Ford Ahead of Schedule, Consumer’s Show Up for Auto Show, MSRP for Charity

Paul Daly  0:22  

Happy Wednesday, troublemakers we have a lot to talk about today Ford's lightning launch ahead of schedule come on consumer showing up at the Auto Show. And it's national cold brew day, which is really good news for a father. The people really want to know who isn't who I think I think the fact that it's national cold brew day is so appropriate, Kyle, because we were just talking Kyle was like, today's gonna be one of those days, I can always tell and you could let

Kyle Mountsier  0:49  

me give everybody my address that's on that's listening right now. I'll do that. And I'll give I'll give you my address as well as the closest places to order cold brew through DoorDash. Alrighty, everyone get on?

Paul Daly  1:06  

Oh my gosh, yeah. So Kyle, we were going on the phone and he was like, you know, sometimes that that 4am Whether you want to or not wake up because you have a baby is that day and that day is today, man that day

Kyle Mountsier  1:17  

is today and we're gonna make it it's gonna be all right. We're gonna have a fun day. But yeah, sometimes you just like my wife. On the baby. It's like six o'clock, we're trying to get the kids ready and I'm staring into the distance. She's like, you with a smile. I was like, Oh,

Paul Daly  1:34  

you just kind of get the baby. They're just longingly looking into the corner of the room. There's nothing even

Kyle Mountsier  1:40  

thinking about. I was like, nope, nope, not even thinking about

Paul Daly  1:44  

it. I'm just realizing constantly that I am awake right now. So strangely enough that his national cold brew day. I didn't even know I don't even know how I got on some Dunkin Donuts email list. Maybe it's because like, I have like a reward. At some point. I never get emails from Dunkin Donuts. But I did today. I was like, is it National COVID Day, are they making this up? Well, apparently, up until two years ago, there was no national cold brew day. But cold brew apparently has been around for a really long time. So of course, I had to like look it up, right this morning, as I'm preparing the show? Well, let's find out what what this is all about. So in the 17th century, Japan, we find references the cold brew coffee. When French troops fought against Algeria in 1840. They use cold brew to combat the heat. My question is seems smart, but I haven't really I have a question. All right, go shoot in 1840. And they're fighting. Where are they gettingthe ice? are the refrigeration.

Kyle Mountsier  2:45  

Well, so for cold brew coffee, you don't technically need the refrigeration,

Paul Daly  2:49  

I guess you have to let it steep a really, really, really long time.

Kyle Mountsier  2:53  

The whole point is that it takes like 12 hours to brew, I guess.

Paul Daly  2:57  

But isn't it just like normal temperature water normal beverage? Like me either way. I was like, I have questions. I always have questions.

Kyle Mountsier  3:06  

But after you make cold brew, you sit in my room temperature water, and then you add ice later on.

Paul Daly  3:13  

I thought you had it let it steep in the refrigerator. Well, I

Kyle Mountsier  3:16  

think most people do that these days, you know, because sanitary reasons and things like that sanitation and stuff. After a

Paul Daly  3:24  

brief disappearance called restored back into the limelight, recently, in 2018, it represented $339.4 million in sales and a projected 1.6 3 billion by 2025. At least it didn't say 2030.

Kyle Mountsier  3:40  

They are not auto manufacturers, right? No. And now we've got Nitro Cold Brew, which was good that stuff is like that's, that's crack juice right there. You get all that you get all the like fields of adding a whole bunch of cream and sugar, but with none of the additives and it just like feels right.

Paul Daly  3:58  

There's a whole sensory like even just watching it, like come out of the tats, right. It triggers a lot of things. It's a full sensory experience. If you've never had a Nitro Cold Brew, just go or one and watch them make it and be like yeah, that is pretty cool. Or you can probably just YouTube it but it's better when you order its national Cobra day, you might get one for free.

Kyle Mountsier  4:15  

So arounds like ASMR cold brew? Yeah. Oh,

Paul Daly  4:18  

that's good stuff right there. If you do that ASMR cold brew. That'd be great. We have a few other things to talk about this morning. Aside from cold brew, it just was the perfect like pre segue segue. But we are having a party in May. And just a few weeks from now, right or less than four weeks. The asotu family reunion Remix in Tampa, Monday, May 9, we just opened up tickets to the email address email list yesterday. Today. Anyone can get one so you can just go to a sotu.com There's a little header at the top. So you can click Get your tickets. If you're a dealer, our friends at Auto Five made sure they paid for your ticket already. So you get your ticket comp courtesy of auto phi. If you are not an auto dealer, tickets are still really affordable, and we're bringing you all the value with the ticket price. So you're going to eat well, you're going to drink well, you're going to get an awesome retail swag experience when you come in. And it's just going to be a wild night of fun and learning from all the smart people in the room. And it was really encouraging to see that as soon as tickets open to the email list, the VAT like 98% of the people who sign up for dealers are dealer personnel.

Kyle Mountsier  5:22  

It's so good. Yeah, I absolutely love that. I mean, coming from the dealership world for so long, right you when, when everything is feels like it's centered around, kind of like thought leadership on the vendor side, or, you know, like, getting dealers to come pay for stuff or everybody's trying to earn your business, right to have something that you can go to and be like, you're just in, you get in and not just that, but this is what I love even more. It's not like you're just in it's like, no someone, someone saw it fitted to bring you here and yeah, I love it's something that we after our last event, we're like, we're gonna make sure this happens very soon. And it was able to, we're able to make it happen a little sooner than than we thought. But yeah, it's good.

Paul Daly  6:09  

I mean, look, we I mean, we love our our vender, vendor, vendor community, right having having lived on both sides of that we're in that community, there are great dang in the middle of it. But we do just have an extreme commitment to being dealer centric as a media publisher, which is why all of our investors are only dealers, a lot of other people wanted to invest. And we actually had tell people No, because we're like, no, it's important that we stay dealer centric. From an investor standpoint, our content, our events are dealer centric, and our email list is dealer centric, not just in not just in like confession, but also in practice. So I thought when the when those early tickets came through, and it was all dealer personnel, I was like, Man, this is great, because the practitioners are finding value here. So we're all gonna get together on May 9, so get your tickets if you haven't gotten them. And even if you're within like driving shot of Tampa or you want to fly in, there are actually people that are coming in just for this event. Speaking of the vendor community, though, can we can we do a segue time.

I don't think we've ever done a segue in the intro before. But pitch tank is at 10 o'clock today, Eastern. So in just a little less than an hour from now, pitch tank, which is a vendor centric presentation of new products that dealers and other brilliant people can shoot holes in live in front of your face so that you can make better

Kyle Mountsier  7:32  

decisions. I'm really excited about this morning, because there's two companies this morning that had we not been referred them from other people that had pitched in the past, we would have never known about them. And so I'm just excited to hear what they have to offer dealers and just learn about some new technologies and partners that are in the space. So you know, if you've been to pitch tank before, and you're like, I feel like I've kind of known a lot of the things that are going on. This is one of those mornings where you might hear something new that you've never heard before. Because if I've been to every single one of them, and now I'm saying I found something that I haven't heard before, there's probably a lot more people out there like that.

Paul Daly  8:10  

So that Kyle said, if Kyle says it, shoot, if Kyle says it, it's the truth when it comes to like, you know, just everybody. I can't tell you how many calls were on client calls, partnership calls, where someone's like, yeah, we heard about that. Cause like Yeah, yeah. Oh, Bob over there. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I helped them build that product up. Like it happens all the dang time. It happened again yesterday. So if Kyle's never heard of it, you can be sure that it is absolutely fresh. You can go go on your phone, not on your desktop to asotu dot club A S O T U dot club. And that way, you can get the link to the room really easily and get you in there to have a little fun. You know, the Colbert news was the first news that we were going to talk about today. But we talked about that before we talked about the announcements. So let's let's move down positive dealer news. Sorry about this. I think we're over indexing on the energy and the good stories because it was so heavy on Monday. I feel like that I really got

Kyle Mountsier  9:03  

trying to like get all the good stuff up we started you so hard this monday

Paul Daly  9:07  

nate said that comment feels real heavy this morning. I was like I feel like oh, we fail.

Kyle Mountsier  9:13  

We're breaking all the energy we're rolling through hump day. I'm excited about this one because one of my good friends Eric Hall, who's at class except Chevrolet was able to share with us some something really cool they're doing with not just you know, there's a lot of dealers doing fundraisers out there and you know, pressing into the community and for so long golf fundraisers have been a big part of just the way fundraising happens, especially like, you know, kind of dealers are golfers at heart a lot of times and like we're headed to a conference this summer and they were like, afternoon outing is golf and Paul and I were both like, ah the mountains

Paul Daly  9:59  

up They were like, well, I could drive a cart. Great cart drive, I will carry your clubs. No problem.

Kyle Mountsier  10:08  

Yeah. But what's what I love about this, especially at a time where we're seeing dealer markups, like like crazy, which is natural when you have a supply and demand thing going on. But specifically, they've got a bunch of 06 coming in which if you know about the Corvette brand is a unique and specialized vehicle. And typically, even in non inventory shortage times we see dealers marking those up because they are in such high demand. And they are in short supply. Well, what's really cool about the way that they've done this is they've said, hey, look, we'll take orders on all these, we'll sell them all at MSRP. But in order to get in line, you've got to donate 50 grand to the annual fundraiser. So the markup is all going back into the community like what

Paul Daly  11:05  

resilient brand play? I love it. There's been so much conversation about MSRP selling over MSRP is it good? Is it bad? Is it supply and demand? So there's just been so much like, kind of like tumultuous talk around MSRP that I thought, you know, Eric's idea to just twist this into saying, hey, look, the market value of the vehicle is well over MSRP. So we're not going to ignore that. But we're going to make sure that that value goes into the community. I was just I read that article. It's funny sometimes. Sometimes I read the morning email, and I don't see everything. It's in there before it gets published. So that more this morning, I actually saw it in the email. I was like, That's brilliant. What a brilliant play on MSRP. So man, it's just good to see. I'm never surprised, right? I'm never surprised.

Kyle Mountsier  11:53  

So far this year, they have 27 Customers pledging with resulting in $1.3 million, that they're going to spread out over 13 charity partners like y'all, auto dealers are centric to their communities, and are doing incredible things. And this is just one of those stories. And so please, if you're listening, if you're watching, if you're sharing this with someone share the asotu.com forward slash positivity. And we wanted to hear more about it and talk more about it. Because this is not just like there's going to be someone in Seattle or in New York that goes, That's a great idea, I'm going to execute that same thing. And it's going to be just as impactful in your area. And maybe you're going to iterate on it just a little bit. But that's going to push more into shifting the culture internally of our of our industry and then pushing out the perception that that of anything bad about our industry, because we know that's the reality of what's going on. And we just have to talk more about it

Paul Daly  12:54  

and make it louder. Hey, if you have a story that you want us to make loud or something similar to this or something else going on in your community, we created a page just for this so you can easily submit it to us go to asotu.com forward slash positivity, and then just fill out the quick form we will get the email, maybe we can include it in the show. And just let more dealers know about it. So that like Kyle said, we can make the good things louder, because we need to make some good things louder. Let's see Let's Okay, so let's talk about auto shows. Were you an auto show fan like you go to auto shows. That's not I'm not like a retail the retail car.

Kyle Mountsier  13:32  

I'm a you know car guy as car guys go when we talk about like being in the dealership and you know growing you're not a car enthusiast and I'm not a car enthusiast. Exactly, I now have a passion for cars, right but that's you know, that's that's that's out of what my my career has been. But now I'm not like I gotta go see the next new thing

Paul Daly  13:54  

is very much the same way I've only been to a few auto shows in my life. But the New York Auto Show just you know relaunched and opened up after you know the the pandemic hiatus and you know, the traffic is very, very strong. They're saying they're going to track over a million people coming through the show. And this show is pretty cool because it's got a 250,000 square foot, Evie, Test Track. Think about that. You can never do that before because you have the like the combustion inside right?

Kyle Mountsier  14:25  

World Hey right inside.

Paul Daly  14:27  

Yes, so people could test drive a range of EVs, Chevy's, Kia, Nissan, Volkswagens, Volvo, Indy, Evie, and vinfast all had vehicles that you could test drive on the track. Here's an interesting thing though. A lot of manufacturers chose to sit it out list of manufacturers that didn't show up, you know, or choose to participate in the show General Motors that means there's no lyric, no one saw that the Evie Hummer, which there's a ton of buzz around. Mercedes, BMW, Audi all past Tesla, wasn't there. Porsche wasn't there Honda Mazda, Jaguar Land Rover all were in there. And, you know, from what I hear and what I read, you know, the fact that there's this huge test track really kind of made up for the fact that they were on a lot more exhibitions, you know, but, man, this might be a missed opportunity,

Kyle Mountsier  15:18  

okay? It's either a missed opportunity, or it's saying no, no, we don't need the auto shows anymore. We are speaking a more global language and I think, well, Ford speak. And we'll get a speaking of in just a second before it and other like GM instant Lantis have really leaned into this kind of Apple esque keynote presentation, that, that launches things not necessarily in an auto show, but is based on their timeline, based on their desire to put that out into, into the ecosystem and their their their driving demand based on based on just like them alone, instead of having to sit in a sea of others. So I think there's probably something there as to what these brands are leaning into and being a little bit more individualistic. Instead of having to wait for the next new thing. I have this on the side of like industry partners and vendors. You always think like everybody's gonna come out with something new nada. It's like why is it nada?

Paul Daly  16:24  

But here's here's an issue that I like you and I were just talking yesterday about how EVs like there's more automotive in the general news now that we pay attention to a lot of news all the time. We're seeing evey news in all types of different publications where new vehicle stuff would have never been before because there is a renewed interest in technology, right? And you have people like Elon Musk kind of making automotive like sexy again, right from an entrepreneurial, technologically advanced standpoint, reminds me of a conversation I had with Jason Stein, like two or three years ago, I have to pull up the interview. And I said, I said, Where do you think automotive has opportunity that they're missing? And he says to be seen as innovators in technology? He said that like three years ago, right? I got to pull that off, because you know, he'll show him historically correct. And he's very smart. And I think that this is a missed opportunity. While there is a general general interest in EVs, because it's not like an iPhone, right? We're actually it's kind of disappointing when the keynote is so good. When you get in the store and you hold it in your hand. You're like, I'm always like, a little underwhelmed, right.

My photos don't look like those photos. Well, that was also breakdancing on fire. And I just did the Apple store with my kids, right? It's a little different.

Kyle Mountsier  17:39  

Yeah. And like, son do the spin thing. No, that wasn't great. Yeah.

Paul Daly  17:43  

No, but But driving a vehicle is such a visceral experience. Right? The way it feels the steering wheel feels the way it smells and EVS like, let me just tell you when you sit in the V and you hit the accelerator, dang. Like you feel something? And so I don't know, I don't know, I think that there's a big experiential play that automakers missed with the Auto Show. And we'll see, time will tell. I think there's a lot of experience now driving an Eevee because it is such a visceral experience. But speaking of EVs, segway we gotta give a little quick props to Ford, because maybe in the first time that I can remember, they beat projections on when a vehicle is going to get off the ASCEND. This is

Kyle Mountsier  18:24  

this is actually a first time ever for all industries. You're like, we'd be construction, we beat technology, we've

Paul Daly  18:34  

been supply shortages. Right? Right. We'd be everything. Why? Because we are under promised and over delivered.

Kyle Mountsier  18:41  

It's great. Yeah, it's great. Love it. I you know, I had the I still think the question mark, for me is like, what? What's the lightning gonna be in relationship to dealers? You know, how? How is that? How is that delivery timeline when you're thinking 200,000? Reservations, you know, when they're making these 150,000? What is the dealer involvement when these lightnings actually hit the lots? And how it how are the salespeople going to be prepared? How is the compensation? What is what's the margin? And can they execute on this? Can dealers and the OEM execute on the same experience? That was the registration experience or the launch on YouTube experience on the height? Like, will that same feeling carry through into both the delivery and the ownership experience? Because, like, it's kind of like, it's kind of like this, if you show up to the first date with 12 roses, and you show up to the second date with nothing what happens, right? Loss of interest. What's what afford what are dealers doing?

Paul Daly  19:49  

That's interesting, too.

Kyle Mountsier  19:50  

I mean, right? What What are for dealers? Like, we're coming with 12 Roses, like how are we going to elevate the game for the from the consumer experience from this point on? Oh,

Paul Daly  20:00  

how is this is also kind of like, I mean, I know the mock E is out, right? It's been out. This is the first real I think shot across the bow with the precedent center and what it's going to look like moving forward. And when we say what is the dealer OEM relationship going to look like? I think there's going to be a lot that's revealed in the next couple of months. Right? That is going to take a lot of working through because right now let's face it, if you're thinking OEM dealer, we don't like to paint it in a contentious mindset. But really having the first Evie pickup rolling off the line gives the OEM a whole lot of leverage, right, a whole lot of consumer leverage a whole lot of technology leverage show glad that they were able to execute on time, right? They have 200,000 orders, they said they're going to be able to make 150,000 of those this year as they ramp up production. But that kind of that really is the question, right? What what does the relationship look like moving forward? And how can dealers and OEMs partner to deliver what the consumer wants in a way that everybody wins? Oh, no. That's the question. We're gonna leave you with that question today. Go get yourself some cold brew. Wake up a little bit. You're already awake. If you're listening to this show tomorrow. Keep pushing back. Send us your positivity stories to soda.com forward slash positivity to get some tickets to that party.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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