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Sonic Automatic, the Fortune 300 company Scott Smith ’91 co-founded in 1997, is one of the largest automotive retailers in the U.S. Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, the organization operates hundreds of car and powersports dealerships across the country and employs more than 10,000 people.

Sonic, in short, is a massive operation. Yet, when Smith was CEO, he made sure every Sonic employee had his email and cell-phone number, and he encouraged them to contact him if they ever ran into an issue that he could help fix.

“I answered them all,” says Smith. “Not everyone reached out, of course, but the folks who did would tell their co-workers and friends, ‘Hey, I called Scott and he actually answered, and then he helped me with this or with that.’ Everyone starts to realize that this company and these people care about me and my success. It really helped build a culture of trust and transparency throughout the organization.”

It’s hard to imagine many executives extending such a universal offer of individualized support, but Smith sees this kind of service as the secret to his success.

“The number-one thing for me was having a mentality of service,” he says. “As a senior leader, you were always looking for those people who were selfless for the team and who were always lending a helping hand and making sure that nobody was left behind. If you want that to be a core value across a large organization, you have to model that at the top.”

We recently asked Smith—who retired as Sonic’s CEO in 2018 but still serves on the firm’s board of directors—to reflect on what he learned from spending more than two decades in leadership positions at one of the country’s most valuable companies.

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Don’t let anyone say you can’t do something just because you’re young. When I was 29, I was the youngest president on the New York Stock Exchange. A lot of folks told me I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have any gray hair and wasn’t experienced enough, and yet there I was because I was the person who knew everything about the company and our business.

Spend less time tethered to your desk. That was one of the biggest leadership lessons I’ve learned during my career. I probably spent more than half of my time out in the field, and if I was in the office, I tried to spend as much time as possible talking to people, learning about their job, learning about them, and figuring out what motivates them.

Celebrate your team’s accomplishments—even the smallest victories. You’ll not only help your people develop a sense of accomplishment, but you’ll also let them know that you care about them and you want them to be successful.

Sometimes folks are going to drop the ball. You could get really angry at the person who slipped up, but what’s that going to do? Instead, I want to understand what happened and figure out how we can keep the ball from being dropped next time.

Some things are beyond our control. No matter who you are, you’re not going to be in control of everything. If you can learn to let that go and stop trying to control everything, your stress level is going to come down, and when stress goes down, communication goes up.

Try to eliminate anything that ends with an apostrophe and a “t” from your vocabulary. Shouldn’t, can’t, don’t—I’ve always tried to avoid using words like that. You’re going to run into obstacles throughout your life and career—that’s inevitable. But if you have the mentality to overcome adversity and you’re willing to work hard enough, I believe you can accomplish anything.

Never be so afraid of failure that you’re scared to try something new. To me, failure is an indication that you’re trying to move the ball forward—that you’re trying to break new ground. That’s something I’m always going to get behind even if it doesn’t always work out perfectly.

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