Transition and Growth: From Family Business to Industry Leadership, feat. Amber Kendrick of Pete's Auto Parts
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Introduction and Guest Welcome
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Layci: Hello friends and welcome back to Confessions of a Terrible Leader. I am your host and let us not forget , former terrible leader, Layci Nelson. I am so excited to welcome Amber Kendrick to the show. She is a third generation business owner who owns, operates Pete's Auto Parts.
Layci: Amber, welcome to the show.
Amber Kendrick: Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here and talk about some of my past foibles.
Layci: Oh, yes. We're glad you're here and thank you for being willing to talk about it. Of course. We'll spare you from jumping straight into the deep end
Amber's Background and Business Overview
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Layci: So you guys are based out of the Midwest. You are in Michigan?
Amber Kendrick: Jennison, Michigan. Yeah. Great. West Michigan. We're near Grand Rapids, the second biggest city in Michigan. And yeah, we buy insurance [00:02:00] company, total loss vehicles, and we recycle the fluids and the metals and we sell the good parts off of them.
Amber Kendrick: It's a very green business. Automobiles are actually the most recycled product in America and in the world, which not a lot of people know.
Layci: I was telling you before we hit record, I didn't even think about it, but of course this business exists, right? Like I had no idea and you are third generation doing it.
Layci: So incredible. That's right. Tell me more about did you grow up just. At the business, like how did you decide? Yep, I want to be the one that takes it to the next generation. How did that happen?
Amber Kendrick: I did grow up working in the business, but like a lot of owner's children, I ended up with the worst jobs possible.
Amber Kendrick: I was pulled off one thing and into another, Oh, go deliver this. Oh, clean out that, do this inventory audit and the third story of the warehouse in August, and it's [00:03:00] 85 degrees.
Layci: Yeah.
Amber Kendrick: Shovel out this drain. And so I ran, not surprisingly, I ran screaming from the family business.
Amber Kendrick: I didn't want anything to do with it. I didn't want a job where I had to get my hands dirty every day.
Early Career and Leadership Lessons
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Amber Kendrick: And so I went to college. I was an English major and I had planned to go to grad school. I thought maybe I'd be an author or a teacher or professor. And I thought I've got all these student loans.
Amber Kendrick: I need to work for a little bit, pay down some debt. And then I can continue, go to grad school. And so I hit the job market in 2005 and I, my first job I got not because of my college degree, but because of my background in business, I had experience in QuickBooks and so I was hired by a condominium management company to do financial statements, paid the bills and the taxes and things for condominium associations.
Amber Kendrick: And that's really where I fell in love with growing small business. I helped that condominium management company grow and we more than [00:04:00] doubled in size while I was there. And I had so much fun doing it. But one of the things that happened to me, talking about leadership is that I had a leader in that business.
Amber Kendrick: who didn't really value necessarily my work. I didn't feel, and even though I was like instrumental in helping grow the business, I was told you have to wait until your one year anniversary for a salary evaluation. We do these things, every year annually. And so I was working a ton of overtime.
Amber Kendrick: Just like pouring my heart and soul into this business, and I could see the growth happening. I could see the profits happening, yeah. The owners buying a new boat and telling me I'm not eligible for a salary reevaluation, oof. And that affected me in the best way because later on as a boss myself.
Amber Kendrick: I don't let things like, a date that someone was hired, stop me from evaluating what they're worth and what, what to pay them.
Returning to the Family Business
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Amber Kendrick: So that was a great lesson for me, but I eventually went to my [00:05:00] dad's business manager at the time and said, I'm interested in coming back to the family business if there's a spot for me.
Amber Kendrick: And there was, so I came back, I. Went to work for Pete's in 2006, transformed the office and then moved to shipping and took over the shipping manager position, replaced myself in the office, worked in shipping for a couple of years, worked my way up to production manager, eventually general manager.
Amber Kendrick: And I wanted to buy the company. I wanted to take over the family business. And my dad was really not ready for all that. And I went to him and said, like here, we're growing the business. I want to buy the business someday, but i'm just making it more expensive for myself Like I want to plan here, right?
Amber Kendrick: I want to plan and he was like, whoa. Whoa. Whoa. I'm just now enjoying I've been working my whole life to pay off this business and to build the business like i'm just getting to enjoy it Myself.
Layci: Yeah
Amber Kendrick: So I actually took another job offer. I had an offer to move to omaha nebraska and go run a company Similar to Pete's, it's called American auto parts.
Amber Kendrick: [00:06:00] And so with my dad's blessing, I basically said either I want to plan or I want to go, learn some other things, do some other things. I got to move across the country, didn't know anyone in a new city and go be the general manager of a business that was similar to Pete's but very different as well.
Amber Kendrick: And that was a wonderful opportunity for me. One of the things I did there was I tried to wipe the slate clean on some of my old bad habits and Start fresh. I had a whole new staff. They didn't know me. they didn't know that I had a temper so I was like i'm gonna go in super zen And nobody's ever gonna hear me yell No one is ever gonna hear me yell and they didn't they really didn't I never raised my voice at american auto parts except in excitement
Layci: How did you flip that switch so quickly and why didn't it happen when you were at your other location?
Amber Kendrick: I think part of that is culture. My dad was a yeller and I knew it wasn't effective because like, when he yelled at me, I just shut down. I just tried not to think about it or it would [00:07:00] just made me resent him. But he would yell and I knew it wasn't effective. And yet. I would end up doing it myself, and I would try not to and I would regret it after I raised my voice to someone I would think oh, why did I do that again?
Amber Kendrick: Like i've got to keep my cool, But in the moment I would just get so worked up and for me moving across the country And having people that had never seen me that way like was really good for me because I was like I am going to make this change that i've been trying to make that i've been wanting to make and I was able to practice the pause, when I would start to feel my heart taking deep breaths and saying, sometimes I'd even say okay, I need to calm down for a few minutes before we can, talk about this.
Layci: Yeah,
Amber Kendrick: I don't want to say anything. I regret, and I just never was able to do that in my old environment,
Layci: Okay. So you're at American auto parts. how big was your team
Layci: there?
Amber Kendrick: Started with 12, I believe ended up with, I think, 18. We grew the business while I was there. Yeah. I was there for two years.
Amber Kendrick: And then I moved to H and H Loveland auto parts in Colorado. Okay. And [00:08:00] that's where I met my husband. And I met my husband when I was working in Colorado. I drug him back to Michigan with me in 2015. We got married in 2015.
Amber Kendrick: I did some consulting work and then when my dad was ready, he called me up and said, okay, I'm ready. I want to sell you the business.
Layci: Got
Amber Kendrick: And in retrospect, I think maybe it was more my mom was ready.
Challenges in Family Business Succession
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Amber Kendrick: And maybe like it was because I was settling down, And I was really hurt back when I was younger and I went to my dad and said I want a plan To buy the business and he wasn't ready.
Amber Kendrick: And looking back like I was young, I was a partier. I worked hard and played hard. , I can't really blame him for thinking I wasn't ready. But in any case, like in thousand 15, he said, okay, I'm, I'm ready. So my husband and I moved back to Michigan at the end of 2015.
Amber Kendrick: I bought the business January 1st thousand 16. Oh my goodness.
Layci: Yeah, okay so much in all of that the hurt the family we work with a lot of family businesses I myself have experience as a sister [00:09:00] to watching my sibling go through that process with our dad. There's So many dynamics wrapped up in family business It is a big Beast in and of its own when it comes to navigating all of the Feelings and the fears and the relational damage that can happen and it's so interesting when we do succession planning with family businesses.
Layci: We tell them if you don't have your legal figured out, if you don't have , how you're going to make money on this all of the businessy techy nuts and bolts side of the legal stuff if you're not There or you're looking for someone to do that for you.
Layci: You don't need us but if you're at the point where you're Ready to start even having those conversations but there's just so much tension That's where we come in and help families navigate just those Unspoken fears you're not just coming to the table as someone who wants to buy the [00:10:00] business and oh I'm going to separate business and family you're bringing in your entire heart and soul and Hurts that have happened resentments on both sides that have nothing to do with the business so much to navigate.
Layci: How did you guys have those conversations?
Amber Kendrick: We could have used your help to be honest. We definitely should have gotten some professional help, our transition did not go very well. My dad and I had agreed to all kinds of things in emails. I was living across the country.
Amber Kendrick: So that's a little bit of a unique situation, cause I was in Colorado, he's in Michigan and we're emailing, negotiating back and forth. But we had all these agreements, in writing that then by the time we got to the table with the lawyers, , he had changed a lot, and some of it was tenable and some of it I felt was untenable, there were some things like he wanted free health insurance for him and my mom for life.
Amber Kendrick: And there are state of Michigan laws where I can't treat him differently than I treat other employees. I just put legally, I can't do that dad, Things [00:11:00] like that, that were really difficult. And there were times when he would say fine, then don't buy the business.
Amber Kendrick: And I would go I just bought a house and moved myself and my husband to Michigan to buy this business that we agreed on, and so I think we both really struggled through it. And then once we got to the other side of things and I was running the company, I don't think either of us expected the changes, he had been working for himself.
Amber Kendrick: For decades and decades, he hadn't had a boss. He hadn't had anyone telling him what to do. Yeah. So then when I would come in with a report and say, Hey, these numbers are down or these numbers are up , he would get so defensive. And again, in retrospect, it's so much easier to see, in hindsight that was a very normal reaction and that I should have been.
Amber Kendrick: Tiptoeing into those conversations and I was like a bull in a china shop what are we going to do about this, and he's he's got a boss for the first time, let's not forget
Layci: that dynamic, that adds a whole nother layer of complexity to the
Amber Kendrick: [00:12:00] interactions. One of the things I did is I told him, I have a new rule, there's no yelling at Pete's Auto Parts.
Amber Kendrick: You can't yell. And he would yell at me and I would say I'm going to send you home for the day if you yell. Like I can't have my staff listening to you yelling, so he'd come in my office and he'd whisper, yell, it was quite the thing. You're like, dad, cultivate the pause.
Amber Kendrick: We got to work on this. You can't change people. People only change when they desperately want to. It was so hard for me to change when I desperately wanted to change. So like, how was I ever going to change? I was never going to change him, and unfortunately it ended up resulting in him leaving the business because I wasn't going to change him. He wasn't going to change. And he went to work for one of my competitors for a little bit and then he retired. And he's enjoying a great retirement and that's wonderful for him, but it's just we just had to keep pushing forward, with a new culture. Not that I didn't make all of my own mistakes, oh, absolutely. I may not have made the mistake of, yelling at people, but I made plenty of other mistakes.
Layci: You brought fresh mistakes.
Layci: [00:13:00] So
Layci: thank you for sharing that. That's incredibly vulnerable when you have to talk about it. It's one thing to talk about this boss you had one time. It's another thing when it's your dad, right? Like it is a whole another. You do. And you have the
Amber Kendrick: same time.
Layci: Tell me a little bit about your Transitioning into ownership. How is that emotionally different for you? How was it different than you'd worked as gm in these organizations grown them? Was there anything that's switched or you felt a shift when you went from working for to ownership?
Amber Kendrick: I have always been the type that really treated what I was doing Like I was the owner and for better and for worse, I really took it on like this is my baby I didn't feel a big change between being a manager and being an owner one of the beautiful things I had at american auto parts was That company is owned by Peter Fink who owns Certified Transmission and [00:14:00] they're the third largest remanufacturer of transmissions in the world.
Amber Kendrick: I was a tiny fish in his big pond. Okay. And I was basically like, I was responsible for the P& L at American Auto Parts and I would have to go monthly to his manager's meetings with much fancier, more important people than me. And we would all be responsible for the P& L. And if your P& L was good.
Amber Kendrick: You were passed, like then you were passed by in the meeting not passed by I shouldn't say that but like you weren't on the hot seat, right? And if your p& l was bad, then Everybody dug in and wanted to know why I wanted to know what was going on And so that was a great lesson for me And it was even though I was the gm I treated it like an ownership situation.
Amber Kendrick: I had great responsibility And I learned so much from peter and from the managers that he would gather He was a great boss in a lot of ways, but also working for a big company like that also taught me that I do love small business, you know where there's a few less rules and restrictions and You can make [00:15:00] exceptions and if somebody punches in five minutes late one time, it's not a big deal, That sort of thing was really good for me to learn as well.
Layci: Oh, yeah. I love the part of your story that you went out you saw what else was out there you worked in a variety of organizations with different sizes like you said being part of a massive corporate culture and seeing what that looks like and feels and how there's benefits because you get access to more resources, sometimes response rates are better when you're working at a big, known corporation.
Layci: However, you lose the agility, you lose some of the ability to be innovative the way that you can in small business. And having that contrast and watching a lot of people that do go straight into family business ownership roles, but have never worked anywhere else. I feel like a lot of them do miss out.
Layci: On getting to see how it's done somewhere else and bringing in that fresh appreciation [00:16:00] Was that a good summarization of your experience?
Amber Kendrick: Absolutely, and I would encourage anyone who's working in their family business to go work for somebody else for a while And I would encourage anyone who has children Or heirs in their family business to force them to work elsewhere at some point Because you do just learn so much Going out and working for other people and there's so many things you appreciate about your family business when you come back And there are so many more things that you can bring to the table, you know in my experience anyway
Women in the Automotive Industry
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Layci: Yeah, I love that perspective to switch gears a little bit you're You A woman killing it and i'm guessing a pretty male dominated industry.
Amber Kendrick: Used to be I would say That 10 years ago. It was a very male dominated industry 20 years ago. It was rare to meet other women in the industry, especially other managers. however, the tide has really turned and there's, there are a lot of women in the industry now it's much more common.
Amber Kendrick: In fact, [00:17:00] like we have a women's organization at the national level and we used to do these get togethers at our annual conference at the automotive recyclers association conference. And there would be, like 10, 12 women. And now there are over a hundred, at every one.
Amber Kendrick: Okay. And it's really wonderful to see at pete's auto parts. We've had women delivery drivers We currently have women working in shipping in the office. We have two female salespeople out of five my general manager is a woman we have really great representation for women and I see that in a lot of businesses Not just the women owned businesses But I also know a bunch of female business owners that own automotive recycling facilities Like I do and I didn't know any other woman that owned a auto recycling facility when I started so You know, there's a little bit of a misconception I think that the automotive is for men But I really have seen that change even in like when I put up a job application I get So many female applicants and it's wonderful to see.
Layci: , that's really encouraging. I just got back from Boston for the [00:18:00] women in manufacturing summit. We have a lot of manufacturing clients and that association, the women in manufacturing association has 30, 000 something members. Amazing. Like incredible. And there was over 2000 people in attendance
Layci: I just came back more excited than ever to be part of this great sisterhood of women that are really out there making a difference. And we're growing in representation everywhere, which is exciting to see. And I love hearing that echoed in your experience as well.
Amber Kendrick: Yeah.
Layci: when you took over ownership, was there as many women on the workforce as there are now at your organization?
Amber Kendrick: Not as many. No. We had, let's see, I didn't have any female salespeople, I don't think, when I came to work at Pete's.
Layci: and like I said, now we have two of my five salespeople are female and I don't think we had anyone in shipping. So we definitely have grown the female representation over the last nine years. What [00:19:00] advice do you have for organizations that might be listening to this or owners that.
Layci: . They're at the beginning phases of their career path going, I'm interested in this. I think maybe I want to do ownership. I definitely want to do leadership.
Amber Kendrick: What tips do you have for them before we dive into your confession? Y
Building a Strong Team
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Amber Kendrick: eah, I would say building a team has been like the most important thing for me and my success is building a team that I trust and that supports me and I support them. We don't do anything alone and to have people with you That I treated every project i've ever done as my baby, my team does that too.
Amber Kendrick: And I really think of them as equals. my management team has been with me for years and they care about this business just like I do. They treat it like it's their business. I can't tell you how important that is. I think when we really value people and their input and we give [00:20:00] people the dignity to make mistakes and try out their ideas, I think that's something that my dad did right with
Layci: me
Amber Kendrick: is he gave me rope to play with and to see what happened and there were failures, you know I had ideas that did not work out and were not profitable and then he would say see I told you so And then I in turn I hope I give my management team leeway to make their own mistakes and do their own things and I don't always think that they have the best idea.
Amber Kendrick: And then sometimes it turns out, you know what? Their idea was the best idea. sometimes it turns out that one wasn't the best one, but we all have to learn and grow, and we can't do it alone. We have to do it with people and in community.
Layci: , You can't grow a business and have impact if you don't learn how to do that.
Amber Kendrick: we cannot do it all. And when I replace myself in a task, the person who does it doesn't need to do it as well as I did it. They need to do it as well as it needs to be done. I think a lot of people get attached to Oh, this has to be done this perfect way because I did this way [00:21:00] It's no, somebody else's might, they might do it 90 percent of how you did it.
Amber Kendrick: And that's good enough so that you can free up your time to go do something else. If you hold all these things in, then you don't have the capacity to go do other things. And it's okay. That it's not being done exactly how you did it,
Layci: And eventually as they become masters of it, they're going to do it better than us, right? when you give them the freedom to make
Amber Kendrick: good choices,
Layci: Eventually, they're the ones saying I think that's not the right way and you're deferring immediately because you're like, oh, yeah I haven't touched that for so long.
Layci: You've got more experience than I do. I love that. You're take on building a team and giving people the freedom to Almost have an entrepreneurial approach versus, they're not the entrepreneur, but they're growing their own thing within your business. And it's benefiting both of you, right?
Layci: Taking that ownership of, Oh, this is my baby. And I have enough freedom to actually feel like it's my baby and grow it in side of this company. That is a beautiful thing and [00:22:00] attracts a lot of just killers when it comes to teammates . They're really fun to watch explode and grow as teammates.
Layci: They're a challenge for us typically as leaders because you're like in some aspects have a mini version of yourself and entrepreneurs are notoriously, we're terrible people to try to manage. Just . Look at your dad. So yeah, not easy. But when you can really tap into that, wow, so powerful. learning these lessons probably did not come without some pain.
Confessions and Lessons Learned
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Layci: Without some tears, without some mistakes that you look back at yourself and just cringe, it is your turn to tell us, Amber, step into the confessional?
Amber Kendrick: What story do you have to share today? I hope that this isn't anticlimactic because I couldn't really think of one big, cringe moment.
Amber Kendrick: But what really sticks out to me is my communication, my over [00:23:00] communication and my under communication. So I have a two sides of the coin, kind of two stories to share with you. One is that over communication. So right after I bought the business, I come in gunslinging, Oh, we're going to do so much.
Amber Kendrick: we're going to grow this. We're going to grow that. one of my salespeople in particular, we sell about 10 percent of our used auto parts to individuals. We sell about 40 percent of our used auto parts to body shops and garages that are local in our area. And then we sell about 50 percent of our auto parts to other salvage yards like us, other facilities similar to us, but all over the country that are supplying like bigger markets than we are.
Amber Kendrick: So a lot of our parts are getting shipped out to Chicago or Dallas or New York, yep. And I had a salesperson who was really strong in yard to yard sales. Weak in the local market sales and I had came in and just made all kinds of Bold statements about how we're gonna play to your strengths and we're gonna develop these [00:24:00] yard yards as we're gonna grow We're i'm gonna help you grow, People have, said that those are the easy sales, but I know that you've got good relationships and we're going to help.
Amber Kendrick: I'm going to help you do that. And I had all these other things to do, and I'm focused on inventory acquisition and quality control and growing the local market and new delivery routes. And I didn't even think about this conversation that I'd had with the salesperson and all these promises that I'd made.
Amber Kendrick: And to me these were just like great ideas and that they were just as much his Responsibility to take and run with as they were mine And what I didn't realize is that in his mind, you know I had made him a bunch of promises that then I didn't keep and that he came to resent me for and for months That festered and I didn't even realize that I had blinders on i'm looking at this And he's back here going oh sure.
Amber Kendrick: She said this and she said that and she's not doing it, And I think I did a lot of that as an entrepreneur I have a lot of ideas, and i'm firing them off, And that's okay to do in the right setting with the right people with your management team Prefaces like these [00:25:00] are options and ideas and we don't necessarily need to do this But these are some things to think about and explore As a young business owner, I shot my mouth off a lot I think it came back to bite me.
Amber Kendrick: I know it did when the salesperson, finally exploded I felt terrible. I hardly even remembered the conversation I had right but As a business owner your word carries weight and Somebody might remember that forever
Layci: Yeah, they are holding on to it. They are planning their future .
Amber Kendrick: Yes. Yeah. Yeah positive and negative, And then on the other side of that coin after I came into the business , my management team and I we were like we are gonna grow We are gonna push we're gonna do more, we had been processing like 90 vehicles a month , we made goals.
Amber Kendrick: We're going to push it up to 200 and I would keep everybody in the company abreast of where we were on our goal. Here's where we are. Here's our projected, start churning and burning, we're increasing production like crazy. And as almost everyone in business knows, during the growth phase, you're often not profitable, but then once you [00:26:00] level out, then that's where the profits come in, so we stabilize. And we're stabilized at 200 cars a month and we're doing great. We have more employees, we have more sales, we have all these new processes in place, things are going well, however, at the end of this time period, we're looking back at the books and we're going, We have eight acres we can hold 800 cars, and so we used to turn our inventory Over every nine ten months now, we're turning our inventory over every two months, wow and we have that much less time to sell parts on the vehicle, the vehicles sit in our yard We do put engines and transmissions axles in the warehouse, but the doors stay on the car until they're sold.
Amber Kendrick: So those doors, if you dismantle 25 cars, you have to crush 25 cars. And now those doors are crushed, you also have duplication going on. So we might have bought, we might have two of those 2018 F 150 driver's doors before now we have four, but maybe we only have the market for two.
Amber Kendrick: So we're just, we're not selling everything we're producing. So we look at the end of the day. , we're producing so much more. Our sales are up, [00:27:00] our production hours are up, but where is the bottom line? So where's profit? It looks like we're making the same amount we were when we were doing half as much work.
Amber Kendrick: When we had less headaches, when we had less employees calling in sick, and we had less to juggle, right? We're making the same amount of money. And so as a management team, we decide, you know what? We're going to scale back. We're not going to go all the way back, but we're going to scale it. We're going to find a sweet spot of profitability and productivity.
Amber Kendrick: We're going to keep the very best employees and we're going to nurture those people. And we're going to make this business as productive and as profitable as we can instead of making it as big as we can, we didn't really communicate that to the employees, you know Here we what we had been saying is
Amber Kendrick: we're gonna do 125 cars We're gonna do 175. We're gonna do 200 now we're saying like great job you guys, we hit our sales goal But now we're not communicating about production Now when a dismantler quits, we don't replace them. When we have a part tech calling in sick, we let them go.
Amber Kendrick: We don't replace them. We move somebody in the office to part time, but we're not communicating to people. Like these are [00:28:00] strategic moves that are good for the business. The unspoken thing here is What people assumed was that the business was struggling. The business was not struggling the business had never been doing better.
Amber Kendrick: So we've done christmas bonuses every year since I bought the business I come around with the christmas bonuses And I give out the biggest christmas bonuses that we'd ever that we've given to date Since I bought the business and people were shocked and thought yeah, I didn't know if I'd get a christmas bonus this year with all the reductions Yeah, and I was like, oh We just had our most profitable year, but I didn't communicate that properly, under communication was just as much of a misstep as over communication and sharing with people like what's going on, why we're doing what we're doing what the plan is.
Amber Kendrick: I need to be very mindful of giving people reality, actually sharing with them what is happening so that they know like I knew that we were processing less vehicles on purpose, but they didn't, and they created their own narratives that weren't
Layci: true. [00:29:00] Yeah. Yeah. Like we all do. We all fill in the blanks. We're humans. We're going to do that. that's how we've evolved as a species. That's what we do. We create our own meaning if it's not given to us.
Layci: So we better figure out that communication effectively. Hopefully this didn't happen to you, but the experience can then result in the very people that you're wanting to nurture and hold on to and take with you on this journey as you've made this shift and they don't know what's happening, they're looking for other jobs or they're, because they have decided this is scary, I got to take care of myself and my family, I don't know what's going on, so I'm out and you're losing the very people that you're like, imagining are going to help carry this forward.
Layci: So yeah, cannot agree with your learned lesson. There are more of no, you have to be very intentional and you're right. It's an art finding the balance of , you can't just shoot ideas out there. The way that you do when you're with just your smaller team or you're having drinks with [00:30:00] another business owner, and you're just sharing the ideas of what's going on.
Layci: But yeah, that is an incredible lesson that you shared with us. Thank you. Thank you for that. And gosh, I feel like we just scratched the surface .
Conclusion and Future Topics
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Layci: I want to let you go have your life and live your day But I also know you have a whole sobriety story as I said drinks.
Layci: I was like No, I come from a family of people in recovery and so I just have this whole other Discussion I'd love to have with you if you'd ever want to come back and talk about I would love to come back. Yeah, absolutely. I thank you. I would absolutely love to learn more about that part, like that human part of the journey.
Layci: I'm also on the board of a recovery center, so I have so many questions about diving into that and anyone who's willing to share that vulnerable piece of their journey is. Yeah, we're having you back amber if you're agreeing to it. That sounds
Layci: Yeah, this has been wonderful [00:31:00] Likewise mutual feeling i'm loving learning from you I was literally taking notes like for myself selfishly while you were talking So thank you so much for coming on the show sharing your journey Sharing what you've learned.
Layci: Is there any one thing you want to share with our? listeners
Amber Kendrick: I suppose it would just be the mindful piece. I think that's something that Runs through this from the beginning Of my journey where I had to learn how to practice the pause To when I was over communicating or under communicating, taking some extra time.
Amber Kendrick: I think as an entrepreneur, I'm a bold person. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are bold. And so we make moves and we're not afraid to jump in. And then it's even more important for us to step back and be mindful of what we say and what we do and how we say it and how we do it.
Amber Kendrick: It's really easy for me to gloss over that stuff. It's really hard for me to [00:32:00] practice being mindful. And it is a practice. And when I get out of practice, I get bad at it again and then I have to practice it again,
Layci: yes. Absolutely resonated with that very strongly. So thank you for that.
Layci: If people want to find you, if they're like this woman's incredible. I want to learn more about her. I want to learn more about her business. Or they're like, I want to work for her at some point. How do they find you? We'll drop everything in the show notes, but what's the best way to connect with you?
Layci:
Amber Kendrick: My website is Pete's auto. net and That's where you can buy car parts and read more about Pete's auto parts And you can find us on facebook and instagram and youtube and all that as well
Layci: thank you Listeners go find this woman.
Layci: She's got so much to share so much to give amber Thank you for being on our show today And until next time friends go manage Like a leader [00:33:00]