096 | Giving Back to the Community With Mark Smith

Mark Smith owns Midas of Richmond, and when we talked in January 2015 he was already my example of what giving back looks like when a business owner means it. Listen for what he started right after 9/11, one free oil change at a time. He also describes the weekly what-if email he sends himself, where a lot of ideas fail and now and then one works. Free loaner cars came out of that email.

This is the first of four replays on the run to episode 100, conversations from the show's first year with people I owe a thank-you. It is from 2015, so the prices and phone numbers are out of date. The lessons held up.

What I'd take from Mark

• Give back with the thing you already sell. He didn't start a foundation; he tied an oil change to a blood donation and let the business be the means.
• Hire for the people part and teach the rest. His words: he can teach anyone what a water pump is; what he can't teach is how you treat the person at the counter.
• Watch your own numbers, not the shop across the street. He stopped paying attention to competitors years ago and worried instead about doing a little more tomorrow than yesterday.
• Throw out bad ideas on purpose. One what-if a week to the whole team, most of them wrong, and the loaner cars came out of one that wasn't.

Mark's line I said I'd play again and again: what got him here won't get him where he wants to go.

In this episode: Alex Mossa's bumper and the show's 2015 opening, my new introduction, the January 2015 conversation as it first aired, then a new close from me.

Mark Smith on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mark-smith-61b6097

AI disclosure: my chief of staff, Amber, is an AI. She pulled this episode from the archive and helped me write the new intro and close you hear around the 2015 interview.

My book, Leadership for Entrepreneurs, is on Kindle: bobnolley.com/book