As a self-confessed workaholic, perhaps one of the toughest challenges Bill Nalu faced as a leader was to decide to close on Saturdays. He didn’t want his internal customers and their families to go through what he experienced working 60 hours a week. 

Bill Nalu, our guest today, is the President of Interstate Auto Care and a fantastic leader who lives and breathes serving. At Interstate Auto Care, Bill and his crew focus on offering superior customer service, integrity, and professionalism. 

In this episode, our conversation spin around the many aspects of being a successful leader. We talked about why sometimes the relationships at work don’t mimic our relationships at home, the kind of people we should hire to work with us, and how hard it is sometimes to talk about feelings with tough men that work fixing cars. Bill shared brilliant insights about being aware of cultural traits when dealing with customers, the importance of balance in leadership, and how do encouragement should look like to avoid creating “praise junkies.”  

Tune in to episode 6 of Maximum Octane and grasp Bill’s fantastic and effective leadership style. 

Some Questions I Ask:

• As a self-confessed workaholic, how do you inspire your team to take breaks and dedicate time to their families? (12:50)
• When you are the business, and that’s what you are seven days a week, you eat, breathe, sleep, and then you have to start realizing the company is not who you are. It’s part of what you do, but it’s not who you are. How do you make that shift? (17:31)
• What is one unproductive habit that you’ve had that you have exchanged for a productive one? (35:34)

In this episode, you will learn:

• Where am I going, and who is coming with me? About some leadership foundational questions (4:58)
• When was the last time you took unrelated to work vacations? How powerful questions can help us evolve (9:01)
• How to Bill instilled the importance of taking a break to his team being a workaholic (15:10)
• We sell customer reactions (24:17)
• About the importance of considering cultural differences when dealing with clients (26:48)

Resources

• Interstate Auto Care website
• Book: Jon Taffer – Raise the Bar: An Action-Based Method for Maximum Customer Reactions
• Book: Gary Chapman – The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace
• Book: John Gray – Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
• Connect with Bill on LinkedIn