Ford’s Postponed Deadline, Shape Up Or Ship Out, A Year of Meta

October 31, 2022
Don’t let the costumes fool ya, we’re here to work this Monday as we talk about Ford’s announcement to delay the deadline for dealers to decide on their EV future. We also talk about Ford’s efforts to part ways with underperformers, as well as what one year of Meta being Meta has gotten us.
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Today’s deadline Ford originally put in place for Dealers to make a decision whether or not to invest up to $1.2M and follow the standards required to sell EVs has been postponed until Dec 2nd after multiple requests from Dealers according to Ford spokesman Marty Gunsberg

  • There are two tiers of certification. Both require no-negotiation pricing. The lower tier doesn’t allow the Dealer to carry any inventory and carries sales limits
  • Certifications will last from 2024-2026 after which new dealers will be allowed to enter back into the certification process
  • “A group of automotive trade association executives, representing associations in Virginia and 11 other southern states, this week asked Ford to "reconsider the Ford Model e program as it is currently described," saying it "includes unreasonable restrictions on dealer autonomy."
  • TILI: We don’t know the full reasoning, but it likely has to do more with legal action than Ford having a change of heart

An internal email circulated at Ford reveals the company is actively working to get underperforming workers out of the company.

  • The Oct 4th email which was sent to all US managers focuses on all employees with 8 or more years with the company and have been identified as showing a pattern of underperformance
  • They will be given the option to voluntarily quit to receive a severance package OR enroll in a 4-6 week “performance-enhancement plan”
  • If they choose the enhancement plan, but do not improve, they will no longer be eligible for severance
  • Employees identified as underperforming with less than seven years of service will face involuntary termination with severance
  • “‘The changes are intended to simplify how managers confront poor performance and provide an alternative to the improvement plan, which can be an intense period of work for employees who have made up their minds,’ the Ford spokeswoman said


Facebook hits the one year anniversary of its transformation into its current name, Meta and investors as well as the public don’t seem very excited.

  • In early 2021 then-Facebook was taking punches from leaked internal sources showing the company knew the negative impact it was having on society, concerns about Apple’s new privacy rules, and TikTok’s upswing. The company used the name change to Meta as an indicator of a page turned, and a bright future
  • After investing billions in metaverse dev, the company just announced its second ever revenue drop, and that profits have been cut in half. It’s $1 Trillion market cap from last summer is now under one quarter of that…less than Home Depot
  • Brad Gerstner, CEO of Altimeter Capital, a shareholder in Meta, released an open lette

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SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly


Paul Daly  00:22

Yo, it's Monday. We have a little Halloween decor around the stage today but we have some Ford stuff to talk about. Can someone you said Can someone else make the news talking about Ford's postpone deadline, their employer policy in a year being the people really? I wish I if I was more clever, I would have come up with a better way to talk about the introduction.


Kyle Mountsier  00:48

I think we just did. I think that just happened. I think that's actually what you say. Isn't that we're being so meta. By being meadow meta.


Paul Daly  00:57

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, well, we decided to dress up this Halloween.


Kyle Mountsier  01:03

I decided to come to work as calm mouths here and myself as Paul J. Daly look at us. We look I wear a black shirt of black and it's crazy.


Paul Daly  01:13

We definitely actually do much today. And if you go back and look we don't match every day. Not every week. Somewhat style. It's obviously intentional. It's obviously intentional. Sometime


Kyle Mountsier  01:24

it's great every once


Paul Daly  01:26

in a while when we both land on a white shirt day that's when you really know we got the flow on that day. Like what you wear the white shirt today. It's like once every 28 workdays right white shirt gets hit in the wintertime though you won't see that for some reason. I only wear white in the summer. I don't know where like


Kyle Mountsier  01:41

a proper like a holiday thing


Paul Daly  01:46

is or like anywhere in white pants. You only wear white shirts in the summer I don't own I don't own white pants and I do have white Air Force ones but I don't think kind of shoes. Yeah,


Kyle Mountsier  01:58

I don't know about that. Not them.


Paul Daly  01:59

Oh, Rich. Berry no says this Gary Vee get royalties from Facebook on betta? I don't think so. I don't think he does. I don't think he doesn't. Hey, we got a few things coming up. This week. We are less than two weeks away from going to be in Palm Beach together with a whole crew of in our opinion. Some of the best creatives in automotive we got Darren Dolan who's not an automotive he's just like an insane creative. Go go check out his Wikipedia he's got like over a billion YouTube views on his stuff. Ally pinion Nate, Greg or Nathaniel Greg. Look, we'll call him by his proper name. And we're going to be at the modern retail conference Brian patches modern retail conference teaching a creative track in as far as we know, what's the first one ever an automotive it's not too late to register, go to a so to.com forward slash MRC to get your tickets. And we also released the new podcasts. This will be our fourth podcast fourth


Kyle Mountsier  02:49

podcast. Yeah, so I only one episode. It's just us jammin, but you'll get a little insight on what we're actually going to be talking about on these podcasts. But yeah, it's called in the dirt with De Soto. You can shop it, and you can find it on any podcast platform except Google podcasts. But who listens to podcasts on Google anyway. So you can go find that now. And over the next week or so, you're gonna get like a barrage of really key conversations that we've had, both from name Matt, and then the 800% club meeting that we are at, I think it's something like 25 or 26 conversations all in total. So yeah, you'll want to check those out.


Paul Daly  03:26

And they're short and zippy. If you like short Zippy podcast if you play him at 1.5 speed, even shorter in zippier. I like those shows. Honestly, I feel like I have less and less time for long form content these days. So when I can check in and between five and 10 minutes, get something to think about I love that just gets the juices flowing, you


Kyle Mountsier  03:43

know, I'm saying? Yep, getting the juices flowing.


Paul Daly  03:46

Okay, we have a special segue button today. So I'm trying to think really hard of how to segue into the next I was trying


Kyle Mountsier  03:52

to get the juices flowing.


Paul Daly  03:54

I know but there's not really there's nothing that segues speaking of segue. That's a good segue. I just wanted to see Kyle, bounce across the stream screen on a bale of hay while we're listening to a little bit of a thriller remix. But all right, so October 31, was a significant day it used to be Well, today's deadline. Today was the deadline for originally put in place for dealers to make a decision whether or not to invest up to $1.2 million to follow the standards required to sell EVs for the company. Well, that's been postponed until December 2, after multiple requests from dealers. According to Ford spokesperson, Bharti Gunzburg. Now, just a little refresher course two tiers of certification. Both required note no negotiation pricing and the lower tier doesn't allow the dealer to carry any inventory and limits the number of EVs they can sell. The certifications will last from 2024 to 2026. At which time anyone who did not opt in to certify has an opportunity to do so again, but I don't know I saw that. I'm assuming the dealers who already signed On for this round have to recertify


Kyle Mountsier  05:02

Oh, you would think I mean, why would you invest all that money and be in 2026? Unless in 2026, the world is like forget EVs, right? That's probably not gonna happen. But if you're gonna invest all that money, it's gonna be charging stations and technicians. It's like infrastructure, like you just kind of you're in for the game, you know? Yeah,


Paul Daly  05:21

no, but I'm saying like, if you got to recertify, that that's pretty smart play on Ford's part to be like,


Kyle Mountsier  05:26

oh, yeah, absolutely. Like, oh, well, you half a million dollars that you got,


Paul Daly  05:29

by the way.


Kyle Mountsier  05:31

Or box over there? Yeah, no, I, you know, I think, obviously, like, there's been a bunch of the conversations that we're having with Ford dealers, and with even just people close to the matter. And then we've had a couple conversations with people that know, you know, the state associations that are working to kind of push back I saw a letter from Pennsylvania, the state association there saw the letter to Ford, and Jim Farley, just saying, hey, look, this isn't in the best interest of not just the dealer, but it's not in the best interest of the consumer, meaning consumers are going to have to pick and choose go find the places where they can have access to these particular vehicles. Now, this isn't like unprecedented. You know, I think everyone's like, never been done before. But like, if you wanted to be GTR certified as a Nissan dealer, you had to do certain things. If you wanted to be Corvette certified as a, as a Chevy dealer, you have to do certain things. Now, it's a little bit more broad market so I can see the push back. Alright. So


Paul Daly  06:33

it's been like an individual product and not a whole segment. Right, a drive train segment. So but yeah, like, it's not totally new. You know, but it is pretty new when it comes to like this broad scale thing now. We have it on good information. So I wish we had a hearsay button. Right. Just this is hearsay, but there are, you know some trade association. Well, this isn't hearsay, a group of automotive Trade Association Executives representing associations in Virginia and 11 other southern states. This week X Ford asked for to reconsider the Ford Model II program as it is currently described, saying it includes unreasonable restrictions on dealer autonomy. Carlyle white chimes in on the livestream this morning says bad bad deal for us mid market, guys. But we also know there are several


Kyle Mountsier  07:22

smaller the smaller dealerships like you probably know, right off the bat aren't jumping in on this, the mid market ones, the ones that are like suburban to like a little bit more rural, kind of have to do it to compete with the larger market,


Paul Daly  07:37

your small market, there's no one else doing it. So you're fine. They're fine. But the mid


Kyle Mountsier  07:40

market ones are tough, because you may not have the resources just readily available, it might not be a thought process that you typically lean into. But you kind of have to, to compete with the major market players that are probably close to you. We also know that I had on and Paul laid on him.


Paul Daly  07:57

Well, we, we heard we heard about a significant class action lawsuit. That was that was a gathering storm on the horizon just a few weeks ago. And you know, we're kind of wondering if enough of these like they, they saw the line of lawyers up front of the building, and they were like,


Kyle Mountsier  08:15

you know, okay, we'll give him another month.


Paul Daly  08:18

Let's just wait till after Thanksgiving to deal with this.


Kyle Mountsier  08:22

To get the bellies full, you know, what?


Paul Daly  08:26

Trip the fan up in there getting little sleep? No, but regardless, you know, there are obviously a lot of moving parts around this are a lot of legal actions, you know, dealers are always going to advocate for their best interest to consumers best interest, everyone has a different opinion of what that might be at this time. And whenever there's new technology, or some level of innovation moving forward, it always gets messy. It always gets messy. So you know, that that's just kind of what's going on. And there's another 30 days happening, you know, I say this, the comments are great today, by the way, thank you so much for leaving the comments. If you hit those little like buttons and stuff in the video, that's always a fun fun to watch to going up on the live stream. So regardless, look, things are changing, things are moving forward, but not without some friction and some conflict speaking of friction and conflict.


Kyle Mountsier  09:12

Scott it's a good segue things like an internal email circulated at Ford reveals the company is actively working to get underperforming workers out of the company. So an A email was circulated back on October 4 To all the US managers that saying that there were kind of two groups of employees that they were going to be working on and working to kind of like prune out the ones that haven't been doing haven't been cutting it really so any employees with eight or more years with the company have been given about Ford by the way, did you So Ford sorry about Ford. So


Paul Daly  09:51

why not just talk about all the Ford stuff today you're


Kyle Mountsier  09:53

gonna do all the Ford stuff. So So essentially, if they've been if they've been like pegged as underperforming, And they've been with the company for eight or more years, they've been given two options, either, quote unquote, voluntarily quit and receive a severance package or enroll in this four to six week performance enhancement plan. But the crazy thing is, is that they choose the enhancement plan and still don't perform severance goes, bye, bye. Yeah, I mean, that's strong. Like,


Paul Daly  10:26

here's my, here's my thoughts on the bet. You know? Well, those who are the people who really want it, and I think it's, I think it's a pretty fair way to deal with a changing company. Right? Like, it's easy to look, you know, if you've you're not management, or you haven't been a part of a company in transition, like, it's easy to say, like, how dare you let these people go? They've been with you for a long time. You know, the company is changing files restructuring, any saying like, hey, we know what it what was the quote, We have it here down down the line. You know, in July, Farley said, we absolutely have too many people in certain places, no doubt about it. And we have skills that don't work anymore, we have jobs that need to change, right? If we're going to restructure the company, knowing that we need to provide these things in the future, then we're just not staffed for that. It seems as if, though, they're making a way to say like, Hey, if you really want this, right, we need the people who are going to lean in and perform and help pull the sled. Right. And that's how we're gonna go. And if we see that you're not doing that, we're actually going to give you an opportunity to fix it. Instead of just deciding, right, we're going to let people self select, maybe I want to leave and have the severance. But I mean, there's kind of like a line of accountability, where it's like, well, if you're going to stay, and you're going to, you're going to go through the course and we're going to put those resources into you and we want to see you excel. If you're going to stay, then you actually have to improve, right? You really have what I hear things like even your side


Kyle Mountsier  11:46

problem. It's sent to all the managers so that they can focus on the underperformers that aren't managers. But typically, this is a leadership problem. It's not a people problem. Well,


Paul Daly  11:58

I have a feeling I have a feeling it's a couple managers on them. Yes, yeah. No, I think if your manager and you're underperforming, I don't think you get you don't get the choice. Right. To your point. Like if there's a leadership issue, if you're underperforming as a manager, I think the senior leadership is saying like No, like we kind of have a benchmark require of leadership is as that they perform at a high level. So again, summary, you can take the performance, you know, a performance improvement class four to six weeks, it's said to be pretty intensive, or voluntarily quit. And if you don't quit, or you quit, and you get an A severance package, if you don't quit, and you go through the course and you do well, you get stay. If not, then you don't get the severance package. There's also some employees that have under seven years of service. And if you're underperforming, you have under seven years of service, then you will be discharged with a severance, they're not going to give you so there's a little, a little knife or sheet that, you know,


Kyle Mountsier  12:55

like the legacy employees are getting some level of differentiation, like, hey, we appreciate your length of service.


Paul Daly  13:02

So they get the benefit of the doubt. I mean, it's tough. Stuff like this is never easy. If you've ever had to make changes in the company, you know that whenever you're talking about people's lives, whenever you're talking about their livelihoods, especially when they've been with a company for a long time, it is a difficult, difficult situation. My position is always that it is business, you do have to take care of the whole thing because if the whole thing sinks, then everyone that relies on the company goes down with it. And it is a good thing to even treat people with dignity respect, right and honor on their way out in and most people in the company will remember how people are moved out of the company much more than they remember how people are moved into the company.


Kyle Mountsier  13:43

Yep. Well, and you think about this, like the how many people that are underperforming at their jobs are unhappy and could find you know something better? Oh, yes. Like, the chances of that happening on mass are probably pretty high. And I'm just guessing I'm just throwing it out there. The minute this happens, everyone's gonna be like export employees, search on LinkedIn, go find some people, right?


Paul Daly  14:06

Absolutely. No, absolutely the probably find a better fit. And it'll be engaged and have that start that you know that jumpstarting energy, and we think you could probably end up pretty good for everybody in the real world. Speaking in the real world. That one day, we can use the butthole that's a good segue thing. I mean, a bad segue. Segue segway Well, if you remember a year ago, and we do because we were doing the show a year ago, Facebook hits one year anniversary of its transformation to its current name, betta. And investors as well as the public do not seem very excited about it. If you remember in early 2021, then Facebook was taking punches from leaked internal sources they were talking about the company's negative impact on society, concerns about what Apple's privacy rules were going to do to its advertising revenue. The upswing of TiC tock tic toc a year ago wasn't what it is now, but it was certainly on its way. And the company kind of used the name change to kind of shift the narrative. And you know, kind of get a good narrative and some good momentum going invested billions and billions and Metaverse, Dev. And they just announced their second ever in the history of the company. Its revenue drop, profits got cut in half. And dude, it had a trillion dollar market cap a year ago. And now it's under. Now it's under 250 billion, which is actually less than Home Depot, which, in my mind, Home Depot is kind of like the antithesis of the metaverse, Home Depot, like real stuff that you build real stuff with.


Kyle Mountsier  15:41

It's just perfect, right? Like, isn't it though? It's just like, right there. Yeah. Well, so here's what's crazy to me is like, they literally I mean, we saw this where just everything was poured into the metaverse, so much so that like, literally every job title had some level of Metaverse or the job description, had it. And then all of a sudden, early summer, all those jobs just start disappearing, and it's going by the wayside. And it's quite clear that it's quite clear that investing too heavily in the metaverse right now that the ecosystem just isn't ready for it even if there's a future for that. I mean, you know, it's interesting like that. It's not like they're cutting out the program altogether. But it is saying that like that aggressive and an approach to it is not the way is not the way to go. But I will say is basically no one remembers those internally leaked documents about how bad the company culture and the way that their algorithms happen. Nobody remembers that because everybody's just been talking about meta in the metaverse for a year. So you know, you're in play.


Paul Daly  16:51

Definitely brand plan and for better for worse, who the heck knows, but it's better now. So Jim Cramer, you know, Jim Cramer mad money guy. I know, he's always yelling and hitting the bell and things like that. While he was just about in tears, as he apologized on his show, or maybe wasn't his show. He's been interviewed, because he was constantly encouraging people to invest. He's like, it's gonna go up, it can't go anywhere, but up now it's down. And he was almost in tears saying like, I got it wrong. You know, he's like, I trusted the management team to put limits on the spending and limits on the investment. I also think there's another thing that wasn't mentioned in any of the articles, but it's surrounding the culture, Upswing downswing around NF Ts, and blockchain. Right. We've talked about how that traffic I was able to treat trading NF T's has dropped so substantially, and only the people that had built real community around them are still doing well. And the metaverse the premise of the metaverse is kind of trading in this world where things are not fungible, right and like so blockchain and NF T's and the metaverse all really did have a party going together. Yeah, you know,


Kyle Mountsier  17:57

because the crypto.com, the Matt Damon commercial, launched just about a year ago now to oh my goodness, right. So like you think about that, like, Fortune favors the bold. Everyone's leaning in, like there's just been so much change even in the energy that we you know, I remember back when we started this podcast every single day, there was something new about the metaverse or crypto or NF T's or a new community getting started or the uptick in in Bitcoin every day. And it's just not a reality in the like news ecosystem in the in the cultural climate at all right now.


Paul Daly  18:34

That's true CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company's work saying I'd say there's a difference between something being experimental and not knowing how good it is going to end up being. In a separate statement. He also added I think people are going to look back decades from now and talk about the importance of the work that was done here.


Kyle Mountsier  18:51

What my final short is, is, is sometimes early looks wrong.


Paul Daly  18:56

Yeah, he is saying that we'll see. I think the real reason for this, don't quote me on this, but I'm just gonna say it live on the show. It's absolutely coincidental that this happened after meta Bob left and became Bob now.


Kyle Mountsier  19:13

metadata and the whole company is tanking.


Paul Daly  19:17

The whole company knew about he was really running the show looks pretty good people running the show not gonna hit the Segway button again. But you have a real opportunity today to go and despite what's going on everywhere else, you can go out there work for a positive future impacts of lives and serve somebody

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