Stop Being Average!
Welcome to Service Drive Revolution! Today we’re going to share with you how you cannot be average, how you can perform at a higher level, and how to get out of the rut of being average.
We also are going to talk about the news and discuss our favorite super bowl commercials.
Let’s talk about being average.
What made me think of this is that I bought this book. This is an old book from the early 1900s about average in business. This book about being average is making the case that just about everybody is average.
Even if you’re unique in one specific area of your life, like let’s say you’re really good at math, good at playing pool, or you’re really funny. When you add that into everything else, that one thing that you think makes you special, doesn’t make you above average.
Most people all going through life are average and here’s the, here’s the sad part…
50% of people are below average.
Just think about that for a second… 50% of the people listening to the big show right now are below average.
50% of the Service Advisors, Technicians, and Service Managers out there are below average.
But the funny thing about being average is that people don’t realize they are being average, and they will never stop being average. People are comfortable with that.
It’s always an interesting insight into human behavior and psychology when you’re talking to somebody high up in a business and they don’t aspire to be the best in their town. Let alone their market.
I’ve been offered equity in a dealership to run it for a ton of money and I passed on everyone.
Average people have no path that they could see to make them number one in the country.
My mom used to tell me,
“Never play a game you can’t win.”
My mother suggested that I change my behavior because similar to when kids wanna play a game they don’t know how to play… The likelihood of them playing is slim to none!
If there was some sort of sport or board game that I didn’t know how to play, I wouldn’t participate because I would watch. I wasn’t going to play something that I didn’t have some sort of an advantage or possibility of winning. Overall, I wasn’t gonna put myself in that situation. Now you could say like, that’s not healthy because you’re not giving yourself new experiences and maybe there’s something to that.
But back to my original point, what always blows me away is that people go through life and they have no concept of the idea that there’s so much more.
All we have to do is put energy into it and we have to turn our vision towards the idea that we could issue the best customer experience. It’s funny to me that a lot of people pride themselves on loving their customer, which is code for being terrible at it.
Being average just means that we have bad systems and we don’t know what we’re doing most of the time.
How can we stop being average?
Here’s one thing that we understand about performance: if we want to be number one in the country, we have to understand that this is a journey, not a destination.
Knowing this changes the way we ask questions. This changes the way we talk about things, however, we don’t talk about things in absolutes. We’re not gonna say we have the best customer experience. When I talk to a dealer or a manager that’s performing at a very high level, they will say something to this effect:
“Boy, we really care about the customer experience and we’re always trying to make it better”
Then they’ll ask me a question on what I’ve seen out there and what other people are doing. These people are doing the most to escape being average and are constantly learning more about the industry they are in. Furthermore, the Service Advisors who brag about their customer service want to feel that, but they don’t really care about the customers.
Chances are, if you’re watching this, you don’t know that you’re being average or perform at below average. I’m gonna give you a couple key things that can change your trajectory and help you perform at a high level.
Alright, so how do we stop being average?
This is a prerequisite to what I’m gonna talk about at our upcoming coaching meeting. So we have our quarterly coaching meeting where we’ve been doing them virtually during COVID. This is one of the virtual ones that we have coming up next week.
I’m going to talk about something sort of similar about being average, but it’s about performance and how to hijack performance at a high level. Furthermore, the first part of this is we have to understand how average works and how you get away from being average.
1) First thing that you want to do if you wanna stop being average is stop measuring yourself against everybody else and start measuring yourself against your full potential.
Building off of this idea, maybe we don’t all have the IQ of Elon Musk… But if we look at our full potential, just know that it’s there. Having said this, there’s a pretty big gap between where you are right now and where you could be now.
The real question is why do we compare ourselves against everybody else instead of our full potential? Because it’s easier!
Most of the time when people are referencing other people’s performance, they’re going to reference somebody that is going to make them feel like they’re okay. That’s just how people who are average think and being average constantly repeats itself in their narrative.
Most of the time what we hear in our industry is that somebody is outperforming us and we compare ourselves to them, we then follow it up by their market. If they’re lucky in some way the numbers aren’t true, whatever it is, this happens in 20 groups all the time where people are average but it’s the liars club. I always like to think even if it’s the liars club, why don’t we pretend that it’s real? This will give us something to shoot at.
The liars club is this club where people aren’t honest with themselves about where they stand because it’s a protection mechanism.
If you are not super motivated and you don’t want to attack that gap between what your full potential is and where you are right now…
The easiest way to keep yourself from committing suicide is to create a narrative where everything’s okay. That’s just human nature because otherwise the world would be brutal and depressing. We would be very down on ourselves to a detrimental level.
But when you look at full potential and you look at it as a game that’s fun and you stop comparing yourself to others. Ultmiately, you stop paying attention to what others are doing and this could be awakening for many people.
Having said all of this, stop comparing yourself to others and start comparing yourself to your full potential, if you truly want to stop being average.
Christian asked me, “How would you identify what your full potential is?”
It should be in reference to where you’re at today.
– Could your full potential just be paid, if you’re a commission?
– If you’re a tech and you’re flat rate, could your full potential be to run it 150%?
What happens in your mind?
If you are running it 90% and say your full potential is 150% now, what excuses are gonna come into your mind? Especially valid ones.
When we’re coming up with excuses, we just turn the car around and we’re headed back to below average. You have to work through those things. Maybe you need to go work somewhere else, maybe you need a new shop to work in, whatever it is, our full potential is different than what we’re doing.
Everybody listening to this, your full potential is different than what you’re doing right now.
It’s individualistic and you can start small, have some wins, gain some confidence, then your self-esteem starts to come up. We’ll feel good from not being average and that’s contagious.
Then we start to think bigger.
Let’s wake up tomorrow and be the best we could be.
-Could we potentially be the best in the market? How about making more money? Are we capable of collecting more customers? Whatever the case may be, it is our duty to get our mindset out of the average.
2) The second thing that is keeping you average is… repeating the same average tasks everyday.
If you feel average, it’s probably because most of what you do is average.
You drink average coffee, consume processed fast food, drive an average car, wear the average polo from an event.
You show up with average energy, your vibe is average, and your health is average.
If you wanna live up to your full potential and stop being average…
You have to understand that the hobbies you have, the clothes you wear, the coffee you drink, the food you eat, all of that is contributing to how you feel about yourself!
If everything is average, you’ll be average. This is when you should start treating yourself in the morning and make yourself feel above average. Every time you drive to work, you are in the frame of I’m above average.
But you gotta tell your subconscious and prove to your subconscious that you are looking for things that are above average. Additionally, make sure you’re not settling all day.
The meals you eat, the clothes you wear, the friends you have, your hobbies, whatever it is, you have to prove to yourself that you’re better than that in order for your subconscious to believe it.
It blows me away when you see people that are average or below average and that they don’t work out, they don’t treat themselves like anybody that’s special. You can tell from the conversations they have with themselves in their head that they don’t really like themselves. Average people would treat us better than they would treat themselves.
The truth of the matter is if you’re eating better and treating yourself better, you’re gonna have more energy. Also, you will have a better quality of life, make more money, and have more friends. It’s a simple recipe.
The truth of the matter is you can just start treating yourself a little bit better inch by inch and it’ll happen naturally. When we stop being average, it’ll raise our self-esteem and vision of ourselves.
Remember if you’re on a crashing plane, like the plane’s going down, you have to put on your mask before you help anybody else.
Here are the two tips to STOP BEING AVERAGE:
1) Stop comparing yourself to others and start comparing yourself to your full potential.
2) Stop doing average stuff, stop eating average food, and go treat yourself once a week to an amazing meal that inspires you to have an experience.
Go feed your soul with everything that will make you happy and less average.
Lastly, my wish for you is to think a little bit higher. Let’s raise your self-esteem! At the end of the day, that’s gonna make you have more fun and you’re gonna be irreplaceable in the marketplace.
You’ll be the most desired leader, the most desired service advisor, regardless of what it is, people will just be able to sense your energy. There will be something different about you because you’re treating yourself differently. Start with treating yourself better, stop being average, and then build on from there.
Thank you for tuning in and we will see you next time on Service Drive Revolution.
Got a question? Call us at 1-833-3-ASK-SDR
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