BoA Partnership, Wholesale Prices Up, Tacos From Above, Stranded Tesla Rescue Squad

SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly

Paul Daly  00:26

Well, if Tuesdays are for troublemakers, what are Wednesdays for? I don't know. Well, wholesale starts with the W. But wholesale prices are up, tacos are coming down from the sky, coming down from the sky, from the sky, they literally, we're gonna talk about that in just a minute. We're also going to talk about loosens new partnership with Bank of America. It's doing some things, they're doing some things, they're making some trouble, we're gonna talk about the trouble, trouble knows no bounds. You can make trouble. If you're like a standalone TV company, you can anybody can make trouble. I think we're probably good examples of that. If we can do it. You can do it.

Kyle Mountsier  01:07

That's right. And we said this on Monday, actually, you said this on Monday. And I thought, I think it's just one of those things, we might make a shirt about it someday. It's like it, I think I think the quote was something to the effect of all innovation is trouble make trouble?

Paul Daly  01:24

Yes. And that's all all innovation is trouble. Yeah, I don't know why, but that that's true. And innovation just comes in. And there are people that have a vested interest in protecting what they've built, right? Because innovation is change. And there's always those who built like we do it, everybody does it, right? You have your little thing. You've built it, it's working, right? You don't want anything to ever change again, it's right where you want it, right. And then innovation comes along, and your job becomes to protect it. Now the difference between companies and people who make it and the ones that don't are the ones that say, change is inevitable. Innovation is inevitable. Let me absorb some innovation. Let me be willing to change and pivot but if you don't, you're

Kyle Mountsier  02:05

dying. Yeah, exactly. And we know that so to be so true, you know what's crazy, we just know that to be true right now. Like if you are alive, you know that change is inevitable, and not just inevitable, but advantageous. And yet, for some reason, we still have this like aversion to change as our

Paul Daly  02:23

hardwired it's hardwired, right set of those, Seth Godin calls it the lizard brain, right, your brain goes into survival, right? Because thanks survival mechanism, if you know what your situation is, you're not threatened but a second something changes right now your your attention is split, and you got to focus. It's just hardwired. And like that the neural neural paths that you have, we're getting into like neural paths this morning, I don't know how's it? I love it. But but the neural paths, the ones you like, establish early on in your life, you can never ever break them. You can't you're always going to default to that neural path. So if you were born and raised in a family that has you thinking a certain way, or in an environment or in a culture that has you thinking a certain way, guess what, you'll never be able to break that as being a very strong neuropathy. All you can do is work really hard to develop some other options and lanes around it.

Kyle Mountsier  03:11

Well, Paul biologie speaking of breaking Europass, segway oh my gosh,

Paul Daly  03:19

what is the Segway? Do it?

Kyle Mountsier  03:20

Check with me here. I love breaking neural pathways at conferences, specifically when I get the opportunity to speak. And we're actually throwing through a conference, I've heard about this, the sole purpose is to break the neural pathways of the way that we've always expected conferences to go down specifically in automotive retail. So as soda con is coming, we started to drop hints, and we're dropping like much larger hints of what's going on, we've got a link in the show notes that you can that you can stay close to it, you can go to a so to con.com and and be the first one we're actually there's there's a small subset of people that will literally get the first email, it won't be our mass email, it won't be anything like that will get the first email. So if you haven't signed up there do that. But we're holding it not in a conference room, not in a hotel, we're doing some unique things that will actually serve to break the neural pathways of everything that you expect to come at you so that you can absorb learning absorb conversations and connect a lot quicker. And and actually what we're going to probably accomplish in less than 48 hours will be more than what you could could accomplish an any other week long conference, we really believe the attention to detail. We truly

Paul Daly  04:35

believe that you're gonna love it. And we've been on I don't know, 50 calls at this point seven, you know, feels like 780. But we've talked to so many potential collaborators for the event. We're not having any sponsors. So you know, we're having collaborators, and everyone has been like, this seems really exciting. Yes. Right. And so we're actually going to be in Philly tomorrow. We're all the team. You know, a lot of us you and me, Danielle. All our event planner Alko treat, we're all flying to Philly. Tomorrow, we're going to be meeting with the event venue, we're meeting with the hotels, we're going to be at the grand opening of siopa Subaru flagship Subaru store, which we have some plans with that store and the event novel how novel having the heart of an automotive conference in an odd the conference centers, Kyle conference center workshop rooms just inspire me to build better retail. Yes. And so we're doing that, more to come on that but go to a CIO to con.com and get your name in there. So you can be the first to know and mark this on your calendar. And you see it on the screen. If you're watching September 11. Through the 13th, it's going to be a Sunday night, full day, Monday, half day on Tuesday. We also have pitch tank coming up in just an hour and 10 minutes. So pitch tank, if you don't know what it is, it's a room on clubhouse where three vendors will pitch their products and only three minutes, expert panel will ask questions about the product and the process. They'll all get scored on their presentation and product quality and there will be a winner. But the real winner are the people in the room that actually learn about three different products very quickly. Right. And the expert panel, Kyle is one of the experts on the panel, they asked the questions and pull up the insights that you probably didn't even know you should ask, and probably some of the questions that you already had. So check us out. If you go to a so to dot club ASO t u dot c l q b You can link up to the clubhouse from from there. And we got URLs on URLs as we do we you and I get really excited when we're like, oh, is it available? Yes. And so fun story we had to pay for a CIO to.com. Like we actually somebody was holding that domain. I think we paid 1500 bucks for it. But all the other ones that we bought, like we're good asotu con, asotu club. aso tube. Yeah, so t u.bp. That's my favorite. Okay, let's talk about some news. Let's get into it. Bank of America has partnered with lucid motors to create a seamless financing experience online. So they're calling it lucid financial services. It allows the checkout process and the financing to be fully enveloped in one digital experience with loan options, lease options, you can pick 2436 48 months. And here we have a quote here from from the CEO, Lucid Air customers have requested flexible financing options, including lease and loan purchase, many of them preferring 100% digital experience. So they're looking to develop a best in class, you know, to just their luxury brands. So like the checkout should be a luxury process. It should be. And so, you know, the the takeaway, I mean, it's pretty obvious, right? It's pretty obvious, right? indicators or indicators, people want this process, we have it in our power as retail automotive to deliver this process. And yeah, you can say but they're fully integrated tech stack, they can do whatever they want, guess what we know of people doing it. Yeah, we know people doing it. We're not idealist. This actually happens that but

Kyle Mountsier  08:01

like, just push the boundaries a little bit. Right, incrementally connections that you've never thought of making, we talked about at the beginning, be innovative, seek change, understand that, that you might have to think outside of the box push partners push push each other to get to the finish line. And it may take like a serious focus effort, and research and development and business development. But any dealer that's not doing that level of r&d is going to miss out on real opportunities. And whether you're a single point or a group dealer, you have the capacity to do this actually automotive I think because of the various partners that execute business strategies based on what we need, at a certain dealer level, are more equipped to do this in a quicker in a quicker mode than maybe even some of these big box retailers.

Paul Daly  08:49

You know, I didn't I mean, I don't know if I should have been more familiar with lucid, lucid lineup, but I didn't realize they were so expensive. They. So they start and they all like that the different price ranges, they started at $7,400. They top out the top starting price, I'm probably it's more expensive, is $169,400. I know there's probably a lot different under the hood and in the vehicle. But it looks exactly the same on this site. Right? If you look at it, and so I did a little math, and it starts if we can either we can either measure the price of loosens lineup in dollars, or I think more effectively in chevy bolts. So loosens the base level entry price is 3.28 Chevy bolts, and it tops out at 6.36 Chevy bolts. So that's gonna be my new standard of measurement and

Kyle Mountsier  09:38

both can start fires. Oh, too soon, was that too soon?

Paul Daly  09:43

But if you just calculate the amount of people you can transport in 6.36 Chevy Volts versus one Lucid Air, it's substantially different. True.

Kyle Mountsier  09:54

Right, these are just facts that we just bring me the facts.

Paul Daly  09:56

Just the just the important facts on Wednesdays moving on Manheim just released a report and said that may, wholesale used car prices have ticked up in April. So we were looking at kind of like a little bit of a decline. You know, I thought it was a cooling off. But Manheim saying they're at point 7%. In May up 10% year over year, but month over month is really the more important metric at this point. Are they trending up? Are they trending down? So what are we gonna do with that?

Kyle Mountsier  10:24

Well, I think what we're gonna do with that is continue to understand that the used car market is gonna stay strong for a significant amount of time. Like, we're not everybody keeps saying like, Oh, q2, or q3, we're gonna recover the used car market, we're gonna see downturn. You know, I do think we had the discussion on all things use cars last week. And I think if you're not paying attention to all things use cars this week, you definitely should, because we're talking about turn rates and use cars. But we were talking about, like, how much is too much? Like, what's the barrier of entry for acquiring a used car. And the reality is, is that it's not going backwards yet. And so, you know, from a used car manager, or from an operator perspective, or from from even just a communication to customer, so your salesperson or BDC. Rep, just recognizing that this is still a continued uptrend, is is really important, and to not get caught, you know, quote, unquote, with your pants down, but to make sure that you understand, like, you can't stop pressing the gas on us cars, especially with new car inventory. I mean, we've talked to multiple dealers that just literally aren't getting any more cars in June. Right.

Paul Daly  11:30

So I write it's June 8, and we're done.

Kyle Mountsier  11:33

Yep. And then and then the reality is, and this this was in the article, too, that only 74% of tax returns have been released as of May 20. And recognizing that prior to that last year, 100% of tags, they were

Paul Daly  11:47

right, they were all out by this point. They're saying, hey, there's still there's still more tax return money to be pumped into the market.

Kyle Mountsier  11:53

Exactly. So disposable income is still available. And and we talked about this yesterday, there's this concern on rising gas prices, there's still disposable income for rising gas prices, and that translates to vehicle purchases. So just know like, continue to pressing into the market, continuing to press into use car marketing and brand awareness on what you have available and how you can meet the customer where they are, is like don't stop that strategy. Don't stop that strategy out of fear is kind of the idea here.

Paul Daly  12:24

So yesterday, we mentioned that consumers are electing to spend their money on traveling experiences more than stuff. Yes. Right. So for the auto industry, back to your original point, right? There's disposable income. And there's just a desire to allocate income to things related to moving around in a vehicle, which is going to translate to more sales, more maintenance, etc. And we've mentioned clubhouse once already, we're mentioning it again, because the all things use car clubhouse room that we host that David Long created and we kind of power it, it is the best place I can imagine anyone in the used car division of your dealership to spend an hour because the minute talk to a owner,

Kyle Mountsier  13:09

I talked to an owner or a CEO of a 17 store group yesterday. And this person said literally I don't get on clubhouse at all, except for to make sure that it's in his schedule. He's the CEO of a 17 rooftop group. And says like, that's important enough for me to place on my schedule.

Paul Daly  13:30

It's the best kept secret and used cars in automotive hands down the all things used car cars clubhouse room on Fridays at 9am. Eastern, listen to this title for this week. Because this is not a place where you're gonna hear one person telling you what you should do, you are going to hear contradicting arguments on what other people are doing, which is the beauty of it. Because there's no one way to do use cars. And here in California

Kyle Mountsier  13:55

to Ohio to Florida. It's not like some guy just like one group in Idaho from

Paul Daly  14:02

a vendor somewhere just saying, here's what you should do. I've never sold a car. So here's the deal. here's the here's the grenade that gets rolled into the room this week. Right? Here's the room title. Is it time to get back to a 30 day supply and a strict 60 day turn. That's a hand grenade that gets rolled into the room. There's going to be meaningful discussion around that. And my guess is the My guess is the answer is probably no. But what's going to come out in all the discussion is going to be the strategies and tactics that people are deploying. And you should definitely be there. I mean, every week there's over 100 people having this conversation there should be 10,000 with maybe not 10,000 At least 2000 I like that sounds great. There shouldn't be 10,000 get rowdy up and you're alright we have two quick fun ones for for the end of the show today. If especially for all the Taco Bell fans out there because they do have a cult following and a really awesome Twitter account. Taco Bell has just opened its

Kyle Mountsier  14:58

I felt like that was the sound that has to go alongside. That's

Paul Daly  15:01

the sound that it makes when your food descends from the, from the second level restaurant and it comes down through the tube. So you can take it out while you're sitting in your car. That's the sound that plays doing. Right? So they opened their defi restaurant concept with if you've ever been in a beach town, and you know that, like all the houses are on pylons, right, exactly what I thought the same thing. I was like, this is like house in Ocean City, New Jersey. Yeah, right. So basically, the restaurant is designed to let you have a two minute or less experience at the restaurant you can order on your phone, it's designed with third party delivers Uber Eats and Grubhub in mind, you can order in your app, scan your QR code and your food comes down from the restaurant that's on the second level, the kitchen that's on the second level, and it is in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. And this is full on digital first mindset. Look,

Kyle Mountsier  15:53

it's not okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna be a contrarian there, do it. I actually don't think it's, it's digital. First. It's consumer first, it's like they imagined every part of the there's a place where you can go inside, there's a place where you can do the drive thru. There's a real intentionality around speed and speed of delivery. And there's an intentionality on pickup and delivery, right. So they were intentional about every step of the process, in the way that they designed their brick and mortar building. And if you're, if you've heard anything from us over the past 200 and some odd episodes, the reality that we need to be looking at the way our businesses are structured from a brick and mortar perspective, to meet the customer, wherever they're at, utilizing the brick and mortar to deliver those expect to be like the center hub for those experiences, right? The brick and mortar is the center hub for the digital experience. The brick and mortar is for the in person, the brick and mortar is the center hub for the delivery experience, all of that stuff can be crafted and curated out of a redefined retail experience in as the showroom. And so don't think like you're building the showroom only for the showroom experience you're building the real the place where your people work, to deliver and define all the experiences across digital or physical. Does that make sense? It makes

Paul Daly  17:23

complete sense. And, you know, what I also love is that for those of you who really appreciate that experience with an apathetic person on their phone while they're taking your order, you can still do that, because they've dedicated one lane to that experience. So if you want to go for the nostalgia, right, you can still have that experience too. They have one of their four lanes is dedicated to an actual person taking the order and everybody else is going to order online or go through their phone. But you know,

Kyle Mountsier  17:51

what's crazy, is I bet you all the workers there don't come across with an apathetic tone out of that one. Not at that place. Right? I work here. I mean a level like there's a there's a upscaling to my job capacity just because of the place that I work

Paul Daly  18:07

at is so true. Again, this thing that that person probably doesn't have to listen to the kitchen noises because the kitchen is on the second floor. So it's good. Hey, so they're doing things they're making trouble that they're even talking about.

Kyle Mountsier  18:21

There's a there's an a solo trip to Minnesota in the West just there

Paul Daly  18:25

to talk about wasn't open. It wasn't open. Yeah, we're gonna do this. We need to it's been a long time since

Kyle Mountsier  18:30

I've had Taco Bell. Me too. A long time. I don't know if they can fix the Taco Bell out of the Taco Bell.

Paul Daly  18:35

I don't I don't know. I think I'm just too old. I can't handle the Taco Bell. Alright, this last story is a whole lot of fun so best for us we love surprise and delight we've talked about retail retail love surprise and delight. You'd love to get something that you didn't know was coming that is cool, right? It's stickers in a package or a little gift or whatever it is. So Ford lightning owners got a little surprise and delight when an accessory that wasn't on the accessory list showed up with their new truck and you know what it is? It is a Tesla rescue kits it is an adapter that will fit into a Tesla because for talks a lot about its dual direction charging you can use your ford f 150 Lightning to power your house and power equipment. Well they attached a little adapter so when you see those stranded Tesla's Guess what? You can actually rescue the stranded Tesla's Jim Farley on his Twitter account. He said not trolling. Just helpful Bull. I believe that when he's Twitter like it is it is.

Kyle Mountsier  19:37

Oh my goodness, I can't even the level of so good. Is the one time where 111 room in the in the corporate space was like everybody in the room was like, Oh, right. Nobody was like that's a weird name. intern came up with that idea. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. An intern came

Paul Daly  20:03

well, well, kudos for Ford for adopting a little of, you know, pop culture like this is how you can do business. You can do it fun. You can do it in a helpful way some user you know, some for f150 Lightning owners have gotten stickers that say, Tesla rescue unit, they put it, you know, they put it on their thing, but, you know, slow clap like, well, well. Well played for it. Well played. Oh, that's all the time we have for today. We hope you had a good time with us. We hope you have a little energy and inspiration to get into your day and actually go do something, make some change. Think about what's going on in your store. Just get up there and get some

‍