Driven: Life Lessons from the Used Car Lot
Someday, I am going to write a book, and the title may be “Everything I needed to know about life I learned in the car business,” or it may be the title above that ChatGPT supplied!
My life until taking over the car business was filled with personal growth and emotional learning, sort of life’s way of preparing me for what was to come. The first several years there were so many things to learn and understand that I was exhausted at the end of most days. As fast as I was implementing my knowledge and learning how to handle the challenges of buy here pay here, it threw brand new situations at me.
Listening – Not everyone has good listening skills. I needed to accept that and not take it personally. People talk a lot for many different reasons, and it is not okay for me to just let someone be in my office for very extended periods of time sharing the details of their lives and everyone around them. I do get to decide how much of my time and conversation and back and forth is expected. Learning to get up and gently encourage someone to leave was very uncomfortable in the beginning; that was a learned skill for sure.
Stay calm and sniff rosemary – Rosemary calms anxiety, who knew, right? In the car business, we offered a loaner while the customer’s cars were being repaired. We called it the Courtesy Car, and before we lent it out, we went over the rules with the customer. No Happy Meals and no smoking were the basics. One day, I shared the rules with a young lady who smoked weed and cigarettes. Looking back now, it seems surreal, but the girl totally flipped out. I was not going to tell her what she could and could not do in the car. There were raised voices, and honestly, I was not proud that I was losing my mind with this young girl. I stopped, took a breath, suggested to her that she go outside, and that I would step back into my office. I grabbed the bottle of rosemary on my desk and took a deep breath. By the time I came back to the front office, the girl had talked things out with her mom, and I had calmed down. She agreed to our rules, and she was on her way.
As a lender/business owner, it is okay to say no; to tell someone that you will not finance a vehicle for them. This was something I learned from our finance company/banker. I learned to trust my instincts when someone was not a very good person, was lying to me, or overinflating their stories. It only happened three times, but after interacting with people, seeing their credit report details, and being aware of how they were behaving, I had to make the call. In these situations, I tried to make sure this conversation was had outside, away from my employees and the person’s family, to diminish the possible embarrassment. In two of these three situations, when I told them that I was not going to lease (finance) a car for them, they said “okay,” and that was that. They had typically been told no previously and kept trying different dealerships.
Being a business owner and having employees comes with challenges; some of them can become personal. The whole experience of being a boss made me better at having difficult conversations about performance and expectations. After many of these conversations, there came the day when I decided to let an employee go. (No matter how that goes down, it is never an easy situation.) After letting this person go, their friends and acquaintances took to our business’ Facebook page, writing reviews. They were horrible, personal, calling me names, and questioning my character. The hits kept coming for weeks. What I learned here was to not look at the reviews. I had my daughter and a long-time and repeat customer monitoring the reviews so that I could take them down as soon as I could but not actually read them; that hurt too much and was deeply upsetting. I implemented this after reading maybe the first five? I did not hit back; I did not reach out to the ex-employee and ask them to make their friends stop. There were tears and lots of frustration. The reality is there was nothing I could do about it; I am a good person who had to make a tough decision. And as we all know, decisions come with consequences. Do your best to let it roll off your back and know that this experience will serve me for the future as I become a coach, writer, and speaker; there will be more criticism.
I could go on and on with stories and lessons, and maybe someday I will write that book. The car business has been my teaching ground, and for that, I am beyond grateful; it has made me evolve, becoming who I am today.