A Sense Of Humor Defensive Driving

Texas Defensive Driving This Ain’t Our First Rodeo A Sense of Humor, Inc. has been saving lives through education since 1992. What began as a classroom business focused on delivering top-notch educational value, customer service, and genuine enjoyment grew into the largest defensive driving organization in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. In recognition of our consistently outstanding customer satisfaction, The Power Group named A Sense Of Humor Defensive Driving the #1 choice in the industry. In the fall of 2004—twelve years into our journey—we launched a “home version”: a State of Texas approved online driving safety course at ASenseOfHumorDriving.com. Just like our classroom course, the online version was built on the belief that drivers learn more and actually enjoy the experience when they’re having some “serious fun.” Our online instructor, Eddie, shares his humorous story of becoming a better defensive driver, and along the way you’ll meet his wife Betty, his kids Garth and Ginger, and even his dog Harvey. I’m sure online defensive driving with Eddie is great… but what ever happened to the real-life instructors? This is where the story gets interesting. In early 2005, the original owner of A Sense of Humor was so delighted with Eddie and the online crew’s success that he closed his brick-and-mortar classrooms. That’s where I come in. At that time, my side hustle for about five years had been teaching in those very classrooms—and suddenly I found myself replaced by a computer. Disheartening? Absolutely. Not in a “Terminator, rise of the machines” way, but more like a “Well, crap, how am I going to make my car payment now?” way. Enter my son, the side-hustle king. Barely 20 years old, he convinces the owner to hire him as an IT guy. Any IT experience? Nope. Unwavering confidence that he could fake it till he made it? You bet. A short while into his tenure, my kid had seen enough to realize that online defensive driving was a growth industry—internet adoption was speeding up, and drivers certainly weren’t slowing down. So he decided I should write a course and we’d go into business ourselves. And this is the fairy-tale ending, right? Not so fast. We wrote the course, jumped through every hoop for state approval, scraped together funding, and hung our shingle on the web. But instead of ringing cash registers, all we heard were crickets. When it was over, we weren’t even back to square one—we were several steps into the basement. We found a buyer for the course, paid off our investor, and signed a non-compete that should have kept us out of the defensive driving business for the foreseeable future. I went back to my day job. For the kid? Not so much. Fast-forward a couple of years, still deep in that non-compete. Did I mention my son is a bit of a hustler? While I’d accepted that we’d tried and failed, he kept digging in, learning the industry and figuring out how we could have made it work. Once he cracked the code, he even figured out how to wrangle us free of that non-compete with a handful of magic beans. Back to the drawing board for me to write another course. After another round of hoop-jumping and scrambling for dollars, this time it clicked. We helped enough drivers dismiss tickets and save on insurance that we could both eat regularly and sleep indoors. I even quit my day job. Nice story, but what does any of that have to do with A Sense of Humor? A year or so in, we needed new office space. Once again, my outside-the-box-thinking son had an idea. Both of us had a long relationship with the owner of A Sense of Humor, and his facility had some extra room. Never mind that we’d be competitors sharing the same address—he scheduled a meeting to talk about leasing space. I wished him luck on what I assumed was a fool’s errand and went about my day. Hours later, he called me with news I didn’t see coming. Instead of laughing (or forcibly shoving) him out of the office, the owner made a counter offer: why rent a space when you can just buy the building—and the business along with it? So that’s exactly what we did. So one of the original pioneers of Texas online defensive driving became your Prince Charming? Weird, right? That’s how the Sense of Humor story comes full circle. After helping the original owner earn enough to become an online pioneer, only to be fired because a flesh-and-blood instructor had become redundant, I wound up buying the very beast that made me obsolete. Tale as old as time… I’m telling you all this because here’s what matters: we’ve been doing this a while, and we’re pretty good at it. You could do a whole lot worse than choosing a course from A Sense of Humor. Nearly half a million drivers have already benefited, and it’s easier than ever to take. We’ve recently given the course a much-needed facelift (you remember what websites looked like in the late ’90s, right?) and, thanks to changes in state law, defensive driving now offers printable certificates—making the process of getting it done and getting the court off your back faster and simpler than ever. A fresh interface, free audio read-along, and printable certificates are just a few reasons why choosing one of the oldest names in online defensive driving is the easy call. What are you waiting for? Get started today!