Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] All right. 0:26 If you know, you know. We do a morning show every single day. It starts with this music. It starts with some conversation around audio, and maybe the music stopped. Wuh-oh. Oh. Dun, dun, dun. 0:40 [laughs] There's this really big, like, bass drop. There's a big dr- drop. Apparently it's gone. I know, I know. 0:46 [laughs] We wanna thank our breakfast sponsors, Guidepoint and Juniper, for make- uh, if everybody seems like we're enjoying some break- It's too good. [upbeat music] Let's hear it for them. Oh, there's the music. 0:55 There's the music. There it is. On cue. Just like every morning. Well, good morning, everybody. 1:02 Um, you know, this is a, uh, breakfast on day one of an event and we were so excited to see that, like, a lot of people are really ready to go. 1:11 There's another 50 people in the Wok n' Breakfast that are really ready to go. There's nuts in there, yeah. And, um, we're just happy to be here. Yeah. I think- Absolutely. 1:18 Well, first of all, we do this podcast every single day. We do. It's called the Automotive Troublemaker. If you don't listen, if you're listening and you're not at a SoDoCon- That's a lot of people... 1:26 why aren't you at a SoDoCon? If you're at a SoDoCon and you haven't listened before, welcome to the show. 1:32 Um, this is a show where every morning we kinda talk about what's going on in the world, what's going on in news, uh, in the world of auto, in the world of auto retail. 1:40 And so today we actually kinda get to just talk about what we're doing. I know. And we have Michael Cirillo- Oh, hi, guys... on the show. How's it going? Hey. Michael, you have some applause. I got nothing. 1:52 I was just gonna say who, who all- You really have nothing... who all's already listening to the Troublemaker? You guys already subscribed? You got any cl- like, subscribe- All right... download. Okay, okay. Comment. 2:00 Okay. Awesome. U- usually when I ask that my mom texts. Yeah. And she's like, "I listen." "I love you, honey." "Sorry, sweetheart." Yeah, I know. Well, usually just so you know, it's usually 10 minutes, 10:15 maybe. 2:13 Yeah. Unless we get a little long in the tooth. 2:14 Um- [laughs] And we- we'll cover, like, two or three stories that are, like, the pressing, like, the cover stories in Automotive News or Reuters, Wall Street Journal, and we also bring a little bit of retail, um, s- news into it, right? 2:26 Because we pay attention to what retailers are doing because I don't know if you noticed, but we are retailers. 2:31 And so we wanna keep that mindset dripping into the Daily Drip of not just you, but we made it so you can share it with your staff, your management team, um, your service team. 2:41 'Cause we have something for everybody, and we believe that the more people are looking and listening to the same things, it gets us thinking in the same way and the same trajectory, and, uh, we can make some real change in the industry- Yeah. 2:51 I think-... step at a time... 2:51 a lot of times, you know, when, when you're looking at, and, and I sold cars for a long time, uh, worked throughout a dealership, when you look at news like Rivian announces the RT1, you know, or Elon Musk decided to drop, you know, cars eight grand, or Toyota is building a new plant, or, um, even in retail, Walmart's extending education for employees, and some of the stories that we've covered over the last five or six months, or even some of the UAW talks, it's hard to recognize, you know, how do I get the news that is more broadly in our industry, uh, potentially available on auto networks or other networks, how do I get that to the ground? 3:30 What's important for me day to day to make decisions about how I'm gonna interact with customers or how I'm gonna interact with my fellow employees? And like you said, I think it's 3:41 this alignment of everybody going, we know that understanding the broader industry can bring something to our day to day. 3:49 And if there's enough alignment across the store and everybody's talking about and thinking about the same things, you start to, you start to see those things impact the way that maybe, uh, you're doing your next product presentation. 4:02 Or maybe you see something about the way that retail is engaging consumers and you integrate that into your service processes. 4:09 I think that that's important for us as an industry and something we don't pay attention to enough. We're all consumers. 4:16 We're all out there in the world seeing these things, experiencing these things, and we don't recognize, oh, other consumers are experiencing seeing these things, and they would want to experience similar things in, in our businesses. 4:27 I mean, y- you think about it, this is exactly why we do what we do, and we put people in a room like this, and everybody comes together to have meaningful conversations, not just to listen to the news like the past generations might have. 4:40 Like, I know my parents' generation who were just like- Easy... "You see what happened?" Easy. And then they complain about it over their 79 cent cup of McDonald's coffee. Ugh. Okay, maybe it's $1.50 now with inflation. 4:50 Well, you know what I'm saying. But, you know, so Michael, Michael, if you don't know Michael- We wanna talk about it... he is an, he is a cur- old curmudgeon in a young man's body. What are you trying to say? 4:58 [laughs] And a Canadian all at the same time. I don't know that. What are you trying to say? But he did. [laughs] I know it's mean. A curmudgeon. So, um, who... 5:06 I would love to understand what people think are the most, what's at the top of your mind as far as pressing issues? 5:13 Because we hear a lot of rhetoric, I think, in the news, especially if you're not listening to things like Automotive News, CBT, you know, Automotive Marketing. 5:21 If you're not reading, like, the automotive specific ones, it's pretty staggering what the rhetoric happens in the public and what's happening in your consumers' minds because they're watching CNBC or Fox or Yahoo Finance, and they're, like, hearing about the EV market, and they're hearing about finance rates, right? 5:36 There's a different narrative being spun from your perspective. And if, I don't know if we're gonna get anybody to shout it out, but, like, what's at the top of the list? 5:44 Like, what do you think consumers care the most about right now? CDP. CDP. CD. Someone said CDP's. [laughs] All right. How many consumers- That was the best... know what a C... That's amazing. [laughs] That's amazing. 5:57 I have no idea what you do. Just kidding. Monthly payment. Monthly payment. Monthly payment. Oh. How many people would agree with that? That right now, a lot of hands. Yeah. What else? 6:06 What else is top of mind for consumers?Educating salespeople Educating salespeople. Educating salespeople. You think consumers are thinking, "Oh, they want educated salespeople." They want- Right. 6:17 They do, especially with EVs coming to market. Yes, Nigel. You have to meet Nigel. He's got a glowing name tag back there- [laughs]... and he is an EV expert. That's amazing. 6:25 No, that's true because there's a lot of, there's a lot, especially in EVs, right, there's a lot of misconceptions- Yeah... about what they are and aren't. Should I get one? Should I not get one? 6:32 My sister asked me just the other day. She, she's like, "Oh, I wanna get a new car." She's in a Highlander right now. 6:38 She wants to give it to her son who just got his license and, and she's like, "I, I only wanna spend, like, $300 a month." Right? And I was like- So you mean monthly payments. Right. 6:47 So we got payments, and then I was like, "Well, the cars that happen to have $300 a month payments right now are electric." That's wild. And she, and she was like, "Are they any good?" Like, she had no idea. Yeah, yeah. 6:59 Right? And we ta- Literally, I talked her through all the pros and cons, and she happens to be a person who only drives, like, 70 miles a day. She's a teacher. She would be able to have a charger at home. 7:12 And I was like, "You know what? This Hyundai IONIQ 5 might be a really, really- Could work out for you, yeah... good fit for you." 7:17 But that just went to show me, like, even- The education level needed to get to that point, yeah. There's a lot of questions. But it, but it was, it was, like... And I knew. Right. 7:24 But I can imagine if she was around the table with the rest of my family, right, my other siblings, like, it would, I... The conversation would only go, like, "Oh, you mean the Tesla?" Yeah. Right? 7:34 Well, and you- if you think to the future how quickly, if we're not paying attention, the future will happen. 7:40 We talked about this on the show, I can't remember, on an Auto Collabs podcast, and I'm like, "Dude, my, my son's first experience driving a car will be an EV," 'cause that's- Yeah. 7:49 Uh, he's not allowed to touch my truck. Well, my kids who are in the room- [laughs] This, this was a crazy one. This is, like, just thinking about how peop- how people are perceiving gas- Right... or what your tank has. 8:00 Mm-hmm. Like, kids, wh- when I grew up, it was like, you got less than a quarter tank, you know, I'll go get gas, right? Nobody talks in quarter tanks these days. 8:09 Am I the only one that used to steal it from the lawnmower in the shed? [laughs] Oh, my gosh. To reverse siphon that thing right back in. Michael. Michael. You get at least $1.50 of gas out of that deal. 8:18 [laughs] Canadian? Yeah. But they think about- Canadian, oh, okay [laughs]... how many miles are left, right? And so the transition between gas or electric is not, you know... 8:26 Like, talking about how many miles you have left in your tank is actually different than talking about what percentage of your tank is left, right? Right. Culture of vernacular. Yep. You understand the phone. Yep. 8:37 Well, charge percentage. Yeah. And so that's important- Plug it in... 8:40 because a lot of us who've been in auto for so long, like, even just our internal vernacular has not been as quick to change as the way that consumers are- Right... seeing the retail industry. 8:49 And so, uh, I think paying attention to the way that consumers are perceiving our industry is extremely important. Yeah. Well- So- Go ahead... the whole, the whole perception isn't reality, it's one's reality. Yeah. 9:00 And that's kind of the point. 9:01 If you look at teenagers who are going to learn to drive on EVs with whatever the market rate adoption is for EVs right now, fast-forward seven years when that was their only driving experience and what the adoption rate on EVs will be then- Wow... 9:17 that's what we need to be looking to the future. 9:19 Because similar to how my th- my, my daughter, when she was two and a half years old, could use my smartphone better than I could because it, she was born into this ecosystem. Right. 9:29 What are, what is the driving ecosystem and consumer ecosystem gonna look like when their first reference point was an electric vehicle? 9:36 Well, one of the things I'm excited about is I know we're gonna have a lot of these conversations for the next two days. And, and we always say at a SoToCon, like, we don't finish conversations, we start conversations. 9:47 Yep. And so, um, that's what we try to do every morning on the show. That's what we're doing right here at breakfast. 9:52 Hopefully, it spurs a little thinking, um, a little, a little nugget, something that you can start to ask, explore a little bit on your own. 9:58 Everyone has a different perspective in this room, which is great, 'cause everybody's approaching the challenges and the problems from a different angle. Hold on, I have a sign. I brought a sign. Pick it up. 10:08 Oh, we got, we got a sign. Okay. We went old school. We went print media- [laughs]... for this one. Right there. If you have your phone right now- Move your hand. Turn around... and you scan... 10:16 Oh, you're trying to put it up. Oh, it's on the sc- On the screen. I don't know where to look. Do I look in the middle? Oh, it's funny. It's better if you scan the QR code. You do it. 10:21 You- If you're not following us on LinkedIn- Each of us doing one of them... you can do that by, by putting your... Can you get it? You got it right there? What? Okay. 10:29 If everyone takes a picture of this, it'll bring you to our LinkedIn page. 10:32 Um, a lot of conversation has, happens around the topic, so if you want a little drip feed, uh, we would love for you to be a part of the, the LinkedIn page community. That's kind of where everyone aggregates. 10:41 You can pull the sign down. You can roll the outro music. [outro music] Oh, they were on point with that. Oh, already ready for it. All right. We're really excited. We're gonna do this again tomorrow morning. 10:51 If you come to breakfast, we're gonna do the show, but we have an amazing- Watch Dave Greenfeld on- Greenfeld's with us tomorrow. But you know what to do. We got a lot coming up. 10:59 We have an amazing opening segment, too, so don't miss it. We'll see you all soon. Enjoy your breakfast. [singing] I'll never calling it quits. Bigger money, bigger problems. Yeah. What they said to me. 11:10 I don't ever worry 'cause the stress don't get to me. Live and direct from the mi-
