De-Influenced with Dani + Jordan - Culture Wars, Personal Faith, & Navigating Politics with the President of Toyota

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

Happy Wednesday!! Oh boy do we have an episode for you!! On this week’s episode we are lucky enough to have on my best friend’s dad and President of Toyota North America, Jack Hollis. It was fascinating to pick Jack’s brain about leadership inside and outside of the office, how he raised humble kids and how big corporations handle outside pressure. While we deepdive on these topics, there is one theme that remains true throughout every phase of his life and that is his faith. Jack and his wife are avid believers and credit their successes and journey to their faith. From turning down Toyota after his initial interview to being with the company for 33 years and becoming their North American President there is so much to learn from Jack about leadership, family and faith. We hope you love this episode as much as we do! AND don’t forget we got some great deals from our favorite brands exclusively for our listeners: Simplify your kiddo’s mealtime with 30% OFF your first order. Go to LITTLESPOON.COM/DANI and enter our code DANI at checkout to get 30% OFF your first Little Spoon order. Head over to dreamlandbabyco.com and enter code DANI at checkout to receive 20% off sitewide + free shipping. This offer is for new and existing customers. We love you De-Influencers!! XOXO

And welcome back to your favorite podcast. De-influenced. Guys, today is a huge deal. This might be one of like the coolest guests that we've had. Maybe one of the most successful, I would say. This is a Jordan guest. This is a Jordan guest. I fought for this one.

And not only that, but it is actually one of my best friends' dads that we have here. So we are sitting with Jack Hollis. Like I said, he's one of my best friend, Allison's father. This episode is going to be so special to me. we are going to be de-influencing former professional athlete, current Toyota, chief operating officer and president of Toyota, once again, Jack Hollis. Well, it's president of Toyota USA. President of North America.

North America. Right? We got it right. There are all kinds of weird titles. So don't worry about it. Just go with team captain. Okay, team captain. Yeah, this is actually really special.

So we want to de-imluence Jack today on kind of two major topics. He's obviously so successful. He is the CEO, C-O-O of Toyota, but he also has raised one of the most beautiful, amazing families. Thank you. Allison is one of my best friends. And the reason I know that you guys have such a beautiful family, I've been around you guys a couple of times, but I've never heard, it gives me a goose to seem that. I've never heard of a daughter speak about her father that way.

Oh, he's going to cry. It's really amazing. I think so many people have so many, you know, issues with their families. and I know I know that you all probably do too. But the way that she respects you and your wife as well, it's really beautiful. And I'm like, man, how do I create that with my family? And then not only that, but you've been able to really succeed in your business but hold true to your values. And so we have so much to talk about.

But I have to give credit to my husband because this was his idea and he was so excited about it. So excited. Okay. So let's start off with our first segment of de-influenced. seeing Jack and kind of getting to know him. Yeah. You want to go? No, you take it.

Okay. So first of all, Jack, thank you for being here. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. We're so thankful. Where are you from? Can you tell us a little bit about your background? Sure.

Born and raised in Southern California. Lived all over a bunch of cities primarily in the Torrance and Palis Verdez area just south of L.AX airport and kind of grew up kind of a beach guy, kind of a near the beach stuff. So not quite the same in Texas now. But yeah, I grew up in Southern California. And then how did you get involved in sports? Do you come from a sports family? Is that right?

Yeah, kind of our heritage is sports. Both my mom and my dad's side. So my mom's dad, my grandfather, was a professional baseball player on the West Coast. Before the daughters moved out to L.A., my grandfather was a, he spent about 25 years of playing and managing. and then he became a scout. And he's in the Hall of Fame for both playing and for scouting. And then that was my mom's side. And then her brother also played professional baseball.

So baseball was on my mom's side. And then on my dad's side, my dad wanted to be a professional baseball player. In fact, he had a chance to try out for the Baltimore Orioles. That didn't work out. But that spurred. He loved sports. And so he ended up immediately changing from a baseball desire to golf. and then over a period of short period of time, he became a professional golfer.

And so I grew up with a professional golfer dad and a professional baseball player, uncle and grandfather. And so sports were always around my life. Were they biased in terms of what sport they wanted you to play? Actually, yes, they were biased that I play all sports. You're probably good at everything. No, I'm good at everything that my feet can be in control of. Once you put me on a surfboard or a skateboard or a set of skis, not so good. But you put me on the ground.

And yeah, so they had me play. I played all of them growing up. I mean, golf and ran track and football and baseball and basketball and soccer and whatever ones I'm missing. When did you narrow down? Because you played baseball at Stanford, right? Yeah. High school. You went to Stanford?

Yeah, I know. That's a big deal. That's so cool. I was afraid he was going to be too humble to say it, but I was like, I've got to get out that he went to Stanford. It may be a big deal, but I just call it a God deal because the story around it was amazing, but I will tell you is I played basketball and baseball in high school, loved them both, probably even more passionate towards basketball.

But God had gifted me in some ways with my legs and some speed and in baseball, it fit together. And then, yeah, God blessed me with an opportunity to go to Stanford and got to win a national championship while we were there. And then I had a chance to get drafted by the Cincinnati Reds to start my professional baseball career. So I graduated. I think graduation was like June 7th.

I don't remember the exact date. And then the next day I was flown to Florida to start a baseball career. So it was kind of bang, bang. I never had any time and kind of just moved right into, go from college to work. I know that your faith is going to be a huge part of this conversation. What is kind of your faith story where you raised in a Christian household? You know, how did you come to know Jesus?

I appreciate you asking that. Jordan, I think it's important to understand that I grew up, I gave my life to Christ and I was five years old. And people say, come on, that's it. They can't be able. No, I remember. I remember exactly what was being said. But I grew up in a home where my mom and dad were not Christians, not believers, they had,

until I was born. And there's a long story to it, but the short one is my dad's next youngest brother came to know the Lord. And he came out here to Dallas. He came to Dallas theological. And what happened is, as he got deeper in his faith, all of his brothers and sisters, the five others, so there's six brothers and sisters. My dad, my dad is the oldest. They came believer.

So I grew up in a home that was baby Christians wanting to be around church. And so that's how I grew up. And then as I got older, I just, the faith journey came just as God has protected me in many, many ways. As God has opened up doors for me in so many ways, it's been a, it's been. The reason I have to always share my faith story, or my, my faith story is my story. Right. And they both, they never are apart, whether it's schooling or sports or Toyota or family, they always intersect. And so when you, okay, so when you went to the Cincinnati Reds, how many years did you play there?

Just two years. I played in multiple cities in their minor league system. had a kind of a unique injury in my second year, which really probably stopped my progression. And I knew it. The fact was, is that I looked in the mirror one day, and I just kind of knew. And it was, you mentioned earlier, Danny, about goosebumps and even maybe going to cry about something else.

Well, I feel that same way all the time. God's always given me goosebumps and maybe some tears about how many things he has directed. And I kind of knew one day looking in the mirror that, You know, this is, it's going to be time to end. And God used that, though, to open up the door because that's when I, in between my first two, right before my second season, or between my two seasons is when I met this woman. And this woman was the best. And I ended up marrying her.

This is Allison's mother we're talking about. I know. Okay. Can I share a story real quick? Yes, please. I have to share a story. Because it's part of the faith story that I think is cool. I was praying at the last day of my first year in baseball that, hey, I said, you know, God, Father, I'm coming back home.

I'm going to give you my life. I've already given my life, but I'm going to give you all of my attention. I'm going to go for this baseball career. You've opened up the door. I'm going to give you everything. And if this is supposed to happen, then I'm going to ask you to bless that. And I said, but when I came home, I want to stay focused. So please help me not meet any women because I want to stay focused on playing. That was on a Friday night. I prayed. On Saturday, I got home and I went to a Saturday night church service and sitting behind me in the pew,

specifically behind me at my church, was this woman wearing this beautiful green dress with this great big smile. I turn around. She's sitting there to one of my good friends. I'm literally looking at her in the eye. and have we met? Like I kind of felt like I had met her, which is kind of a weird, like pickup line. Most like weird, you know?

Have we met? And she's like, no, but I know you. You're Jack Hollis, aren't you? I'm like, yeah, how do you know? She goes, I'm living with your best friend's fiancee. I've seen your picture and they told me we should meet. Oh. I said, oh, so great.

Now remember, I just prayed the night before. I don't want to meet anybody. And my next comment to her is, hey, could I take you out? Oh. She's like, no. Like, no. No. I mean, literally, I was like, no. She's like, no, I don't mean no, ever. I mean, no, not right now because I have to go to work. And I'm like, because you prayed about that. I was like, this is crazy. So I only share that because if I keep telling you different parts of the story, I knew at the end of my second year at baseball, really that it was coming to an end.

But God had opened up this door, this window with Jane. And that was moving at full speed. Well, so, okay, so I'm wanting to kind of track your life story here. You met, you met Jane, okay? And then how long did you guys date before you got married before you had kids? We met on September 3rd of 1989. that was our first day of meeting at the church. We started dating when she got home from her work trip.

She was a flight attendant for Delta Airlines and she was coming home. And she asked if I could pick her up. And that was our first date. And we dated long distance because she only lived in the area that I was living in for only about a month before she had to transfer. She had a transfer back to her home in Portland. So we dated long distance for seven. months and got married. Wow. So it was not long. Yeah. And we got married in January of 91. So you were like out of, were you freaking out whenever you quit playing baseball? Because you probably had spent

almost your entire life just playing sports. Did you have a vision of what you wanted to do? Like, how did that eventually end up at Toyota? So when in 1990, when I met back, so I met Jane, I knew I wanted to marry her, asked her if I could marry her, but I didn't know when I was going to be able to ask her. I went to my second season. I was playing. Kind of started to get in this impression that I'm probably going to end this career. When I had to say no to baseball, it was really hard. I had spent my whole life, if you look at even notes I wrote to myself in a journal or things I even published, there were things about I'll see in the majors or and again, got it allowed for a lot of success. And I'm very, very, very.

grateful. I learned a lot about what I apply today about team sports and what role we each play and how each role is critical to the end. Some get more attention than others, but the team is always the most important. It's no individual. So this was all happening at this time. And then Jane and I got set or wedding date in January so I could go back to spring training for my third year. But during that time between Cincinnati letting me go for me to try, try to go back to another team, which was pursuing me. And I was working in an internship at a bank inside me. I didn't know what I wanted to do.

That's the issue. I had always thought it was going to be baseball, and I was going to honor God through that and maybe go into ministry. And when that was ending, yeah, it was quite devastating early on. And so I kept working at the bank just so I had a job to then support, you know, Jane. But inside, we were trying to figure out where, we were to go. And it turns out that the city that we were living in is Torrance, California, which was the at that time, the global headquarters or the regional headquarters for Toyota.

So it was the U.S. or North American headquarters for Toyota. And so it was in my backyard. And it's literally like I keep telling you this story, God started opening up these doors where I was meeting people. And within a very short period of time, all these people were pointing from Toyota. They were either a person from Toyota or recommended Toyota. Toyota or Toyota was in the golf tournament, it was sponsored to the golf tournament that I was going to go play in or work at or whatever. And so all this is all happening at once.

So there was a lot of feelings and emotions around the time of loss from baseball, but there was also a lot of matching feelings of excitement about what the future was holding and where we were going. And then I happened to meet a man who at my, so my dad was the head professional of a country club in Southern California. I used to work at that country club part-time to make more money. I met a man while I was actually in college who said, if your baseball career ever ends, please give me a call.

I love hiring team athletes. And I understand you're a captain. I say, I was a captain of the team. He said, I love hiring captains. I said, why? He says, captains understand what it is to be on a team, but to have to make a decision. That's so smart. So smart.

So smart. We're only hiring captains around here, guys. But that's why now I love the title of team captain, and I use it all the time. Because that man told me that. And what he said was, if you will call me, I'll help you. He never told me what company he was with. He never told me what he did. This man just took an interest in me as an individual, as a person.

Four years later, my baseball career is ending. I find his card. And it's a card. It literally just says Bob. Bob with the phone number. So I call Bob with the phone number. Bob, well, as I call him, he doesn't answer. His secretary answers. Hi, this is Jack Hollis calling for Bob. His last name is McCurry. Bob McCurry. And she's like,

oh, hey, Jack. And I'm thinking, hello? And she says, oh, wait, isn't this Jack Hollis? I said, yeah. She goes, oh, this is Sue. You don't know me? No. Oh, you're talking about my dad. she thought she was talking to my dad who has the same name. Jack calls and he was supposed to give Bob a golf lesson. Oh, funny. So I'm like, no, this is Jack Jr. And I'm calling Bob because he said, if I ever needed some help, maybe looking for a job. He's like, so out of the background, I hear Bob say, hey, Sue, give me the phone call.

That's Jack Jr. It's a long part of the story, or the longer part of the story, but the short part of it was. He says, come in for an interview tomorrow. I interviewed with some people, didn't really like the interview, didn't really like the people I met with. I said no to Toyota. He calls me back and says, why did you say no? I said, the people I met with really weren't the kind of people that you told me that the company was about. What happened in that interview? It just was weird. It was just the people I was talking to. Bad vibes. And they were, they were asking kind of questions that there was, they were like

traditional. Tell me about a time that you struggled and you, how'd you overcome it? I'm like, boring. That's not an interview. I want to be with people. Yeah. I just want to be like good people. And what position were you interviewing for? I didn't even know. Oh, that's funny. I didn't know. He just said we have openings. Got it.

So I didn't know. So I said, I said, no. And he says, come back tomorrow. So I came back tomorrow. He put me with three different people and they were awesome. And these questions were great. They told me about this role about it could become a management trainee. It's the lowest of the low.

But by going into it, you can learn the entire business. And if you're willing to, we'll move you around the country. And you'll go to like our field office. and you'll learn the dealership side of the business and parts and service and sales and marketing and all. So that sounds good. And especially since my wife didn't really want to live in Southern California. She says, I'll go anywhere.

I'd like to go to Portland. And they had a Portland office. I said, maybe we'll get lucky. So I said yes. And like three weeks later, two weeks later, I started in January of 92. So basically one year after we got married, we were starting with Toyota. And so I've been married to my wife for 33 years and I've been married to Toyota for 32 years. and I've been loyal to them.

They've been loyal to me and it's been a pretty good, pretty good. So the president of Toyota North America started as a management training. I started as a management training. That's crazy. And I, and the truth is I was one of the longest termed management trainees

or another way of saying I was the slowest to get promoted. Maybe one in the history of our company. Let me ask you this. So I feel like the working environment is so different now. like my mom worked at the same company for 30 plus years too, but you don't see that a lot anymore. Do you, the several people that you mentor, or even your kids,

do you give them the advice of loyalty and trying to rise to the ranks in this day? Because you're a success story for that, but I almost wonder if it's possible. Because the moral of the story was stay loyal. Kind of, yeah. But is it like that these days? I probably should be revert.

He's like, as the COO if I say no. I lose thousands of. employees. I feel like I should return. I should be the interviewer. You should be asking questions why you tell me about society today. Because I've got to a place where if I'm sitting, if I'm sitting in a room with my daughter's friends, you know, it makes me feel like, man, I am. But the answer to that question is, is I'm a little disappointed in today's lack of loyalty to companies. Yeah. I'm disappointed for this reason is because there are so many companies that have a lot more to give you if you'll give it time to experience it.

I've been in for 32 years and I've had 17 different roles. 17 different roles in the company. Basically every two years I'm having a new role. And if I break those down, I've probably had six or seven different careers inside of that. On one side when I was doing parts and service, that's a completely different mindset than when you are on vehicle sales. The distribution of vehicles.

Marketing. I mean, I can go on through the different. pieces of the jobs, but those are all different fields. Now, I realize that Toyota has all of those fields, so that's special to me. But many companies have a lot of opportunity that people by not staying loyal, and I understand why. There's more opportunity and you want to grow. And so which way do you want to grow? Do you want to grow in one company and give yourself different experiences? Or do you want to go and experience multiple things? But I've told my kids, and what I tell everybody that I mentor today, including people Toyota, it's not for everybody, is.

For those especially who are believers, you need to really ask inside, is the Holy Spirit confirming your choices in this company or not? If Holy Spirit's not confirming it, then you need to leave. You need to go until you find what to leave what God's path is for you. On the other hand, I'm always asking, employees, again, believer or not, Christian or not, what is it that you're looking for out of your career? Some people are looking for money.

Some people are looking for balance to be able to work just enough to be able to be home a lot. And everything in between. It's, it's, they're all, they're all correct. There's no wrong one. Right. But I'm just surprised at how often people are moved today moving so quickly that do they really get a chance to understand the depth of what they were working on? Right.

And that's my only, that's my, I think maybe slightly more conservative stance, which is give it time. Mm-hmm. Have a reason why you're joining or have a reason why you're leaving. I would tend to agree. I mean, we, because we try and focus on retention. every hire that we make, both at Divi and on Danny's team. There's a lot of things that you can do as an employer to implement that.

You can make sure they have a 401k. You can make sure that they have really good health insurance. You can really kind of be provisional. It's the harder things, I'm sure, as the company gets bigger, especially at the scale of Toyota is how do you really develop them individually? It's one of the biggest lessons that we had to learn going from a team of five at Danny's team to a team of 25 at Divi is that it's harder to figure out scalable ways to really develop each individual. You know, and it comes down to the hires that you're making at the management level

because we're saying, oh, man, Danny and I cannot mentor you because there's too many of you now. So we have to hire really good leaders to lead the new trainees coming up. But I would imagine that because COO, I mean, that's a lot of your oversight, right, is the employee retention, the HR, the culture. I would assume that you've implemented a lot of programs that really focus on the development of the employees. A couple of things you are there. One is the word development can never be shared enough and you can't. And I would encourage the two of you as well. How you develop your team has got to be a major focus because you can only grow or you can only grow the way you want to grow.

So you can grow any company. If you want to grow the way you want it to grow will mean that you're developing and mentoring and coaching the people in the direction you want to see the organization end up in. But secondly, you said some about leaders. Leaders and leadership is my passion. Leaders developing leaders who can develop leaders is my goal. It doesn't matter the title. I've been doing this for a long time.

It just happens to be that the company has chosen to put me in a role of more responsibility. And I'm thankful for that. But my philosophy is the same, which is to surround. around yourself with the greatest leaders, not the greatest employee. There's a lot of people who are really good employees at one specific thing, but I want to surround myself with people who can lead others. They can coach others. They can love on others.

They can serve others. These are things that are really critical. So that is my focus. And my focus that Toyota has been for most of my career and is today is how do I serve people to help them become leaders so they can develop other leaders? Is that the main role? Like, if you had to summarize what you do as C-O-O, what would you say? Well, there's two, there's two, I break it into two halves.

The one-half is full operations. I must, on a day-to-day basis, ensure that the operations of Toyota are running to the maximum ability. There's a word in Japanese, the word Kaizen, like people will know it. It's this idea of continuous improvement. But it also means you've never reached the end. You've never reached perfection. You're always getting better. So mine is to take the entire work stream.

That's everything from product planning and research to know where we're going to go, to parts supply and manufacturing to the vehicle logistics, to move it to a dealership, to sales with the dealership, the after sales. All of that is my responsibility. It's just one straight line. And always at the end of this is this big circle, all of it matters to the consumer. How is the customer at the center of everything we do? I call it customer-centered operations.

Here's my operations, centered on the customer. That's critical. So that's a 50% of the job, or I shouldn't say 50%. I break them into two pieces. Sometimes it's 100% and sometimes it's 20. But it's critical. The other side of it is the development of the leadership team and all the leaders that I have an opportunity to help.

Because it's impossible for any person. I don't care how good they are, CEO, COO, CFO, CSO, any of the titles. Yeah. It is impossible for that one person to do the work that's needed. Mm-hmm. The way to do it, in my opinion, to do it best is to create a team of people. Back to the teamwork.

Yeah. Back to sports. Yep. Is to find a team that understands their role on how to mesh that team together to get to the outcome over here of the operations. So they have to work at equal passion. How do you keep people excited about their roles? And like we talked about employee retention and people are so, I think it's kind of like dating these days.

It's just like if you don't like something, you just go put out your resume, you go on an app and swipe left or whatever it is. So how do you keep people invested in working towards that mission? Probably the hardest thing to do. It's your personal attention. Do you actually care or do you not care? Yeah. And everybody knows. You either care for the person that you're talking to or you don't.

the way, the best way to encourage that is to actually not only care, but to do it with them. You know, a lot of leaders will say, okay, here, here's a class for you. You guys go take the class. If there's a class to go take, I take it with them. If there's a learning, we're going to do it. I learned it with them. That's good. Whether I've learned it before or not, it has no relevance.

We're doing it together. So, for example, right now I have a group of five direct reports, and I nicknamed us the super six. There's only five of them. Well, people say, why do you keep calling the Super Six? Because we're all the same team. Yeah. You know, the hardest part, if you think about, I'll use a, I love the example of the soccer field. Okay.

Soccer field is 11 players. One has a band on their arm. They're the captain. Are they the best player? Maybe, maybe not. Are they the best player in that game? Maybe, maybe not. Fact is, they've been assigned a role.

Who gave them that assignment? Their coach. their coach. I have been assigned to be the team captain of this operations team. That's been the assignment I'm given. But I'm on the field. I'm on the pitch. I'm one of the 11.

And then the soccer field, which is great, is based on the way the game's going, you might flow into any position on the field, maybe other than goalie. So you have a specialist. He's the goalie. The other 10 are moving out all times.

The field is always this flow. That's how I'm trying to do. So when you ask you, how do I have to make that happen? I'm trying to have all of the leaders understand all of the leadership role. so that they're not just focused on their own, but focused on the values or the commitment of the whole team. I believe for me, I have experienced success in that. Now, there are a lot of

other people who have done it different ways, and they're super successful as well. I can only share with my experience. What I have is building up great teams. And I believe the reason I'm in this role isn't because I'm the best employee or the most knowledgeable. That's fine. I'm not. but I'm really good at how to bring the teams together to get the best out of the entire team. Support for D-imluence comes from Little Spoon. Wait, I'm so excited. My Stratton just started eating Little Spoon. It's so good.

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Truly, it has been amazing because typically like at 6 p.m. at night, I'm so exhausted. And the last thing I want to do is try to like force my kid to eat healthy foods. Some nights I'm just like fine mac and cheese. but the fact that like these meals are so good but have all the nutrients is like truly amazing. I'm so passionate about it. Yeah. How many employees would you say you oversee throughout Toyota? It's in the, I know it's in the tens of thousands.

It's a lot. Just guess. I don't know. I have, I don't know. I think the number maybe. 30,000? Yeah. I think it's like, I think with all.

We have 30 and we're freaking out every day. No, that's right. No, I think oversight is like, I want to say it may me like 25,000. 25,000. But it's hard because, yeah. So here's my question. It's just a lot. I don't know. So you are overseeing 25,000. How many kids do you have total? Four. Four. I got five now because I have a daughter in love. Okay. So raised four kids. Yeah. We're going to talk about Toyota a lot. But before we move on into Toyota, I really want to know, because I think this is a big question that Danny and I have. How do you balance the responsibility of overseeing 25,000 people with making sure

your number one priority is the four at home. Well, two things. First, before I get to the four, the number one priority is my wife. And so there's no doubt, Jane is the most amazing woman ever. And she is my teammate. And even when we got married, I asked her if that she would commit to being my wife and to being a team that shines for God. And that was in our vows.

And she said yes. And so on day one of our marriage, we created team Hollis. and everything for us was about team. And I can't be a good team leader on what God's called me to be as my priority, which is my spouse first and family if I don't live it. But that same mentality is the commitment to my family that I do make to Toyota. And that commitment being that I'm going to give those direct reports. I have five at home.

I actually have five at work. Well, there might be a big number of 20,000, $30,000, whatever that number is. I'm not directly, while I'm responsible for the whole team, I'm actually only directly coaching whatever number, you know, now I'm coaching more than the five as I have mentors. Of course, but I have five direct reports. So when I see that, I don't ever think of it as how many people at Toyota. Yeah. I look at it as one by one.

So the same thing is the, is the, and we can probably, if you want to get in, into it further I'm happy to, which is I had to make a commitment to myself. I said, not only was I compelled, my heart told me that my commitment had to be for my wife and then, and then successively, you know, in succession, each of the four kids. I wanted to, with a mindset always was, I'm going to give, and this is my, I don't know why I'm bringing this up right now, but I'm governed by two things, my attitude and my effort. and those are the only two things in life that I think I can control. We can talk about a lot of things.

You, your team, you're 30 people. What can you really control in your life? And I will argue that it's your attitude, which I define most of the time is the fruit of the spirit. I can define my attitude. But whatever way you want to create attitude, if I'm giving my best attitude, the greatest attitude in my point is to serve others.

So I was like, is my, do I have a servant's attitude? attitude, I have a servant's heart and then effort. And let me ask you to, who's the only person who knows if you're giving 100% of your effort? I feel like there's a lot of people that would know, but. Who truly knows? Yeah. Me. Oh, is that the answer? Boom. I was like, this has got to be a trick question. It's my answer. Yeah, I would say me. I know. I know what 100 is. And there is no 110. I love what I feel. I'll give 110%. No, you can't give more than you can give. So you can give all of you. Now, to many people on the outside, you can give 80% and it looks like 100% because they may not know. They may see others. You may see you working at a level that's higher than the level

they're working at or whatever, but only you know. So here's my belief and this is a, this is truly my heart. If you give 100% of your effort and you give 100% of your heart or your attitude, your servantness, that I believe that you can be confident that the outcome is God's. We believe we can be in control of a lot of things and we're not. So a lot of times people say, how do you know if it's God's will? I can only tell you is that if I give 100% of who I am in any phase

and my attitude is the best I can give. It doesn't always work that way, but it's the heart's manner, right? It's this serving attitude. I can feel confident that outcomes are gods. So that's what I've done with my kids and my wife. That's what I've done at work. and the outcomes are what God has provided. It's so much of why I was excited to have you on

because I think a huge part of your testimony is I think culture teaches us through social media through self-help gurus, et cetera, is that if you work hard enough and you sacrifice enough, you can be successful. Your story is you have worked hard and I know that you have made sacrifices, but in so many ways your message is the opposite.

It's countercultural in the sense that you're saying, hey, I prioritized my family and I prioritized my wife and God opened all these doors and now I'm the president of Toyota USA, right, through an interview that you actually turned down or said no to at the start. And so I think that part of your story that I hope people here and that we can highlight is that there's a sovereignty that God had over your life throughout the entire time, right? but what are some, I think that what the biggest challenge men or women who are ambitious

listening to this podcast are going to have is how do I balance? I think balance is probably what we're all looking for, you know, especially millennials of like what does that look like in terms of balancing my family with work. So when it came to the practicalities of balancing the five that you were managing at work

and then the five or four that you were managing at home, five plus your wife, how did you do that? What did that look like? I remember asking Allison a question. I was like, did you ever feel like your dad was like always gone or busy? Because, you know, assumption-wise, you'd be traveling to Japan or wherever you go. And she says, yeah, he was busy, but when he was home, he was home. I never felt like I was competing with his attention when he was at home. So can you speak to that and what you would kind of teach a young executive that you're training who has a family of how to balance the two? Yeah.

Wow, there's so much there, and I really appreciate the thoughtful question and the heart around it. You know, because my experience has been interwoven with Christ, to anyone who's listening to this is, whether you are a Christian or not, a lot of the principles that I really enjoy are the same, the principles. It doesn't matter if you've given your life to Christ or not. And the part about balance is very, very difficult. And it's becoming more difficult today. And here's what I mean is how do you define balance? When people say, well, Jack, what's your idea on a work-life balance, which is kind of what you're, you know, I think what you're asking a little bit is I don't know how to,

I don't, I don't know that I, what my balance was. What I was focused on was giving 100% to whatever that thing was. So, for example, I would work and give 100%. But as soon as I left work, I'm now 100% home. I'm 100% coach. I coached both my boys and eight, nine years of baseball. And I did all their all-stars. And I went to the nth degree and taken them to Cooperstown and special travel ball.

Why? Because I wanted to give that. To Allison, my oldest, she was my first. I was learning a lot of times as a dad. I mean, literally your first child, you're trying to figure it out. I'm out about you guys. It's still always your first, right? Yes.

When you're looking to Stirl in Stratton, right, and you're like, okay, we sort of read some books and we have some friends and we sort of, do you really know? No. No. So Stratton comes along and you have a chance to say, well, we've learned this up front. We could do a little bit better. It's not better in the sense of the outcome. It's better. And you have a more thoughtful approach to it.

That's all it is. Your third one. And congratulations. Thank you. Is going to have even more. of your thoughtfulness around it, right? This is what I had to do. So Allison was that I wanted to be there for everything.

And as a dad, at the first time, I figured my way to balance was to just engulf her with everything I could. If she's going to play soccer, I'll coach the soccer. If she's going to be doing studies, I'll do the studies. She's going to do dance. I'll do dance with her. Whatever it is, I'm just going to jump in.

So it wasn't, I never thought about balance. Do I have enough time? it's that I would be giving all of myself to that person and to my wife. I still think that's the way it is today. Now, I do know the history or the background of the question is, how do you not to be too swayed on one or the other? Right. Because I have to say no sometimes.

I have to say no a lot of times. Yeah. So for Jordan, for you, it would be, you know, in my counseling session here for you too today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say, Jordan, the person you ask is Danny. Danny is Jordan having a balance? Is he giving you the attention and the kids' attention?

And then, Danny, you would come back and say the same thing to Jordan. I had to do that all the time with Jane. Jane, where are we at? Kind of keep that thermostat correct, right? Where are we at here? And she would be great. She'd say, man, thank you. The kids could really use a little extra time.

Could you make that happen? Or the kids are doing this or great. Or she'd say, hey, how about me? And she would be reminding me, hey, don't be too focused on work or the kids. I mean, and so there's this. There's kind of this dance as a couple that needed to happen to be able to know the right levels of quote unquote balance. And that's what that's what I have experienced. And I would just tell people to define what balance means to you.

What are what is really the outcomes you're looking for and then steer your time and efforts towards that? Do you think that Toyota has a more balanced or harmonious work culture because it's a. Japanese company. Are there any like Japanese cultural things that you feel being a part of Toyota that you wouldn't maybe feel at a U.S.-based firm? And the only reason I'm super generalizing, but you know, I think that we have a lot of friends who are in big law or, you know, big for accounting and they drive their employees hard, right? America is such a productivity first type of environment, sacrifice what you have. And I'm wondering if the the Japanese ideals, which I actually don't know what they are,

come into and have played a role in you being able to feel a little bit more balance in the work environment. I would say the, first of all, the two pillars of the Toyota Way. There's something we call the Toyota Way. There's two pillars. One's called respect for people.

And the other one is called Kaizen, or continuous improvement, like I mentioned earlier. The idea of our respect for people is to respect each person and what the decisions they need to make. Because everyone has a different home life, a different personal life, single, married, families, whatever. The respect for that is to really support that. You're always supporting the individual, but Toyota, which matches up with me personally, is always about the team.

How does Toyota win? Not how does one individual win. Okay. So because of that in Japan, though, you would find, depending really what department is, their work culture is more hours and more company committed than you would usually find on a U.S. company. They're driving the team to be the best the team can be, Kaisen. Efficiency. Efficiency.

And what happens is, just like this, if there's multiple people in a room, it's all of us. And if no one, who's leaving first? Who's leaving the office first? Yeah. Well, if nobody leaves, you're there for 18 hours. Because there's always constant improvement. There's always constant improvement. And you're always like, I don't want to let the team down.

And so there's a, that's a culture at Toyota, which is always to help one another do more. It's not about I'm doing more. It's how do we all do more? And you don't want to be the person to let the team down by leaving early, which might have been after 12 hours. Right. So that's the kind of the culture to this. In the U.S., it's not significantly different.

What is different is culturally, we are a regional office in the North America versus the global headquarters and Japan. And there's always going to be difference. It's just like you. You're the global. center here. People who are the further you go down the road, they're not going to have all the full exact understanding of the commitment you guys have. You want to try to develop that, but it's hard, right? And it just is. That's what we face today. So ultimately for my own personal sake,

which is always how do I measure and how do I make sure that I am giving my best to the team, starting with Team Hollis first? You know, we met in 2020. Hard year. Yeah. Hard year to be a public figure. You were a public figure on a different stage than we were. And I met you at Allison's, I think, birthday party and heard a lot of great things about you. But I opened up to you during that time of, oh my gosh, we are just getting blasted on the internet.

And everyone was. You know, you and I had a really interesting conversation, which is probably like why I mainly wanted to have you on this podcast of we had a really interesting conversation of how you were. were thinking about things in the boardroom, how you were pushing against messages that maybe people wanted to push out through Toyota Global or Toyota North America. And I asked you for a lot of advice of saying, hey, we're getting a lot of pressure to say XYZ, but sometimes we don't agree with XYZ. And I think that what's- Or we don't know what XYZ even means right now. Right.

There was a lot of convoluted messages. And I think we look back on 2020 and we, you know, a lot of people who are pressured to say X, Y, Z, you know, are now being like, we shouldn't have pressured them to say X, Y, Z. You know, we're smarter in hindsight than we were just caving to a lot of messages in 2020. But the reason I think it's so interesting to have this conversation is because I think that the average consumer out there, the average audience viewer, whether it's mainstream media, cable, they want to know what is happening in these corporations, you know, why are they supporting this message or that message?

What conversations are happening? And I think that there's probably two divides here. There's the people who ideologically are happy that a lot of the political messages are being said. And then there are others that just simply are like, why are brands becoming political? Like, can you just sell me car? Dibby, can you just sell me a hair care product? And I think the tone has changed for executives probably in 2020 to now. I think that they've lightened up on just jumping straight into, you know, political messages.

But I'd be curious, you know, let me think about what my question is. My question, I think, is at a Japanese company, do you feel a little bit insulated from the culture wars of America? Hmm. The, you like that question? That's good. I don't think. So it's interesting. as you stayed the question because I don't see myself working for a Japanese company.

That's first of all. I need to make sure why that you understand that. As a regional, I'm very clear that Japan's are a global center, and I'm very clear that I report up through global CEO. So I get it, I get what you're coming from. But we are a regional. We run North America. And Toyota has given a lot of autonomy to each of the regional office.

offices to run the business as the way that we see fit because everything has come from the Toyota family. So remember, Toyota the company is a family business. We're on the third generation now. Actually, the fourth generation is working in the company, but our chairman is the third generation. And it's very clear even when I met with him. His name is Akio Toyota. And Akio Toyota will simply say, you must do what is best for our team, our brand, in the U.S. or in North America.

Oh, so you're right, you're right here with us. You're in the culture wars. It's always a culture war. Now, Japan has a different societal belief around a lot of the cultural challenges we might have. When you live in Japan, it's an island. So you have an island mentality. And the island mentality is that everybody always protects the island. So if you think about that, it's different.

We think of Japan as this big place. It's a very small island. And that's small island. So their mentality is to protect. everybody all at once. In the U.S., it's a lot more, less about the team and all of the U.S. winning. Unfortunately, it's all about my thoughts winning, my small subset of people winning, my whatever that is. So my, in the U.S., and in the cultural wars that go on, what we did in 2020 to today is this, at the company, it is very easy for me to go in and say is, as a team or a brand,

our goal, our desire, it sounds super simple is we want to sell and service vehicles to every person. The outside, a lot of times the pressures come in is because the outside wants you to choose between their beliefs and their beliefs, right? And we're saying, why are we even choosing? We are not a political entity. We are not a, we are a vehicle company. So many times our company here takes the stands of we believe in both sides. Because listen, we're a company of all kinds of people with all kinds of beliefs. So we want to represent our whole family of individuals to the outside. So why would we want to choose A versus B? And I've said this obviously, A versus B, when we really have people inside our company who believe in both,

and we're trying to sell product to both. So what's really hard is when it comes down to with somebody to say, well, what about this question or this societal issue? My own personal belief may or may not match up exactly with the next executive. And we may not match with the third executive. But ultimately, as a team, it must be about

what the brand's ultimate goals are. And for us, Mr. Tudis says it all the time is, we are here to serve every customer and bring a smile to their face. Right. Can I ask you a tough question? Please. If you worked for a company that decided to halfway through the year that you started working there,

change their values and align with something that you didn't believe in. Because it sounds like, you know, Toyota just wants to serve everyone. That's what we want to do with Divi. It's like we want to sell hair care. But if you work for a company that halfway through, they decided take a stance that you don't believe in, how do you handle that as a Christian? Is it something that's so strong that you feel like you would have to leave? Or how would you handle that?

Yeah, I think it's really critical that on your, based on your question, you're saying you started to work for a company that you saw their belief systems and you joined them because you thought that aligned. Yeah, somewhere along the way they changed their belief system. I think it happened to a lot of people in 2020. Yeah. Can I, I love your question. Can I back up almost a little bit? I would have a question that asked you. So 2020 was just a pivotal year because it was the first impression that we had of the escalation of pressure to.

Yeah. jump into identity politics across the board, right? Well, COVID did it because it had those who believed COVID was real or not real. Correct. Or how did address it or not address it? Correct. And I think that there were a lot of other sub-issues wrapped up in the COVID era as well. But we had never really seen that as strongly before.

But I'd be curious that that's your experience as well. So is 2020 in that era kind of a mile marker in terms of, oh, this is when brands really started to be pressured to push these political messages out the door or is this for you, this has always happened. You guys are just now exposed to it on a higher level. Does that make sense? Like almost the history of brands becoming political in your opinion. I think I can potentially even address both because in my experience as a company of Toyota, we've always faced this cultural kind of questioning for at least as long as I can remember. 2020 is just exasperated. It brought it out. We accelerated during COVID,

but maybe what we had been dealing with for 10 years. We did it in like, you know, 10 days. I mean, that's how fast the acceleration occurred during COVID. So we had always been there. And there had always been this, what side do we want to support or what is the Toyota brand going to stand up for our back, you know? So that's been something always. And always, for as long as I can remember,

Mr. Toyota has always been, the leadership of this, locally has always been, we do the right things for our dealers. We support our dealers and we do the right things for them to support the customers. And when you think about the simplicity of that, and then I'm going to jump to your question, Danny, because I think what was interesting in there is where I'm so thankful for Toyota is our value statements and our goals have always remained consistent. There has never been a change to that. And that is because from day one, it was always about serving others.

and truly looking at the next person in the chain. So for us is to help our dealers so the dealers can help the consumer is, I can't then choose a red or a blue or a conservative or a liberal. I can't choose that. And then you asked, but as a Christian, how do you do that? What you do is you are trying to make people the most important. As a believer, what did Jesus believe is always the person in front of them, how to take care of that person, how to address their needs.

How to love on somebody, even if that person, by society, those definition are being loved. His point wasn't, I'm not judging, I am loving them. If I'm in a company and if anybody who's listening is in a company and those values change, two things you have to ask. One, why did the values change? Why? Why did the values change? If it was this and now this, what has changed? Do I want to be a part of that change? Yeah. And I think every person has the right to say, hey, I thought we were going this way. We're not, and I'm going to go and follow again back to my heart and the Holy Spirit to go to where I'm aligned. leader in a company, C-level executive in a company, did you feel that during that era,

you saw a lot of values change and not Toyota, but other companies around you? Yes. Because what we felt, and I think everyone would feel this in hindsight, is that it was a cultural pressure that led to a lot of quick action on behalf of companies that confused a lot of customers who subscribed to a lot of brands. And at the end of the day, I think we look back and we say, that is what we would define as virtue signaling. You virtue signaled your way. You broke your values. And now some brands are trying to claw it back. But it was a, and I don't blame them. I really don't. It was an intense pressure cooker of a season. And we should never blame anybody for anything because everybody, we don't know the pressures. I don't know the pressures that you face every day.

Right. You don't know what I face. And everybody that we would ever talk to, you have to, we all have to give credit to the other person to the other entities. There was intense pressure. But when it comes with intense pressure, comes something out of that. And if people are changing their values based upon intense pressure, what are they going to change again? Something else, something else changes? Right. That's the core strength of a company is what do you stand for? And if that's flip-flopping, you just have to, as an employee question if you want to be a part of that. You can still be a part of it, but you have to realize they may change at any given moment. And that was why that time, but that was intense. When I talked about exasperated and people changing,

There was a lot of companies who wanted to jump in on a political or a social element. I just questioned it. Like, why? Why are you moving to that? When, for example, as a toad or Alexis, when we're, we are literally trying to serve the needs that you have. That's transportation needs. Well, transportation needs are not red or blue. They're not liberal or conservative.

You have a need. We're trying to meet your need. there are different companies that were at that time who who were wanting to I think make a name for themselves. They wanted more, they wanted more attention. They wanted maybe headlines. But always think of it this way. If you choose one side, you're alienating 50%. It's just, that's just math.

Yeah. If you turn left, the people who are going right aren't going to like it on this opposite. Right? Sure. So the question is, how do you, how do you provide? and how does Toyota, and I love being part of this, how do we provide the best that we can for people's needs? And by doing so, isn't then a question of, of, of, of any,

would you say virtual signaling? Yeah, virtue signaling. I'm sorry, virtue. Virtue signaling. It's not about virtue as a company. It's about meeting someone's needs. And that virtue or value statement, which is we're going to respect you and we're going to make things better for you,

that's generally I will say that's generally what we have tried to advocate for and fight for within our executive team at Divi as well is listen guys we we are here for people not right or left not conservatives are liberal not this or that you know just people right and there's a really kind of a a pure heart when you're just looking at the person beyond all of the the things that they might you know, say I am this or I am that, I'm that. We're looking at just the heart of the person, the people. That's right. And I think that we have just felt that so long as you stay focused on just providing the need, which ours is hair care, yours is cars, you know, in transportation, it becomes simpler, right? But. Yeah. And if I can just speak to that too, I think that, I'm just going to be honest, it is really, really challenging as a Christian to grow, start, and run a company as it grows. Because you want to keep your values, of course, but not everyone is always going to have your values.

Sure. But I think what you said by focusing on the one and not being so caught up on the box that they're trying to put me in or the label that they're trying to put Divi in or Divi supports this or that, like just focusing on the one individual. and the people in front of you, takes a lot of that pressure off where it's like, we don't have to virtue signal,

we don't have to say that we align with this because at the end of the day, like we align with loving everyone that is working for us, focusing on the one individual listening to them because at the end of the day, I'm always like, even when you post that one thing on Instagram,

it's not going to actually change people's minds. That's not what changes someone's mind. It's a relationship. It's a conversation. It's getting to know them. It's influencing them. Well, and I love how you're saying this because you may,

earlier as we were talking about loyalty. I am fully convinced what people want in life is trust. They want to trust you and they want to be trusted. They want your product to be true all the time. They want you to be consistent. That's what people want. They're striving for it. And it doesn't, even if we don't want to go down the word of Christian or of what those values are, I can still say that one of the things I've learned the most from the Bible itself is, what did Jesus do? What is the actual most virtuous person ever, truth, trust? And what did he have? And how did he live?

And I think that's what we should do. And that was to love each person individually, love them. He loved on like the dingbatts too. It didn't matter. But the fact was that's what the ministry was. But, Daddy, that was, that's exactly, it wasn't a choice. He didn't say, oh, well, I'm going to love you, but not you. Yeah.

He actually blew the whole world mind when he said, where I'm going to love the Gentiles as much as I love the Jews. Yeah. The issue was, is that I'm going to love everybody. Yes, yes. And as a company, I want to be, and as an executive, if I choose one, I means I'm actually loving one and not loving the other. No, I can't do that. That's not acceptable. I won't do that.

I hope you won't do it. The goal should be is for us to be true to the other person to help the other person. And that's truly what it is to be a servant leader. And that in that case, you're not flip-flopping. You're not changing your value. You're not changing your statements. You can be consistent. And you can actually look everybody in the eye and say, this is what I stand for.

And that's when you're talking about freedom and really enjoying your work is when you are doing that every day without concern for what somebody might say. or something I might do. No, you're doing it. What are the counter arguments that you get in the boardroom against this more simple philosophy of people and we're here to serve transportation? I think some, I don't know there's so much counter arguments. I'm kind of loud.

There's not a lot of counter arguments. So I don't know that there's not a counter arguments because they don't think anybody really wants to. People who say, I disagree with your belief that this is how we love people. there's a disenfranchised community over here that we feel that we need to love extra at Toyota and by not doing that we're not loving people

because we should love them. But my problem is in my counter and this is we would go on and on in this joint because I'm going to always come back to if anyone who's quote unquote disenfranchised gets more attention than you are actually by definition taking attention away from someone else

and doesn't each person deserve the equal amount of attention to equal amount of love? And I don't know who who is, other than God, I don't know who is virtuous enough or who is good enough to make a decision between one group needing more or less than another. You are by then defining yourself as you being a judge of someone else. I'm not judging other people. I'm loving them. I can't tell you that this person is more, and we talk about disenfranchisor, we talked about served or underserved or I don't know how, who gets to make that decision, who's making that definition for that person or group of people.

Mine is, is that I am not less than anybody, but I'm not more than anybody. And I think that's as a company, as a culture, any company with any belief system, I would encourage to say is, I am equal in basis of value. I'm not better than my company is not better than your company. It's not less than your company. They're just different. And every difference needs to be loved to the master. maximum. And it's not about equal. It's about max. Max,

max, consideration, max serving, max loving. Yeah. What? He's like, Mike drop. That's what I was looking for. Honestly, I'm asking a lot of these questions for advice, too, just from our standpoint. Yeah. I think one of the things that I think boardrooms, and people talk about boardrooms today and because there are more kind of political statements, I mean, look at the country, look at this election. You know, cycle right now. It's not as bad. Well, it's going to get worse.

Am I crazy? It's going to get worse. It's going to get worse. It's going to get worse because that's why you're here. You're preparing. Because you have this maximum change that you could possibly have of one candidate to another on a Democrat side. In every election,

not I shouldn't say it. In every election of the majority of the people who are listening to the podcast, every election has been within at one to two percentage votes of one side or the other. Same for Senate, same for the House. It doesn't matter. Because why? Because everyone's saying,

you have to choose between A or B. And I'm still, even in politics, why can't I love both of you? Why can't I think you both have great ideas? Why can't I think I really like a lot of what you both have to say? I mean, that's how I feel as an individual. I think that that's how the majority of America feels. Okay, so.

They're more reasonable than I feel like we think. Yeah, I think that the majority of America is moderate, somewhere in the middle, but the middle is, it's really hard to exist in the middle in this media environment. because a lot of society is because you're at 50-50. Because just think about it, if everybody's at 50-50, your goal is like a tug of war.

If I can just pull a couple more to my side, then it becomes 51-49. And my own personal beliefs win. We're talking about tug-of-war in an entire society to move one or two percentage of people, so it becomes more and more loud, more and more and more pointing fingers, more and more blame,

more and more dispersion more and more. And that's what quickly damages companies, countries, people, families, it becomes divisive. That, I don't even want to, I don't like to call myself red, blue, or moderate. Because I literally look at things as policies. What are things that I think are best for the future? But that's how I think of it in business. That's why I'm more for the whole country.

What is the best for the future? And it tends to be that, On the right and the left, there are some really good ideas here and some really good ideas there. But there's no way they're going to allow the other person's ideas to become, oh, that's a pretty good idea. No one ever says that. Yeah. I'm still waiting for the debate that happens and goes, wow. That's a good idea. I should do that.

That's a really good idea. I think that would be best. It doesn't mean you're right and all your philosophy. It just means like, wow, that's a good thought. People might appreciate the vulnerability too. Totally people are doing. Because what are we, what are we lacking today? What are we lacking in this country?

What are we lacking in the boardrooms? Grace. Grace. There's one other word I'm looking for. At least I'm saying grace and. I don't know the word, but I think what you're doing, which is just being rational. Oh, that could be. I was actually going to say the word that I'm thinking is what I have seen less and less of as humility. Humility. When people are humble, they actually stop and they say, wow, what you're saying, what you're doing. It's really good. And when you stop and say, it's even better than I could have thought of, lives change.

Do you do that a lot as a leader? Totally. You have to fall on your sword and say, man, maybe I, maybe you were right the whole time. You know, I would say it's more like this. Danny, that's an interesting concept. I was thinking of X. I really like what you said. Could you explain that to me some more?

What happens is it's the. humility, not to say the entire concept, everything has to change. It's that idea is so interesting. Give me more of what you're saying because I'm going to change my X to X plus. And now it's an informed decision, an informed idea that's better because you listened, but humble enough to say is that's adding value. And that's one of the things I think, whether it's at home life, and I love to look at at home, as you as of your children, as they get older, their ideas you start saying, those are good ideas. And you're like, I thought I wanted, I thought this was good.

You know, our team Hollis and we'll have a conversation. I'm like, whoa. And the more that you just stop and listen and are humble enough to say, an idea is better than mine. That's where I think growth happens. That's where I think maturity occurs. That's where I think life becomes super enjoyable. And respect happens.

And respect happens. Yeah. And you talk about values, that's where value grows. Yeah. And Team Hollis, we always are talking about a team that shines for God. I'm sorry, Jane and I talk about we want to be a team that shines for God. Our principles about loving God and loving people. If our principles and values are just love people and you have an idea and you have an idea

to love people in a way that I wasn't thinking, let's go. You're on the same team. Totally, let's do that. Different ways. But when corporations stop and say, nope. this is the way to do it. This is the way, it's,

this is, this is the answer. It becomes very quickly polarizing because then you think you know better than others. Right. Can you speak more to how you run your family like a team? Hmm. That's a good question.

Well. Or like a business? Like a corporation. Kind of. That's interesting. That's interesting. Okay. So,

so, so first, every good team. When you see a, when you see a football team before of a game and they're standing in the locker room, they're coming out, they're about ready to run the field. What do they all do? Before they get together, they huddle.

They huddle. They do chant. Yeah. So, we got to Team Hollis chant. And we just, we count to three, one, two, three, go Team Hollis. And you say, dude, that is so corny. And if my kids listen to us, they're going to be like, dad. Today's episode is also brought to you by Dreamland Baby.

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We'll have, another way of when a team comes together, we'll have the roles. We're packing the car. Getting ready to go on something. Everyone knows what their role is, right? Everyone's like, okay, this is what I packed this lunch. I'm the one who does the packing of the back of the car. car, one of my sons does that. We have one who's designated who prays for us when we got in the car before we'd leave. He prays for the road trip. Everybody has a role. Team. We are all having an element,

did we do our, did our team? We did it. But I will tell you this. The one for family is the way we practice team is we do what many teams do do is we start by praying. We pray that it would not be our will be done but gods. We are praying that whatever the outcome is going to be, would be God is not ours. That is very similar what I do for my team all the time. I pray over them. Sometimes I'll ask them to let me pray for them or with them. I will pray on their behalf. I will pray over their chair that they sit in. Why? I'm wanting to make sure that I'm doing the best I can to support them. And the only way I know that I can give them my best is if I'm aligned with God to give them the best of who I am. And in both ways, those are ways that are very, very similar that I see

for both business and for family. Do you practically, did you, you know, when your kids were younger, maybe in high school, well, you actually have your daughters. And she just went to college. Yep. She's a sophomore. Okay, that's right. When they were younger growing up, did you have team meetings?

Did you have more structure? Were there more like practical, you know, things that people could implement to bring the team together? I laugh because I know my wife will listen to this and she's going to laugh. What is he going to say to that question? because we would have, it was more about dinner time. Okay. A lot of times was our goal was to try to eat together at the family at the dinner table as much as possible.

Yeah, that's, that's huge. We've heard that's really big for families. Statistically. Statistically, for families to together. It's just about having a common place to share thoughts and ideas and be loved and be very, have freedom. So that was like a rule, not like a rule, but something that you highly encourage was, hey, dinner time, we're all sitting together. We're not going off watching TV in different rooms.

Yeah, well. We are a pretty non-TV house. We are pretty non-screens. We were talking about screens. We are also statistically. Wait, what do you mean? Like you didn't have TVs? We did.

We had one. Jane and I never even had TV in our bedroom until like we moved to Texas and we're like, as a kids were out of the house and we're like, and we've used it like, I mean, literally we've been here for seven years. I bet you we've turned it on like 12 times. I don't know. I mean, seriously. What's the last TV show you watched?

All the way through. chosen. Oh, okay. Good answer. It's a good answer. It's on brand. Yeah, on brand. If you give me another one passed out,

I'm really going to have to think. You mean you don't watch Love is Blind? I don't even know somebody shows. See, that's the problem. Okay, so here's, that's great. That's actually awesome. In our opinion about team was the more that we were doing things together, the more that we were together, that that was building our team.

So if you're a team or you're on that, you're on the, we'll go to basketball now. At basketball, you put the people together on a court. You spend time on the court. And even when you're taking a break, you're sitting on the court. You're always just together. And then you become closer just because you're seeing the guy, one guy is having a tough time and he's sweating and he's sick.

And you're kind of like you're caring for him because you're just together. It's quantity time. You're just there. You can't, you don't know when quality time is going to happen. Quality time comes because you have quantity and it just turns into quality time because you're there. And it's very difficult to say, well, I have quality time. What are you going to say to your. kids, okay, now we're going to have quality time? No, you're there and it just becomes quality. So one of the

things was, was try to maximize the amount of time together. And a lot of that had to do with, well, if the TV's not on, then we can use that time together. We could go outside. We can go to the park. We can go on a walk. We can go on a bike ride. And so our goal wasn't necessarily anti-screens or anti-TV. It was more like pro do stuff together. And unfortunately, screens, get in the way of doing the stuff together. You have a lot of really cool perks that come with your job. I've seen on Intel now since your stories. At the Olympics.

Like the whole time. Lots of, you know, and Toyota's always sponsoring these amazing events. How did you, we talked about this on our last episode. How did you prevent raising entitled children? You're assuming this case that they're not entitled. I appreciate that you're giving me that credit. I mean, they're not at all. I mean, Allison is one of the most humble people I've ever met,

but then she's at the Olympics. And then, you know, she has all these, but she's also always inviting people. And so, like, you would have never known that her dad was the CEO of Toyota. Unless you have actually asked her, what are your parents to? I mean, I think our first year I didn't know.

Oh, that's good. And so I'm just, I'm just curious. Like, how did you raise such cool kids? I have a great wife who was always about, thankfulness, gratefulness, and not looking for more. We,

it's, and I'm telling you, it is so much of God's grace in, in that. My four kids, I love them. I tear, I choke up about how they are

as individuals, with the lives that they're leading, not because of success or not success in the world's eyes, because they love people. They are humble and they give to others. And to me, that's,

I mean, when my kids come, me and they'll say something like, thank you for investing so much time on us. Or I get a note from one of them says, hey, just thank you for letting me call you in the middle of the night and having you help me. It's being there for one another. So when you say, how did we raise it? It was Jane and I truly deciding what priorities we would put forth. And most of those parties came about were about being together and the thankfulness even in small things. The entitleness is difficult because Toyota has open up doors for us that we just, we don't, not only do we not deserve, we just like, can't even

believe we're here. So to sit at the Olympics and be there for two weeks and get to have, you know, most of our kids get to come in for a period of time. My one daughter, Amanda, she actually got to work at it. She got a job working as an intern for NBC, so she got to be a part of seeing it, but we got to see her a couple times while we're there. She comes back. She said the greatest thing was just to see so many people that she could serve. So I don't know necessarily how we got there other than by God's Grace, and then by me teaming up with a wife who was so always about, not about things or stuff, was always about doing and being together. Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, how did you preserve your ego in all of it as well? I had a wife who kept my ego down. Yeah, wives do that. You're not

all that. You know, people get caught up in these things and then they're like, you know, and I'm sure you maybe work with some of them and they get caught up in looking a certain way or being invited to, I'm sure you're around celebrities all the time. And it can feel like, wow, I really. I really and more important than the average gel. I am a, you know, I'm a lifetime of making mistakes and lifetime of making all kinds of errors that I wish I could go back and change. But every one of those changed me and has developed the person I am. Growing up in with means that were just okay, right?

We didn't have a lot and we didn't have a little. We just, but my mom and dad always cared so much about me, we're willing to give me their attention, that we never really looked at success in the world's eyes ever. The success we had was how many times we could be together or have some sort of fun experience. And some of those experiences because we didn't have money were just like a car ride to go from L.A. to San Diego to go to the zoo.

And that would be a summer vacation. So that would cool. And I love that. I think from our kids and our standpoint, in my own, to keep my own ego in check, which was really, as I truly believe, is asking almost on a daily basis, God, I work for you. Not myself. I don't work for myself. In fact, I've said this many times on different things, but even in speeches, my name is Jack Hollis.

I don't really give a title. I work for God. I get paid by Toyota. I'm not saying that I don't work really hard for Toyota. I'm saying by me working for God, that means I give my best to Toyota. They go together hand in hand. But everything that has occurred has occurred because of God's provision, not Jack's doing. And I think it's having a proper look at yourself because the company could have chosen

all kinds of people to be in any role that I've been in. But they chose me. I'm trying to work as hard as I can for God to be, you know, really to be, you know, to be his son to really work in his way. And to do so means I have to live that and be that for every person at Toyota. They go hand in hand. So I don't know how necessarily, because I think many times I probably had an ego. I've probably been too confident or whatever.

And in life, life has thrown things at me to help me to stay humble. Or at least I think that's what it's called as humility. But it's more like it's always, though, about how I'm serving, not being served. And I think when you have that mindset of how often I can be serving somebody, it almost by definition keeps you humble because I'm not worried about what I'm getting. I'm worried about what I'm giving you guys. I mean, I am so thankful that you guys, for some silly reason, decided, hey, we'll have Jack on our podcast.

And I'm saying this super sincerely. I'm like, why? We're thankful. I'm like, why are you here too? No, but why? But I look at it as how cool is the God to give us a chance to just hang out with one another for a couple hours and just to love on one another and other people. And I just hope that that's, I guess that's, I don't,

I don't really have a great answer because I think a lot of times I've screwed up in of ego. But it's always come back quickly to say, but it's not about me. It's always has to be about God. I want to wrap the podcast on two other topics. Okay. They're fun. Okay. I'm scared now. This was already fun. So you understand the business model of the car industry.

Are you long or short on Tesla? Wow, this is great. Okay, I am, I believe that Tesla has done what every great company and great industry has, which is disrupting what people think is normal. However, when you have a business model that cuts out the dealers who are the local business men and women who are the closest to the customer, I think you're really missing on something huge. and that is the ability to get really close to the customer. And when a company is just a company and just selling a product, over time, it becomes less personal.

I still think the automotive industry is personal. I think a vehicle choice, just like when you purchase a house, when you purchase a vehicle is personal. And you have a, most people end up having a really good relationship with their vehicle. And that relationship with that vehicle needs care. and that care comes from people. So I'm not long or short. I like the fact they disrupted. I'm simply telling you that a product that is only one product

that gives no choice to consumers, whereas Toyota gives you five choices of, you can have a gas or a hybrid or a plug-in hybrid or a hydrogen vehicle or an electric gives customers choice based on what they need versus a one-choice place. Because you've acknowledged they disrupted, are there any of their innovations or disqualification or disruptions that you are going to look at at Toyota and say,

they did that well. Oh, we're going to try and do this. All kinds of things. That's what, but every disrupting company in any industry does. So when Tesla comes in and they, and they,

great website and they had these products that with this gigacasting, all these, of course we are. Because like I said, you remember earlier when I said, the humility, we don't have it all figured out. And with Kaiser,

there's always something to get better at. Of course you're going to look at Tesla. And there's a company out of China called B-YD, Rivian here in the U.S. There's a couple of other companies that have come in that have these different kinds of innovations in a way to create product. But most of those companies, in my opinion, this is just an opinion, don't have the customer at their center. They have the product at the center. And I'm still going to lose or win with the customer in the center.

The product is a way to interact with them. But so is your app. So is insurance. So is mobility devices. so is whatever, whatever, whatever, the customer's got up at the center. And so while those companies, we'll learn from all of them, and they all have elements that we will pick up to make us better because we still believe in Kaisen that we have a long ways to go.

Okay, next question. Yes. Is this about Twitter? Yeah, I've heard that you know the new CEO of Twitter. Yeah, not so new anymore, but yeah. Yeah, so tell us about her. I heard she's, I mean, she's fighting quite a bit right now. she just issued a lawsuit against a garm or whatever, which is that advertising.

But what does she like? She's flipped Twitter around, you know, in so many ways. Are you on Twitter? I'm not on Twitter. I'm not on Twitter. Oh, we were going to shout out your handle. I know. See, this is what's really funny about this whole podcast is you two who are like experts in social everything.

You're talking to a social not expert. Okay, let's just go with that. Honestly, it's good. It's better for you. I can spell Facebook. X. I can spell X as well. I know Linda.

Linda's great. Linda Yaccarino comes out of NBC, comes out of a media world, very influential, and is, she's a friend. She's a friend to my wife, Jane. She is a wonderful lady who seeks truth and who wants truth to be told. Wow. This advertising thing you're talking about, I have no idea. So I'm not on anything. so I have no idea what that is.

I can simply say this. Linda, as a person, as someone who can be trusted, and I trust her, and that's a cool thing. I will also say this for listeners who don't have Twitter and all this. I want to tie that to something.

You mentioned earlier about pressure we filled at the boardroom. There's been many people on my company who said, Jack, we need to get you on Twitter or Facebook, Instagram, da-da-da-da-da-da. And I'm like, why? Yeah.

Well, because we want to tell your story. we want to we think you could tell your story about what you're doing and how it affects and how it helps Toyota and I'm like my problem is I've been a competitor my whole life and what I would want to do is compete with everybody yeah and I would be focused on that piece and as soon as you start to think that there goes your ego there goes humility there goes other these other elements I've I've chosen not to do that well in a lot of ways I think to protect myself against what I think it would do to me and or our company because I simply want to make the company number one, not Jack Hollis number one. I really want to see Toyota's brand be elevated, not Jack Hollis's brand elevated. I'm just a person. I mean, I'm just, I'm just one of however many billion people. I'm so I look at that and that's the reason why I'm not. Mr. Toyota's listening to this and he's like, I love this guy. That's my favorite employee.

Well, I don't know about that, but Mr. Toyota is great. And I think I have an, I'm, I'm, I'm super honored to work for this company. I'm super honored to have been with you. Thank you for taking a quote, quite a chance on me to hang out with you. But I will tell you this. It is truly amazing to me that in my life, God's allowed me to be able to enjoy the experiences of what allow me to sit in front of you or for my kids to be able to go to the Olympics and then, you know, connect through the two of you. And when I look at the weaving of all these things, to be able to do something like this, unbelievable, I thank you for having me on to be de-influenced. Okay. And last question, what's your your favorite Toyota car. Tundra,

TRD Pro, white with red interior, TRD exhaust. We're at Google that one. Okay, where can people find you? Have you written a book or anything? I know you're not on social. LinkedIn?

Yeah, we're going to find you. Unbelievable. No. Okay, okay. I'm on LinkedIn. Well, Jack Hollis is a ghost. The only place you'll ever find is on this podcast. Well, link Toyota.com and the show notes.

Yeah, totally. Actually, it's funny. I had LinkedIn. I started a long time ago. Because at one point, like, whatever many years ago, somebody wanted to send me their resume, but they didn't want any able to know. I said, all right, I don't know what LinkedIn is.

So I had my secretary put me on LinkedIn, got in. Now I have a lot of people that are. And it's a ingesting area for me, not a. Yeah, you don't put anything. Is there a book in your future? Yeah. Okay. Oh, really?

Yeah, I'm working. Quite honestly, I truly believe there's a couple of things really on my heart that I would like to do to encourage other leaders, leaders of corporations. Whether that's a Christian book or not Christian book, it's not really important. It's more about leadership that I believe could encourage others. So I want to be able to figure out a way to leave a little bit of some leadership nuggets for others. And that will happen over time.

I'm not a writer. So I have to be able to find somebody really good who I can speak. I can know a microphone like this and they can AI put it together for me. Wow. That's amazing. Well, include us on the book tour this podcast, please. We will. We'll link it up.

We'll push it out. But thank you so much. you're being here. It means the world that you took your time and spent the morning with us. Thank you. A blessing on both of you. And for Stella Stratton and number three, baby.