Ford Has a Big Q1, Live Audio Craze is Fading, Sharing Dealership Stories

SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly

Paul Daly  00:39

All right, it is Wednesday, April 5, the day of the event pumped in Arlington, Texas. We're in Ireland. We've been in Ireland.

Kyle Mountsier  00:48

I've been hanging out. Get to know the place, you know.

Paul Daly  00:51

And apparently the busiest place in Grapevine Texas at 930 on

Kyle Mountsier  00:56

never believe this is Walmart WallyWorld.

Paul Daly  00:59

There was a Rangers game. Yeah, we were there. But today we're talking about some news. We got to we got to talk about the event. But Ford is posting a big quarter one game some interesting things there. Spotify is shutting down. Its Spotify live live was called Spotify life.

Kyle Mountsier  01:15

Yeah. And nobody knew.

Paul Daly  01:17

That's the problem. And we're going to tell a few stories from the dealers revisited yesterday. So let's talk about what we're doing right now. And tonight, tonight, we're gonna be in Arlington Music Hall. With the band is in town, the venue is getting set up.

Kyle Mountsier  01:30

Yeah, if if you aren't following us on like Instagram or Facebook right now, go check that out. Because we'll be telling the story of everything leading up to today. Also, you'll be able to check out the live stream on YouTube or LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, anywhere where we can live stream to we'll be pushing it out tonight. 730, Eastern 630 Central and you're not gonna want to miss it. If you're in for some reason, not in Arlington, you're not going to want to miss even if you're working, you

Paul Daly  01:57

could still be on the live stream. Yeah, because it's probably one of the most productive things we can do in this industry app. So on Instagram, a so two events is the account where most of the behind the scenes are going to be posted today. And again, you could go to the website, a CIO to x.com and you get the live stream through there. And if you're in the Arlington, Texas area, come on, it would be awesome. If you join the live studio audience you have a bunch of people coming by. And we're going to have some food, and we're gonna have some fun, and we're gonna have a show tonight. They go tonight tonight, though, tomorrow. We'll talk all about it. We'll do it. Alright, let's talk about some news. We don't have our usual screen set up. So in the face of lingering supply chain disruption, Ford announced on Tuesday, its first quarter US Sales rose 10.1%. That's good, driven by strong demand for electric vehicles, SUVs and trucks. So interest rates, the pending looming recession we've been hearing so much about for three years. We're still waiting on sales of SUVs and trucks made up or 95% of their sales in q1. And demand has been so strong actually that Ford announced that they are going to look to increase production in its Michigan plant that makes F 150s. And I think some SUVs to

Kyle Mountsier  03:10

look trucks are not going out of style, not Texas. No, definitely not in Texas see a lot of trucks, lots of trucks here. struction not going out of style. It's clear that Ford whether they're going after the Eevee or truck or SUV market is continuing to push the boundaries. This This has proven that there's there's even like a lot of a noose around like the strength of the new vehicle market. You know, our friend Charlie Chesbro, the senior economist, economist at Cox said, the US new vehicle market is showing signs of strength. And it's also being reshaped by higher prices and fewer subprime buyers. So when you think about trucks and SUVs and higher priced EVs, you still got a really strong market. For those even though we don't have a lot of subprime buyers in the market. Well,

Paul Daly  03:57

isn't it a funny story that yesterday, we spent about three or four hours that Audi have great fine, big beautiful Audi store? Yeah, and they sold to f 150s. While we were there.

Kyle Mountsier  04:06

Yeah. Pre Owned, but still, of course, out of the out of an Audi dealer.

Paul Daly  04:11

detail we just sold sold an F 150. He's like, Yeah, Pedro, the GM was like, oh, yeah, we sold that raptor today as well. So that's actually a little proof in the pudding. Yeah, I mean, granted, there used f1 fees, but light trucks. There's a market for Yep, speaking of proof in the pudding or things that there's a market for play this segue in your head. So

Kyle Mountsier  04:33

Spotify had a clubhouse competitor if you didn't know we didn't really know which is ridiculous. It is pretty rare because we're in the podcast, Spotify, Spotify,

Paul Daly  04:42

premium member, we're on clubhouse and on LinkedIn audio, live audio

Kyle Mountsier  04:47

and we know where their spaces and we missed the Spotify thing altogether. They're They're closing the door on the whole project. There. It was called shot Spotify, Spotify live and Basically remaining users, which is just a few handfuls that are holding live room still got a notification saying at the end of the month, they're going to be shut out. This was this is the crazy stat. In late 2021, they acquired the company, Bette labs for Paul $60 million. And that's what they turned into Spotify live, it only receives 60 675,000 downloads, which is dwarfed. Yeah, by clubhouses. 35 million downloads in 2020.

Paul Daly  05:32

I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you right now, the attitude over at the Betty labs, folks, people put your hand up, yeah, looks like this. That's the spirit over there, buddy labs. Strangely enough Twitter Spaces has emerged as kind of the front runner in the live audio spaces, which makes a lot of sense, because that is a platform that really is gathered around different topics. Yep. As communities around topics and hashtags. Ironically enough, Twitter has laid off most of the Twitter spaces staff, as they restructured

Kyle Mountsier  06:06

for the rest of the staff that they've pretty much laid off

Paul Daly  06:09

just Elon Musk is just swinging the axe over there. But there's still a pretty vibrant, vibrant community over there. Twitter spaces. LinkedIn audio is not mentioned in the article. But we've started using LinkedIn audio from moving over from clubhouse because we believe that like LinkedIn audio is the most logical place for professional conversations to happen. And they already have it just comes up like an event, you can pick an in person event, or a live streaming event or an audio event. And that just became available for the soda page a few weeks ago. So we're using that for pitch tank and all that. The bottom line is this. There's got to be a community to have a conversation and Spotify just didn't do the work to build the community. And I don't know the complexities. I don't know if they rested on the fact that they have like the Joe Rogan's of the world to think that they just mobilize the community to go to the live. But

06:58

well, it didn't even know about and I think just in general, this this audio event, you know, ecosystem is starting to wane, right? You've got you've got clubs to work now, right? Everybody goes to work and has things to do and zoom calls kind of retook over but clubhouse has already dropped by 82% of monthly active users. So you're seeing this in in multiple in multiple companies that have been involved in that. So we'll see what audio events have to do. But I do think that you're right, I think LinkedIn has an opportunity to be there and the professional

Paul Daly  07:30

staying power. We're gonna give it a shot. Well, I mean, once a soda is on the platform, they show and just right there, just right. So we wanted to tell it talk a little bit also why we have a few minutes left here in the show. The fact that about the fact that we've gotten to spend many hours in dealerships this week. And what we're actually doing is we're filming a TV show type type program, named to be released soon. But it is it is really based on the premise that we think it's tragic that people have the consumers have the wrong stigma about dealers, and we want to show and highlight all the stories in the lives and the people that are affected and change in the stores every day. So we're getting on the ground and Highline stores and mid market stores. And we're just interviewing we're talking

Kyle Mountsier  08:15

to salespeople and receptionists and technicians and the general manager, the tint guy does the tint guy he's a subcontractor at the store. Right? And he was pumped to be there. Yeah, I love the Actually, both of us met desert different times. And he had this energy that was designing and it was like, Man, you you just you you shrink and cut tint in the back of a Kia store in a back of a few other stores. But you're excited to be there. You're excited, like tint is your thing. And there's a there's a customer care aspect of that there's a last mile piece of what he's doing at a dealership that's important to consumers in the area. And he sees that he sees the excitement for himself. Yeah, you know, we talked to we talked to we're going to meet her tonight again and we're going to tell her story a lot.

Paul Daly  09:06

But Peggy Peggy, just the way that mother grandmother the way that she

Kyle Mountsier  09:11

sees a PDI is like it reshaped the whole narrative. It was so what a pre delivery inspection is seeing that

Paul Daly  09:21

mindlessly would be invisible. Right? Right that is an invisible position

Kyle Mountsier  09:26

like the same you just kind of throw on Saturday afternoons when there's no more work left in the shop. It is her that is her way

Paul Daly  09:33

that is her care. That's a great way to put it right and to the consumer that is invisible, right? They don't think about it but she's like look, it's my job to go in there and test all the things in the car to make sure when the consumer gets in the car for the first time. It's right that the air conditioning blows cold right? She used to peel all the plastic off the cars which I thought was really cool right and and I made her walk me all the way out to the back of the lot so I could peel the hood. So

Kyle Mountsier  09:56

so, so good. Which she was happy because she hates that she

Paul Daly  10:01

didn't have to do it. I don't how could anybody hate that part? I feel like that's a tick tock I can't wait to have like that story

Kyle Mountsier  10:06

in particular is it's that's a microcosm of things that are happening at every dealership where someone's doing a role that they care about in such a unique way that a lot of times just gets overlooked or not talked about are not stored inside or outside our industry. So I can't wait to highlight more of those and put it put it just right on the right on this end. And we're gonna have

Paul Daly  10:28

a bunch of these people on the stage on the show with us tonight. So if you're interested to meet these people kind of in real time in real life, come out to the show, or tune into the live stream. And I have a feeling this isn't going to be the last that you hear of this. And if you're interested, so we're filming this TV type show, we're going to feature some of the people tonight on the on the live tonight show. But the show that we've been making that we've been going around and filming is actually we're announcing here for the first time, we're going to throw a big premiere for the show. The second night of digital dealer, we're collabing with digital dealer to help get all the dealers free tickets to this event tickets if you're not a dealer, very, very reasonable. And we've rented out the Tampa theater and doing the red carpet. We want everybody to come and dress up and we're gonna do a big premiere. We're gonna have a happy hour. We're gonna food we're have drinks, we're gonna have laughs and then we're gonna sit at the theater. We're gonna watch this picture. So I'm getting excited. So to start, right, that is right. So we hope whatever you do with your Wednesday, that you really make it count. We hope that you make it count by joining us tonight for live tonight. 730 Eastern 630 Central and you can do the math for the rest of it. For all the details you can go to us so two x.com We'll see you tonight. Before we see you tomorrow.

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