said, “Okay then, if this is what you think, you’re the regional sales manager, then I’m going to grant you that empowerment to make that decision as well.”
Mike:
I think that’s fair.
Douglas:
Yeah. The fourth one is teamwork. Again, it’s not rocket science, but I believe that not one person ever in the entire history of the world and today has ever done anything on their own. It always takes some type of support team. Even if you’re a golfer or a tennis player or a swimmer, because everybody talks about those individual sports and things like that. Yeah, they’ve all got teams around them. They’ve got support mechanisms behind them. Parents, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. Everybody helps out other people to achieve the goals that they’re reaching.
Mike:
Oh, yeah, no doubt about it.
Douglas:
In the corporate world, I believe very, very strongly that all of us are going to achieve great things as a team. Individually, we can’t really accomplish a whole lot. I mean, for example, I’m heading up this wholesale group. Yeah, I know a lot of the things that need to be done, but guess what? I can’t go into the ERP system we have here and start doing all these slicing and dicing and numbers and stuff. That’s why I need to get an expert who can do that stuff for us, it’s a team. I can make the decision or I can work with the to make a decision, but I can’t do all that. Now I can, it just takes a lot longer because I can do all sort of-
Mike:
I understand
Douglas:
Tables and things like that. But if you get an expert in there, you can get your decisions quicker, you can move faster and be ahead of the market and get the business that you want to get. So it takes a team. Marketing, I mean, yeah, I know how to do all the marketing. I used to work in marketing. I don’t have a bandwidth to do it today, that’s why we have a marketing team and they do an excellent job. We correspond with each other. What’s this best? What’s this thing we need to do? What do you think we should do with that? We look at different ways to market the company. So big time, teamwork. You can’t do it without the team. You win as a team, you lose as a team. Bottom line.
Mike:
Like it.
Douglas:
And then the last and foremost is this came from the former CEO owner of Camso, Camoplast back in those days. His name was Pierre Marcouiller. I love the guy. Smart, one of the smartest guys I ever met in my life. He used to always say, never be satisfied with anything that you’ve achieved. There’s always a way to do it better. Well, I took that to always look for continuous improvement because I didn’t like the words never be satisfied. You should be satisfied with what you’ve achieved, but just don’t be.
Mike:
Complacent.
Douglas:
Complacent about it. Great word. Complacent, always look, and I always like to use, and I’m not a big, in fact, I’m not a fan of Alabama, but I always like to use Nick Saban as an example here. Every time he’d win the national championship, every time you could go back and look at the tape, he’s holding the trophy, he reached the pinnacle, he’s holding the trophy and what does he say? “Well, I would’ve liked to seen us tackle a little bit better in the second quarter. I would’ve liked to seen our outside linebackers box in better.” Or, “I’d liked to seen our corners do cover,” whatever it is. “Our quarterback was 12 for 24. I would’ve liked to have seen him at a better percentage of passively.” He won. It doesn’t matter. But he’s still looking at that how do we get better? How do we get better?
I always think that that’s the best way to do it. I tell the team, we’re going to celebrate the successes. I’m all about celebrating. If someone has a good idea, it doesn’t have to be my idea. If you have a good idea that’s going to bring us something, then you’re going to get the credit for it, especially if it works. And then that’s the way that the team can build trust with my leadership, their coexistence with their own leadership in their own areas. They can trust each other. I’m a big proponent of, a good team is not full of a team that people like each other. It’s the team that respects each other and trusts each other.
Mike:
Amen.
Douglas:
That’s really the way I agree. So those are those five things. I went long-winded, sorry.
Mike:
No, but I like it. But it’s a very, like you said, it’s not complicated. It’s simple, but you’ve learned that these five things get you where you want to go.
Douglas:
100%.
Mike:
Yeah.
Douglas:
And thankfully in my career and in my personal life too, but in my career, I’ve had great success with the teams that I’ve been on and been part of throughout my career.
Mike:
But you’re a lot like my brother. My brother is a high school football coach, but he coached under a lot of really well-known coaches in the country, and he can tell you everything he learned from each one of them that has made him successful and he’s been ultra successful. But part of that is he’ll flat out tell you, “Well, I got this from this guy and I got this from this guy, and I just stirred it all together.” I like that about you, yeah, and I think that’s good, I mean-
Douglas:
I can tell you I have life lessons that I learned when I was 12 years old from my very first football coach.
Mike:
That’s awesome.
Douglas:
I remember him to this day, so yeah, I 100% agree with your brother.
Mike:
Yeah. Well, so I’m going to ask you a real tough question now, and fortunately I’m cheating here, but I’m going to be honest with my audience. I already know the answer and I love the answer, but what’s your favorite movie of all time? Or it doesn’t have to be of all time, but one that comes to mind.
Douglas:
Yeah. It’s funny because this is not the kind of movie that they can make today, but this movie is the Bill Murray Stripes movie when he is the recruit into the Army. And unfortunately or fortunately, I have some friends, we could sit there and do all kinds of quotes for that movie. We just laugh our heads off. I love that movie.
Mike:
And I told you I love it too because and we didn’t mention this, but Harold Ramis is his buddy in that.
Douglas:
Yes.
Mike:
And that guy was comic genius. I mean, people don’t realize.
Douglas:
Oh, absolutely.
Mike:
Some people may or may not realize, but there’s three guys that came through the 1980s, late ’70s that created all the favorites that we love of comedy and Harold’s one of them. But I think he helped write Stripes, if I’m not mistaken.
Douglas:
He did that plus Ghostbusters and a bunch of others.
Mike:
Oh, a ton of others. Yeah. He did Groundhog Day.
Douglas:
Groundhog, yeah.
Mike:
A lot of the Bill Murray ones, they were always on the same page.
Douglas:
Exactly.
Mike:
Exactly. He acted in that one and he’s a trip. I mean, they’re all funny because John Candy’s in there.
Douglas:
Oh, John Candy was great.
Mike:
Yeah.
Douglas:
Yeah. When I first saw Stripes back in the day when Showtime first started, and it was on cable. It just played the same movies over and over and over and over again so we saw that movie one summer I think 50 times, just because it was.
Mike:
That’s all that was there. Yeah, I get it, man.
Douglas:
Exactly.
Mike:
Well, I got to tell you, I really appreciate you being on the podcast, Doug. It’s been a pleasure.
Douglas:
Well, I appreciate you having me on, thank you.
Mike:
Well, and before I wrap this up, I want to encourage you guys, any of the listeners out there, if you want to learn more about, or if you have ever heard of the Traction Summit and considered going or learning more about it, it’s Traction Summit 2024. It’s hosted in Charlotte this year, Charlotte North Carolina, August 13th to the 14th. To learn more, just visit TractionSummit.com. To all our listeners out there, thank you for being part of our podcast, we’re grateful for you. If you would like to recommend a guest to me, it’s real simple, just please email me at [email protected]. Till next week, be safe. Offer to help someone in need if you can, a little help. And have a great day. Thank you.
Announcer:
Thanks for listening to the Gain Traction Podcast. We’ll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
Sign up for the newsletter!
Get notified about updates and be the first to get early access to new episodes.