Transcript
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Welcome to Get In Her Lane.
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I'm your host, jamie, and I have a 25-year career in automotive.
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This is the show where we dive into the unique challenges and opportunities women face in the automotive industry, amplifying her perspective to drive positive change.
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Women influence 83% of car buying decisions, so it's crucial we see more women in leadership roles to shape the future of this industry.
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Let's try to get there together.
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Today, I'm really excited to be joined by Zac Kinch, who's been doing some amazing work with social media and podcasting to transform the way Rohrman Automotive Group approaches hiring and diversity.
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Zac is the creator of the Driving Relationships podcast, and today we'll dive deep into how that initiative is reshaping not only their dealership but also attracting a whole new wave of talent, including women.
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Zac, welcome to the show.
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I'm so happy to have you on.
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Well, I'm excited to be here.
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Thanks for having me.
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Absolutely.
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I know you from my Toyota days, of course, but why don't you share a little more about your role at Rorman Automotive Group?
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Yeah, so it's been a journey.
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So 11 years officially, which is crazy, and I'm one of the few that can say.
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When he walked into the dealership as his first role he stayed at that same dealer and has not ever gone anywhere.
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So 11 years with Bob Rohrman, toyota, and came in on the sales floor and, of course, like anybody that has early success, got the opportunity to move to the internet department and thought that was the greatest thing in the world and realized very quickly I needed another opportunity because the internet was a grind and brutal.
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So I did three years in finance, three years as a GSM, and then have been setting the role as general manager since.
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So it's been a blessing to be able to kind of stay in one store which I never thought I'd be in automotive.
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That was one of the things I always said is I don't want to be in the car business and I found a dealer group, an ownership, that wanted to change the way people saw dealerships and fell in love with the mission and passion.
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So here we are, 11 years later trying to continue to build that every day.
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Right, that's fantastic.
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I can't wait to hear more about that as we get into the episode today.
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But one of the big reasons why I have you on is because you actually have your own podcast slash YouTube series called Driving Relationships, and when we were talking initially, you said it was for the goal of improving the hiring process at Rohrman Automotive Group and that really excited me because I wanted to dig into that more and just see how that tied to trying to attract more women to the industry and grow them in the industry too.
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So I guess, tell me about driving relationships.
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How did it get started?
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What inspired you and how is that aligning with the overall business goals?
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Yeah.
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So how is it aligning with the business goals that is TBD.
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We'll let you know at the end of this patchwork project, but I think it's anything that kind of comes out of anything.
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You know, anything that falls back to that.
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11 years with the same dealership is that I feel like at this point.
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I know my store, I know my people.
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I've had a lot of the same people work with me for some time, so they know the expectations.
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So I felt like one of the next stages in my career is going to be really building leaders and generations, not just, you know, somebody that I could promote and have in a role, but like, how do I make them into the next general manager of the Roman Automotive Group?
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How do I, you know, force myself out of my role by having somebody replace myself.
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And that'd be a dream because that means I could spend more time with my family and kids.
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And as we kind of started building this whole thing, it was like, hey, I'm tired of trying to go traditional media routes to hire people and I want to try to be unique and different.
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And that meant, you know, reaching college students.
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That meant reaching people without in this industry, reaching people that don't understand automotive and maybe trying to give something that pulls the curtain back is transparency, and that's where the idea came of us starting a social page, which led into the Facebook TikTok because that's where we thought the easiest place to go was, and, through our success on Facebook and TikTok, it led into the Facebook TikTok because that's where we thought the easiest place to go was, and through our success on Facebook and TikTok, it led into YouTube and we, being some of the lesser intelligent people, thought it would be easier to film video, a podcast, versus just upload audio.
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And really quickly we learned that meant there needed to be cameras, and that meant there was audio be cameras, and that meant there was audio equipment and that meant there was editing and that meant all these other things.
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So we were blessed to have somebody on staff that had kind of voiced a concern of his role in the company and not for sure where he would fit in long term and had shared with us during the way that he had some belief that he could do some editing stuff if we ever got to that.
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And then full circle, here we are today with a podcast and a social platform that's grown, and it was like you asked, like truly around hiring people.
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We wanted to connect and show the auto business and show stories.
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Our auto group tries to do it differently, so the initial launch of it was let's pull in general managers, directors, people in the industry that don't have any path to automotive and try to walk them through.
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How did they end up in this role?
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And maybe that could be a connection to others out there and through that it's been amazing just to see the applicants completely come flooding in and we've shut off sources like Indeed.
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We've shut off sources like all of our traditional third-party marketing for hiring people and that's been kind of a cool side note that we didn't expect when we started the whole thing.
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Wow, that's so cool and there's so many different avenues we can go with what you just said.
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So let's go back to the socials that you kind of started with before driving relationships.
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Yeah.
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Kind of came to be what kind of content were you putting out there that was helping you make the connections?
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Yeah, in the beginning it was just, I mean, truly our core values.
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One of them is transparency, and I wouldn't work in the auto business if this group didn't focus on it as much as they did.
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So really it was just kind of that transparency of, hey, we're gonna have a sales event and this is actually how it's going to physically work and we're going to give you all the rules and everything right here in front of you.
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And it then turned into you know, here's some sales tips on how to buy a car.
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And people would then actually come to us from within our group and be like hey, do you think you're going to hurt yourself by sharing these tips and this transparency?
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Are you going to make customers use this against you?
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And I was like, man, it'd be great if they did because it would be a faster process.
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And then that's where it started leading into.
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The applicants started funneling in from other dealerships, going hey, I hate where I work because I don't feel like I can be myself and can be fully authentic and transparent.
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And that's where then it led into what if we pulled the curtain completely back with some type of a podcast showing our ownership group and how we believe we're doing the automotive business differently, but how can we show that to other people?
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And then it was amazing the hand raisers we started to receive from vendors and different people going, hey, we would love to be on here and we've had to be somewhat strategic in who we bring on, because we want it to be a partnership where, hey, you got to match our goals of changing the automotive business and if you're that, then we want to obviously highlight you and show you that.
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And I think that's really built into the brand for us of wanting to be different in the automotive space.
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And that's the part that we never would imagine that people would start, you know, asking to be interviewed because of a passion project.
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That turned into a hiring platform for us and that's where it's been as of today.
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So we've really moved away from the Facebook page.
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It still gets probably our down funnel stuff hey, we produced it on YouTube and now it's on Facebook.
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Or, um, hey, we produced it for our social page, tik TOK or LinkedIn, and now it went to Instagram, facebook, everything else.
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But, um, it's just been amazing to try to meet people where they're at.
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And then, obviously, one of the biggest things for us is trying to hire a different type of human being.
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Tell me more about that.
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What do you mean by hiring a different type of human being?
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Yeah, I think again, 11 years in the same store.
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I've hired all types of people, and one of the ones that I'm trying to move away from and it sounds terrible is automotive experience, and I want to hire people that come in and hit our core values and we focus on being servant-minded, personal, innovative and transparent.
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And then our mission statement is awesome experience through driving relationships, which is where the podcast name came from, and what we want to focus on is people that build relationships, and if you're not here to network and grow your brand, we don't want you.
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It's not about a dollar bill, it's about a relationship, and part of this has turned into making sure that people come in here and they pass simple conversational tests, not even focusing on hey, how could you sell a car?
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We could care less about that.
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We want to know how are you going to interact with our customer base.
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So even our podcasts, our social pages, have turned a lot into hey, go watch this episode and give us a recap of what did you actually take in.
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And being able to get somebody to write back an email or even comment on a video like a paragraph of what did I hear, what do I take from it has led to better hiring for us because we get to see an actual glimpse of how their brain works.
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We know what was said because we were on it right.
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We thought about it, we created the notes, we knew what we wanted to ask the person.
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So when they hit those, you know the head of the nail and they hit those highlights.
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You can really tell that these people are able to take in information and then be able to share it back via relationship.
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And that's been kind of the cool platform we didn't know we were going to get into.
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When we started this was like how do we just share that behind the curtain, look?
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And now it's.
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How do we use this as a platform to evaluate people at a higher level?
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That's really cool.
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I mean, that's very specific and innovative in terms of how you're trying to get a sense of a candidate and evaluate them.
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I love that.
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I'm going to be thinking on that for a while.
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Do you see a common theme at all in their backgrounds?
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I mean, you said not automotive in a lot of cases, right?
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Yeah.
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Is it a certain industry they've been in, or education, or is it really just kind of all over the place?
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So what do you see in terms of?
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The people that end up where you're saying, oh wow, these candidates really look like they're going to meet our core values and I want to take a chance on them.
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Yeah, it's all over.
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I mean, and I think that's the part that I've fallen in love with in automotive is that we're not looking for a specific industry and what you think qualifies as a good candidate never is the actual qualifier, so it's trying to find kind of those things where you just connect as a relationship and we truly believe in this business, in this industry.
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That that's why people want a dealer partner and why they want to work with a dealership.
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And the number of times that we've sold cars to people or service cars or continued relationships because somebody says to us you know, you actually asked me how I was after my collision.
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I had a car that was totaled and it wasn't about oh, how can we get you a new car.
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It was how's your family?
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How's whoever?
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How's that been?
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Is there anything we can do and that's been the big focal point for us is trying to find those relationship people.
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And that's where we think those who actually watch, you know, a podcast in itself or any of our social, are getting a glimpse inside of what we don't want to be in automotive and how we want to change the industry.
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And the biggest thing is we've tried to use the platforms where again in your podcast, get In Her Lane.
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We want to find more women and we want to find a way to continue to pull them into this industry, because it's a dynamic thinker and it changes the way that the auto industry has been slated to go, and every time we've done it, our numbers have skyrocketed and we continue to grow with it.
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And one of those areas is TikTok, which I never in a million years thought I would be on TikTok or involved in TikTok.
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I told somebody the other day I never thought I would have to approve my sales staff and my management team's TikTok videos in the auto world, but the stats were 59% of the total user base on TikTok is female.
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So it was like how do we go to a platform where we can actually interact directly with and how can we highlight these different things?
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So it's been social clips, youtube shorts, tiktoks everything's been pulled over just to get conversation going and that's been huge for the interview process and pulling people in and trying to onboard it and show, hey, our auto industry isn't going to be the stereotype that you expect in the auto business.
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So it's definitely been a new age, welcome to the car business, and TikTok, apparently, is part of it.
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So TikTok is definitely helping create some of that awareness, from awareness with the female potential, female applicant to actually coming in and applying for a position with your organization.
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How do you think they took that next step and got there?
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Like what do you think it was and I'm sure you're asking the question right, I'm interested in finding out what you're hearing from them.
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Yeah, you know what, and I'm going to use this platform to obviously pick your brain here.
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The one statement we get always is.
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It's a leap of faith and it feels like a big jump to even interview and that's one that I would love to hear.
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Even some of your experience of what you hear from your podcasts and everything is like we want to grow in making that barrier to entry less.
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We want to have that to be a less of a jump, and I understand it completely.
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The auto business I hired in 11 years ago was ruthless and if I probably brought my parents in to see where I worked 11 years ago, they probably wouldn't have been the most proud human beings because of what the industry was and who the people were.
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Here and again, we know every day we come to work it's how we handle situations with customers, how we present ourselves online, what that social footprint is going to look like to continue to lessen that various entry.
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But that's what we hear every single time is like, well, I'm looking at five other jobs and I just decided I gave you a chance, and then I think it's that pull the curtain back and show them like, hey, here's who we are, here's how we're going to be in one-on-ones, here's how we're going to be in coaching, here's how we're going to be in one-on-ones.
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Here's how we're going to be in coaching.
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Here's how we operate our dealership and here's what we want you to do on the role of our dealership.
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And I think that's been the relief that has actually got us some success with hiring is going.
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Oh my goodness, this isn't what I thought it was.
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This is something different.
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Let me see and explore if I could do this kind of thing, and that's been super refreshing.
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That feels always like a win.
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When you hear I was so nervous to even come interview with you and through all those interviews I've done in 11 years that's not a phrase I hear often is I was nervous to interview with you.
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Yeah, I mean, just to even be able to get them in there to interview is a win, right?
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So if you have their attention and they are there in front of you, then it's how are you describing the work environment and what it will be like if they do come on board with you, and what's your onboarding like if they do decide that they want to take that leap of faith and join your organization, so you don't lose them right away because you finally got them, and then you have to make sure that you don't end up losing them because the reality isn't what she thought it was going to be when she started, right?
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So that's a huge piece of it too.
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Yeah, and I think we've had a lot of success with you know, we have a good staff right now with women on the staff.
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I think that's a huge relief for a lot of women that they're not the only woman on the staff, and it's like I would rather work with a bunch of women because I feel like I wouldn't have to deal with some of the showing up late stuff that I deal with in some of my guys.
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I feel like we have a successful salesperson on our staff who's been with me for five years and she literally says hey, I'm a single mother, I have two kids, I need to be out of here by three o'clock and she does more in those five hours six hours than what any of my other staff does, because she's laser focused on what it is.
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And I've just continued to see we have a female GM on our staff that we just filmed a podcast.
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I'm super excited with that.
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She turned to me and goes hey, do you mind if I take over your podcast and I go?
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What?
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do you mean, and she's like I just think I can bring a whole nother element to it and I'm going to take this episode over and I'm like let's go.
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I'll have at it and roll with it and it's like the level of confidence and I'm a big believer in dynamic thinking and I want to take it from.
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I don't care if you're male, female, I don't care if you're old or young.
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I want all that input because I don't make great decisions.
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I believe I get great input from individuals and I want the most dynamic thinkers around me to be able to take that.
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And I believe that if industries aren't hiring women or hiring young, old, whatever it may be, you're missing out.
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And that's kind of our belief here is that we want to go full core press and bring in all the different demographics because we want to have that ultimate thinker that makes our company the best company possible.
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Absolutely.
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You said it very well the diversity of thought is so important to driving the innovation in your company and keeping it successful and going forward and accomplishing everything that you guys are setting out to do, so I think that that's fantastic.
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What other things, if you don't mind elaborating, do you do in your store to help women feel supported and empowered?
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Yeah, and this isn't again what I love about this company is that they've given me the autonomy of kind of running this dealership.
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I think they have the trust of 11 years in the same store that I know it.
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The other beauty is that as I came up, Troy Rorman so one of the owners it was my general manager, so I think he knows that he kind of taught me through this, so he's given me that autonomy of going.
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I trust Zac, I know what's going to happen, I know the results.
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They kind of allow us to self-operate this store and that's an amazing feeling because it allows you know, autonomy for anyone.
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I mean, I have individuals, like I said, that have to pick their kids up at 3 o'clock.
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So Monday through Friday they're part of our team.
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The joke always is there's four kids that work here from 3.30 to 5 o'clock so after mom and dad go pick them up, they come back here and they're part of our team and they sit in the work areas with us.
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We all know them by name.
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They hang out in our offices at times.
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So it's like how can we make sure we're supporting you and whatever you have in your journey in life?
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We're a believer that you need to have a work-life balance.
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So we offer up to four weeks vacation.
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A lot of dealerships are capping it still at two.
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Within those four weeks of vacation, we also also offer nine personal days, so we're talking like almost two months of you being out of the dealership.
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And then, for all employees male there's six weeks of paternity leave that we pay for as well.
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Wow, so it's like we want you to be with your family.
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We want you to be able to step out and actually support them.
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And we believe in being a family operated dealership.
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The family is the most important thing period.
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So I love the fact that I get to step out of the dealership and go be with my kids on soccer days or baseball days, and the expectation is you are too.
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And we shifted a big portion of our sales and service team to being actual teams and no longer solo operations with a manager and a salesperson or a service manager and a service advisor or service tech.
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We operate in the team sense, where it's kind of a collaboration of pay in some sense, because we want you to be able to step out and say, hey, I need to go be at my son's game at two o'clock.
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It's from two to four, so I'm going to be gone that time.
00:18:21.259 --> 00:18:25.036
Here's who I have coming in and they don't lose compensation for that.
00:18:25.436 --> 00:18:31.078
So we went away from the traditional manager and went to team leaders, where they work in groups of five on the sales floor.
00:18:31.078 --> 00:18:42.875
On the service side there's two teams over there as well, so that we can prioritize you being with family, so that whatever your priorities are, I mean, you may not have a family and say, hey, I have this thing that I'm really passionate about, great.
00:18:42.875 --> 00:18:46.321
Go support it and we look at the results and if the results are there, we'll support you.
00:18:46.321 --> 00:19:00.384
And if that means time away, you're probably going to come back in a better mental spot going to that game, then coming back and missing said game, because I know firsthand, if I miss it, how I feel as a dad, how I feel as a parent, how I feel as a human being.
00:19:00.384 --> 00:19:03.280
So I guarantee you that pulls back into the workplace as well.
00:19:03.722 --> 00:19:04.787
Yeah, absolutely.
00:19:04.787 --> 00:19:06.674
I mean, I can't miss my kids games.
00:19:06.674 --> 00:19:18.980
It really hurts me deep down inside and I know they're disappointed too, and that's what I live for when they're in their middle school and high school years right now, and it's only a short window of time before they leave the nest and go on.
00:19:18.980 --> 00:19:34.893
So, yeah, while it's crazy busy, while people are trying to work a full time job and sometimes it's dual income households and they've got either young kids or kids in sports, it's you don't want to miss those moments because that window of time is is so short, but that's awesome.
00:19:34.893 --> 00:19:38.960
Those benefits are absolutely huge, along with that flexibility.
00:19:38.960 --> 00:19:41.184
I mean that just speaks volumes.
00:19:41.184 --> 00:19:42.248
So I love that.
00:19:42.248 --> 00:19:50.911
I know you touched on it a lot, but maybe I want to make sure I'm not missing anything when you talk about this is not a traditional dealership setting.
00:19:50.911 --> 00:19:54.578
I don't want to work in a traditional dealership setting.
00:19:54.578 --> 00:20:01.250
What does that mean to you and what else are you doing to reshape the dealership culture?
00:20:01.615 --> 00:20:03.559
I'm a big passion individual.
00:20:03.559 --> 00:20:12.077
I've used that word multiple times that my wife hates it because she says what happens is you fall in love with something for nine months and then you move to the next thing you can fall in love with.
00:20:12.077 --> 00:20:15.222
And I said Well, the good news is I haven't fallen in love, out of love with you yet.
00:20:15.222 --> 00:20:20.097
So those are the things that I believe and I believe the dealership operates that same way.
00:20:20.097 --> 00:20:31.840
I mean, 12 months is a long time to do the same thing and I'm sure anyone listening to us that's not in the auto industry goes that's what I do as well, my job, and I go yeah, this industry is sick.
00:20:31.840 --> 00:20:36.565
It looks at things in a 30-day cycle, so there's always a pressure of how do you operate?
00:20:36.565 --> 00:20:37.945
What's the next 30 days?
00:20:37.945 --> 00:20:44.192
It doesn't give you the quarterly or the semi-annual reports back, it's monthly.
00:20:44.192 --> 00:20:52.625
So I believe that the operation of a dealership has to be fun and if you aren't coming into work and having an absolute blast, the auto industry should not be for you.
00:20:52.625 --> 00:20:53.788
And it should be fun.
00:20:53.788 --> 00:21:04.444
I mean you have an opportunity to take somebody's the second biggest purchase they make in their life typically and an automobile, and take a terrible thought process, experience and make it fun.
00:21:04.444 --> 00:21:06.898
So we look for those high energy individuals.
00:21:06.898 --> 00:21:09.144
So that means we try to provide a high energy atmosphere.
00:21:09.144 --> 00:21:16.048
So, as we were recording this, my team just went running through the hallway because it's's 1115 here in Indiana and that's their sales meeting.
00:21:16.048 --> 00:21:28.351
I don't know what was going on, but they were in almost a Congo line going through and the leadership team was doing something to get them fired up for the rest of the day and have good energy so that when they walk out to the sales floor it's all smiles.
00:21:28.351 --> 00:21:29.940
We tried to find those.
00:21:29.940 --> 00:21:32.732
So we've introduced things like Top Producer Club.
00:21:32.732 --> 00:21:38.140
So every 30 days it's the top 15% of all of our staff, so that could be porters.
00:21:38.140 --> 00:21:38.982
They have a goal to hit.
00:21:38.982 --> 00:21:44.762
It's technicians, advisors, salespeople, sales managers, finance and it could be anything.
00:21:44.762 --> 00:21:55.246
As far as we've done escape rooms, we've done trivia nights, we've done rock climbing, we did a high ropes course that was team building, and it's every 30 days where we just take them out of the store during work.
00:21:55.246 --> 00:22:00.849
We pay them while they're here for that time because we want it to be something that is just an awesome experience.
00:22:00.849 --> 00:22:04.011
Part back to that mission statement where they look at it and go.
00:22:04.011 --> 00:22:04.692
This was crazy.
00:22:04.692 --> 00:22:05.452
I've never done that.
00:22:05.593 --> 00:22:07.680
And then, as we just mentioned, with family.
00:22:07.680 --> 00:22:16.503
We know that dealerships here in Indiana are closed on Sunday but they're open on Saturday, and that wears on the other half of your family being at work on Saturday.
00:22:16.503 --> 00:22:21.471
So our belief is, if we're going to be here on Saturday, we need to make sure we provide for families.
00:22:21.471 --> 00:22:25.365
So we have the Saturday lunches that are provided, but it's also provided for your family.
00:22:25.365 --> 00:22:28.741
So if you want your family to come in and have lunch with you, come in at noon.
00:22:28.741 --> 00:22:29.624
Food's going to be here.
00:22:29.624 --> 00:22:31.007
Enjoy, have fun.
00:22:31.595 --> 00:22:33.898
With that being said, on Saturday we want to have events going on.
00:22:33.898 --> 00:22:38.306
We want to have things that are driving it, that are making sure that your family can come and be a part of it.
00:22:38.306 --> 00:22:42.818
So we really focused those on Saturday, but now it's turned into how can we have those during the week as well?
00:22:42.818 --> 00:22:47.082
One of the big ones we have coming up is next Tuesday is our community trunk or treat event.
00:22:47.082 --> 00:22:48.748
That is in its sixth year.
00:22:48.748 --> 00:22:51.297
This will be a day where we shut down the dealership all day.
00:22:51.297 --> 00:22:54.826
So we'll open the doors for service, but for sales it's completely closed.
00:22:54.826 --> 00:23:02.881
We'll see anywhere between 4,000 to 7,000 people on property.
00:23:02.901 --> 00:23:05.407
It is not about selling cars, it's just about being a community member and having the families here.
00:23:05.407 --> 00:23:08.898
So my entire staff of 74 employees will stay until 7 o'clock, stay late to work and do this.
00:23:08.898 --> 00:23:11.506
It's totally optional, they don't have to, they choose to.
