Noob School - Episode 71: Sales Stories: Baltimore to Japan with Dirk Pieper

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

On today's Noob School episode, John is joined by Dirk Pieper, a Lead Executive Officer of Asahi Kasei, and President & CEO of Sage Automotive Interiors. Topics range from the challenges faced and overcame throughout Dirk's esteemed career, to the big differences in sales between Japan and the Western world. Tune in for incredible stories, knowledge and advice to add to your sales repertoire. I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #noobschool #salestraining #sales #training #entrepreneur #salestips #salesadvice

New School Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back to the Noob School. John Sterling here. Today I've got my good friend, long-time friend, Dirk Piper. Thank you for being here, Dirk. Thank you, John. It's a pleasure to be here.

Of course. Among other things, Dirk is the CEO of Sage, which is one of the largest suppliers of interiors to the automotive space. Is that correct? That is correct. That's not bad. That's pretty good. Yeah.

So Dirk has a fascinating story. I mean, I'm telling you, it's fascinating. I've gotten to watch it myself. It has a lot to do with what happened in 2008 and 2009, but also about all the preparation in his kind of skill development and experience that made him ready for it. So anyway, we're going to get to that. But let's start at the beginning, Dirk.

grew up in Baltimore. That's right. Baltimore, okay. And you went to St. Paul's? I did. Prep school? What was it like going to prep school? Well, you know, it was kind of a unique situation for us. I was the youngest of six. And my mother happened to be the librarian. And that was really what our choice was to attend St. Paul's. Okay. Because she was the librarian there. So all six of us went to school there. Wow. And it was only really three miles from my house. So it was very convenient.

Okay. Very, it's changed a lot. You know, when I was there, it was more, it was a small school that was located in an old mansion that had been redone and built into classrooms. And now it's probably bigger than where I went to university. All right.

And did you live off campus or? Yeah, yeah. I just, when every, I was a day student. They did it. Okay, okay. All right. That's good. That's good. All right. Well, I've always heard that's a great school. And then you decided to go to Washington and Lee. I did. I did. What was your small group of colleges you were considering? Well, you know, at that time, I was playing lacrosse at St. Paul. So I was interested in a lacrosse school. So probably on the high end of the reach was Cornell University. Visited there, but it was way. too cold. Yeah. You know, and then W&L was in the mix, UVA was in the mix, and then a small school in Ohio

that not many people probably know of Dennis and. I've heard of that. Yeah. Dennis in college back then. They had a pretty good program. But anyway, I decided to go to Lexington to Washington and Lee, and it was a great school, worked out really, really well. Yeah.

Great community at W&L. Yeah. Good experience. Yeah. And a beautiful country there. It is a beautiful place. beautiful place. All the people I know that went there, kind of good, well-rounded people, you know, good character. So yeah, I think it's a great school. They got a strong alumni,

for sure. Yeah. Without an out. Absolutely. Yeah. I don't know. My, I guess my cousin's husband's named Charlie Tom. Okay. You know, Charlie? I don't know. He might have been a little bit older than you, but he's been on the alumni relation things there. But he's done real well in Florida. There's a pretty big community here in Greenville, W&L brands, and particularly South Carolina, for sure. If somebody was listening to this, one of our youngsters here, what would you tell them going to W&L's like? You know, I think that first, from an academic perspective, you know, it's a fairly rigorous program. It's also, I think, what I appreciated was it was it was very well-rounded. And so I think the advantages that I had of going to W&L coming out and starting to work with a big company like Milliken, I was very well prepared in terms of how to write letters, believe it or not, which we had to do prior to email.

And ensure that the grammar was correct. And it's amazing how that school was very well-rounded in terms of preparing you for that side. and demanding that you have that. But also, you know, I was a chemistry major and had a very, very strong chemistry department. But it was balanced. You know, I'd say that the experience was balanced, and that's why it gives you a good overall education,

not to where you're just, you know, targeting chemistry. Right. And you take, I mean, it's truly a liberal art school where you get a good opportunity. Where did the chemistry come from? Why does you want to do that? Well, you know, my grandfather was a chemist for a company back in the day called,

It was called Armstrong Cork back in the day. He was around when they created linoleum, if you will. And I was just always fascinated by it and, you know, the background that he had there. And I think it also allows you to think analytically sometimes, having that kind of discipline. That and math, I think, are similar in, you know, giving you that kind of discipline to where you can look at things analytically and make some good discipline. decisions. Yeah. Interesting.

It seems like when I look at the tech leaders today, not all of them, but most of them are people who certainly have the engineering background, which so many of them do, but they have that, but they also have, you know, the well-rounded background where they can talk to the press and think about sales and marketing and what consumers want and, you know, that kind of softer stuff. Yes. But also have this. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I think, you know, as one of the items I point out, as I went through my career at Milliken, you know, it was very interesting because to your point, there are many times that you'd have a very qualified individual, but, you know, you could change their position in the company, and it could be close to a disaster. You know, and I always liked the comments that we'd have, you know, because we go through these year in reviews. and, you know, Tom Malone, who was then the CEO would always make a point of, you know, let's be careful about saying that that person's not capable or not a good person. We may very well have them in the wrong type of position. And there were so many times in the company where we would, you know, you put somebody in a position that they weren't, even though on paper it said they were outfitted to management,

they really weren't because of their skills. And, you know, you could put them back in another position. they'd flourish. But you'd see people, you know, in a group of 10 be one of 10 and they get moved to another group. They could be eight next year. Very interesting, but always taking a look at making sure you got people in a position that they're best suited for. And so you're getting out of Washington Lee, the chemistry degree, great school, great degree, and you picked Milliken. What other companies were you looking at? You know, I actually was seriously considering going to graduate school primarily at Emory University.

But, you know, it was kind of an interesting story. I was playing lacrosse. And, of course, my father came down and broke the news to me that lacrosse didn't pay a whole lot of money and that I needed to start to look around. And, of course, I was seriously considering graduate school, but Milliken came on campus and interviewed. And it really kind of changed my direction in terms of what I wanted to do. So I switched from graduate school because I actually came down here a couple of times and visited and was fascinated by the manufacturing and the company. And, you know, also I felt like, you know, having grown up in Baltimore, I wanted to experience something. I always tell my kids and their peer group, you know, I went pioneering, you know, and packed up my car from Baltimore.

and came down to South Carolina to Greenville where I'd never been before. Yeah. And walked up the steps at the Galey Mill back in August 27, 1979, and it was quite an experience, you know. So really I thought about graduate school primarily, but then when I interviewed with Milliken on campus, I absolutely fell in love with it. So I didn't look at a whole lot of different places.

Got it. Got it. Well, you didn't need to. It's a great company. I mean, I don't know many companies that are more, like long-term approach focused. Yeah, for sure. Long-term, let's do what's best for the long-term of the company.

Yeah. Well, I think, you know, the vision that Roger Milliken had and certainly has instilled in the board as it stands today was definitely the diversification of the company that he did. Very, very clever move to move into, you know, where it was primarily, you know, when I started, it was significantly textiles. But he had started and had the vision to branch out into the chemical business and to nuclea agents and also into carpet. You know, and that really gave a good balanced portfolio.

And textiles really took quite a dip, but now it's actually back. It's probably one of the strongest. It's unreal. Yeah, with the repatriating and, you know, the consistency that's going on. So how much time did you spend with Mr. Milliken? You know, I would say, as I probably after about seven or eight years, you know, I always had the opportunity in the quarterly meetings to present to Mr. Milliken and had a lot of opportunity. Probably my closest opportunities were when I spent four years over in Europe. And there was always a situation where Mr. Milliken, he would come in on a Sunday.

and so I had the responsibility to pick him up at the airport and kind of spend the week with him. So I came pretty close to him at that point, and then I would say down the stretch of the acquisition of the automotive group, certainly got to know him fairly well during that period as well. Yeah, interesting. But just a super gentleman and what a businessman. Yeah. Yeah. Just terrific.

How did that whole thing start? I mean, did he start it? It was like, no, no, he was third generation. Third generation. Yeah, yeah. His grandfather, Garrish, had started it. It was a, believe it or not, a trading store in Minot, Maine. And, you know, in the guesthouse, the Milliken Guest House,

they actually have the original books, the trading books of, you know, four bags of potatoes and how much it costs. And then they got into the woolen business in New England. Yeah. And then ultimately, you know, Roger, Milliken is the one that actually moved him down here to Spartanburg. For the labor and the weather and all that stuff? 100%.

Primarily for labor and non-union. He was very strong about that. And so... It's just amazing, though. They started as a trading shop in New England and then become something completely different. Yeah. You know, think about Michelin, same way. You know, two guys in the bicycle shop.

Yeah. in France. Pretty amazing. Yeah. It's visionary. I think, you know, I think the message I always get from that is that you kind of need to be in the game to make something happen. Yeah. You know, just talking about it's not enough.

But if you're kind of in the game and you've got something started, even if it's not the exact right thing, you know, if you stay at it long enough, who knows? Yeah. Well, you figure it out, right? Yeah. I mean, I think that's always an opportunity as to diversify. I mean, it's basically, you know, what we had to do at Sage was a lot of, you know, what Roger Milliken had taught us, right? So we were primarily textile manufacturer of automotive seating. Right.

And, you know, 95% of what we did was here in North America. Now it's about 42%. So, you know, he had taught us to have the vision to grow globally, but then also product diversity. So we're now manufacturing, you know, synthetic swades and synthetic leather and headliners and the whole interior. So because if we had just stayed with a narrow focus and just textiles, you know, we would have really be in a spiral. Right. You know, just diminished revenue. And, you know, that's cutting your way to profitability is not my motto.

Right. You know, I'm a big believer in growing. I love it. Plus, in your business, I don't think you can just, I mean, you have so much capital costs. Like in a software business, you just cut people. It's like, well, expenses are gone now. But in your business, you already have all these fixed expenses. That's right.

Can't cut it the same way you can't cut it. That's right. You know, I've never, that's, as you know, and you study a lot of these different business cases. I mean, you know, I always told our people every year, you know, if we're not growing, we're dying. because I've never seen a business be successful that just tried to cut their way to profitability the whole time. It just doesn't work. Not for long. No.

Well, you can get short-term results. Yeah. So you started there in 79. Give us just the highlights of your different jobs and responsibilities you had up until, let's say, 2008. Yeah. So, you know, I spent the first 15 years in manufacturing, right? And eventually, you know, of course, was a plant manager, you know, was probably the first major role I had where, you know, I'd be presenting to Mr. Milliken. And then I moved on to director of manufacturing and, you know, ran all the automotive manufacturing.

And then I got my first opportunity in business. And I became in early 1990 the Ford Global Business manager. So managing all the four business. And that was a pretty incredible learning experience for a guy that had spent 15 years of manufacturing. You know, one of the points that I'd make today is, you know, that was a real learning experience. And I had a few hard knocks in that job because, you know, I didn't quite understand what I understand today. Right. And, of course, when you're young, that coming out,

of manufacturing, you have all the answers. Right. Give us an example. Well, I'll give you an example. It's not one that I'm real proud of, but... We won't tell anyone. It's one that I've certainly learned, and it really has been very helpful for me. So I'll give you an example.

So, you know, of course, with automotive companies, there's always an annual, you know, price reduction or cost give back, right? APRs is what we call it. Okay. Well, I had a very aggressive... purchasing director at Ford, you know, who was insisting on a certain amount of recovery. Well, you know, we had developed a plan by switching some products, et cetera, that we were going to save them a significant amount of money without damaging our profitability, you know,

because that was important to maintain that. What I failed to do was I failed to listen and really understand what his performance measurements were and how his performance measurements were calculated. So as it turned out, he was rated on what they called non-engineering type cost reductions. And, of course, we'd given them a significant amount of engineering cost reductions. And we didn't meet his target. And we actually got put out a Ford for two years on moratorium of no new business. So that was a real eye-opener.

You talk about a sick feeling flying back on the plane from Detroit to Greenville. But, you know, what I'd say was important about that is, you know, I probably was upset with myself for a period time, but I chose to learn from that experience and really try to understand what I had done wrong. And I can tell you, that mistake, which at the time seemed almost fatal to me and fatal for my career, I thought, you know,

it turned out to be the greatest learning experience because now, over time, having developed relationships with people across so many different OEMs, you know, I concentrate first on understanding, you know, what their performance measurements are. Right. Right. And you really want to make those people successful. Yes. And it's not just your calculation. You got to make sure you understand it in their terms. Right. So, yeah, it was a... That's a great lesson, Dirk. That's such a great lesson. It's such a great way you handled it. Well, at the time, I was a little bit concerned. You have a couple of drinks on the way home? I don't know. I think I was stunned.

Well, yeah, I mean, I mean, to... just to reiterate for the school, Dirk's lesson learned was just because the contract looked good from his perspective and the guy signed it, it still didn't make it a good overall deal. Because when Dirk won, this guy really lost, and he had other things he could do to Dirk. They weren't even on that piece of paper.

That's right. And you have to remember that, particularly with these big companies. And the other thing that's weird about it is, you could have, it sounds like you could have arranged at where you could have given them those things. Yeah, without a doubt. And since that learning experience, you know, been able to orchestrate many, many, many deals with different OEMs and enjoyed a lot of success, you know, which has allowed us to become the largest, right? So we always wanted to be the number one preferred, not necessarily number one. Yeah. Because what that meant was when anybody thought about automotive interiors,

they thought about SAGE, you know, and just so happens to that philosophy and always treating our customer right and never breaking a promise, you know, allowed us to grow the business to where we, where we became the largest. Unreal. Number one in the world. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. It's unreal. So one other question I've got is if you're dealing with, let's say, an Asian country, and they won't tell you that information. Like I found in dealing with them, it's just they're less likely to come out and just say, this is what I want. How do you handle that?

Well, there's no question that. Am I right? You are absolutely correct. And in fact, you know, because Sage is an American company, you know, and even before that, when we were with Milliken, you know, trying to get. business with the Japanese OEMs was very difficult. Fortunately, we've been successful. But to your point, it would even be expressed in a terminology because at first we used to have to have trading companies with us all the time. And the purchasing people would even really look at you and say,

well, tell me why you're here, you know, because we really don't need you to be here because I've got my trading company that I'd really rather deal with. So the way that we worked through that situation is across all the different functional areas in a big OEM like a Toyota, we would build relationships, right? So where the purchasing folks might hold it close to their chest, you'd start to glean different amounts of information. out of, let's say, engineering or, you know, product planning or the different areas that you dealt with, and they'd start to give you some information about what was going on.

But, you know, one of the things I'd say, John, is that I've learned throughout my career is building relationships and trust with people goes a long way. And, you know, just consistently being in a position to where you develop a relationship. So, you know, I've been to Japan 72 times to develop, to spend time, you know, having dinner, karaoke and just continual persistence, if you will, relentless pursuit of, you know, look, we want to be a supplier. And I'd say that it's probably taken 15 years minimum, but we're finally, you know, there. but when they hold the information close to the best, I think you've got to go lateral to different functional areas and try to find out information.

Gotcha. Go around. Correct. That's unbelievable. 72 times so far. And you've got two more trips coming up? Yeah, oh yeah. Coming up next year?

Mm-hmm. That's awesome. I've been working on my Japanese karaoke. How's it going? Pretty good. Pretty good. What's your go-to song over there? It's called Kitasaba.

Kitta Sabah. Yeah, yeah. So they don't play like, Like ACDC or something? Oh, yeah, we do that too. Okay. They love that. Okay.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. They like to stay up late and drink cold white wine and... You know, well, sake is good, yeah. But they like, they really like Suntory whiskey. Santhory whiskey. Yeah, they make their own whiskey.

It's a pretty good whiskey. Okay. Yeah. Well. But they have the coldest beer in the world in Japan. No doubt. We tried Japan, the Japanese, Japanese, market. And this is how pitiful we were. We went three times and gave up. I mean, first time

that we just look at you. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And then the second time they said hello or something. Yeah. I mean, it was we're well we gave up. You know, one of the one of the items that, uh, that I would also recommend and you know, we, we had our, our team do it is it's always a good idea to read up on the culture, right? Because, you know, the perception that we would have as as Westerners, you know, it's part of their culture, but we don't understand it, which is, you know, they have this expression, the am I, which means basically they don't say a whole lot. It's just kind of they have a feeling about the way that the meetings are going. And it's, and it's not all black and white for them.

And they don't prefer it. You know, in fact, before you even go to a meeting, the meeting's really already been decided through all the Nemawashi, et cetera. But so I read this book called The Japanese Mind and several other books that were, that really helped in understanding. So when I was in a meeting, you know,

I wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't say anything. Somebody would make a point and you'd just wait to say something, which all of a sudden made them, realize that you started to understand their culture because our impulses we've got to be saying something in the meeting or we're not doing anything but many times they will remain silent for an extended period of time yeah and they're really kind of testing you well that happened to us we had we had the guy show up it was like the senior guy and the junior guy yep we're sitting like way across the table oh yeah and the senior guy is like leaning like this and his eyes are like shut and we're like

We give up. We're done. We gave up like just two seconds into it. But that's what he was doing. He wasn't feeling so good about it. Yeah. Yeah, the tendency is definitely to kind of absorb the situation. You know, so I'll tell you, it's, I really recommend for people, you know, we're a great country, America. But be an expat somewhere and go out to a restaurant when Americans show up.

Okay. All of a sudden you get a pretty good idea of how we're perceived in other cultures. You know, an example is, you know, we're in the country where we're living and, you know, I hear the American coming. What's wrong? y'all didn't figure out how to invent ice, you know, and things like that and comments like that. It's not their culture, right? And it kind of makes you cringe, but you get that experience. And then it teaches you when you're around other cultures to be aware, you know, how we're perceived.

Because many times it's true the way we are, you know. Yeah. I mean, it is excellent. In the book, in my book, it's one of the things I recommend if the people have the time and the means is to go around the world before they start college. Yes. You know, work, travel, do whatever, stay in friends' houses, whatever you got. Just do the lap. Yeah.

And you'll see that, you know, maybe ICE is a good way to do it here, but other places, they don't do it that way. That's right. You know, it's okay. It's okay. Yeah. Yeah, and you have to understand it in the guidelines. One of my favorite stories is my friend in Japan, you know, who I hired years ago. We've, you know, been throughout it, you know, I became very conscious of,

many of the customs, you know, but, uh, so I had a big old apple and we were on the train and I looked over him. I said, taco. I said, uh, you know, it's probably not really a good idea to eat this apple on the train in it. He said, oh, it's okay, Dirk. They think you're a heathen anyway. So go ahead. You know, you just got to know where your spot is and uh, where your position is. Well, then you and I agree on that. And again, I give to all the people, the, the new school people travel when you have a chance and get around the world and it will help your it helped me sell better in America when I got back yeah 100% so easy yeah you know comparatively I thought just so much because people will just tell you you ask them a question they tell you the answer you know

so um we agree on that so let's let's go ahead and get to 2008 2009 so you're you're running safe Actually, I was with Milliken. But I mean, but you were running Sage as a division of Milliken, right? Yeah, but it wasn't Sage. What was it called? It was the Millican Automotive Division. Okay. I also called Sage.

So you're running that, which essentially became Sage. Correct. And it was one of the big divisions of Millican. Sure. And it just served automotive. And that's when everyone announced that all the car makers around the world were all going out of business, basically. Yeah. Yeah. I would say, you know, what we actually had was, you know, the new leadership came in at Milliken.

Yeah. And, of course, we did a full-on Boston consulting group study. And, you know, the old four-box model, you know, you're either a cash generator or you're up in the right hand of proprietary, et cetera, et cetera. Well, you know, we were kind of right in the middle. And, you know, I would say going into 2008, when the dark clouds were forming, you know, was kind of perceived that, well, you know, you can only have so many businesses that fit in a certain category. And so keep the performance textiles group and we'll sell the automotive division. So I was tasked with selling the division. And, you know, we created the SIM and distributed it primarily to a lot of our competitors.

And, you know, we had a lot of discussion, but, you know, as time went on, we were racing against time. Yeah. And the storm clouds had really gotten quite heavy, and nobody was interested in it. And, of course, the revenue had dropped significantly. There were some very difficult times for sure. Yeah. So then what happened with that in mind? A colleague of mine approached me.

I was running the group. He was in a strategic role in manufacturing, and he said, you know, wouldn't this be a great business to buy? And, you know, I give him a lot of credit for certainly generating that idea. You know, because when you're in the heat of the action, you know, I mean, we were dealing with cash before delivery. We were dealing with whether we were going to get paid. We had three customers on the verge of bankruptcy who actually went bankrupt.

You know, so with Azalea capital here in town, Jim McCauley and the group, you know, we made an approach to Milliken and got a letter of intent signed. Now, as part of that deal, that was in May, and as part of that deal, in order to incentivize us, the CEO and CFO of Milliken, asked that we resigned. So basically we went, I went four months with four kids at Christchurch with no salary. It was a little bit hairy. And quite frankly, as you remember, as everybody remembers, the market was really upside down. Yeah. And so the normal model of, you know, getting this debt and maybe get some MES debt and, well, we didn't get to

Right. And we were literally, you know, I was very engaged in trying to secure the funding. You know, like I had mentioned earlier, you know, we had 21 managers basically put the retirement in. We had Azalea that put in a certain amount of equity. Hold on. You put, you had 21 managers, including yourself, push in their Milliken retirement, into the deal, Zellia Capital, local private equity company.

Right. And you're looking for that final gap money? Yeah, which was pretty significant. Okay. It was about twice the amount we already had in there that we needed to meet the Milliken price point. Okay. And things got pretty harrowing from that perspective. And this is, you know, I can look back on it now and reflect.

But, you know, I was literally traveling to every customer, even though I wasn't employed by Milliken. You know, I had to explain to them we were doing a buyout. Oh, yeah. Because one of the largest customers, like I said, you know, the decision been made to put them on cash before delivery, and they were taking all of our business and giving it to a competitor. And I can remember to the day going up and having a meeting with them, I remember the individuals extremely well, and they've become great friends. I said, give us a chance, you know. And so they stopped taking away the business and we proved out we do it. But what they, a letter actually came out from Milligan that said, look, we're.

We're going to shut the business down because it doesn't look like the cash has been achieved. Banks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, well, you know, I can remember I often tell this story that, you know, we made the presentation. I was there were 66 banks in the room. And I made the presentation. And as soon as I used the word textiles and automotive, it was like turning a light on in a room full of cockroaches. They were gone.

Yeah. You know, and we ended up at the, literally at the 24th hour, getting an individual investor to invest in a company and made the difference. I remember July 24th to this day sitting in that parking lot, you know, praying that we would pull this thing off. And that individual liked the deal. And so then the fund began, right? We got the deal closed, you know, and we had to execute, like, within 9.4. 90 days of getting the whole thing flipped over. We had no ERP system.

They cut you off. We were handwriting checks. Yeah. You know, we had a, no, they didn't cut us off, but we facilitated a transaction agreement, you know, transaction services agreement. But within one year, we had to develop our own ERP system. I got you.

Okay. Right. So we had a year. Okay. But I was pretty amazed with the people we had that they got all that done. And so, you know, we started up the company and very manually focused. But, you know, that's when we created the name Sage. And the reason we picked the name Sage was because of our top management group had, on average, about 24 years of experience in automotive.

And so we were bringing wisdom to the automotive industry. But the other part of Sage is the green part, you know, the herb, being. in the sustainable nature of the company. So we created it. So, you know, from there, the rest is history. We've grown significantly. Like I said, 95% of our business was in North America. Now about 42% is.

We're larger in Europe than we are here. And then in Asia, we have a significant presence. But a lot of experience with doing M&A and expanding outside of North America. It's been, we have a, we have a, fantastic team of people and it's been very successful for it. That's fantastic. Well, it's just an unbelievable story. And again, I think, you know, when people read like Forbes or Inc or one of these magazines, they read a success story like yours, they think, I want to do what he did. I want to do that, you know, it just sounds really good. But it's the, it's the chemistry degree and the

Washington Lee degree and all that time being a good up-and-coming executive in all those different things. So when it happened, you know, that with your sales skills and your determination, that allowed, you took advantage of that opportunity. Yeah. But many others couldn't have tried it or they couldn't have pulled it off. Yeah. You have to be ready. Yeah. Yeah. So you're ready, but it still was really hard. Yeah. And you got to have a lot of faith. Yeah. It's going to work out. Yeah. You know, I would say the two, to your point that you're making, I would say two key factors. If I look back and say, okay, one of them was, you know, not necessarily being afraid to make some mistakes and to learn from it. You know, I know that's kind of a cliche, but it's true, especially the one I

described for you at Ford. Yeah. Pretty significant mistake. I thought it was a career-ending move at the time, but I learned a lot. Yeah. The other is just what we were talking about is I strongly encourage people to take themselves out of their comfort zone, right? The move of me of moving the family to Europe for four years was not real popular. As I say, you know, you turn out, if you're crying when you go over there and you're crying when you come back, that means it's a success. So we ended up that way. But certainly, that's a challenge. But I recommend it, and for our entire family, but particularly for me from a business perspective, you know, that made all the difference in how I looked at situations and

the risks I was willing to take and just kind of an overall grasp of what was going on. So happy for you. It's wonderful. But I want to ask you a couple of quick sales questions. In your experience with all the different groups you've managed, what are some of the things that salespeople have done that made them great salespeople or they've done that made them not make it? So I would say as it applies to our business, and I think in a lot of cases, those people that have been successful truly know the product or service that they're selling, right? If you don't do your own internal homework and really know the product that you're selling and the services that come with it and the reliability that comes with it and really understand that and know that what you're saying is accurate, you're going to have a very difficult time. And I think if you get in a situation where you get asked some questions that are difficult,

you don't know the answer, it's always best to come back and say, I'll get that answer for you, rather than wanting to act like you're the smartest guy in the room and have all the answers. People respect much more when you say, I don't know the answer to that, but I'll get back to you. But the more you know about your product, because I've seen where people have gotten themselves, in a tight spot, maybe by overselling some things that maybe were not exactly true about the products. And I'm probably one of the most zealous, overzealous people in terms of wanting to sell

our product. But you have to be careful that you don't oversell it and you really understand it. Okay. You know, I think the other factor is, as you call on different people, you know, you really have to work diligently at trying to build the relationship, right, to know more about the people that you're dealing with. And again, I go back to understanding what their performance metrics are and making them understand either, you know, through telling them straight out or by your actions that you want to get them promoted and you want to make them successful. Anytime

somebody sees that, they're going to want to want to work. work with you. Yeah. For sure. That's that is so true. Yeah. I mean that you can genuinely tell that. If you believe that about someone, you're like, well, let's do some business then because that's what I want to. Right. You know? Right. We want the same thing. Right. But if you're selling and you can indicate that you want to make that person successful, yeah. They're going to work with you. I love it. They're going to work with you. But I also suggest you really understand your product or your service that you're selling because BS and doesn't get you there. No. Not anymore. No. Too much information available on the web to get away with too much anyway.

Yeah, people can look up things right while you're in a meeting. So, Dirk, let's see, two more questions. What's your favorite word? My favorite word. You told me you're going to ask me this. You know, I guess it's, from my perspective, it's, well, my favorite words or expression is, if you're not growing, you're dying. Okay. Nice.

That's my number one expression. I love it. If you're not growing, you're dying. That applies to a business, applies to people. Yeah. It applies to everything. You know, I always have an expression, which I've tried to work through,

and I believe in it very much myself. You know, a guy named Dennis Wheatley, he wrote these books way back when I was really figuring out, but it's the theory of positive thinking, you know, and never spend time worrying because worry is the misuse of your imagination. Absolutely. Yeah.

And there's so many people that worry, they spend so much time worrying about what's, you know, they don't want to happen. Yeah. It does happen. Absolutely. Yeah. And I strongly recommend that positive outlook and think about where you want to be. Right. That's important.

I love it. Well, I've certainly noticed that about you, our whole friendship, always positive outlook. It's wonderful. And then lastly, what would you like to promote today to the listeners? Anything? Well, you know, one of the things, and you and I were talking about this, you know, for Sage Automotive, you know, we try to participate as active as we can in the community. Right. Because there are not a lot of people here that can buy directly from us because we're OEM directed, except my friends at BMW, they could purchase from us.

Oliver, I hope you're listening. Yeah. Anyway, you know, I think in the charitable organizations that we support here are trees for Greenville. We're a big supporter that have been since day one of sage because it aligns with our sustainability. We, because of the design aspect, you know, we're a big supporter of, you know, the artist sphere that's here because that's important to us. And then also, you know, the performing arts school out there at Wade Hampton, we actually started a textile class out there. great for you know and teaching automotive textiles but also textiles in general and so we so we got that started and then we're big supporters of the of the heartball every year so so that's

my promotion well that's wonderful that's wonderful we appreciate all you do for for for for those nonprofits and also for what you've you've done to make sage that's a great part of the community and I'm real proud of you and thanks for sharing with it well you thank you and thanks for I wish I'd I had this when I was starting out. So I had the opportunity. Me too. You know, a lot of us learn to the school of hard knocks. But this is terrific.

Good. Well, thank you. It's great. Appreciate you. Thank you. Okay, yes, sir. Always good to see you. Good, see you.

Enjoy our friendship. Thank you. Did y'all get that?