How Obsession Inspires Higher Performance | SDR #229

Welcome, everybody, to the big show today. We got an exciting one for you. We're going to talk about is obsession good or is it bad? There's a lots of fun stuff coming up in the news, and we're going to share a secret with you on how you can start a conversation about work and brainstorm with your team doing it in a different way. So there's that and much, much more coming up on this edition of Service Drive Revol.

Great. Better than ever. It's not raining anymore.

Was thinking about something. You know how I always say, like, people that say it's just business, like, you can't be friends in business?

Oh, it's the worst sign.

Why?

Because it means you're about to get screwed.

Has that happened to you?

Yeah, a couple. Well, yes, definitely.

Tell us names and situations.

No, I'm all right.

All buttoned up.

Yeah.

Is it. Is that you're hiding that, like the childhood trauma, you won't come out?

Yeah. You know, it's interesting I was gonna tell you that. Is that, like you're gonna cover the.

Pain now with a joke? Yeah.

I'm super, super closed off emotionally. Like, the only way. The only way to my heart is with a scalpel and a bone saw.

I thought that was really good.

But it also could be really sad maybe.

Maybe because of all the covering and everything.

Maybe you need a friend.

Yeah, you're my friend.

You don't feel safe, though.

Yeah, that's probably it.

It's about feeling safe.

I think I do feel super safe.

But we. We did something the other day that I think is.

A.

Lesson for everybody. It's been a strategy of mine for a long time. Like, I've used this very effectively for a very long time.

Okay.

Like, almost as far back as I can remember, which is to get people out of the work environment and get them into a social environment. But talk about work.

It's funny. I've got plenty of examples of that, but I think I know what you're talking about now.

Yeah. So we went to a Raiders game in Vegas.

We did.

We rented a party bus.

Yes.

And we all went. So it was yourself and your. Your girlfriend that calls you Papachiullo? It was myself and my fiance, and then it was Patricia, and she was going to bring her husband, but for.

Some reason, Brian wasn't able to make it.

Yeah. Oddly. How often do we. Has Brian been to our new office?

I don't know if he has or not. I haven't seen him.

So his wife goes to the same place Every day. And he has never been there.

I think that's.

That doesn't seem weird to you?

Oh, maybe a little bit.

You don't. You don't at all think that she's keeping him away from us?

I don't know. I've. Oh, man, this is gonna get weird.

We had a manager in our group that I had helped get some jobs. Yeah, he got let go once because of something bad he did. He told his wife that he got let go because of me, because he couldn't tell his wife what he let go for.

That's terrible.

And I met his wife once, and she was really mean to me, and I didn't understand why.

Then you figured it out.

And then I figured out that he had told her that I had got him fired, which was the farthest thing from the truth. I wasn't even involved in it. It was all his doing.

Logically speaking, you getting him fired would be a terrible plan.

And so sometimes the way when you meet somebody's spouse or you interact with somebody's spouse, it's an insight into what that person really thinks at home, right?

Oh, yeah, I can see where you'd say that.

Like, if you. If you came over and Missy was mean to you, you would start to think, like, oh, there's something weird going on.

What's happening when you come home from work? Is it like, oh, that freaking Christian guy? Yeah, I would definitely think that.

So do me a favor. Hold. Hold your. Your hand up. Open. How many times you've met Brian?

So once. The very first.

I've met him. I met him several times.

Oh, so it's just me that doesn't ever get to meet him?

Yeah. I was trying to say this is where I thought it was gonna get weird. Like, so every. Let's call it, like, six weeks or so, I go see Brian play in his Irish band.

He's great.

Oh, so it's just me.

It could just be you. Although I think you'd have a. You'd get a kick out of watching him play too.

So I gotta go watch his Irish band in order to see him.

I think we'd have a good time.

Maybe. So we get in the party bus and we go to Vegas.

We do.

And what do we do?

Well, there's also. I had to come to the office before the party bus because I had to pick up a bunch of books just to give you an idea what it was going to be like. But we literally, from the time that we got picked up to the time that we got Dropped off. We literally talked about work and maybe a little bit of music, but we worked the music into work at the same time. Do you remember that?

Yeah. We had a big debate over the best Alice in Chains album we did, Which I don't think either one of us have changed our point of view.

No, I still think that Dirt's my favorite. But I appreciate the facelift stuff because it is way. It's way less drug related at the end of the day. But I think if the trip would have been 14 hours, we would have talked about work for 14 hours. It's just. To me, that's just fun. It's what I'm thinking about.

But what is it? Do you think about those sort of things that make you.

Think about work in a different way?

Yeah. So when you're out of the environment, I think that it automatically, like, whatever, I'm probably saying this wrong and you'll correct me, but like there's a pattern interrupt that goes on in your subconscious because you're talking about work in a different environment, which then makes you maybe look at stuff from a different perspective and you come up with more new ideas. Like there's a couple of good ideas that we came up with on that trip, too.

Did you invite yourself to go see Brian play or were you invited to go see him play?

I was invited.

See, I've never been invited.

Son of a biscuit.

Never been invited.

I told you this was going to get awkward. That's great.

Why is it awkward?

I don't know. Because I. Maybe Patricia just assumes you wouldn't want to go, but I think that. I think you would.

I don't think that. I don't think that's it at all.

You think you're getting blocked?

Yeah.

We should. We should test that theory.

I've asked, I've brought it up. I'm not. This isn't something I'm hiding.

I feel like she thinks that him and I might get along too.

Good. We have a ton of stuff in common.

Yeah, that's what I think. Okay, let's talk about the news. And then we're going to get to our topic of obsession.

The first one. I think this is really smart. Shell, the oil company, is. They're going to acquire the EV charging firm Volta, which. I've seen these out and about. But $169 million investment into EV infrastructure for an oil company, I think is really, really good. 169 million bucks. It's an all cash deal.

So they're writing a big check if they'll rebrand it. Show.

Yeah, maybe. I'm looking to see.

That's still, you know, Tesla has, I think the biggest start, but that's still a very.

Ripe thing to take over is the infrastructure for electric charging.

My apartment complex just got outfitted.

How many dealerships put one in and they need like 10.

Yeah. So it's funny, I remember having this discussion with some of my dealers a couple of years ago. The requirements were always one and my best stores were like, no, I want eight. It was really smart, foresight wise. Especially when you talk about certain companies that are going all electric like Volvo or gm making a huge commitment to it. So having a lot of chargers is not a bad thing. But I thought it was a good idea for Shell to hop into that thing. And they're obviously not cash poor if they write a check for 169 million bucks. So regardless, when anybody says the oil business is good, this is not car related. But I think that there's probably indicators in here that Chris will talk about Microsoft laying off some employees. How many do you think?

Well, 10,000.

Yeah. So 10,000 layoffs. And then the funny thing is I've got.

What about everybody else?

Yeah. So I did a little research because I thought I'd give IT context. But 10% represents 5% of Microsoft. Then I'm just going to kind of go through Amazon also. You know how many they did?

18,000.

18,000. Good job. Facebook and Meta 11,000. Google 11,000.

So the Google one really surprises me.

I thought they were pretty lean to start with.

It's really hard to get a job at Google.

Yeah.

And so the one thing that Google has going for them is this kind of were invincible against the world sort of thing. When you lay off that many people, it's going to affect your culture because people aren't going to believe in the culty kind of feel of it anymore. You're breaking that trust. Kind of like when you don't get invited to a bagpipe convention or whatever it is.

Right.

Best joke of the day. That's pretty good. So I think the big thing is too is even if you're one of the survivors that doesn't get laid off, then you're always looking by behind your back too. There's just. That's a really rough thing. But listen to this stat. A recent report from outplacement from Challenger Grand Christmas found tech layoffs were up 649% in 2022. So the reason I brought this one in is what do you think this Means for us in the automotive industry.

I think it definitely is a narrative we could be selling to the younger kids.

Yeah.

Coming out of school, you know, that maybe going into these tech jobs isn't as secure as is working on vehicles or those. Those kind of.

Jobs that are actually easier to train for in the long run too. Yeah. So I think. I think we should be using it as a narrative of security.

A lot of people when they get laid off like that, they. They switch industries for sure.

So maybe that's the thing too. Is that art? Could our industry adopt some of these people that were in tech?

I saw. Maybe I showed it to you. But there was a girl that started a YouTube channel and it grew really fast, and her whole thing was getting laid off at Microsoft. And so she talked about how she thought she was in a section because they were actually producing revenue and she was safe. Yeah. And that the, you know, the marketing department and all these other departments go first in layoffs, but they just completely shut down the division that she was in, basically, even though it was profitable. And so then she talked about how they handled it and her feelings after. They offer mental. Like mental health counseling for six months after, I think. Oh, wow.

Okay.

And. And they also have an agency that tries to get you a job somewhere else, so they assist you in that. It's.

I've never heard of that before.

Yeah, it's very, very friendly.

Yeah.

That way. Yeah. It's just interesting.

How when you went to watch Brian play.

Yeah.

How good was the drummer?

They didn't have a drummer.

Oh.

So guess what?

I am.

If it was an instrument that I was gonna play, it wouldn't be the piano.

No, you'd play the drums. So I should also say that Brian, he plays a kick drum.

Yeah. Well, that's.

So it's not a full drum.

That's a cry for a drummer is what that is.

Yeah, it could be. You know what's funny is, speaking of all this stuff, I'm out. I was out to dinner with my girlfriend over the weekend, and there's this person there and just drunk and belligerent. And I just keep staring at her. And she goes. She's like, do you know that lady? And I'm like, yeah, I know that lady. She's my ex wife. We got divorced a decade ago, but after that she went to. She started hitting the bottle really, really hard. And Claudia's like, my girlfriend says, that's a long time to celebrate.

Pretty good.

Thanks.

It sucks that they don't have a drummer.

You're building interesting to you. You're building a strong case. Oh my gosh.

How funny would it be if. If I knocked on Patricia's door and she answers the door like one evening at like 8 o' clock and I'm like, I'm here for band practice.

Yep. What, what if they have an ad running for a drummer?

Yeah.

Oh, sorry. Don't know any drummers.

Just. Just get past the ide. Not invited because I'm not considered a friend or what I'm perceived as being a pain in the ass or whatever it is, the drummer thing. That's pretty odd, right? Like, what kind of a band is gonna get a lot of good gigs without a drummer? Like, you're, you're only gonna go so far.

Well, they're niche. They're niche. It's an Irish. It's an Irish band. So the main instruments are certainly the accordion and the violin. There's a guitar for rhythm in the background.

There's a lot of bands with bagpipes that do pretty well.

Yeah.

Bagpipes are phenomenal instrument. It sounds like someone dying when you play it wrong, but.

You ever heard of the Dropkick Murphy's?

Very much so.

Okay.

I like Drop Kicks.

Do they have a drummer?

Yes.

Is that bagpipes?

Yes.

What about the Flogging Mollies?

Yes.

Yeah. So like I said, the potential is going to be capped not having a drummer.

Yeah. Could be an issue. I wonder if they need one.

They don't have one. Of course they need one. It's rhetorical.

Also in the news.

You remember talking about the company Vinfast a few months ago. This is the Vietnamese company that is actually, they're trying to kind of break into the market. And the niche that they're hitting is that the batteries are leased. So essentially you get a lifetime warranty on the battery because you're leasing it every month. So their thought was that they would come into the US market at a lower price point. Well, they're under a little bit of fire right now for two things. The first is they said they were coming in at a lower price point. You know what their base price is on their lowest priced vehicle? Vehicle?

$56,700. So it's not a low price point at all. But here's the thing that really, you're.

Not buying the car for that.

Right.

Aren't they leasing for like 300amonth or something?

So you actually buy the car for 56, 7. On top of that, you have your lease payment on your battery.

Oh, that's not gonna work.

I don't think it's gonna work either. But here's a really cool thing. Is that battery that you're leasing the range 179 miles.

That's a joke.

It's a joke.

Let me ask you a question. Now, transitioning to the subject we're going to talk about.

Have you ever thought about or given any sort of analysis to the.

Fact that there is an average to everything?

I'm certainly aware of it.

I don't know how much time there's an average distance people walk to work.

Yeah.

There's an average commute, average income. There's an average yards per play in the NFL.

That's right.

Right. There's an average length of song that they play on the radio.

Three minutes.

Probably not three minutes.

Probably more specific, like 2 minutes and 47 seconds, something.

But there's an. There's an average length of hair, right?

Yeah, I bet you're right.

There's an average length of your thumb.

Thumbs, not your thumb. And so everything is average right now. There's average income.

Yeah, of course.

There's average net worth, average home price.

And so what is it about average that's so dangerous?

Because there's no growth in just trying to fit in.

Fit in. That's the answer that I was looking for. So when.

Average and fit in are coupled together, what does that mean?

Stagnation?

No, it means acceptance.

Yeah. Okay.

So if the bulk. If average means the majority of people fall in this little window, then the majority of people would be considered normal.

Fair. And anybody outside of that would be considered abnormal. So average equals normal equals comfortable equals safe equals acceptance. You follow me?

Yes.

And so told this story before, but it's. It is a good analogy here. For this is when I was a kid, I had my friends from high school, my friends from high school and I would go to Vegas sometimes a couple times a year. It was like a fun thing that we would do.

Oh, yeah, I remember the story.

I became a service advisor. All of a sudden, as a service advisor, I'm making.

Five times what they're making. A lot more than what they.

Yeah.

I all of a sudden have disposable income. I have a new car. I am shopping at a better grocery store. Like, I'm doing things with it, with that money, and it's giving me freedom.

Historically, we would go to Vegas. We might all drive in the same car. We might pack food, we might have a cooler. We might all share a room. Right now, all of a sudden, with my Newfound income. I don't want to share a room. Maybe I want to invite a girl. Maybe I want to go to a nice dinner. But the norm, the average in my little group of friends was very uncomfortable with that because they said that I'd change.

Yeah. You weren't part of the hippie road trip anymore.

No, I wasn't saying, hey, you guys are losers. I want my own room. I wasn't saying, hey, you guys are losers. Let me pick up the tab for dinner. I wanted to go to dinner, and so I was willing to pick up the tab because I, you know, I. I valued our friendship, and I never saw it that way, but how did they feel?

Yeah. So they felt like you were showing off and dismissing them, which is funny. And now that you're telling me that story, I feel like when I was right around that 20, 21, right. Getting into the car business, I did the same thing. And then they never wanted. My friends never wanted to go out with me anymore. And I always was confused by that. And it just hit me, holy cow. Because they thought that that was condescending.

Tell us more about that.

I just remember taking, like, a group of five or six friends out. We went on the city, which is Chicago, when I call it the city, and I wanted to go to a nice dinner, which I would. My friends growing up were the Denny's variety. Right. Like, we went to Denny's, had coffee and hung out and talked and didn't spend a ton of money. And then when I started making money as an advisor, I wanted to go out and have an experience in the city. So we stayed at the Palmer House in Chicago, where I paid for everybody's rooms, and I also wanted my own room. And then when we went to dinner, I paid for the dinner. And it was like the last time I remembered kind of doing an event like that with some of those friends. Yeah. And I never knew why.

And when you. When you offer to buy dinner, you're not doing it in a condescending way. You're actually excited to share that experience.

And I expected nothing in return.

But they take it another way.

That's right.

They take it as you're talking down.

Yeah.

Which is not. It's not the intention, but it is the. It is the unforeseen byproduct perceptions, reality of not being normal. And so now you have a choice, which a lot of people choose to be normal and lower their expectations of themselves, or very few people will break away and go find new friends or be okay with the idea that you no longer are held in the same esteem as when you weren't challenging their worth. Right, that's right. And so that's the problem with average. That's the problem with normal. What is considered normal or fitting in. And we all want to be accepted. So it's really hard not to be accepted or liked, especially by people that we have feelings for, we've had experiences with.

It feels like you're betraying them or yourself in a sense. Right. And very, very lonely. So the same thing happens when it comes to having goals in business is there is. There are narratives out there. Like one we were talking about is, so.

You can't be friends with people you work with. Cause it's just business. That's a narrative that isn't true, but it's commonly repeated.

Yeah, Someone wants that to be true. It's weird, right?

Because it's a symptom. Right. It's treating a symptom like, hey, I didn't tell you this whole time that you weren't doing a good job and now I'm gonna tell you, you're gone. Right.

Yeah.

Like the thing I always say, if somebody's gonna let go here is like, do they know that they're gonna get let go?

Should never be a surprise.

Should never be a surprise.

They should have every chance to change their behavior and then it's up to them. Right. But it's non negotiable. So the same thing is like, I've been with people at dinner and they will say, can we not talk business at dinner?

Then it's quiet the rest of the time.

Well, at first, like when that would happen to me when I was younger, I thought there was something wrong with me.

And then I started having friends. And one time I told a friend that somebody, you know, actually, and he said, oh, you shouldn't be going to dinner with those people.

Oh, he's very right. Yeah, he's a smart dude.

But I never made that connection until he kind of pointed that out. I always thought, well, I'm just different. I'm the exception, you know, and so most people don't want to talk about business at dinner. I'm imposing on them instead of even considering why am I at dinner with them.

It just turns out you're in the wrong room.

Yeah. And so I think the same thing applies to the topic that we want, we want to share with you today is obsession. A lot of people think that obsession is a bad thing, that being obsessed with something is a bad thing. But like, when we Were talking about time management.

People that are obsessed don't struggle with time management because they're obsessed. Everything else that doesn't matter is getting eliminated and it's getting replaced with things that do matter, that are high leverage items. And so.

I also find that getting obsessed on things is actually very fun because you learn so much about yourself. You dig into areas that you wouldn't dig into. It also gives you the courage to do things you wouldn't normally do, like reach out to people. Right. Like there's people that we have hired to help us with stuff that we would have never met or that are celebrities, are very famous in their field that we would have never met if we wouldn't have had needed that advice on that obsession that we're trying to figure out. Yeah, right. And so it. It makes you perform outside of the boundaries that would be just social. Social norms into boundaries that are more effective. It broadens that.

Yeah, I love it. It's good. I have a list of a couple of things that obsession's really gotten a bad rap about this. And I don't know, maybe it's bad, maybe it's warranted, maybe it's not. But obsession's kind of bad for serial killers. I think.

Also obsession can be bad for stalkers.

And for people that are in a culture. I think that obsession might be bad, but I don't know. Have these things gotten a bad rap for no reason?

I think that the first two. Yes. I think cults. People don't realize that they're in a cult because they're conditioned over time. But I don't know that it's an obsession. I don't know that it's an obsession.

It's more of accepting authority.

Yeah. I think the thing that my deal with cults is that it's really easy to go to all the negative. But I just. I can't believe how many leadership lessons you could take from it. If you can look at it without attaching the emotion, like the execution, the obedience. Like there's a lot of kind of neat stuff that comes from a cult. But then I think that you were kind of saying this, is that, you know, what's the difference between cult and really just really passionate about your cause is the intention. Right?

Yeah.

So I wrote something down that I think that that's the scariest thing when it comes to cults. Is that what it has to do with his charisma? It was the Andrew Bustamante thing from when you interviewed him. I don't know if you'll remember this quote or not. But he said, charisma without intention is really dangerous. So if you're just charismatic, but you don't have an intention for good, that's where it's the scariest. So you think about.

Some of the most terrible leaders in Time that had a huge following. Their intention was in the wrong spot, but they had the charisma and the following, and that's how they get to where they're at. They definitely obsessed about what they were trying to accomplish, and there wasn't much that was going to keep them from getting to their goal.

So kind of summarizing this and wrapping it up, people that are obsessed or outside of the norm, but they're the most fun to hang out with because they're clearly focused on something and they're trying to be special at something. They're passionate about it and they know more about it than anybody else. And it's not casual. Right. That sort of energy is contagious, but it's not normal. It's not average. This is above average performance that we're talking about. And there's nothing wrong with being obsessed. Being obsessed is good. It can be very healthy if the intention is in the right place.

That's right. Yeah. Like a lot of our elite members are obsessed. They're obsessed about the comp. It's funny to hear them talking about it, but they're looking at ways to dissect that.

I would say the comp and net.

Oh, yeah, the net to gross. Like California.

When you said they were incest, I thought net. Yeah, okay, you're right. The comp too. But the net, it's good. Awesome. So get obsessed. Ask yourself, what is it I'm obsessed with? And how. How can I become more obsessed? It'll fix your time management. You'll hit better, bigger goals. You'll learn more about yourself, everything. So thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Drive Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell on bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chris collinsinc.com now that's offers.chris collins inc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.

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