Assessing 2023 with High Expectations of Ourselves | SDR #270
This YouTube episode (Service Drive Rev #270) features Chris Collins and Christian reflecting on 2023 and sharing major lessons—especially about expectations, thinking bigger, entitlement, and self-esteem—and discussing automotive news and the LA Auto Show. Collins reports the LA Auto Show felt diminished, with many luxury/exotic brands absent and Tesla offering external test drives and on-site purchases. They also cover a partnership where Hyundai vehicles can be bought via Amazon (Prime next-day delivery), with Hyundai Capital financing options and Alexa integration planned for 2025.
Chapters
Boy, do we have a show for you today. Tell them, Christian. How good is this show?
A 10 out of 10.
We are going to reflect on 2023 and talk about what our biggest lessons were. It's vulnerable, it's honest, it's real. And we invite you to be a part of that conversation. And then there's a bunch of fun stuff in the news. I talk about going to the LA Car show and much, much more coming up right now on Service Drive Rev.
I went to the LA auto show.
Okay. How was that experience for you? What.
What car companies do you think, car truck companies do you think were not represented there?
Okay, so we're going with the not it list.
It actually might be quicker to do the IT list, but let's try the knot.
Let's try the not list. Okay.
I don't think this creates an interesting outcome too, by the way.
Okay.
Like, it has an effect on who is there. So I was. I had a early ticket. So before they opened, you know.
Okay.
So I got to. We walked around and then it opened.
So you got an exclusive. Was it hours before everybody else got in or was it a day before?
I think it's ours.
Okay. So my first guess that the brand that's popping out in my head is Ferrari.
Ferrari was not there.
Okay, good. So I'm one for one already.
Ferrari used to be there.
So if there's no Ferrari, there's probably.
By the way, in the press, they were saying, like, you know, seven exclusive launches and like, new model launches. Largest auto show in North America.
Like, yeah, they hyped it. All this hype, it was the biggest one since 2019.
Yeah.
Considering they probably didn't have one for a couple of years, I don't know if that's a big feat.
So who else do you think wasn't there?
Okay. Jaguar. Yeah.
Land Rover wasn't there either.
Okay. Jaguar Land Rover wasn't there.
You know what's funny is I didn't even think to look who wasn't there until I got there and nobody was there.
Yeah. So I'm going to go ahead and go to a limit here, Limb here and say no Benz.
Either.
Bentley or Ben's Benz. Neither.
Okay.
No Rolls Royce.
No Bentley. No Aston Martin? Nope. No Bugatti. So no exotics.
No BMW?
Lotus? No BMW?
No BMW.
I like BMW.
No Audi.
Okay, no Audi then. No vw.
VW was there.
Okay, so there was a Volkswagen.
All right, so then you just had Toyota, Ford, Chevy, Subaru, Kia, Hyundai.
Toyota, Toyota, Nissan, Nissan. It's Pretty much it. Okay, so then what do you think that does to the. The audience that attends the car show.
Completely changes it on a demographic status would be my guess.
Yeah. You think it's lower status or higher status, people status? Yeah. Do you think it was packed? No, no, it's pretty dead. Like my experience of the LA car show before, like, you know, there would be press conferences and it was like a big deal. Everybody was there. It was the place to be seen. You'd, you know, you network make a lot of connections. This seemed, it really did feel like a swap meet. So the downstairs part, or the part that used to be exotics were.
Like people selling banners and.
Oh, not even direct car things, just like marketing tools.
No. Like, if you wanted a, you know, Volkswagen flag or Matchbox car, it just seemed like. Yeah, it was just like a swap meet. You know, who is at the front of the car show outside before you walk in.
The Goodyear blimp?
No. A car company. Oh, good lord.
I'm not very good at this game.
Hyundai.
Tesla.
Really?
You literally could test drive a Tesla, right, that, like.
And buy it there, which you couldn't do with any other.
Yeah, you could buy it on an app.
That's funny.
Right in front. They weren't, they didn't have Teslas inside. They were all out front ready to drive.
Don't, don't bother going into the auto show. You just buy the Tesla here.
Good lord.
Those guys are different.
And they had like, they had ones that were like, you know, wrapped and they, they looked cool and. But you could, you could drive them.
That Model 2 is not too far down the road. The one that's going to be 26 grand. That's going to make a big splash.
I think it's gonna hurt.
Yeah.
Yeah. So it's interesting how, how much of a letdown it was.
Tesla's in my news today.
Oh, let's go right to the news then.
Well.
Yeah, I'm sorry that there was a, that was a letdown. I don't know, I probably should have gone, but I don't know, I needed to do my hair that day or whatever. It wasn't the highest priority.
Didn't miss anything.
Yeah, that's true.
I literally, I literally wanted to go pretty quick. I couldn't believe, like.
Yeah, I was there 20 minutes and I was like, oh, this is. This is a joke.
Yeah.
With that being said, what's in the news?
I thought this was interesting. This is our, this is our friends at Amazon and, and Hyundai just entered into A car buying agreement where you can buy a Hyundai on Amazon prime next day delivery.
Like it shows you the inventory and everything.
Yeah. So it's. The big part of it is that the inventory has to be current. The only thing you can't do through Amazon is if you want to test drive, you have to go to the dealership. But otherwise the dealer is just the vehicle by which to go pick up the place. It's like the Amazon prime location.
So basically it prints out an invoice like in the kitchen, and it's like make meatballs with spaghetti.
Yeah.
It's like, hey, stock number blah, blah, blah, is sold to this person.
And then financing is already available through Hyundai Finance.
So do they give the dealer any of that or they give them just a flat or how does it work?
It sounds like. It doesn't sound like a fleet deal is what it reminds me of. But yeah. So Hyundai Capital is at the immediate financing option, but they're going to have other financing options adding to it. But it looks like the dealer will get a. A delivery fee. That's fascinating, isn't it?
Does it say how much the delivery fee is?
No.
It does say that Amazon Alexa is going to be the exchange there is that Alexa is going on. Hyundai's starting in 2025. So Hyundai's gonna give them the cars and Amazon's gonna give them Alexa. Good lord. That's crazy.
Okay, you want to talk about our big lessons for 2023.
Look back.
So reflecting on 2023.
This was an interesting kind of dialogue that we had about this. Yeah, I think very. So I asked you, I said, what do you think my biggest lesson of 2023 was?
And.
You said that it was think bigger.
Yes.
And why did you say that?
Because I've heard you say that a bunch of times.
Oh, I need to think bigger sense.
Because I said it.
That's why you thought many times. Not just once.
Because I said it many times. That's why you thought it.
And then you'd say, think bigger. And then you think bigger.
Oh, so I said it and I did it.
Yeah. Wow.
It's interesting.
I pay attention in class sometimes.
But that's.
I don't think that's. I think that plays into what. What my biggest takeaway from 2023 is. Reflecting back, Looking back, but I think it's expectations.
Okay, so you should unpack that for the audience.
Well, it goes quite. It goes left, right, north, south.
Because.
Drives thinking bigger.
Right.
That's a part of it. But expectations.
In a sense are.
Kind of the key to happiness. Right. Because if you expect, like, let's say you, you expect somebody to do the right thing, and then they don't, what happens?
You're let down, you're disappointed.
Yeah. Are they?
No, no. It's just you.
And then did. If you reflect on it, did you ever really have any evidence to point to the fact that they were going to do the right thing?
I would actually say that they were, if, looking back on almost every situation, way more evidence that the outcome is actually what was going to happen. Yeah. So.
It works that way. Right. Is like, you act. You just assume people are going to do the right thing. You assume people are going to understand. You assume people are going to.
Well, really, you can replace the word expectation with assume. And we have jokes about assuming. Like, Right. Assuming is that you're going to make a blank out of you and me.
Yeah.
And like, I remember you saying one time, it wasn't me you're talking to. I just happened to be in the room where you're talking to someone else. Like, you're like, I know when I say that we assume that we're about to make a huge mistake, and really, if you replace the expectation with assume, it just means that you're just getting ready to make a big mistake.
Yeah. Okay. Now, what about people that are entitled? Like, what do you, what do you think about people that are entitled? They feel entitled to something.
Well, they've got their own level of expectation, the. That something should happen for them.
And then when that doesn't happen, what happens?
They get depressed.
Yeah.
And then they shut down.
And then was there evidence that that thing wouldn't last forever? Like, think about, we talk about this all the time with service managers. There's like a 50% turnover in that position. How many times when a service manager gets fired.
Do they go, oh, yeah, I knew that was gonna happen.
Regularly.
But more than not. Yeah, they're surprised. It wasn't their fault. They, you know.
Oh, I think that a lot of service managers, you have to point it out to them afterwards, but then they're not surprised. They might be surprised in the moment only because they assume a social contract that they won't get fired.
Yeah, they, they, they're entitled. Right.
But you can make a list of all the reasons that they got fired for. And it's like, that's. Yeah, they might have waited a little while. Too long.
Yeah. And then.
Your, your expectations of things drive.
Your effort. They drive your ambition. They, like you were saying, think bigger. Like, if you well, so another example of this is like us building this library and the leadership book and all the stuff that, that we've been working really hard on on the last couple years. How many times did I say to us as a company, like, it's going to be harder than we think or it's going to take longer than we think and it's going to be more expensive than we think?
Many times.
And that's an expectation. So if everybody thinks it's going to be easy, if everybody thinks it's just going to be handed to us, if everybody thinks it's going to be on time, then we get complacent. You know, we feel entitled and we get blindsided and then we run out of money or we get caught flat footed or whatever it is.
Right?
Yeah.
We just told, we just gave that advice to somebody not too long ago was go into it as expecting it to be way harder than it's, than you think it's going to be. And then at the worst, you can be pleasantly surprised if it's not harder. Yeah, but that's totally okay. But it's probably going to be harder than you think.
Yeah, you're going to run out of money. It's going to. And the world is going to test you. Right. When you get to where you think the hard stuff is over, it's going to be like, just think about the roof leaking, like all of the, all of the stuff that happened at the worst time. Right.
The main thing to think about that is, is that the coaches and the travel.
Like how hard travel is. And I don't know that we ever have properly conveyed that to anybody.
Well, isn't it funny that we tell coaches when they come in, we're like, hey, it's, it's really hard. And like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I hate my wife.
You can set a clock, I don't.
Want to be home.
Set a clock to four months and.
All of a sudden you want to be home. Yeah, yeah.
I have so much respect for them.
So that to me like expectations are like this prism that.
Comes in many different forms and angles and maybe is the key to everything because the, the one like counterbalance to expectations is self esteem.
Right? Yeah.
So if somebody has low self esteem, what is their expectation that it's all.
Going to be a mess?
Like if you say to somebody like, hey, what is your goal for 2024 and they have low self esteem, what are they going to say?
I don't want to get fired.
What is the goal going to be lower? Is it going to be high? Low?
Yeah. Why? They just want to survive.
Yeah.
Because they don't think they're entitled to anything more.
And they, if they, if they tried to do something and failed, it would be an indictment and it would be confirmation that they're a failure. They're not worthy or they're not good enough. They don't belong.
Right. Yeah. Would you say that that's kind of the punchline to expectation jokes is that we oftentimes expect too much out of others and not enough out of ourselves?
Yes, I, I think that's very insightful.
I just came up with that.
It's good. Smart. So then if you have semi healthy self esteem.
What, what sort of, what sort of ambition do you have.
To be at the next level financially, professionally, socially?
And how do you handle mistakes or things taking longer or you know, as lessons. Lessons. Right. And then.
If you have low self esteem and you.
Expect somebody to do the right thing and they don't, how do you process that internally? What is your, how do you digest that and, and work it all out, Connect the dots.
Oh, so, so for me, what I do is I say what could I have done to set that table to make that happen?
No, I'm saying low self esteem.
Oh, I'm sorry, low self esteem.
