Your Work Matters

This week we received the 5.45 AM call that every parent fears.

Our 16 year old daughter was in a bad accident on her way to swim practice and we needed to come to the scene.

My wife and I were out the door in 120 seconds.

The 20 minute drive to the scene felt like it took an hour.

It was still before dawn and we could see the bright lights blinking from the accident site well before we arrived.

We drove up to an intersection blocked off with what looked like 10 police vehicles, 2 fire trucks and multiple EMS trucks.

I felt like I was in a movie as I ran from where the road was blocked off to the EMS trucks to look for my daughter.

Unimportantly...her car was totaled...the entire front end collapsed...the bumper was nowhere to be found and all airbags were deployed.

My wife found her 1st and was hugging her when I saw her and I just wrapped my arms around both of them with the adrenaline still pumping through me.

She is fine...we are so blessed...

That is actually not what this Saturday Note is about.

We moved out to our suburb of Atlanta 15 years ago.

I had always had a healthy distrust of mechanics because I don't know the first thing about cars and very little interest in learning, so I am an easy 'mark' for unscrupulous operators.

One day I thought we needed work on my wife's car so I took it to East Cobb Auto Care and met a man named Kevin.

We left the vehicle with him and he said he would call and let us know what was wrong.

I fully expected him to call and say 'your blah-blah needs fixed and it will cost $10,000.'

When I answered his call later that day he said that nothing was wrong, they just needed to tighten something and put air in the tires.

And...he was not going to charge us for it.

I was frankly shocked.

Do you think I have ever taken our vehicles to anyone other than Kevin since?

Not a chance...I trust him and the team at East Cobb Auto Care exclusively.

Trust that has been built over 15 years and 7 vehicles.

When my daughter was ready for a car she decided that she liked the VW Beetle...and if you know her you can see how it would be a cute car for the young lady.

My wife and I ran around to used car dealerships until we found one with low miles that we felt could make sense.

Then I took it to Kevin to check it out.

That particular car was not a good fit for several reasons that Kevin explained.

Then he proactively gave us his advice: The VW Beetle was not a good car for our teen.

He layed out all the reasons why, including potential crash safety issues.

He said it should really only be a Toyota or Honda for teens...for multiple reasons that he shared with us for 20 minutes.

He said it with conviction and from a clear place of experience.

I even wrote a Saturday Note about it a few weeks ago. Link

My wife and I took his advice.

We had a difficult conversation with our daughter about why we were not going to go the VW route and she was very disappointed.

I hate letting my daughter down...but I trust Kevin's advice.

We gave our daughter my old Toyota 4Runner.

If we had not taken the advice Kevin gave us and she was in that Beetle during the accident.........

We will never be able to measure the impact that Kevin has had on our family.

Professional Takeaway: Be like Kevin. Know your business better than anyone else and share what you know with confidence. Your work matters and it impacts lives.