Car Business Divorce Rate: How to Have A Successful Marriage in the Car Business | SDR #248

Car business, divorce rate, how to have a successful marriage and thrive in the car business. Christian has some experience with this and much, much more. Coming up on this edition of Service Drive Revolution.

Can I form complaint about the news?

Yes.

There's relevant news out there about the economy that I feel like you're not covering in the news. And I'm wondering why you want me.

To talk more about the economy.

Well, don't you think the economy is important? No. Have you ever heard of the stripper index?

Tell me more.

There's a stripper index in that when people stop going to strip clubs, it's an indicator of people not. It's like one of the first things people cut when they don't have money.

I would think it would be the last thing people would cut, but maybe not.

I haven't been to a strip club in. I can't remember, 20 years.

I had to have been in my 20s, so I'm probably pushing. Yeah, 20 years.

I'm just saying from an economic perspective, it's an indicator.

Yeah.

That people aren't spending money on other stuff. Yeah. We don't really know anybody to. To help us with that inside information.

No. Any strippers listening? Feel free to let us know.

Call in. There's none.

8, 3, 3, 3, ask STR.

What'S in the news today.

I just had a quick question for you. Why don't. Why don't astronomers like Orion's belt?

Why?

It's a waste of space.

Thanks.

Okay.

So we had a. There was a strike going on in Holland, Ohio. Employees at the Clarios automobile battery manufacturing plant approved a new contract. So it's Battery production plant.

3, 500 signing bonus now, 3% raise each year. But you know what's funny is I don't even hear about strikes anymore. UAW. UAW Local 12.

You haven't heard about the riders strike in LA? Yeah. Yeah.

Only because of you.

But I. You haven't driven by them?

No. Where they at?

All over.

They're not between here in my place.

Well, it's not far.

No, on purpose.

They're all overworld.

Toyota just dropped their details on their first electric sports car. It's gonna be a Lexus 0-62-seconds, manual transmission. But the manual won't actually connect to the powertrain. It'll simulate the sensation. It's fake. It's.

But that's it.

Yep. Shifting gears by adjusting the torque of the electric powertrain and generating sounds, mimicking an engine revs, building and dropping.

That's fun.

That's hilarious. If you could have any stick shift, a GT3.

Really?

Yeah.

How about you? F150.

Oh.

With those big, long sticks.

It'S not really news, but Shocker woman embezzled more than $400,000 from a Lansing auto dealership. And the only reason that this is news is because they only got away with 400,000. Like, I mean, really, I think to get into the game, to make news, it should be a million.

How did she do it?

She was working accounts receivable and accounts payable when she embezzled more than $400,000 from 16 to 19. She and her husband, primary, primarily use the money to gamble.

But it doesn't say what she did.

I two times.

Have had office managers handcuffed and taken out of dealerships.

Yeah, it's a scary, scary thing. Yeah.

There's a commonality between them is when.

I would ask them for the chart of accounts and then specific accounts, you know, and they wouldn't give it to me. Yep.

Yeah. And then you started to dig in further. Yeah.

One time they were in on it with the used car manager, and I looked up the corporation.

Yeah. I always get nervous anytime I see.

They weren't even smart enough not to put their names on the corporation.

Yeah. Anytime you see a used car manager with a wad of cash makes me nervous. You ever see that?

No.

Maybe that's a Chicago thing. I remember this one guy, used car manager, and he pulled out like this, and it was 50s and hundreds.

I had to fire somebody three days before Christmas for taking money for used cars.

Maybe I'd like to think that it's cleaned up more in the industry, but I could be wrong. I think that there's just. There's more tracking, but honestly, the controller can fix everything. That is the crazy thing about our industry is you could lose $400,000 and not know it. Like, it's nuts.

What is. What is Ronald Reagan's old saying? Trust but verify.

Yes.

Don't trust.

I don't. I don't. I struggle with that.

You. You struggle with trust.

When it comes.

To the money and accounting. Like, I want to see all the. I'm gonna see everything.

Car business, divorce rate. Christian, how many times have you been divorced?

Two that I know of.

Would you blame it on the car business?

No.

No. You think it had an effect?

Yeah, maybe. Could have been a contributing factor.

Could have been. Or it was.

I don't know. No, I use the car business as an excuse.

So why do you think so many people get divorced or have miserable mar.

In the car industry, I've seen a few commonalities. I would tell you that.

Okay, what are they?

So the first thing that I would say is when the car business. And there's people in the car business going through divorce.

Is that.

That when you come home, you complain about your job.

So controlling the narrative in a bad way. And all you do is just. You let go of all the terrible stuff that happens to your significant other when you come home. And even if the job is the best job you've ever had in the world, the picture you paint, not so pretty to the spouse. Yeah. So then they start to say things like, oh, you should get out of that. You should go do something different. And then you don't. And then they start to resent you because they feel like you chose this thing that you hate over them. How am I doing? Good. Yeah. Okay.

And then what happens when you're working long hours and all that's going on?

Oh, gosh. Yeah. So the neglect just grows. And that then.

You know, reinforces the fact that the job's more important than the significant other.

And so you come home and are you more understanding or less understanding? No, more passive aggressive.

As a matter of fact, probably what you want to do is that, you know, the person that's been waiting for you for 12 hours to get home, they just want to talk and you just want to sit in silence.

Right. And so then you become passive aggressive and they.

Feel like you've changed or you're indifferent to them and you're worn out. Like, you're literally worn out. You couldn't hear another thing.

You've been punched so long for so many days, like you. You just can't take any more punches.

Yeah. And so then you start to kind of grow apart. Right. And then what do they do when they double down and they try to help you? As they say, you work too much. You should get a different job, whatever it is. Or sometimes, though, you. You work too much. You don't care about me. And then you're going to miss a dinner here and there. So she made dinner. She has people over and. Or he. Whoever, whatever. But. And if you have kids involved, same sort of thing, you miss games and.

And then there's the guilt trip that comes with that.

Oh, yeah. Oh, the guilt for sure.

So that's. That's another thing, too. I would say that when you're. Anytime you're forced into a situation, we have to choose between the spouse, the family, and the car business. No one wins.

And so the so the one thing that we could establish right off the top is that the spouses are on a different page.

Yeah, 100%.

And so one is trying to get closer to you, and the. The other is trying to.

Isolate and be alone, basically. Right, yeah. And which you could describe as not being on the same page.

Yeah.

Okay. So the first thing that I think is important is I do this at the beginning of every year. We sit down and we talk about what are our goals.

So we have financial goals, and then we have other fun goals, like, hey, where do we want to go on a trip? What, you know, what do you start?

You start every year out like that.

We start in December, and then we finalize in January. So it's kind of fun to talk about in December, but by January, we kind of come up with a list. So now let's say that I have a really big financial goal. Then the next thing that we do is we talk about, okay, what price are we going to have to pay to hit that goal? Right.

Because it's never free.

So say I'll. I'll do a specific example. So I am. Am writing this leadership book, right. Which is turning out to be pretty incredible, but it's been three years in.

The making, probably longer if we talk about all the stuff beforehand. Yeah, yeah.

So one of the goals is to finish that book. Now, do you write a book? Like, do I have the time to write a book every day of the week? Like, no. And so to finish that book, I'm gonna have to work some weekends. I'm gonna have to work some nights for a while there was getting up at three and working on it in the mornings, Right? So now if I'm talking to my significant other about this, and I'm like, so to finish this, I'm going to have to make some sacrifices. And we agree to those sacrifices. It completely avoids the passive aggressive, you work too hard. All that, because we decided to do it together.

Well, and there's no blind side when the extra work is required. That's probably one of the biggest thing, is that when the extra work's happening, the other person doesn't know it's coming.

Exactly. Yeah.

That's huge.

So let's say you're in the car business and you sit down with your wife at the beginning of January. Like, okay, well, what do we made this last year? What do we want to make this year?

Well, they're changing my pay plan. And so for me to make the same amount of money, I'm going to have to increase profits by 25%. We already know that I'm stressed where I'm at. So there. I would need some things to change at home in order for me. Well, what would those things be? Well, you can't make me feel bad about working late because it tears me up. Now all of a sudden they, The. The approach is like, no, I really do care about how you feel, but I'm doing this for us. It's not that I want to do it right. It changes the perspective and gets everybody on the same team.

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

Yeah. So there was a phrase that I wrote down about that that you've told me before is that you have to be a power couple. Yeah.

You have to look at yourself as a power. Like the outcome of this union is that we're both better. We're. We produce more, we do more as. As an outcome of the way we treat each other, the way we communicate and the way we function.

Right, right.

Not leaving it to chance. Right.

And so now every one of those goals, you have to, like, let's say you have a goal that you want to take a trip. Well, okay, that trip is going to cost this much now. How are we going to come up with that? Yeah. And so there really aren't any surprises.

At the end of the day.

Yeah. That's good.

And then we. We formalize it and then we look at it all the time. Like, sometimes I put it on my mirror where. Where I would. Where I shave every day. I shave this little part right above my.

I was going to say you probably don't change blades very often.

No, A blade will last me a long time.

Yeah. Last me a long time, too. You know, what I've got down here is the number one reason for divorce in the car business. And it's going to be the same thing. Poor time management.

Explain.

So if you're controlling your day, and.

Let'S say you've got. Your kid has two baseball games that week, and you control the day, you make it to two baseball games. But if you don't have control of your day, you make the zero out of two baseball games. Yeah. So what you do during the day actually affects your ability to follow through on the promises you make outside of work.

Time management has way more to do with you prioritizing things than it does time management.

So you don't have to just make that about in work. That can be prioritized out of work, too. Yeah.

They go hand in hand.

Yes.

So we do anything is how we do everything. Right.

So you get really good about managing your time outside of work.

And I have to get up.

Yep. So that's probably one of the things I would tell you is I've heard this from the coaches, and I think I've probably said this before too, is that when, like, for us. For us doing our coaching gigs and the coaches on the road three weeks out of the month and everything like that, that week that they're home, they're super intentional about their time with their families. That's the way that. That's the magic of it at the end of the day, is that every minute you have with your family, you have to make the best of it. Like, you don't have time to sit on the couch and just de stress and everything like that. But if you're controlling your day, there's not as much stress to unwind from. You can unwind from the stress on the drive as opposed to the drive plus an hour and a half.

Yeah.

So I think that that time management thing is probably the number one cause of divorce.

That's good. So time management and then sitting down, thinking of yourself as a power couple, that we're better together and including your spouse and what the goals are. Yep. And then talking about what sacrifices have to be made in order to achieve those goals. Yep.

And then do you want to say anything about, like, we talked a little bit about the negative, but the controlling the narrative in terms of, like, don't just come home and complain about work. You have to also talk about the stuff that's going amazingly well and the things that you're accomplishing that were. Maybe they were the goals at the beginning of the year, maybe they've exceeded that. But you have to be willing to talk about the good stuff as well as the bad stuff. Yeah.

Because it is funny how.