Transportation and Logistics
Larry Wind
President, Woltz & Wind Ford and Washington Ford
By Meredyth McKenzie
Smart Business Pittsburgh | September 2007
Teamwork is important to Larry Wind, and it’s something he stresses at Woltz & Wind Ford and Washington Ford. He thinks of himself
as a team leader instead of the car dealership’s president and has worked hard to establish the right team to help him lead the company.
He says that knowing that they are a part of a team makes all employees feel that their input is valuable and that they can influence the
direction and vision of the company. It also creates a sense of loyalty, Wind says. This emphasis on teamwork has allowed Wind to grow
the business over the past 28 years from a small dealership into two large car dealerships with 140 employees and 2006 revenue of $84
million. Smart Business spoke with Wind about how following the Golden Rule and nurturing and empowering employees help create a
good leadership team.
Look for ambition, honesty and integrity. I
don’t know anybody who gets ahead in this
world by working 40 hours a week. So if
you sense that a person is a 40-hour-a-week
person, I would say that person is not
ambitious. You need someone who is more
interested in doing the job and making a
good living than watching the clock.
You want people who are competitive,
ambitious, take pride in where they work
and want to participate with a winner.
Build a successful team. You don’t start
from Day One with the team you have in
place today. It takes years of hiring and nurturing and mentoring and terminating to
get the right team.
Surrounding yourself with good people
and building that good team is a challenge.
I like to grow the employees from within
when possible, and that’s the best way to
get loyalty.
You have to learn to delegate, and you
have to learn to trust, and you have to
inspect what you expect. So if you’ve delegated something, you have to watch it to
make sure that it meets your expectation.
Play by the Golden Rule. Our mission statement is the Golden Rule. We want to treat
our customers and each other as we would
want to be treated.
It’s running your business for the long
haul, wanting the repeat and referral business, treating your employees as team
members and important parts, no matter
what their job. If you didn’t need them, if
they weren’t important, they wouldn’t be
on staff.
Make sure they understand the mission
statement. We have the statement posted,
employees sign it, they understand it, and
we turn around and treat them well.
Be attuned to your employees. I don’t make
myself a best friend of my employees, but
I’m a concerned employer. When you nurture the employee, it’s the entire environment that they work in and making them
feel valuable. You don’t necessarily have to
be the highest-paying company in your market, but you have to be good in all those
areas.
Don’t lose focus. It’s easy to lose your
focus, particularly as you become more
successful. You have to have a passion for
what you do. You’ve got to like getting up in
the morning and going to work. So if you’re
doing it just to make a living, you’re probably not going to stay focused.
You have to stay humble and remember
where you came from because no one
starts out a success. You have to be a student of the business. You’ve got to read the
industry publications, attend the yearly
meetings and participate when you can in
associations.
Be wise with your money. You have to have
a little bit of marketing savvy because it
takes money to make money, and if you’re
undercapitalized, that’s a problem. But if
you’re properly capitalized, you’ve got to
take the risk at putting the message out
there.
Businesses fail because they are not
properly capitalized when going in. Not
everyone’s going to pay you in 30 days, not
every check is going to be a good check,
and if you can’t market, you can’t get your
message out there, and people won’t know
you’re open.
You have to borrow money and take the risk. No money is made without risk capital.
Once you are successful, you’ve got to
make sure you leave enough money in the
business and you don’t go getting foolish
and spending it. You can buy the toy as long
as you are leaving enough money in the
business.
Park your ego. Partnerships are as difficult,
if not more difficult, than marriages. So you
have to work at the partnership. And that
comes from treating him or her as you
want to be treated. And not taking advantage of your position.
Don’t get too involved in your ego where
you think you’re smarter than him or her.
When I had a partner and I had what I
thought was a good idea, I got him on
board and to buy in. It would have been
real easy to just go do it, but that wouldn’t
have nurtured the partnership.
Communicate. Communication is important with your employees, your partner,
your customers. You’ve got to put yourself
out there and be a good listener, you’ve got
to listen before you put your mouth in gear.
You have to pick your words so that you’re
honest in your communication.
Honesty is the best policy. Any time you
sugarcoat something or mislead somebody, it will bite you.
Don’t settle. I follow the saying of, ‘What
you tolerate becomes acceptable.’ So we
work hard at not tolerating behavior in any
employee that is not acceptable. Because
at the end of the day, if you don’t stop that
type of behavior, you’re the one that’s at
fault, not the employee.
If you have a situation where it’s a high-ranking manager on your team and his
behavior in some ways was not acceptable,
it’s a lot easier to tolerate it than to terminate him. But in the long haul, you have to
terminate that employee because if not,
you’re just tolerating it and making it
acceptable behavior.
HOW TO REACH: Woltz & Wind Ford and Washington Ford,
(412) 279-4551 or www.woltzwindford.com
