Turning 30 and unsure of my career!

[carl_green]

Morning all,

TL;DR How can i bag a decent job in the motoring industry?

I've been a long time PHer and am an avid fan of anything motoring related be it cars, bikes, quads even traction engines and boats.

I come to you looking for some words of wisdom. i'm 30, work a pretty good job 8-4 Monday to Friday however I've constantly lusted after a job somewhere using my passion for the motoring industry.
I'm good with my hands, have a good mechanical knowledge and am confident in diagnosing issues however i have no formal training.

I am also well read and knowledgeable when it comes to new cars and bikes and would love the opportunity to get back into a customer facing role and put my knowledge to good use in sales but with no sales experience i feel i'll get rejected immediately.

I'm also a keen detailer and often wonder if my skills could be put to better use elsewhere rather than my own cars.

I would love to go to work do my job and go home feeling as though i have accomplished something.

I live out on the Suffolk, Essex border and there are several small business' out our way where i think i would love to work but it seems these places very rarely have any vacancies.

i would love to hear from you guys if anyone has had any similar experience and how one went about fulfilling this desire. Turning 30 really got me thinking and working in the same job for 10 years with little to no progress makes me wonder if it's really what i want.

Thanks

Carl

[DillonL]

Why not try starting small steps. Do some mobile detailing outside of work hours for a fair price. See if you can build some regular customers and hope for good word of mouth referrals. Might be a good way of testing the waters without having to take a big risk by quitting the day job.

[Pig benis]

In my early 20s (30 now) I thought being a car salesman would be brilliant. I'd be around cars all the time, and talking about my favourite topic all day.... The reality was far from this. Car sales is all about targets and from my experience, your colleagues will be utter s and customers are a real PITA. I would never recommend this job to anybody, it was the absolute pits.

It sounds like you enjoy detailing. Maybe setup an FB business page, start advertising and see where that goes?

[Fast Bug]

Pig benis said:

In my early 20s (30 now) I thought being a car salesman would be brilliant. I'd be around cars all the time, and talking about my favourite topic all day.... The reality was far from this. Car sales is all about targets and from my experience, your colleagues will be utter s and customers are a real PITA. I would never recommend this job to anybody, it was the absolute pits

That's when you should've switched to fleet sales. More money, no weekends or bank holidays and when you move up to large fleet, working from home

[carl_green]

Thank you all so far, my thoughts were to start a facebook page and do some detailing on the side so i'll give that a go however has anyone done this when there are a couple of others local doing the same thing?

i'm not sure i want to go and be self employed though, i kind of like the certainty of getting paid at the end of the month.

[sparks_190e]

Working in a car dealership is soul destroying, don't do that. Also, there won't be many of them left in the next 10-20 years. I'd say most dealership employees couldn't give a stuff about cars, and your passion for them could very well suffer too.

Your detailing idea sounds good. Get the word out and see how you go.

[Pig benis]

Fast Bug said:

That's when you should've switched to fleet sales. More money, no weekends or bank holidays and when you move up to large fleet, working from home

Tbh at the time when I left this industry, I was so disheartened that I decided to never go back. Instead, I landed a job in IT and am now a network engineer. It is far more me, I guess some people just aren't cut out for sales.