Being Resiliant at Zeigler with Candace Rabourn and Ariah Daniels| EP147

At Ziegler, you are with a group where there are people in place who can help you get there. You just have to connect with the right people.

Welcome everyone to the driving vision podcast brought to you by the Zigler Auto Group. I'm your host, Sam Dark. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. Like it if you do, and leave a comment. Hey, everybody.

Welcome to the special edition of the driving vision future of Zach Today. Today, we actually have 2 special guests. Araya Daniels, welcome back. You're often with us. Araya?

Thank you, Sam.

And then with us also and Araya's gonna tell us a little bit why you're here. Here, doctor, yes. You heard that right. We rarely hear this in the automotive. But what's cool about this setup here is that the Ziegler Auto Group, we bring the best of everyone from all sorts of different backgrounds and professions.

We've got a balloon pilot for crying out out loud. We've got a CPA. We've got attorneys. We have people from all fields. And today with us, we have doctor Candace Rayborn.

Yes. You heard doctor is correct. And Araya, tell us a little bit about Candace and why she's joining us today.

Oh, man, Sam. So I'm so excited to introduce doctor, yes, doctor Candice Rayborn to the podcast today. So Candice raised her hand and also volunteered to help lead our next ZAG Women's Call. So this is a series of coaching calls that we have inside the Zigler Auto Group where we bring female leaders inside our auto group to speak on topics that they're passionate about. And so Candice here just recently, and by congratulations, just received her doctorate and PhD, did her dissertation on a project and topic that is very near and dear to her heart which was resilience.

And so I'm really excited to have Candice join us and kinda recap really the call that we just had with the group of, female leaders inside the auto group. So welcome, Candice.

Absolutely. Thank you, guys. And, of course, whenever we speak to Ziggler, and you know we love to be the best, one of the things that was important to me as I was completing this journey, this 18 year long school marathon as it were, I was working with the best to come to a conclusion there. So all of the women who responded for the sake of this survey, out of the, 55 surveys we sent out, we got 41 responses back. So that's a 75% return rate, which is just about unheard of when you're talking about this kind of survey, and they really are the first group of women that have ever been surveyed in an automotive context.

So we talk about being the best here all the time. We talk about bringing the excellence. How cool is it for us to have the first group of female leaders ever surveyed on resilience in an automotive group?

So I love it. And before you go into the resilience, let's get some background on you. So you sell at our Granville stores. You sell Chryslers. You're incredible.

You do a great job. You recently run won the walk around competition. So congratulations to you. Why on earth does a salesperson at the Ziegler Auto Group decide to go out and get a PhD in resilience?

So funny enough, I actually when I first was hired here, I was in the process of finishing up my MBA. Now when I got my MBA, I, focused on luxury retail spaces and using, retail theater in those spaces to enhance client experiences. And after that, I'd love to say there was a profound reason that I decided to go for my doctorate, but I have, my mom and I actually finished our MBAs together, and she said, you know, if you go for a doctorate, they'll give you an even fancier hat. So, as it turns out, that was all of the convincing I needed to then commit to about 6 more years of, late nights and long studies, and, here we are.

So let me ask this. You're in the auto auto industry. Again, the auto industry is cool because it brings people from all backgrounds. You actually get to bring your strengths and contribute to the whole, make us better. Do you intend to do something different with this outside of automotive?

Or is your intent to stay with within automotive? And if to stay, why? Why go to all that effort?

So that's a a little bit of a twofold answer for me. For me, I think there are so many topics in the automotive industry that are completely unexplored. We're not always seen as an industry that is as I don't wanna say serious, but as serious enough to merit academic study. But I think that we are super relevant. We're obviously a major driver of the economy.

There's 1,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 of dollars that we generate year over year, and some of the actual automotive topics are special. You don't always have that same 30 day versus 365 day sell cycle, and there's unique insights that we can get in the automotive industry that we can get nowhere else. So for me, I plan on staying in cars.

Very cool. As you went through this process of getting a PhD, it's a massive process. How many years again did you say?

So it was just under 7 years for this one.

7 years. Was there anything about your role in selling at Granville that made getting the PhD better? Or shot like, I imagine like, academia is so different. I imagine you walking into the university where you were getting your PhD and they're like, what are you up to now? And you're like, I sell cars.

And maybe somebody said, that's wrong. What are you doing? Right? Like like, was there anything about the fact that you're in the automotive industry and you're pursuing a PhD that surprised you or anyone else? Was there any big learning there?

It's, it's kind of a mixed bag. Now the funniest thing is and I shared this with Araya because I had my defense of this whole dissertation the week after we did the walk around competition. And the entire process I've been with the Zigler Group for about 6 years now, have been in Zigler Granville the whole time. I do a Chrysler Dodge Deep and Ram and now Maserati Alfa Siya. And after I did my presentation, they said, the presentation you just gave is one of the best we've ever seen.

The way you took all the complicated statistics and facts, progressed through them well, you kept it moving. Spectacular presentation. And in that moment, I could only think of as we were doing the walk around competition, as we're presenting the same kind of information to our clients every single day. We have to take these super complicated spacecraft like vehicles and break it down in a way that our clients understand walk around competition, not from you, but your

code number 1 was he set the car on fire. So, Araya, the question I have for Candace is, did you set your thesis on fire as you defended it? Was that part of the, showmanship of it? Showwomenship of it?

You know, I really should have used that technique. I should have spoken to them all about having it, environmentally protected and then just let the thing on fire.

Before we launch into resilience, last question for me, and then I'd really love to have Araya lead a converse and I'll give a little bit of context and background on women at the Zag because I think what you're doing is so cool there for women everywhere within automotive and all auto all industries. So, Candice, what would you say to anyone who's pursuing a higher degree, a PhD, an MBA about going into automotive? Like, you're in a unique place because most people in academia that high up don't decide to, hey, get into automotive, although we have them. What would you say to somebody that wants to do that after getting the their degree?

I would say that a lot of these fields, in particular, some of the culture based ones, you have a new almost a wild west to look at. If you wanna be a pioneer, if you wanna look at things in a new way, this is the field for you. And it isn't always going to be easy. I mean, if you look at the ups and downs we've had this year alone with CDK, with different recalls, with any number of different problems we've had, it's not as static as some topics people wanna look at, but it's well worth putting in the effort to discover something new.

Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. So, Araya, a few months ago, was it been 3 or 4 months that you got together and and put together this women at the Zag, this group of of female leaders and and employees and team members across the Ziegler Auto Group. Why did you do this?

Yeah, Sam. So I, you know, I was thinking looking back now. So it was June we had our first call. And over the last year or so, it's it's always been sort of on my heart to create a space that allowed women in, not just necessarily within our auto group, but in the automotive industry and business in general to have another space where they could come and learn and grow and learn from each other. So I just started to notice within our auto group in general that we didn't have a space that allowed women to come through and just freely share their thoughts.

Like, we have certain, you know, forums and things that that we provide, but the space to just have a group specifically for our female leaders was just so apparent to me. The conversations are just a little bit different. They hit different. They allow women to speak up in spaces that maybe they didn't feel initially comfortable with and it allows them to build confidence in order to carry that into other areas of our industry or within the auto group or in their roles in in as leaders inside the ZAG. So kicking off this series of of calls has really been just so wonderful and near and dear to my heart.

And to see a few of our female leaders inside the auto group be able to to step up and raise their hand and say, hey. I'm passionate about this topic. I feel like it's something that I've done really well on, and I wanna share that with others. That's why we're doing this. And so we've had some really great guest speakers.

Carrie Ann Thomas, our director of security started that call. She kicked off our series with us and, Cheryl Percherioni, she from from our, Orland Park stores and now Candice. Candice, came to me and said, hey. I would love to do this. I'm actually just got a topic that's very near and dear to me on resiliency and just so happened to tie so well in with her research at school.

And I we were just all for it. So really excited to, to share a little bit about our findings from this call and her research as well. Yeah.

Alright. Well, Candice, we're excited to get into it. So what the heck does resiliency have to do with being a a female leader or a team member at in automotive?

So resiliency or resilience is something that all of us need. It's it's something that you need both in good times and bad, and it's something that we all kind of need to be aware of and consistently work on. Now in terms of women in the auto group, one of the things that all of the, the science of this research has turned up is that women use some slightly different strategies to help encourage a more resilient life, and one of the number one things that we do is we often network and then tap into these networks when things are going bad. So we tap in for better feedback or for perspective or we tap in for some extra assistance. So one of the things that we had a goal, Araya and I did have a good call before the call, you know, make sure that we are both on the same page, which funny enough, a number of the points that we made were identical.

So that's how we knew we're a little bit aligned on that. And we talked about using this conversation about resilience too as a great way to set up goal setting for the next year or 2. So one of the things that we did too is, we opened with a quote that, both of us loved as well, and it said, I cannot hate myself into a version of me that I will love. I cannot punish myself in any way that will unmake the past. Now this idea of resilience is not just overcoming individual obstacles.

It's seeing the position where you're at and the setbacks that you had is a springboard forward. So how do we encourage people when we see something like the CDK outage or, like, even COVID? One of the best answers we had was about the Mercedes store setting up the remote services during COVID. And how do we see some of these troubles as a way to create something better than what we currently have? And, resilience is a a key way for us to accomplish that.

And we we talked a little bit about the the 4 pillars to a resilient life. So taking care of your health, you know, mental and physical health, giving and seeking support from others, which was a really cool theme we saw emerging in a lot of the women's answers is it's not just them seeking support that they do in hard times, but it's giving of themselves that helps them feel more resilient.

I love what you're saying here. So you think about a moment that requires resilience in our daily life in automotive. Like, we think the past, COVID, the shutdown, that was crazy. CDK, super extreme. There are also some pretty unexpreme examples.

Right? I might show up to work hoping to get a promotion and may not get it. I might show up to work and someone might say something to me, and I might be frustrated with the tone or the way that they approached me. Mhmm. And you gave us 4 you gave us 2 right out the gate super strong answers to support this.

1 is physical health, and we've long believed that. Araya, you are a great example of that. What is it about physical health that leads to resilience? That's not just a a guy versus girl thing. That's everybody.

Right? What is it about physical health that allows us to be more resilient, Araya?

Yeah. Along with taking care of yourself, there are so many other great strategies that I think we'll touch base on here in a second. And

Yeah.

What what it takes to stay calm in tough times. And fitness in general is a great tool to use to to show you that you can do hard things and come out on the other side and feel better. And I always look at fitness as something that helps me more mentally than it does physically. And so when you have conquered whatever it is, if you if you're doing sets of bicep curls and you pick up heavier weight and you realize that you can do that, oh, what do you know? Resilience has been built.

So Yeah. Like little things like that just in fitness really set the tone for creating, that resilient mind. And I think that's such a a great example of how we use those kind of strategies for our physical health to to remain resilient. But some other ones that I think were that were just so powerful to talk about, and I think Candice and I can share great words of advice for being able to stay calm in tough times is things like that. Like going going to workout, going for a walk, just taking a a deep breath.

Maybe it's meditating, doing some kind of that mental health check-in. There were a lot of just different things that helped people stay grounded that they shared in the call to, to stay resilient during those times. And I think those were just worthy of sharing here because they were so powerful in helping all of us in different ways and be able to say, like, oh, I've never really thought about that strategy. That that's something that I'll try next time that maybe I'm faced with a situation. So little things like that I thought were so powerful.

Candice, were there anyone specifically that I think stuck to you from the question 1?

Now, from some of the questions, I think one of the most important ones that we had covered was on the self reliance part of it, which is self reliance, of course, being a very big part of resilience, which is not just the belief in oneself and one's abilities, but it's sort of the ability to filter feedback, from other people too. A lot of us talked about your gut instinct and understanding when advice or feedback from others may or may not be to your best benefit.

Yeah. Yeah. That was a powerful one too. And I I loved because everyone really dove into see seeking that strategy of, like, hey. I might go gather someone's perception about this certain instance that I'm in.

And being able to receive that feedback, like you said, can sometimes be helpful or not helpful. And maybe especially if there are people against you, then it's not it's not so helpful. Right? So relying on that gut feedback and being self reliant in those instances, which actually brought up another really great topic that both of you and I answered similarly on was imposter syndrome. So the times that maybe we doubt ourselves more during certain things, maybe we're we're questioning our worth or our ability to do something or get through something.

And then going to seek advice from others that can either give us energy or it can totally strip it away. Right? So

Absolutely.

Drop that imposter syndrome, that sense of like, oh gosh. Am I even capable of doing this? And relying on your gut to know that you've prepared for something or that you are capable of something. That self talk is so powerful. So I loved that part of of that self reliant piece.

Yeah. Which, of course, then leads into the final two of those four pillars for a resilient life. Number 3 is then balancing rest, responsibility, and recreation, and number 4 is then engaging fully in life. And like we said, there are those times, and it came through again across the call in different ways, where we have to balance our responsibility in certain areas and our ability to take those moments for ourself with then our other responsibilities to make sure that we stay balanced, that we stay invigorated and have resilience to keep going in spite of some difficulties we may be having.

Yeah. Absolutely. I love that portion, because that comes from the last two questions that we talked about, and those are part of the the pillars. Right? Our last two two pillars.

Mhmm. But we we talked a lot about those two things and being able to balance. And especially for, for 2 like us, Candice, you and I have resonated in the fact where we have a hard time sometimes celebrating those things because we're constantly moving in different directions or taking on maybe too much that we think we can't handle, and then we find ourselves feeling unbalanced. But just funny to to work through that. But I

mean, I it has been said I've never found a candle. I didn't find a way to burn both ends on. It's like it seems like there's so much opportunity here, and it's it's always so important to have those people in your life, the ones that you can trust and the ones that empower you to make your own more autonomous decisions too that say, hey. Is this really the most productive thing that you can be doing? It seems so much more productive to have 37,000 things going on at the same time, but is this really contributing to your bigger goals, to your bigger ideas of what you would like to accomplish?

Yeah.

Yeah. Or even fulfilling your purpose. Right? Like, what is your purpose or your mission? Which really brings up another great topic of our conversation and being that meaningfulness.

So

Mhmm.

Meaningfulness fullness and resiliency. And the question we asked everyone on the call is had have you ever experienced a time when maybe your sense of purpose wavered in your job? And what did that look like? Conversations with colleagues. How did how did connecting with someone, help you find meaning behind what you do?

And you have to share what was the activity we had everyone do as when we first asked that question.

So and we had everybody raise their right hand and put it over their heart and basically reflect on the idea that the heart that is beating in their chest and the air in their lungs, that is their main purpose. You are not responsible in some ways for things beyond that. Everything else is you know, it's the the frosting on the cake, but these are the things that are the, core meaning in your life too.

Yeah. I think it's just so apparent as a human being being is there's times that probably every human on this earth is at one point or another question like, hey. What is my purpose here? What am I passionate about or whatever? And to have a conversation with, another group of like minded women who have all said, like, hey.

I've been in that boat, and these are the things that I've done to really help pull out my purpose or what is my why and lean into others who also see that purpose in you was so powerful on this call. And we just had such a great connection with each other in our roles, you know, like, just to to see everyone in their role. Someone talked about, they shared vulnerably, like, hey, I felt like during COVID, like, my role was just completely irrelevant to what what the auto group needed. And then reminding ourselves, like, no, like everyone has a purpose. Everyone has a stated role for a reason.

So it was cool to be able to connect in that way and just really help everyone realign in their purpose and what they do and to know that they matter. So I love that.

I have a question for the guys. I'm gonna come in here just just briefly because this is such a good and important conversation. So you say that that women are more likely to have a support group, more likely to, go to others to get some feedback and and and get some help. How do you create that network? And and how do you decide what is helpful and what's not?

Because I think in leadership, but also in following and being a teammate, it's tough to know like, you can't just ask anyone for help. You can't just ask anyone for advice because not everyone cares enough to give good advice. Right? And we need a good network. We need good advice.

We need good support. In automotive, you can spiral so quickly to the negative. How how do you find that good group?

So I appreciate that you brought up the male perspective too. Because this networking

because we don't ask anybody for anything, Candice. Nothing.

Which is why you guys struggle sometimes is what the science shows us. They say that, women will build these networks in a lot of times much to their detriment. It's very damaging for guys, but they tend to feel like they have to do it by themselves

We do.

Or that they lose some kind of respect. Yes. And

This is true. This is not true.

It it is. And what they say is sometimes what you'll see in women who are having moments of low resilience is they'll get they can be depressed. They can be isolated, and men will do the same thing. But for men, they say it expresses themselves a lot more physically. So very few of your male friends would likely say, hey.

I'm having trouble with my resilience right now. But plenty of your male friends, I bet, would say, hey. My heart rate, my blood pressure's through the roof. I'm struggling with type 2 diabetes. I'm having a hard time drinking too much.

I don't sleep well at night. Like, these are the things that for guys, they notice the physical parts of it more, and it's why, I try and sort of put the word out there as well that there's nothing weak about telling anybody else that you need to fortify yourself for what is to come. The biggest thing that you can do is to make these networks where you get support from others who have walked in the shoes before, and some of it is what we were talking about with gut instinct. So you can rely on some people based on their track record, and you can rely on some things people based on their actions. An action speaks a 1,000 words, something like that.

My mind is

not catching up. There we go. Yeah.

There we go. And and that's what we see is that as we find these people that we are aligned with, not just action wise, but that we can align with on a deeper level. So if they have similar values to us, it's important to keep those types of people in our lives so that in hard times, we can tap into that. Tap into the deeper things when the more shallow things are having a hard time.

I think a word that comes to mind too is pride. And this is a moment, like take gender out of it. Right? I think both male and females can have such a high sense of pride. A lot of type a who feel like they can do it on their own, guilty.

So that's something that I've had to learn. I've had to really learn like, Hey, in moments of distress or times where I'm not feeling so resilient, in past I have said, Oh, no one needs this. No one needs to bear what I'm going through. So I'll handle it myself. Right.

But as as I've grown in my leadership and not just personally, but professionally, when I find myself struggling with a task at work, like I have become so it's taken such a long time for me, but it's it's easy now for me to say, raise my hand and say, hey, I need some help. Can you give me some perspective? Can you give me some support on this? And that just makes such a world, of difference. And especially when you do it from a place of just being vulnerable and saying, hey.

I'm not perfect. I need some help. That being able to to do that is so liberating. And I would encourage people to find that network, find those 1 or 2 people inside work that you can lean on in times of of feeling that way and drop your sense of pride to just say, hey. I wanna be better and I need some help.

And I love that you used the example earlier of weight lifting because that's the best example for it. The more you are willing to do small moments of reaching out for help, the bigger, you will be able to make that. You'll be able to ask for help on the things that truly matter most to you and accomplish greater goals than you can ever imagine if you're willing to take those small initial steps of saying, hey. Maybe I don't have every answer that has ever been.

Hopefully, that helps you, Sam, with some tasks and different strategies that we've used.

I think it's a great idea. I still struggle with the idea of saying I'm having a tough time being resilient at this moment. I think most guys are just gonna say string together 3 or 4 four letter words and talk about how life sucks at the moment. And so but maybe there's something good about that. Right?

So but I love this idea of finding that network, finding that group, finding that tribe, and leaning and relying on them. And I think it is so, inspiring. The group that you've created here at Ziegler, it goes back I think Araya shared this. I posted somewhere on social somewhere that automotive is the greatest industry of opportunity in the American economy right now. You can come with any background.

It doesn't matter, you know, your education level. It doesn't matter your your socioeconomics. And there was a a a person, a woman that posted the social angry and she said, it's not true. Women are not treated the same in automotive as men are. And we had an interesting back and forth conversation.

And I think what you're proving here with this is is that together supporting each other, we create more opportunity for each other. And you're inspiring each other and and you're also, helping all of us to see opportunities for for growth as you do it.

Yeah. I think that's a mindset thing. What you're sharing, Sam, is that people can choose to keep their blinders on and and not see opportunity or they can actually choose to see it. And, you know, like, okay. Historically, yeah.

Could we say that this, this industry has certainly been male dominated and even now? So our auto group contains 20 percent women, but what we have been provided, the space and opportunity to create a networking system with female leaders has been awesome and really changed a lot of different mindsets and leadership for other female leaders inside the organization and just provided a space for them to grow. So, yeah, definitely I love

it. And I would say, as opposed to, trying to encourage men to walk up to their friends and say I'm feeling particularly low resilience today.

Yeah. And and you do

that for the yeah. No. That's fair. I would expect that. It's the the methods that we choose to reach out to our friends has to be organic.

So instead, just asking a friend, it was like, hey. Can we grab a beer and just being honest? Hey. Let's talk about how things suck for a while. That's perfectly fine too.

There

is my verbiage. It's like, dude, this sucks. Let's go do something.

Yeah. We do This sucks. Let's go spend some time outside. Like, it's perfectly fine. It doesn't Yeah.

I feel like sometimes that prevents a lot of people from getting more help as they feel like it has to be this big grand thing. I'm just asking you to talk to someone you know if you're having a hard time. It's it doesn't have to be some fancy flowery big worded thing.

That's awesome. Well, Araya, we're gonna give you the last word. Doctor Candace Rayborn, super awesome that you're here. We appreciate you sharing your perspectives with us today. And I would say, most of all, we appreciate you for continuing to be in the automotive group even though you're a PhD now.

I think it is so cool that you're bringing that background, that experience to make your store better, to bless lives of your customers, and better to deliver that ultimate automotive experience. And Araya, to you, before you get that last word, thanks for putting this group together. It's fun to be a part of it kind of, like, outside in, you've allowed us as a podcast audience to join it. So, Araya, we'll give you the last words and, and we appreciate you all being here.

You know, I'm gonna give Candace the last word, but I am gonna end first my portion to just say thank you so much to Candice and for her knowledge and wisdom on sharing this and helping lead the charge on a survey and something that will really make a huge impact on female leaders inside the automotive industry. So, Candice, thank you so much. Thank you so much for your research and your time and and really sharing your knowledge with the auto group and our listeners out there. So, Candice, last words.

Last words from Candice. I did wanna once again say thank you for both the opportunity to be on the podcast and to both participate in the women's group and lead the women's group. The only last thing I would wanna say is that I agree a 100% with Sam. In the auto industry, the sky's the limit, whether that looks for you like, spending 18 years in school, whether that looks for you like becoming the best in sales or in service, you are the, arbiter of your fate. You are the architect of your destiny here.

And at Ziegler, you are with a group where there are people in place who can help you get there. You just have to connect with the right people.

Awesome. Thank you all. A huge thanks to Candace Rayborn and Araya Daniels for contributing to this week's episode. Until next week, how are you driving vision today?