The Servant Leader: How Shane Taylor is Transforming Auto Sales Culture | Auto Industry Series

Intro: Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Kodespode and today’s guest is Shane Taylor, partner and operator at Krause Auto Group. Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, they operate 22 dealerships across South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida. They represent over 10 automotive brands and focus on treating customers like members of the Krause family.

Whether you’re looking for a sporty coupe or a luxury sedan, their simple financing process and commitment to excellent service keep customers returning. Shane has over 30 years of experience in the automotive industry starting from washing cars and moving up to executive positions in family run automotive businesses. He has completed online courses from Harvard Business School and NCM Academy, demonstrating a commitment to ongoing learning and leadership. His passion for building effective processes and helping teams succeed makes him a key player at Krause Auto Group, ensuring top notch service and a supportive environment for both customers and employees. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today, partner Krause Auto Group, Shane Taylor. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Thank you, Anthony. So many people wouldn’t realize that you got your start in the automotive world by washing cars. How did those early hands-on experiences shape your leadership style and approach to business today?

Shane Taylor: Yeah, I don’t know that washing cars actually did it, but the path and the journey to where I am now definitely has formed me not only as a businessman, but also just as a human being. So I think at the time it was just a job, right?

In 91, trying to figure things out, I’m 18 years old and just kind of want to get some money in my pocket to do whatever was going on that following weekend. So it did put me elbow to elbow with some organizations where I saw what business looked like and what success looked like and got me chasing that quite a bit.

Anthony Codispoti: So take us through a little bit of the journey that got you to where you are today. What were some of the key stops along the way for you?

Shane Taylor: You know, so in washing cars, again, I always ground myself there. And then from there it was kind of working in dealerships, seeing guys and they worked elbow to elbow with guys and technicians. We call Lube guys, which are guys changing oil and I saw there was an opportunity there and quickly jumped into that after a short stint of washing cars and especially in the northeast where it was cold. So washing cars and working with water was always fun.

So jumped into a situation where I started working what we call fixed operations in our business and that’s changing oil filters, stuff like that. I was not very good at it. I’m not the guy that takes things apart and can put them back together very good. And after leaving a couple of tires loose on cars and making some major mistakes, they said, well, why don’t you see more like a sales guy?

Why don’t you sell the service instead of working on the cars itself? So I was gracious there and took that opportunity and learned how fixed operations. I talked about this as a key point because so many leaders in our industry have never had anything to do with fixed operations and really don’t have an understanding of it.

Most of them are retail oriented guys. But this really going to give me a grounding for how it operated in the back from parts and service and working with technicians and selling that service.

Anthony Codispoti: After doing that. Just to clarify, fixed operations is what you call the service side of the business.

Shane Taylor: It is. So that would be everything from writing a car up that comes in with troubles to working on that car parts is going to be considered fixed operations as well. So I’m learning just a basic understanding of how that function helped me later on in my career dramatically. And then watching sales guys come through with Rolexes on was tempted me into that realm where I was a natural talker at that time in my life.

And so jumped into sales and you know, expedited my career really, really quickly in the beginning becoming a number one sales guy. Probably some faults I had was I thought that I started taking the shortcuts instead of going back to the basics that got me where I was. So I after about 90 days of leading a sales board early on in my career, I became to the bottom two or three for probably a six month period. Kind of ate some humble pie and figured out that hey, all these things I was doing the first 90 days was just out of excitement. So kind of getting excited back, reteaching myself how to sell cars and then spend a long, a long time selling cars, you know, in today’s industry, we see that jump happening within two, three years. I was closer to about eight years of what we call pounding pavement and and greening customers on a lot walking around, whether it be cold weather or hot weather.

So really kind of getting I have a good understanding of what that what that entails. I certainly didn’t take any easy roads or quick roads to where I am right now. I took every single obstacle and took every mountain that was out there. I climbed the hard way. So shortly after that, I was given an opportunity to go into the finance and where we finalized paperwork.

We sell products in the back from insurances, set up loans for customers. And this was great. I was I was like a fish and water for the first couple years there and did really, really well. Again, guys typically will spend, you know, three to four years in there. I spent closer to nine years in there just grinding it out. I was my own worst nemesis, though I was cocky and very self serving at that time in my life. So I held myself back by my attitude and it took years to and I was always chasing the next spot. You know, it took me years later to realize that any time I’ve ever moved forward in my career, I focused on the task at hand. I accepted that what I was doing was what I was going to do for the rest of my career. So I accepted that in sales at one time. It’s like, well, I’m just going to be the best salesman there is. And shortly after that, I got a finance opportunity. Trying to get out of finance after three to four years can be really grinding and what we call in our industry, the box or the finance office.

Chasing for the next level and this couldn’t get there. And it wasn’t until I said, you know what, I’m going to be a finance guy the rest of my life. And this is what I’m going to do and I’m going to be the best I can at this job. Shortly after I kind of wrapped my head around that, I got an opportunity to get into a store at a leadership level as a general sales manager.

General sales manager kind of oversees the sales department underneath the general manager. Still chasing the role of a general manager is kind of what I found myself doing again. Finally, one day kind of sat myself down and said, okay, you’re going to be the best years is where you are. This is the best your career is going to get in this position. And you’re just going to be the best general sales manager there is. It was within less than a year I was tapped on a shoulder to become a general manager. Now in our industry, becoming a general manager is like being made in the mafia. So it’s a really big deal and you’re talking about the top two to three percentile in our industry over hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people.

So it was super exciting. I did all this under one organization. It was a guy named Tom Cody just outside the Washington, D.C. area who was primarily in the Ford business. He had some great people under him, a CFO named Mike Salini who was teaching me things I didn’t know he was teaching me. And a great mentor, Greg Basilico, worked underneath him was not only a good friend now, but a really good mentor and gave me some future opportunities as well.

And then after as a general manager, I worked for them for the next couple of years and worked with a friend there under a friend. You know, people in our industry or in business in general say that that doesn’t go along with each other. There’s a guy named Steve Rayleigh taught me said, hey, when you go to work with a friend, that doesn’t mean you can see what the least you can do, but it makes you work twice as hard.

And I’ve always used that philosophy and I’ve got a lot of friends I work with now and I teach in that same philosophy and it works out even better than you’d think. So working with them for about 20 years, I guess another shift would be that, you know, I ended up leaving them as recruited into the Georgia market by a guy named Vernon Kraus. Vernon was successful guy owned, you know, probably at that time, I would say eight or nine dealerships, maybe seven or eight dealerships at that time is back in 2016. And moved down to Georgia. It was a it was a big shift, a big change in my not my life. I’m 42 years old. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years and I thought I was in a company that I was going to be with forever and we ended up retiring in an area that I actually grew up in in Maryland. I learned later in my career that without the pain that comes with change, there’s really no growth. So, you know, I look back on that and I this this opportunity became really, really big for me.

So I recruited for a Hyundai store in Kennesaw, Georgia. Now, there’s a couple of things wrong there. One, it was a new company that I didn’t know. And I had but when I did my research on the guy, he had a store, a really big Ford store in Alpharetta, Georgia, which is a well known area super it’s growing like crazy. And I was really familiar with Ford at the time I’ve been with Ford majority of my career. So I’m thinking he’s calling me recruiting me on this weed had over an hour on the conversation.

I said, Hey, listen, Alfred, I have a brother who’s now for it. I’m familiar with Alpharetta. I’m excited about talking about this Ford opportunity. He said, Ford, Alpharetta.

No, no, no. I’m talking about a Hyundai store I have in Kennesaw. And I was like, Well, you got the wrong guy. Hyundai is not me.

And Kennesaw, I’ve never even heard of Kennesaw, Georgia. So best of luck, you know, let’s let’s pass. So we ended up staying in touch and talking for the next couple months. And then I come down to see the store down in Kennesaw, Georgia. I guess I talked so much about this because this was a super big ledge for me in my career. And taking over the store, the store was could have been the best Mercedes facility in the nation. It was just a beautiful facility he had built was not growing area after I did my research. So it was a it was an okay performing store at the time. I came in became partner with him fairly quickly. And within about eight or nine months, we were the number one store in Georgia and the surrounding states outside of Florida.

Now explain why that is later. But what did a bunch of work with him slow quickly became he said, Hey, if you can do this in another store, so he had a Ford store down the street, ended up taking over the Ford store. He had ended up working with the Alfred Ford store that I actually was hoping to go and be a part of down there. It’s kind of their mother ship there.

Anthony Codispoti: And then just a second, Shane, sorry to cut you off. There’s been so many I’ve been furiously writing notes because there’s so many good things that I want to dive into. So let’s stick a pin in this part of the story. We’ll get back to it. But I want to review some of the things that that you talked about so what so far. So you became okay, so you had this this background and fix operations this helped you a lot later on and I think we’re going to get to that at some point. You but then you got an opportunity to go into sales because they said hey he’s not so good at fixing things. Yeah, right. But he’s got a good personality. Let’s put him out front the customers. Sure. So quickly became the number one sales guy in those first 90 days. What was it that you were doing that was so effective and different from everybody?

Shane Taylor: You know what what happens in our industry is we get too smart for ourselves and we start pre qualifying customers before they even get out of their car when they pull up.

We start thinking we’re good enough to skip steps. So they showed me hey here’s a roadmap to the sale and I was just excited to be up front there. I was excited not to be working in the back anymore and and and grinding out washing cars and 20 degree weather that I was just so and I could wear a tie, you know, every day and I just got super excited about it. I followed those 10 steps to the to the T and was just kind of personable enough where people liked me and then so it just it just kind of exploded and I was very hungry and I was wasn’t afraid to work the hours. I would say that was just it was just

Intro: almost kind of following enthusiasm and following the steps of what they showed me to do a B and C and I did a B and C. The problem is quickly after that you start saying well maybe if I did BC and then D and the skipped a so that was a real growing experience early in my career to say no there’s the structures there for a reason and a purpose. And it really did they didn’t do a great job of telling me why in this company for over 20 years they taught I learned so much of my fundamentals from this company but wouldn’t explain to me I didn’t understand why until later in my career this is why they did this and light bulb started kind of going off and that’s really when my career started accelerating.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay so you did great you were at the top of the heat very quickly then you started looking for some shortcuts cutting out steps yeah partially because you didn’t understand the why yeah because you’re like hey maybe I can accelerate this growth even more.

And then you quickly came to find out that okay you ate a little bit of humble pie because you dropped to the bottom of the heat now and so when you went back to following those 10 steps were you back top of the heap again.

Shane Taylor: Yeah I was able to build a business model that was sustainable long term and not just built on just inertia and excitement. So I really started learning some of the skill sets you know and became a student you know school was never really my thing. I became bored very quickly but I’ve always been a student in something that I’m interested in and where I study it almost compulsively and try to master it so I became I started looking working on word track constantly where I was never put into an uncomfortable situation and you know a lot of memorizing and a lot of working and a lot of drilling that and then became. Word track yeah you know we train word track so you know when when a customer comes in and throws up an objective of some sort where do you go you know so that’s that’s a big part of any kind of sales even outside of car sales. You got to be prepared instead of just kind of looking at them dumbfounded on and not being able to answer their question.

Anthony Codispoti: You know you said something else that was interesting. What was it you didn’t take the easy path. Basically you found every mountain obstacle along the way say more about that.

Shane Taylor: Yeah I mean the example of just trying to take shortcuts was my first stent there. You know and I really I really became. It was it was really about chasing the dollar for me in the beginning. You know I was excited for the fact that you know I had buddies that were you know a couple years in were coming out of college and making you know not less than a quarter than what I was making as a sales guy so that that became my drive but it also became short lived. You know I spent a good portion of my career trying to separate myself from the bottom from a financial standpoint and then also just in title. It wasn’t till years years later that I realized that closing that gap created better connection with employees and I could actually do more and be just better at what I do. But I those small things became big obstacles for me and and you know from a general manager looking down at what I was doing he I was very self serving again I I was interested in what benefited me and not trying to help other people.

Anthony Codispoti: So then you got an opportunity to move into the finance side of things which for me as an outsider seems a little unusual. You’ve demonstrated the personality and the skill sets to be out in front of customers. Now you’re going more to what I’m envisioning is the back office is this a normal sort of path for folks to take in the car industry.

Shane Taylor: It’s certainly the healthiest path. There are guys that skip it and there are very very few greats that don’t have some sort of experience in that office. So I mentioned earlier that a lot of successful car guys in our industry are retail oriented. So you learn that early on as in selling cars. We call the sales part was like we call the back end fixed operations we call the front part variable operations.

So the majority of the leaders that come into our industry are have come from just the variable side. So you learn how to you learn the retail and the problem on the retail end is you can run pretty sloppy and be successful. What the finance office does is it creates detail in your life. So you know looking back as miserable as I was probably the last four years in that finance office the skill set that I learned on how to slow down organize things build relationship with other banks that I could get things. I could get paper hung or bought what we call that other guys couldn’t became invaluable later in my career and making stores successful.

Anthony Codispoti: And why were you able to get paper hung or bought relationships.

Shane Taylor: It was all about relationships which you know in that part of my career I started just tipping the iceberg of understanding what relationships really meant in our industry and now it’s everything. So everything I do is trying to build relationships and strengthen those relationships that some point or another those relationships can be super beneficial to you. But that’s not the only reason to do it but that’s a major reason.

Anthony Codispoti: So in the parts of your story that we’ve heard so far there’s certainly repeating themes here right Shane you were chasing money you were chasing titles you were chasing what was good for you. And in your words that kind of turned you into your own worst enemy.

Yeah that’s right. And there were realizations along the way it sounds like where you were like man well I’m here I’m in this spot I’m in this role. I am just going to buckle down and make the decision that I am going to be the best at this that I possibly can. And it seems like in the instances we’ve heard so far it seems like once you did that the new opportunity the new door opened pretty quickly afterwards.

Shane Taylor: And that trend still happens today. So yeah it’s really about focusing what’s in front of you and what’s on your plate and just being the best you can at what’s in the task that are in front of you at that time I think to propel in anybody’s career.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay so now let’s skip forward to kind of where we left off before. There was an opportunity down in Kennesaw Georgia a place you’d never heard of before. Sure. Hyundai which I’m not a Hyundai guy I’m a Ford guy so you’re like nah I’m going to pass. Yeah. Something kind of brought you back to it you went down you checked out this beautiful dealership and you’re like alright let’s do this you became a partner and how was it that you quickly became what did you say the number one store in the state?

Shane Taylor: Number one Hyundai store in the state and the surrounding states outside of Florida so every state that that surrounded Georgia we were the number one Hyundai store there. What were you doing? Volumize. You know everything that I had learned in my previous group it was it become almost mechanical and I just I plugged in all those same practices. I did have some things open up so Vernon was big on education and he always has been. They are a part of a institute called NCM and they are out of Kansas City, Missouri and they are strictly automobile schooling for every aspect. So within three to four months he sent me to NCM schooling where I accomplished you know financial management and understanding one and two general manager one and two I did service more fixed operation classes. I spent a good portion of my first year traveling out to Kansas for three to four days stints on trying to understand it.

When this happened a big light bulb went off they use what they call a composite where they dissect every single penny that goes through the dealership from a sales standpoint to a how it converts to a growth standpoint and your expenses thereafter. This was all new to me and I started understanding through these numbers why the group I was with were doing certain things that they did and kind of shed light and then when I had a better understanding of it I became a better operator. I could teach people. I’ve always enjoyed instruction and training and that classroom setting. I feel like it’s probably one of my gifts is being able to communicate well with especially variable or sales guys. So I was able to implement that and then you know with the work ethics that I had learned you know through my 20 year career with the Cody organization plugging that in getting an arsenal of understanding the numbers in depth. Now suddenly I was becoming not only a good retail guy but I was also starting to become a good businessman as well. And that’s what I’d really really our success in that store was and then quickly after that in about a year I understood I never had a store that I couldn’t really figure out within 12 to 16 months. I’ve been plugged into a few different stores and it could usually turn around with definitely within a year and a half but most most of the time inside a year just plugging in things that I had been trained over the last 20 years. So I could almost get bored after a year in a single store. So I think Vernon since that a little bit and started plugging me in other stores very quickly where I’d implement the same things I did in the Hyundai store I started implementing in the Ford store and helping the organization grow at the same time.

Anthony Codispoti: And so does that bring us to present day?

Shane Taylor: That does not bring us to present day. No. So full circle there the an interesting part of the story outside of business is that Vernon had a amazing daughter named Jennifer Kraus that I met in my stint in Georgia fell in love with and started having a pretty serious relationship with which put a little strain on Vernon and I’s relationship respectfully. During that stream I had a group called Morgan Auto Group which is based out of Florida.

Morgan is the second largest private auto group in the nation and they kind of saw some of the things that were happening in Georgia and they started trying to recruit me to come down and be an executive for their group. They were about they were growing fairly quickly. I think at that time they had 34 stores. And Jennifer and I felt like it was kind of best at that time to separate from the crowd saw a group. So sat Vernon down and just kind of explained everything and left everything right. We’d always talked about potentially getting back together but at that moment it was a good opportunity. Florida was always been the ideal destination for me. It’s the Mecca and the car business. It’s you’ll see some of the largest stores in the nation coming out of Florida.

They don’t put the dealerships very close to each other. So you’re serving a larger demographic area and the weather is awesome right and the golf is good. So and fishing.

So those are my other two hobbies of night and I’m not working. So being in Florida was always opportunity. Larry Morgan and their CEO Tom Moore. After long talks I and Jennifer and I decided to move to Florida. We got married in Florida and then so it started kind of going to family functions with Vernon. And we became we became more than than just business associates. We really became friends. He became my father-in-law. He’s a mentor of mine and we stayed and we grew our relationship really blossomed over the next three years. He happens to live in Jupiter, Florida a mile away from where I was too. So we were we saw each other frequently. I bring this I bring this up because it was an important it was a important part of my personal life that affected my career in a positive manner long run. You know what I what I learned in Morgan was invaluable. Larry Morgan is just a he’s an amazing guy and he’s got a really, really good people around him.

He only had I think at that time three or four executives at 30 some stores and cover in all of his model is all in Florida. So to be a part of that really stretched and push you want to talk about going above and beyond and outside of my thresholds and comfort zones. That was probably one of my biggest steps there that I found that I could do things that I had no idea that I could do when when applied properly. So after about three years of that I realized that I wanted to get back into a little bit smaller setting. I was managing and with Morgan I was managing 12 stores that round from Claremont, Florida, which is just north of Orlando, all the way down the East Coast, all the way to South Miami. So I stayed on the road a lot and the expectations with that company are large.

What was really cool was probably something that we’ll never we may never see in our industry again. So as a private dealer in this market, he took that from 34. I believe the number was 34 at that time. And when I exited he had 75 dealerships. This is massive. I mean, we’ll probably never see that growth spurt in a private company ever again in the history of the car industry. And I happen and I happen to be an executive to be front row on this thing and be a part of it.

Anthony Codispoti: What was happening that was able to fuel that kind of rapid growth?

Shane Taylor: I think it was always his vision. From a financial standpoint, he did some syndicate loans through an outside company where he had availability of some funds. But his vision really in just growing and becoming bigger and better was something that I learned. I mean, Larry’s over 80 years old and outwork most 30 year olds that I know have ever met in his right hand of his son as a CEO and Tom Moore as a COO became a friend of mine. And just a phenomenal guy that I have the most respect for and mentored me over those three years. What I learned in those three years was probably bigger than any 10 years stint I learned in the automobile industry.

Anthony Codispoti: So at some point along the way, you began, I’m going to assume, you began to realize that Shane chasing the money chasing the title. That’s not really the way to go about this. Maybe I should take a different approach. When did the light bulbs start to go off there and what did that transition look like for you?

Shane Taylor: So yeah, I heard a phrase one time that said, if you only worry about being rich, you’ll never be rich. The bar always moves up, so you never accomplish it. I mean, really, really, really good money with the Morgan Auto Group. It’s one thing they do is they take care of their people. But at the end, I felt like there was something that I wanted to do above and beyond that. I’ve embraced schooling in specific areas that really excite me like I mentioned earlier.

I went through a year college. It’s a credited course called Spiritual Leadership College. And this was eye-opening for me in the sense that it got me in contact with kind of a spiritual path that I was starting to go down.

But from a leadership standpoint and the impact that I can make on other people’s lives. So my wife did it with me. Jen and I did this course over a year.

It was in person. It was not an online course and it was a lot of memorizing, a lot of studying and a lot of reading that really kind of formed what we wanted to do to help impact other people’s lives. So we kind of came up with a model that we wanted people, we wanted to help impact people’s lives not only from a financial standpoint, but a spiritual standpoint and help them experience some of the freedoms that we were experiencing through our spirituality.

And that’s through God. And then as this idea formed about that time, I believe God put an opportunity in front of me with Vernon to buy a couple stores with him. Buy one store and a store that he was already a part of.

He allowed me to buy into that store in the Venice, Florida market. And that’s kind of been our model. We started that December 11th of last year. So just over a year and our goal again is to really kind of change some of the negative traditions that are going on the automobile industry. Also to really make a difference in people’s lives in a positive way and a spiritual way as well. So we spent a lot of time just kind of witnessing and helping people that are in need.

Anthony Codispoti: Say more about your goal being to change some of the negative habits that go on in the car industry. What are those? How do you want to shift them?

Shane Taylor: Yeah, you know, we’ve all seen the movie Wolf of Wall Street, right? So, you know, there was a real correlation in some of the things that were going in and those bullpens that are happening on showrooms when customers weren’t around. A lot of bullying, a lot of talking down to people, a lot of just things that are overall kind of negative and a way to do business that’s not real healthy for the customer. So we kind of set that aside and said, hey, let’s talk about what the customer’s needs are. Let’s work on a more transparent way to do business with customers that are a little nontraditional from the car business as a whole. And then let’s see, let’s make our legacy how that we can positively impact these people again, not just financially but in a spiritual manner.

Anthony Codispoti: So what did that transition look like? Because you’ve got folks in the team that are accustomed to operating a certain way and you want to come in and teach them a new way. Not everybody is receptive to change. Was there a lot of turnover that took place during this transition?

Shane Taylor: Yes, there was a lot of turnover, which is one thing that we work hard on not doing is turnover because you lose a little traction every time that you have turnover in your business. But we did have a hard time finding people that have the intensity on a business side. So as soft as what we’re talking about, our drive and intensity was furious.

It was move at quick pace but understand. And we had, you know, this was, we were investing a lot of our own monies in this majority of our portfolio. So we had that stress on top of it as well. But we believed in it. So we had budgets set out for ourselves that we said, you know, not hitting these marks are not going to work. So finding the right people that were willing to do that was definitely tough. So yeah, we had we had a lot of turnover across the stores over this last year.

We have stabilized that in the fourth quarter. We have great people working for us right now, great leaders in place and the culture as a whole is really turning to where what we want in a store atmosphere.

Anthony Codispoti: Shane, I’m kind of curious to hear from folks who were part of, we’ll call it the old guard that did successfully make the transition to the new way of doing business. What can you say about how those folks evolved or what was helpful in kind of coaching them into a new way of doing business?

Shane Taylor: I think kind of letting them know where we come from from a moral standpoint and what we wanted for our not only our customers, but the employees that fell under that management. You know, we we really try to edify our people, lift our people up and and make them make them better and get behind them. Servantry leadership is something that we focus very, very high on. And in this industry, as it did for me, and I explained over my first 20 years, your head gets a little bit big. It’s hard to be a servant when your chest is puffed out and you’re full of pride. When you have big successes in here, that happens a lot. So just getting behind our people and teaching the culture of being a servant for them.

You work for them, they don’t work for you. That was probably the biggest keynote there. And I’ll mention too, even with the turnover, there’s not a person that I don’t stay in touch with that didn’t work out for us in our particular situation. There are some really, really good people there that I still stay in contact with. There’s a couple of general managers that ended up parting company with, and one left.

One we left to part with, but are just really, really good people. I think at the end of the day, they would say that it was overall a good experience, even though it didn’t work out for everyone. I think that they would say that they learned something about servantry leadership at the end of the day.

Anthony Codispoti: Where can, for people listening to this, who their ears are not perked up about servantry leadership, are we going to be a good place for folks to start to learn more about that?

Shane Taylor: You know, the example of Jesus in the New Testament is the best example that we have a servantry leadership. Here’s the best leader, best coach, best mentor in the entire world ever.

And he always took the back road or the second row when it came to getting behind his people and was always humble. So, you know, I’ve got several of the mentors that I’ve mentioned do similar things and have taken those roads and showed me what that looks like for me to be able to define it for myself. But yeah, that’s where I’d say. I’d say, you know, if I had to bring two guys up that are big in our industry, there’s Andy Elliott, who’s just on fire for life and specializes in auto industry. And this guy is, you know, he’s ripped the core and he’s just go, go. And then another one of my big mentors is John Maxwell.

So if I had to say, I come into a split with an Andy Elliott and a John Maxwell, which are complete opposite to the spectrum with a similar message that kind of helped me communicate with my guys and what our needs are in the direction that we want to go. But culture ultimately is something that you build and it doesn’t happen overnight. And we’re slowly building the culture that we had a vision for over a year ago now.

Anthony Codispoti: So you wanted to change some of the negative habits in the car industry. But the other thing you said is that you also wanted to help people spiritually as well. Yeah. What does that look like in a work environment?

Shane Taylor: Well, in an environment where you try to get every penny that’s on the table, sometimes it goes into a gray area where people, when anytime you introduce money into a situation, especially in sales and commission type businesses, it gets really murky sometimes about what’s right and what’s right for the customer and what’s morally right. So we really try to push about, we spend thousands of dollars on our customers after the sale to do what’s right. When your salespeople start unseeing that and really understanding that, it gives them a confidence and a step to kind of do better business. And that’s how we built this culture is just by doing the right thing every single time and then letting that bleed down through our leaders.

Anthony Codispoti: Say more about what it meant or what it means on an ongoing basis to spend a lot of money on customers and sort of back that.

Shane Taylor: So, you know, a customer comes in, they say, hey, I, you know, there’s a scratch here. It could be an interior situation. It could be a, hey, there’s not something that’s not running right with my car. We’re going to embrace that instead of run from it. So we take that customer and we just, we make that situation right. Whatever that looks like, whether it be something on a financial contract, whether it be a physical situation on the car, whether it be a used car that was an as is, we’re still going to get behind that car or that product and we’re going to make that situation right.

We do it, we do it every time. Or if a customer even had a perception, you know, oftentimes the process gets so rushed that customers don’t even realize what they’re signing and then they come out and then the excitement wears off and I want to take that customer, I want to sit them back down and if we can’t see eye to eye, the number is going to make it right. We’re going to either take that car back or we’re going to say, hey, this is how you understood it.

This is what we’re going to do. And if they don’t feel good about it, the car deal is not worth it to me. It’s, I would rather not have the sale and that’s, that’s different in our industry from, from, from where most practices I think stand from.

Anthony Codispoti: What are we talking about? 20-some dealerships now?

Shane Taylor: I think 26 is what Crow Salter Group is up right now. My, my interests are lie only in Florida and only in the Venice market. We’ve got some Florida stores down in the Fort Myers, Cape Coral. There’s a partner down there, Mike Spinazzi is a major partner with, with Vernon and he does a phenomenal job in business down there. Mine is kind of this smaller bubble right here in Venice. We’re, we’ve got some good things in the horizon looking to expand.

Anthony Codispoti: So the reason I asked is, I’m curious how you teach that different style of thinking, you know, across multiple people, multiple physical locations, because it’s, you know, it’s one thing if you’ve got a policy that’s sort of black and white, right? We sell this car as is. That’s what the contract said. The customer comes back and they complain.

It’s like, sorry, like, hey, and you’ve got this internal policy. It’s black and white. But the policy that you’re describing, there’s a lot more gray there. There’s a lot more flexibility and wiggle room. And so what’s, I’m kind of curious, what’s the guidance that you give people who are sitting in that seat across from the customer so that they’re making a decision that aligns with both your moral values as well as your financial values?

Shane Taylor: Yeah, there’s definitely a training period that goes on there. I would, I would answer this in two parts. One, when you manage from a platform, which I’m not doing as much right now, but whether it been through Krauss in the Atlanta region or with Morgan in a large section of Florida, the start to change that culture comes from servanship leadership. So when you are dealing with leaders from a platform level, your con, my biggest stress every morning after I did my Bible reading and my run and got in after my routine in the morning, I really worked on getting ideas to bring something to them. When they’re convinced that the idea is theirs and they implement it, that’s when you know you have a win. But it starts there because when you are managing leaders that way, then those leaders start, that starts tailing off and they start understanding what they need to do for not only their employees, but also their customers.

It just bleeds all the way through. We have a button on our websites, just in our just in Gen and I stores here in Venice that says talk to the owner. And that button allows customers to kind of directly communicate with us. So when they communicate with us, it’s usually because something didn’t go their way or they’re not getting what they want. So that’s a training.

Every one of those is a training experience. You know, we’ll pick up the phone, talk to the general manager, say, Hey, listen, what happened here? They, Hey, you know, listen, this is this is not this is this is it makes sense. Well, I understand. We’ve got to see a bigger picture here.

You know, how many people are the how many people is that guy going to go talk to, you know, he’s going to bleed into here. And how does that how does that contradict the money that we’re spending in marketing right now? So word of mouth, when you start doing that word of mouth very quickly, I think we’ve just been nominated for business of the year in the Venice market, we’re supposed to find out who actually won here in the next week. But it’s really just kind of through doing that and hey, doing the right thing. So it starts with a culture of servantry leadership to your people, bringing them ideas, serving them. When they know that they’re being served by somebody that’s over them, they start serving the people that’s under them. That bleeds through all the way through our customers. And then just doing the right thing. So, you know, every scenario, this is a weird industry where there’s no textbook for it.

Right. Like there’s there’s no there’s no book you can read and go in and run a car dealership. I tell guys all the time, the only difference between you and I are about 2000 mistakes. It is a business of mistakes.

You have to live it. I mean, as a general manager and operator, you’re not only managing, you know, all kind of different personalities because in the sales world, you know, you’ve got, you know, alpha is all over the place, but you have, you know, some introverts as well. You’re an HR manager, you’re an accountant, you’re a recruiter, you you have to be multitasked all day, every day. And there’s no there’s no textbook for that. So you kind of learn as you go, unfortunately, in this business.

So if you can put big enough bumpers down the bowling alley rails and kind of keep them within a certain thing and teach the culture of servantry, that’s the only way to make this thing bleed all the way down through.

Anthony Codispoti: You mentioned having to wear multiple hats, one of them being a recruiter. You know, a lot of folks I talked to in business leadership positions, it’s still a pretty tight labor market. I’m curious what you have tried and found some success with on the recruiting side and maybe as well as on the retention side, which can be just as important.

Shane Taylor: You know, this is probably something I learned from a guy, Tom Moore, the CEO over at Morgan Auto Group. He, when he had a position that needed to be filled, within five minutes, he could have two to three people on the phone for that position. So no matter how great or how small the position was, he would call that person, he would have an hour long conversation with them, just talk to him about who they were. And if he liked you, he would actually put reminders on his calendar to have five minute conversations just to stay in touch with him. Now, this is probably, this is a guy that worked near 80 to 90 hours a week, but he probably spent 20 hours in a work week just touching base. Now, he’s running 75 stores, so he’s got cannonballs flying at him 24-7, but he slowed down enough to build relationships with guys and they loved him, man, and they would wear his phone out.

His phone was non-stop. Hey, how are you? You got up as a spot for me yet?

You got a spot for me yet? Didn’t matter if it was a technician, a porter, general manager, a salesperson. And I use that to the T where I just slow down, go through every application, I review on myself personally, I pick the phone up, have general conversations with them, ask the ones I like, and just try to stay in touch with those people via text or whatever. And it’s been beneficial and we are so reactionary in this business because it moves at such a fast pace that the standard in our industry is, oh, this guy just quit, or oh, this guy just left, and what are we going to do? And so now we scramble. So trying to teach my guys the same philosophy for success is something that we’re trying to implement as well.

Anthony Codispoti: You mentioned something about your morning routine. What does that consist of? What time are you getting up?

Shane Taylor: So 4.30ish, I get up. I start immediately with just God’s word for me. If I don’t start that way, the day just seems just off-tilted just a little bit. So I spend an hour, hour and a half there, depending on how I’m led that morning, some prayer, and then I get into a three to five-mile jog where I kind of feel clear-headed at that point.

And then I’m ready to kind of start my day. I spoke recently in front of a bunch of young athletes and I’m a big believer in what I call the pre-shot routine. If you’re a golfer, all golfers have what they call pre-shot routine, where they slow down before every shot. They get their breathing in line, trying to get their heart rate in line. There’s a series of mechanical movements that they’ll repeat every single time so they can perform the shot exactly the same way. And that’s what I call my pre-shot routine, is Bible run and then work. So it allows me to kind of get my breathing right, get my heart right, get my head right, and then I’m able to attack the day more consistently, just like those golfers try to do before every shot.

Anthony Codispoti: You said you spend 60 to 90 minutes with God’s word. What does that mean? You’re opening up the Bible and kind of seeing what pops up?

Shane Taylor: I used to do that pretty regularly. Now I’ve got a good friend and mentor, Frank, that taught me a series called The Great Eight. The Great Eight is basically eight markers all the way through the Bible from Genesis all the way to Revelation.

It’s split into eight different sections. I’m a car guy, so my attention span is pretty small. To go through some of that Old Testament and just try to pound it out, I don’t have the tolerance for it. But what The Great Eight does, it splits it up and it kind of looks at more stories. It’s strategically kind of spread out through the Bible where I kind of get more of a flow. So I do The Great Eight every single morning.

Anthony Codispoti: And this is just on repeat?

Shane Taylor: Yeah, it’s on repeat. So yeah, I’m on… It’s extra competitive. You’re just sort of reading the same things over and over again? Yeah, you know, that’s the cool thing about God’s word is that, you know, depending on what state of mind or what you’re asking for or where your head is that morning, you can read the same exact scripture and get completely something different for it. You know, I believe that the, you know, they call it God’s word for a reason because that’s how he speaks to us, right? So the spirit kind of gives me some direction on that flow and kind of enlightens me. You know, I used to spend majority of my time in reading like automotive news or auto trader or the current news via internet on what’s going on in my market. And I found that if I replaced a good portion of that with just reading God’s word, that those answers were provided for me and I was enlightened and even in my business world through those routines. So it’s a really big portion. I now spend probably 20% of my reading time scanning some recent automotive news that may be relevant for me right now.

Anthony Codispoti: I mean, for a really busy guy like you, Shane, you have multiple dealerships, lots of folks reporting to you. We haven’t gotten to your growth plans yet. We’re going to talk about those soon. You know, dedicating 60 to 90 minutes out of every day to reading the Bible. Obviously, it’s important to you. I have to imagine it’s hard to find the time, but can you maybe put into, I don’t know, a little bit more concrete example of how you have found this so beneficial? Maybe there’s even a specific story that can kind of help enlighten why this is so important and so impactful for you.

Shane Taylor: Well, I’ll address first the timeline. You know, I used to get up at seven to do that, but then I was found myself rushed. So then I started getting up at six to do it. And then I didn’t feel like I was able to get everything that I needed out of it too.

So it slowly crept up to a 430 time. That specifically is God’s time for me in my life. So, you know, I believe God’s leading my life. So what Scripture does for me in not only my personal life, but in my, I believe the Scripture is relevant, as relevant today as it was then.

So there’s example over example. I mean, I’m reading right now in 1 Samuel about King David, one of the greatest Israelite kings ever. And the example that he gave of servantry leadership to his people, no matter how they crossed him, I think it’s as relevant today as it was then. So, you know, I serve a God that was God then, and through all that time period, and the same one now. So where people look back at it as just history, for me, it’s as relevant as it is today as it was then.

Anthony Codispoti: Can you maybe share a particular anecdote, a story of, you say, you know, believe God is leading your life. What’s maybe something particularly impactful that might be interesting for listeners to hear about?

Shane Taylor: You mean a story in the Bible that would be impactful there?

Anthony Codispoti: Or maybe an example of you reading the Bible at a particular time in your life. And there was a message there that was just what you needed to hear. And here was kind of how you put it into action.

Shane Taylor: I’d say that, you know, one that, I mean, there’s, gosh, there’s hundreds of them. But, you know, it’s easy in the business world to forget what your focus are and what your real drive is and even get sometimes foggy with your relationship with God, even though it’s the most important thing in my life. You know, there was a story of Peter on a boat and there was a storm kind of going on, and Jesus is where, this is a story where Jesus walks water, right? And he tells him to come out of the boat and Peter steps out and he’s looking at God, he’s focusing on Jesus.

And then he takes his eyes off because he’s looking at the storm around him and he starts to sink and then Jesus grabs him and pulls him up. And I, and to me, I find myself being Peter all the time, right? Like, my intent is to draw closer to God or draw closer to Jesus. And oftentimes the storm around me kind of distracts me in a way where I take my eyes off that and I find myself sinking or I find myself in a panic or feeling of fear, you know. There’s a great scripture out there that says, God does not give us a spirit of fear or timidity, but of love, power, and self-control. So, you know, that scripture kind of gets my focus back on Jesus when the storm is kind of going crazy on around me and allows me to do things better and do it right. So those are things that, you know, through reading scripture that allow me to give me encouragement and refocus me in times of need.

Anthony Codispoti: So let’s talk about what the future looks like for you and Crouse. What are some of the plans that are in place?

Shane Taylor: So the long-term goal and the agreement that I went into with Vernon was to be able to buy him all the way out in the stores that I’m involved with.

That’ll happen over a little We have some other stores in sight right now that’ll be really, really, I can’t go into detail in, but are really, really big opportunities in our, in the Florida market. And then to build something for our children. We have three children and, you know, part of our legacy and our end goal is for them to get involved.

They’re in the business now kind of cutting their own teeth in trial stores in Atlanta, but our dream is for them to be involved in what we’re building in the Florida market separate from, from Atlanta.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay, so let’s shift gears here for a moment, Shane. And let’s talk about Chase.

Shane Taylor: His name’s Chase, sorry. Sorry.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah, we’ll make it, we’ll make it look good. All right. Let’s shift gears for a moment, Shane. And I want to talk about maybe a serious challenge that you’ve overcome, either personal or professional. What that was like going through it and maybe some lessons that you learned coming out the other side.

Shane Taylor: You know, we talked about earlier that, you know, change can often be painful without that change, you know, there is no growth. So every time there’s been a major, the major obstacles that I talked about in leaving the Cody organization, leaving the Krauss organization, and even leaving the Morgan organization, you know, there’s a small part of every time I left there, I felt like there was some failure. Fortunately, every single one of those moves have been major stepping stones for my career. So just embracing that change, you know, failure comes almost daily when you don’t, when you look back on the day and you don’t, you see that you could have done something differently, you could have done something better. You know, but my goal is to constantly look forward, not back there, but mistakes. Gosh, I mean, again, you know, I’ve got a 30-year-old general manager where my store is right now and he’s just cutting his teeth and he’s going to be a great guy one day. And the biggest difference between him and I when we sit across the desk is, again, a couple thousand mistakes.

So full of mistakes. If you want me to get specific, I probably could, but your day is full of them in this industry because, again, there’s no book, there’s no outline to exactly how this plays out or how it works.

Anthony Codispoti: Is there maybe a specific story that you want to talk about?

Shane Taylor: Yeah, no, I, you know, when I left the Kodi organization, it was mutual. I struggled with my ego and how I spoke with people. It’s completely opposite of how I conduct business now or how I communicate with my staff is before I realized that edifying them was better than talking down to them. I was kind of still old school at that time.

And I had several HR complaints about the way that I talked to the employees. And, you know, I was coming from a place of what I thought was passion. You know, I’ve always, I’ve always thought that passion supersedes skill set.

But the problem if you haven’t disciplined yourself or don’t have the control or don’t really haven’t have got in your life, when it’s all passion, you just kind of leave a disaster behind you. And I was starting to do that as a general manager and early in my, in that part of my career, where, you know, people, people complained. People didn’t like how I interacted with them. And I took it very personal and set out on a road when I moved to Georgia to kind of change the way that I was going to do that. It was like a fresh start in a fresh beginning.

It was a painful change. It was an area that I grew up in. I knew everybody.

I had long lists of customers that just come see me and just deal with me. And I had to separate my pride, you know, was way, it was interfering how I communicated with my people. And it showed. And that was a, that was a really, really tough lesson. So through, again, several mistakes, understanding where I wanted to go and far as lifting people up and helping change people for the better. I had had some major changes I had to do to come out the other side of that. And it was, it was, it almost ended my career as from my own standpoint, because I thought, gosh, I’m pouring out everything I have here. I just needed to figure out a different way to do it. And that was a real, real painful experience for me.

Anthony Codispoti: You know, it’s commendable because, you know, a lot of people, you know, faced with a situation like that, you’re doing in so many aspects of your career, you’re doing really well. And you are just putting everything that you have into it. And you think that you’re doing the right things. And then to have, you know, several people come and tell you, man, you are off the mark, like this is not working. What, you know, your approach here is not okay.

Most people, in my experience, you know, faced with that would get very defensive. Problems not me. It’s all you guys. You know, you’re not keeping up. You’re not doing, you’re not, you know, pulling your weight here. To be able to be reflective in the way that you were and check yourself and say, man, I I need to come up with some new ways. It’s not something everybody would do. What do you think it was about you or about that time that made you ultimately so receptive to that feedback?

Shane Taylor: That was ingrained in me from as a child. My dad was all about accountability. So anytime that something went wrong, he would sit me down and he would either have me write or open discuss. And it was a long discussion on how we do things differently. He would tell me, he said, you don’t do anything you don’t want to do.

He’d say, hey, listen, I don’t want to do this, but you’re gonna find yourself doing it because you don’t do anything you don’t want to do. And that message brought an accountability on myself of, hey, listen, there’s always something different I can do. That’s something that, you know, I actually have notes on how to talk about that because it’s it’s been big in my career. So anytime anything’s ever gone wrong, leaving pride a little bit on the shelf in that manner and trying to find a better solution has been something that’s just it’s always been ingrained in me. And doing better, you know, knowing that there’s something left in the tank every single time and pushing yourself to the to the next level.

Anthony Codispoti: How important is community involvement to you? And Krause?

Shane Taylor: It’s big when you’re talking about location, if you’re talking about locations and where we do business, you know, our involvement very quickly with, you know, local newspapers and local police and hospitals has been something in part of our outreach program. It also builds that culture that we talk about and becoming not just about us, but also giving. You know, giving is a big part of our culture as well and trying to figure out different ways to help other people and give.

Whether it be financial needs or just advice. So that that bleeds in what we’ve been talking about all along, bleeds into our community. Which which draws people to us and and we’re being recognized by that right now, actually.

Anthony Codispoti: Shane, we’ve covered a lot of ground today, but I’m curious. What is something fun or interesting about you that we haven’t already shared and our listeners don’t know about?

Shane Taylor: Gosh, we’ve covered a lot today.

Anthony Codispoti: You know, in particular hobbies, passions, any thing in your past that was particularly unique?

Shane Taylor: You know, I love to golf and fish. If I’m not even not trying to figure out how to sell more cars, I’m slapping around on a golf course somewhere. If I have time or fishing, I’m not really good at either one of them because I just don’t have the time. But those are a couple things that I’d say that, you know, our children are very important to us. And we have them in mind with every step we take up the mountain that we’re on now. That we’ve been over many times before.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s a true thing. Shane, I’ve just got one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. Everyone listening today, I know that you love today’s content. Please hit the like, share, subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. Shane, I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you. What’s that?

Shane Taylor: Um, you know, you can my phone’s always open. I don’t I don’t hide the phone number. I could share that with you. If you’re comfortable. If you’re comfortable. 301-752-6638. And then my email address is S.Taylor at krausauto.com. K-R-A-U-S-E .com. And I’m always open to communicate with people and love making new relationships.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s terrific. So last question for you, Shane. I’m curious, what do you see the big changes coming to the car industry in the next couple of years?

Shane Taylor: Gosh, you know, EV is probably electric vehicles is probably something that’s, you know, it’s been being chewed on over and over and over again. There’s a little bit of a battle between, you know, we don’t really have the infrastructure to implement the electric vehicles that we thought we were going to three to four years ago. You know, the dealer body has kind of spoken up over the last year, year and a half, where you’ve seen some little less talk of EV and probably more about hybrid. But running better, cleaner cars is probably the biggest change that we’re going to see in our industry.

You know, there’s a lot of platforms out there right now with online buying. We encourage it, but I don’t in my lifetime see it changing. People still want to come in, look somebody in the eye, you know, customers still want to negotiate.

It’s easy if we try to make it in most situations. But I’d say between that and, you know, AI is quickly changing our industry as well from how we describe things online to how even sometimes we’re interacting with customers. So the two biggest changes I’m probably the most resistant on and that I bring up, but they are, they’re, they’re heavy topics and you have to have some self-awareness about them for sure.

Anthony Codispoti: Let’s, let’s pull on each of those threads that you bought up for a second, because I’m curious to get more of your perspective. Right, EV, you know, and it seems like it was not that long ago, we were hearing that, you know, several countries were making rules where they’re going to completely phase out, you know, gas powered engines by year such and such. Auto manufacturers were making big pushes towards electric vehicles. Seemed like it was the right thing to do good for the environment, you know, more opportunities to power the cars with renewable energy.

And, you know, you’re a car guy, so you’ve got a better perspective on this than I do. But the articles I’m reading now is that people are really pulling back on that. You know, part of it is the lack of the infrastructure. The cars are more expensive than gas powered cars, at least for now. How do you see this unfolding in the next several years?

Shane Taylor: So what, so what, what stemmed that was the government really putting a lot of money on the line for the OEMs and other manufacturers to go EV, and it was so much money that they were forcing the hand of the dealer saying, hey listen, to be compliant, right? There’s, every OEM has a circle of what they call compliancy, whether it be building or maybe EV in this situation that we’re talking about now. And they were telling the OEMs, hey listen, you’ve got to have this, oh, it was going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to put this in. Well, what we found is while some guys are starting to put it in that when you, when we had to contact the electric company to figure out what that was going to look like, a lot of electric companies were saying, hey listen, we can’t, we can’t power that, and we don’t even know when we can power that. So we’re having these OEMs tell us as dealers, look, you have to spend this money in order to get X amount of money back, right?

It’s really what we live on. There’s no margin in the actual car itself anymore. It’s just kind of what we get back from OEMs is primarily that money. So the dealer body about a year and a half ago really went to DC and lobbied on this, and we made some, the voice was really heard. We did a really good job as a dealer body saying, hey listen, hold on, we’re not ready for us to make them spend this money. We got to slow it down on this EV talk.

So it’s not out, but that’s what created that slowdown. And then when you look at, the benefits of hybrid versus the EV, there’s just so many more benefits in my opinion. I’m still a little bit maybe old school in that thinking. But that’s, I think that’s, Hydrogen’s another conversation that’s on the cusp of the future. We’re not doing our self any favors to our planet by what we’re doing to sustain these EV batteries. So looking for a healthier manner, we’re definitely moving in that direction, some form or fashion. EV talk slowed down, and that’s why it slowed down over the last year. But we’re on the cusp of doing something cleaner, for sure. We just got to, we just got to allow everybody to swallow that pill slowly.

Anthony Codispoti: AIs, the other one I want to talk about real quick. How are you guys using it now? And what do you think you might be doing with it a year or two from now?

Shane Taylor: You know, we look at one thing that’s very time consuming for us is putting descriptions online for every single car. So if you’ve got 300 cars on the ground, you’ve got to do a description on every one of them. AIs got some really cool tools out there that kind of save us tons of time. Where I’m starting to see it, we’ve been interviewing some companies, you know, we have what we call business development centers or BDC centers inside stores. So typically when a customer calls in or does an internet inquiry about a car, we have got a person that’s live and they, you know, respond back or they’ll pick up the phone and have conversations with them.

That’s still kind of a practice that we’re using right now. I’m watching some guys in our industry right now go to AI companies. They don’t have the overhead of personnel and these AI companies are getting really, really good at responding in a more natural way to the clients. So haven’t fully bought into that, talking to several people right now.

But I still, you know, and my stores are at a smaller point as of right now, where I still think we can give that personal engagement, you know, all the way through with good training. It’s going to supersede. It’s going to beat that that AI tool. But that is, that’s a big conversation. When you look at stores that are selling, you know, six, seven, 800 cars a month, you know, those business development centers sometimes are 25, 30, 35 people. You look at that on an hourly rate and then insurance on top of that. I mean, the AI tool is less than a tenth of what you’re going to spend. It’s really affordable. So for those guys, it’s super attractive.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah, I could see that. It’s going to be interesting to follow how that’s all unfolds. Shane, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Shane Taylor: Anthony, you’re a great man. Thank you so much. Enjoy watching your podcast.

Anthony Codispoti: Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.