I’m reaching the end of my tether and cant help my husband as he won’t let himself be helped!
my husband is a self employed driving instructor. He quit a decently paid job in hotel management in 2019 due to stress and ridiculous hours. It was my idea, enabling him to pursue this new career. Due to covid he ended up without a job for 21 months. When he started I expected it to be slow to begin with then pick up and increase. It just hasn’t. I hear everywhere about instructors with waiting lists and he works about 12-16 hours a week. As an observer, I think this is down to him.
- he doesn’t advertise. Anywhere. At all. Just his branding on his car
- He ignores or doesn’t notice new enquiries in his emails or texts for days at a time. Takes him several days to respond to them
- when responding he answers the specific question they asked and not much more. Doesn’t sell himself. Doesn’t follow up a few days later. Doesn’t offer to call.
- Doesn’t want to work evenings or weekends. We compromised a while ago that he would work Saturdays because evenings and weekends is where the demand is. For a while he had 3 back to back lessons Saturdays. Now has 1 and hasn’t filled the spaces.
I have made suggestions for advertising, advertised for him on Nextdoor and Facebook, joined him into Facebook driving groups, offered to keep an eye on his emails and let him know when new ones come in, responded to his Facebook enquiries, responded to the Nextdoor enquiries, offered to print leaflets. In response I get negative comments about how I am always criticising or nagging him to do better. We’ve had many a chat where I explain this isn’t the case, we simply cannot long term support our family on 14 hours a week, I offer more suggestions, I offer more help. Usually he shuts me down by saying “yeah” then not engaging further. Tonight I kept pushing and he said he is worried he is bad at the job because pupils fail their tests. We looked up stats and found 35% pass rate round us so actually his rate is really good. I’ve suggested he undergo any training he feels he needs to improve if it would improve his confidence - he shut that down saying it would cost too much. All suggestions get shut down. Leaflets are ineffective, he doesn’t know when he gets emails, he doesn’t want his email alerts on, he doesn’t like the idea of approaching shop owners to display posters, he doesn’t want to ask in the driving instructor WhatsApp group where other people advertise, he is very busy “cooking dinner” so can’t always reply to people (at this I had to comment “you weren’t cooking dinner for 3 days!”),
he’s now saying he is really worried about the autumn as 3 of his 10 students on the books are due to pass and leave. I again suggested advertising to be met with a heavy sigh and a yeah maybe.
I feel like I’m at my wits end with it. He earned £7k last year! We’ve just spent £12k on a new car for him, added dual controls and branding another £1k. I traded MY car in to allow him to do this, and now have his old instructing car. I have supported us now for 4 years and have had to up my contract to more hours to continue to do so. I feel like he just doesn’t have any motivation to push his business forward.
what can I do?? I have bent over backwards to support his choice and he doesn’t seem to care whether it sinks or swims.