Episode Details

What I learned from reading Les Schwab Pride In Performance: Keep It Going! by Les Schwab. 

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16 ideas from the book: 

Intensity is the price of excellence —Warren Buffett

I am 68 years old now. And I've run it in overdrive my whole life. I've always wanted to be the best tire dealer, not necessarily the largest tire dealer.

The people serving your customers are the most important people in your company:

We have had over the years some people in the office that sometimes think they are more important than the stores. The office serves only one purpose, and that is to serve the stores. Some of our office people sometimes wonder about this. But I’ve warned them, don’t bitch to me because that is the way I want it. If you want to go out and start at the bottom changing tires and work into a manager job, then hop right to it. If it weren’t for those men in the stores working their butts off in all kinds of weather, missing meals, God awful hours, etc. you wouldn’t even have a job.

If you’re not serving the customer, or supporting the folks who do, we don’t need you. —Sam Walton 

Let the people at the store level and your manager know you are behind them. They are the ones who make you successful, not the person in a nice office who has nothing to do today but to send out another damn directive. If it doesn't help the store, tear it up and tell the store to tell the office to go to hell.

There are no shortcuts around quality, and quality starts with people. —Steve Jobs

People are the success of our company. Most anyone can sell tires. The only difference between a Les Schwab Tire Centre and most any tire dealership is the people working there.

Sharing profits with your employees is a way to build people. Be unselfish for good reasons.

We share 50% of our profits with all the employees in the store. My thinking has always been if I give away half the profits I still have half. If I share $10 million with people I still have $10 million left over. I don’t understand why businessmen can’t do this. It is being unselfish for good reasons. It helps a lot of people.

Helping others succeed provides deep satisfaction:

Success in life is being a good husband, a good father and you end up being a second father to hundreds of other men and women. Last night I attended a wedding of a young man from our office. This young man told me that two men had influenced his life, his father and me. That’s worth more than money.

Promote from within —There’s no problem you can’t solve if you know your business from A to Z

In our 34 years of business, we have never hired a manager from the outside, nor have we ever hired an assistant manager directly to that job. Every single one of our more than 250 managers and assistant managers started at the bottom changing tires. They have all earned their management jobs by working up.

Most businesses are poorly run. If you are on the ball you can beat them.

We are different from most American corporations, as we think the most important people in the company are the people on the firing line; the ones who sell, do the service work and take care of the customer. Most American corporations have the fat salaries for the top people and treat the people at the end of the line as peons. I guess that is why, if you are on the ball, you can beat them on any type of fair competitive basis.

Decision making should always be made at the lowest possible level:

A company starts, it grows, and as it grows, more and more of the decision making moves to the main office. And this is one hell of a big mistake. The decision making should always be made at the lowest possible level. Give your manager the authority to make his