Episode 2
Being fired ain't final!
In this episode, TheBEAZ tells his story about being fired from a job and describes how that experience brought him to the epoch of Being fired don't scare me. He discusses the "Get down" of the episode:
- Own it
- Self-talk
- Seek other opportunities
And shares how this "Get Down"helped him find the career that he wanted.
He refers to a poem, Mother to Son by Langton Hughes, that motivated him to reach his outcome.
Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:05):
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::Do you feel like its time to begin a new period of productivity, growth and success in your life? It happens and we just need the right motivation and the right teacher. Welcome to TheBeaz presents Epoch Visionary. No matter where you are in life, if you've made it, or on the way up the ladder, this is for you. We're here to enlighten, discuss, inform and question established points of view so that we can begin a period of new discovery, and achieve those life altering amazing results. This is TheBeaz presents Epoch Visionary.
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::Charles Beasley (00:53):
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::Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. I am Charles TheBeaz Beasley, and I want to thank you for listening to another episode of Epoch Visionary. Like I mentioned in the last episode, they call me TheBeaz, and the coolest thing about that is that everyone in the world and those that are yet to come will hear me because everyone is always told the story about the birds and who? The bees. And that was, and is me. So in today's episode, we will be talking about being fired ain't final. And yes, I do know that I did say ain't, I'm a country boy. So it's all good. Now, if you have ever been fired from a job, maybe let go in a relationship that wasn't necessarily your idea, but someone decided to move on. It could have been that you might've been turned down for a loan that you needed to start your new business, or it could have been a loan to get the job that you wanted. It could be the loan that you wanted to get your house, and someone told you no.
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::Charles Beasley (02:02):
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::If you like me, you might've made some bad financial decisions at some particular point in time, and you just don't know what to do, don't know where to turn, and you don't know what you're going to do. You could have maybe quit before you reach the goal that you had set for yourself. And maybe that sets you back and you just don't feel good about where you are. I don't know what that is, but somebody has been there at some point in time. And I want you to know that if you follow a success formula that we're going to lay out for you, this will help you move on and do what you need to do in the future. Yet, before we get there, I do want to refer to something, in this case, it is a poem by Langston Hughes.
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::Charles Beasley (02:47):
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::I remember being younger and reading the poem and has resonated with me then, and it still resonates with me now. And the poem is, Mother to Son. Now I'm going to read it to you, just listen to this and see how this affects you. The poem starts with, Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, and splinters, and boards torn up, and places with no carpet on the floor-bare. But all the time I’se been a-climbin’ on, and reachin’ landin’s, and turnin’ corners, and sometimes goin’ in the dark where there ain’t been no light. So boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps’ beause you finds it’s kinder hard. Don’t you fall now for I’se still goin’ honey, I’se still climbin’, and life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
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::Charles Beasley (03:44):
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::I love that poem because it just gives me a sense that I can see that conversation going on and I can see that mother pleading to the son that don't stop, don't give up, just to keep on keeping on, and we'll come back to that in a little bit. Just let that marinate in your spirit for a little while. So the goal today is to present you with a formula that will help you take another step, just to take another step towards being an epoch visionnaire. And we talked about what is an epoch visionary? An epoch visionary is a person that has vision to see where they want to go. You got to have vision before you can be a visionary. Now an epoch is a set of events that happened in a person's life that resonates with them so strongly that they decide that they have got to change and go in a different direction. And they will remember those events that help them move forward in their life. That's an epoch visionary.
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::Charles Beasley (04:50):
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::And we're going to give you a success formula that you can play over and over in your mind today, that will help you move forward when you are confronted with situations that cause you to possibly stop. That is the get down, and that's the get down in every episode that we have that we want you to latch on to, and then make sure that you play that sound, those songs, those reasons over and over in your mind to help you continue to make that next step. Last week, we talked about challenge, or challenge a point of view, your point of view does not have to be the same as someone else's, but you do have to think critically and make those decisions, that was step number one. Two is you got to have vision. We also stated that if you have vision, that is where you are hoping to go and you see things as they could be not as they are. And if you have sight and no vision, then you are worse than the blind man.
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::Charles Beasley (05:50):
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::Now the third is to take action. You've got to do something to get you off center and to keep you going forward, but you've got to take action. That is the get down from last week. So how are we going to do this? We must first collect the dots, then we can connect the dots. So I'm going to drop some dots for you to collect and hopefully you can connect them and move forward. And the story today is going to be a story from my life. It is called a Beaz story in my journey to get to where I am today. So we're going to start with the fact that I'm seeking employment at this time. I've been in the car business for a long time, sales. Now I'm a sales manager now, I'm looking for the next opportunity. I wanted to get to the general sales manager's job because ultimately I want to be a general manager.
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::Charles Beasley (06:40):
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::So I go to the small dealership, which is down in Pawleys Island, South Carolina. I am living in Charleston, or in North Charleston. So now at this particular point in time, I drive to Pawleys Island, which is an hour and a half away. I meet with the owner and I meet with the general manager of this group. They've got a couple of small stores and they're looking for a new leader to take over their Dodge store and take them to new levels and to the next level. Now this store they're telling me is doing about 80 cars a month when in reality is averaging 60, maybe 70 cars a month. He had a steal, we sit down and we talk about it. So I find out about where they come from, where he comes from. He sits down and finds out what my life story has been in the car business, what my credentials are.
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::Charles Beasley (07:28):
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::So we sit down and we discuss those things about the vision, or the goals for the store, and how they perceive that we can get there, that they can get to this next level. So finally after we exchange a little bit about each other, I finally asked the owner, I said, well, what is it that you are looking for? What is it that you want to find in the person that gets you to the next level? And he said to me, I want you. Based on what you told me, I feel like you're the person for the job. And I hope you take it. At that point that leaves me with the executive general manager and myself, and we're talking about things. So we finally come to some terms that we think will make sense to each other. And I took that job and I had a whole lot of leeway in terms of how to make the things work and my ideas about what it takes to sell, and how to train and all those things.
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::Charles Beasley (08:23):
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::So immediately we go from the 70 car range to a hundred cars, which was the goal. And we get there in the very next month by just working a little bit harder, changing some things up. And we get there immediately. So, that was a good thing. Now I love them, they love me. Things are going exceedingly well. And now we continue to grow. He starts to look for some other opportunities at other dealerships, he was looking for those dealerships now. The executive GM is a little bit more old school than I am, and I've got my own ideas and flavors about what I want to do as far as advertising and what we need to do, whether we need to do it digitally. And I'm a big technology guy.
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::Charles Beasley (09:06):
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::So now let's fast forward a little bit. They get an opportunity to take a Nissan store, which is in Orangeburg, South Carolina. So they came to me and said, look, we got this store. We can probably make this work and go to some new heights if we take this store that does extremely well. They've got some other locations that may come available to us. Do you think you could go up there and make that happen for us? And I said, yes. Now I'm driving an hour and a half to get from Charleston, or North Charleston, to Pawleys Island. So this affords me the opportunity to go to Orangeburg and I could only have to drive an hour away. So that's a little bit better than an hour and a half. Nonetheless, I go from a store that I have grown to come into another store that's even a little slower than where I first came from.
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::Charles Beasley (10:03):
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::This store now is doing about 35 cars a month. And I take on the challenge, again, a herculean challenge because you got to hire the people. You got to come into a new market, you got to figure things out. So we take the challenge and we put up a team together and we started to move from the 35 to 55. Then we got to 75 cars a month, and it's going extremely well. So, that's a good thing. Now we bring the team together, things are growing, we're doing well. Now, if we continue to grow this, we can do exactly what we stated, which was possibly get some other stores for his group.
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::Charles Beasley (10:44):
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::So now we press the envelope. We're starting to have some friction because of the points of view that myself and the executive general manager have. Now, I left something out in the story. So when I left, or when we talked about leaving Pawleys Island to come to Nissan, one of the stated goals that I had was I'll take the store as long as I have the title of general manager. Now, some people say titles don't matter. I get it. Having said that, titles do matter in some cases, because it's about access. It's about authority. So I got the title of the general manager of the store. Now remember I keep saying executive GM, which means that he's over his whole group of companies, so that means he's over me. Now I still have my ways of wanting to do, and my thoughts about technology, and what we needed to do to be able to speak to the customers in the way that they want to, the digital age is here.
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::Charles Beasley (11:52):
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::How do we market on the internet is here? So this is where the cracks in the relationship began. So nonetheless we're beginning to continue to move and we're continuing to sell, and those things are going well. So now I'm sitting here, we have taken over the store. We actually have beaten the Toyota store that's in that area, we're beating the Honda store that's in that city, which is unprecedented, that does not normally happen where you have a Nissan store that is outselling a Toyota store in the same area of responsibility. So we're doing some unprecedented things at those numbers. So I go to them, the timing is right. It is summertime. We can possibly get to this elusive hundred car marks. So I go to the executive general manager and said, look, I want to put a package together as far as bonus money that if we do a 110 cars out of the store, then we need to pay everybody a little something extra. The sales managers and the sales team we agree to that, a 110 units. Again, unprecedented, never happened in this small town.
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::Charles Beasley (13:07):
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::So we go to work, everybody's all jacked up, they're helping customers, they're doing all the right things. We're working hard. We're putting in the right amount of effort and time taking care of our customers. So in the car business, in this case we have what you call the glass. So if I sold the car, then I would put the name on the glass and we could see as we wrote those names on the window how close we kept getting to our stated outcome of the 110 cars. It builds momentum. Everybody can see it visually and it's in front of them. So they keep moving. They keep pressing and we keep pushing, and that's a wonderful thing. And we continue to do that so much so that, guess what we do? We hit that 110 mile mark, and we get to that unprecedented territories that we set out to do.
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::Charles Beasley (14:00):
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::So now the person that writes the checks call me up and said, Beasley, they are not going to pay your guys. I'm like, what? What do you mean? I'm just telling you, they're not going to pay you. So I said, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it, I'll handle this. I'll make the call myself. So I called the executive GM and we get into a very, very heated conversations about that aspect of it. I said, what do you mean we are not going to pay them? Or you are not going to pay them? Well, you didn't hit it. We did, or they did hit it. Well, you had some deals that came out the prior month. I said, that's not what we talked about. These guys went to work and they busted their hump to sell a 110 cars. Something that has never before been done. We need to pay them.
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::Charles Beasley (14:51):
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::Now, this conversation was very, very, very heated. Anyone that could look down and see me talking to him, because I had to go outside of the dealership, arms flailing, forehead all smashed up because I am upset so much so that he hangs up the phone and tells me don't ever blank with him again. I call him back. We get back on the phone so much so that he said, I'll call the owner. I said, well, you call the owner, but you need to pay these guys this money. They've done something that has never been done before. Now, after collaborating with the owner, they agreed to pay them the bonus money, which was great, which was exactly what I was hoping to do.
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::Charles Beasley (15:38):
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::Now, you can imagine the stress between myself and the executive GM so much so that it's come to a head that the owner of the store now has to make a decision. Who was he going to roll with? Is he going to roll with me? Or is he going to roll with his executive general manager? Now, they have a deep relationship, and I can appreciate that, so much so that I was off on Wednesday. I get a call on Wednesday night to meet at the store on Thursday morning early. So it doesn't take a scientist to figure that out. So we knew, or the handwriting was on the wall as I got up on Thursday to go to work. So when I got there, of course, the executive GM and the person that controls HR are in there so they could make sure that they recorded, or they had witnesses to what was transpiring.
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::Charles Beasley (16:35):
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::So he simply said, we're going to separate. I simply said, okay, no problem. They gave me a little bonus money and the assurance that the owner appreciated all that I had done for the company so much so that if I needed a reference, he would be more than happy to give me that reference. Cool. I leave. It is what it is. So now what that is going to bring us to is, well, what are we going to do now? This is the story, or the part of the story that is the get down. And I want you to take these clues from this story because you can collect these dots and then connect these dots over and over again, this is the get down. So the first thing that you have got to do when confronted with these circumstances is to own it, own your role in your current situation and embrace it. It is what it is.
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::Charles Beasley (17:37):
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::I had knew that based on the fact that I was going to go to war with him over this money, that it could lead to my termination, yet what I stand for, and I'm a principle person, says that if I said it that I've got to follow it through regardless of what that circumstance could be to me. So now I get terminated from my job. That's pretty traumatic because guess what? The bills still keep coming. I got a little boy, I got a wife. I still got to take care of the responsibilities that I have in my household, yet I own it. It is whatever it is and I will get through it. So own it. That is number one. And what brought that about, again, was a challenging the point of view they did not feel, or he did not feel, that he should pay it because he's simply trying to say some dollars for the organization.
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::Charles Beasley (18:36):
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::I said, we need to pay it because that's what we said. That's what we do. And it will benefit us long term, but we got a different point of view. In this case though, you got to own it, whatever it is, own it and recognize your role in your current situation. Which brings me to the second point. Now that's the jump off. So the second point now is self-talk. Self-talk is the vision scenario in step number two. Your vision helps you focus, or the self-talk helps you focus on the vision that you have. Remember, vision is the ability to see things as they could be, not as they are. So self-talk sometimes helps you focus on your vision that you already laid out for yourself. Now, some examples of self-talk, my dad is Garfield Beasley. Something he would always say is, look forward, don't look back. Snatch that rear view mirror out of the window.
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::Charles Beasley (19:35):
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::That which is behind you is over. Don't worry about that, which is in the past, because you cannot go back and unring that bell. Snatch that rear view mirror out and always look forward. That's something daddy would always say. And everybody who knows him remembers that because that is something that he said, he is gone on to glory, but that's something he left with me that resonates with me over and over and again. Now another example of self-talk was my son. Now he's 11 years old, he just got his black belt. Congratulations, Chase. Now something that a point in time that he had to do was when he was getting a belt, it wasn't his black belt. Yet they have to break a board to be able to get to this next level to get to this next belt when they go and they test for it.
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::Charles Beasley (20:29):
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::So I get there a little late. I can see it from the outside. People are crowded around. I can see Chase stressing and straining and he looks upset, he looks like he's about to cry. So what it is, is he's got his last opportunity to break this board. And if he doesn't do on this last opportunity, he does not advance in his belt. Now I see him struggling. I see him stressing. I see him crying. He gets himself together and he strikes the board with that blow. And guess what? It breaks the board, the whole place erupts. He's so elated. He's so ecstatic, because he accomplished his goal and broke the board. Now I remember going to Chase. I said, Chase, man, what happened? How did you do it? What did you say? What was going in your mind?
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::Charles Beasley (21:20):
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::He said, daddy, I thought about Philippians 4:13. And he said, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So at the time that he was stressed and straining, he thought of some self-talk, in this case, it's his Bible verse that helped him focus on what he needed to do and then he accomplished his goal because his vision was, I need to break this board and I'm going to break this board. And that's something that he says to himself. Now in this situation that I'm in, I am very stressed because I quit, excuse me, I didn't quit a job, I got fired from a job. So I got to go tell my wife that I'm not working right now. And I've got to do something right now to fix this situation because I own it, and I am responsible for it. So what am I going to do?
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::Charles Beasley (22:21):
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::So typically when I got that kind of decision in front of me, or things are very upsetting to me, this is one of the things that I tend to say to myself, it says, I don't ask for God to lighten my burden. I'll ask for a stronger back. He won't put nothing on me that I can not bear. So I ask for a stronger back. And I'm glad that he gave it to me because a lesser man may not be able to take it. Now I say that to myself and I can envision that and that helps me straighten up and fly right, and go do the things that are necessary for me to do. That is step number two. Self-talk helps me focus on my vision. And that helps me do the things that are necessary for me to take another step. And you can do the same thing.
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::Charles Beasley (23:09):
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::Now, once you do that, you got to do the third thing which brings it all together, you got to seek other opportunities. Now, I chose the word opportunity, I did not say another job. Another job can be an opportunity, but there are other opportunities outside of another job. It could be that you go back to school and get that degree that you wanted to get to help prepare you to where you want to be later. It could be for you to take that money that you save to go ahead and start your own business that you've been holding off on, it could be that you don't really have the money, but you go step out there on faith and go ahead and do the job and put yourself in motion to do what you want to do, which is take your cake baking business and blow it up into something that you've been holding on to, or holding off on. I don't know what that is, but you've got to seek other opportunities.
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::Charles Beasley (24:07):
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::Now, in my case, I had built relationships with other executive managers and managers that were in the industry that I had been associated with. So I began to call those people and tell them what I was looking for and asking for help. I began to put my resume together and do what is necessary for me to do that so much so that I have to take some risk maybe that I wasn't willing to take before. Now, what that brings me to is two job opportunities. One of them is Martinez, Georgia, right outside of Augusta. The other one was in Statesboro, Georgia. So I go and I interview. And based on the relationships, I get two opportunities to go to work. Now, again, remember I was the sales manager, wanted a GSM job, then I wanted the title of GM knowing that I was not necessarily the GM, but I had the title, because I had the title and people could see what I was responsible for at those other stores that opened the door for me to sit down and talk to people.
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::Charles Beasley (25:14):
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::Now, the good thing is I had those opportunities, but I did not have, there was not an opening for a general manager at the time. So that forced me to choose between where I wanted to be and what was available to me. So now I get to be a sales manager again, and I chose the job opportunity in Statesboro, Georgia, simply because I thought it was the path that could get me to a general manager's job sooner. As long as I went and did the job based on my experience, then I might be able to get someone to say a store has come available to me. And that's the conversation that I had in both situations where I was, but I chose to go to Statesboro because I thought that organization might get me to the next position quicker.
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::Charles Beasley (26:05):
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::So now what that causes though is my family is in Charleston, or right outside of Charleston. Now I have a job in Statesboro, which is two and a half hours away. Can you see the problem that we have is because I can't drive two and a half hours every day to get to a job and then come back home and function. So we decide to rent an apartment in Statesboro. So I rent this apartment in Statesboro and one of the toughest things. So again, now you got the house note, you got all the other things going on and you have to pay that rent every month in this apartment, which is, it is whatever it is. And we do what we have to do.
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::Charles Beasley (26:54):
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::But the most difficult thing is the fact that in order for me to get to work on Monday, that means I got to get up at 4:30 or so to get the work, then I've got to spend a whole week away from my wife and my son just for the opportunity to drive two and a half hours to get back to them on the weekend to come back to work on Monday. So we set off on that journey and I did that for about three months. And then I get a call from the other place, which was in Martinez, Georgia. And now they have a general manager's job available. And he said, Tad, you're it. If you want it, you can have it. So I immediately do like the Beverly hillbillies and I pack up the truck. And now I take the job in Martinez, Georgia. That is now five years ago.
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::Charles Beasley (27:47):
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::Now, I would have to still drive because I had the apartment down there in Statesboro. So now I got to drive an hour and a half every morning to get to Martinez, Georgia, for the general manager's job. And on the weekend I've got to drive to Charleston to see my family. So I did that for a whole year. Again, that is sacrifice, but it is what it is. And we do what we have got to do. I said all that to say though, it brought me to this position of where I really, really wanted to be, which was a general manager of a store. And we are thriving and we are, again, meeting some unprecedented numbers in the location that I'm in. We've built a great team. Things are going exceedingly well. And that's a good thing yet we had to move on from a situation.
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::Charles Beasley (28:44):
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::So the stores that I run now is Gerald Jones Subaru and Gerald Jones Volvo, which is in Martinez, Georgia. We've moved. And now I'm only 20 minutes from my job. So I go from being out of a job to having a great job and being 20 minutes from the job. Now, all of this set me to this epoch in my life, and this epoch is, being fired doesn't scare me, being fired doesn't scare me, I've been through the fire. I have been fired and I continue to move on and things happen, and they have to happen, but it doesn't scare me because I've already been through that. Now, I have the success formula that I can, again, play over and over in my mind when I need to, because that is what has to happen.
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::Charles Beasley (29:42):
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::So you got to collect the dots before you can connect the dots. So I hope that you've taken from this experience a way to do that. Again, this epoch is, being fired doesn't scare me. And that helps me continue to move forward in my life. So remember that the get down in this scenario are these three factors. Remember that you got to own, wherever it is that you are, take ownership of it. Number two, you self-talk to help you stay focused on your vision. And then the third thing is you got to seek other opportunities to get to where you want to be. Now that's going to bring me back full circle to where we started from.
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::Charles Beasley (30:29):
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::And again, let's go back to the poem of Mother to Son, because remember she said that she's been in places where there was no carpet on the floor-bare. The place had splinters in it, boards all torn up, yet she still kept climbing, reaching landings, and then turning corners. Sometimes she was in the dark, but she kept going on because she knew that there was something else out there for her, and she told her son that don't you sit down on the steps because it gets hard. She was still going on and still climbing. And that is what we have got to continue to do. That success formula that we talked about, or the get down in this situation, is for you, get it, play it over and over in your mind, and then when you get confronted with those situations, just let that record play. And I think that might help you to move on.
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::Charles Beasley (31:29):
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::So again, thank you for listening to me and giving me a little bit of time in your life, which is going to bring us to the next episode that I want you to listen out for and be prepared for is simply, Always Start with a Positive, Always Start with a Positive. And if you start with a positive, then you can always end up where you want to be. But that's the next episode. Again, thank you for giving me your ear. And I look forward to talking with you, or listening to you and us communicating in the future.
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::Speaker 1 (32:06):
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::You've been listening to TheBeaz presents Epoch Visionary. TheBeaz is an executive manager that runs two successful automobile franchises. Having been in the business since 1995, he's hired, trained, and mentored other successful executive managers who run and lead sales teams. And now he sits down with people from all walks of life to reveal how they were able to see the need for change in their way of thinking and begin a new period of productivity, growth and success in their life. We hope you've gotten some useful and practical information from the show. Make sure to like, rate and review. We'll be back soon. In the meantime, hookup with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Beaz Network. Till next time.
