Metaverse Madness w/Brian Kramer, New(er) EV Price Hikes, Banks Pushing Back

SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier,Paul Daly, Brian Kramer

Paul Daly 00:23

everybodywelcome to Monday March 21. Troublemakers troublemakers troublemakers we'regonna start calling Monday decision day because you make decisions that aregonna set the rest of your week in motion so let's start making decision tobounce the people who isn't who Id they stopped oh man the making the Mondaydecision was faulty and kind of came up with we were writing some of the copyemail this morning and for the podcast like it's not like all literally all theall the NCAA basketball fans are like this isn't a decision day. That was twoweeks ago. well, I got unfortunately count myself as one of them. I just havenever been a big college basketball fan but it watching the fanfare around youknow, it's fun. I get swept up into like the brackets and things like that justbecause it's fun. But I understand like people have like skin in the game.Seriously. Look last night before I know you were going somewhere but I have toget my basketball and Okay, first of all, we didn't talk about it last week.But St. Peter's coming in and knocking off Kentucky was like the greatest thingsince sliced bread for me as a Duke fan. Second, right second Duke last night.Just absolutely coming on. Glued against Tom Izzo as Michigan State in the lastseven minutes of the game to go on. Like I think it was like a 21 for run. Oh,in the game. And when the game they were down five and came back in one. It wasannoying. That is an alley. That's it? Yeah. So guess what decision day. Wehave a fun show for you this morning. Brian Kramer is going to be joining us. Ijust saw a text pop up that he's pulling into the dealership now. So he's justgonna appear in the stream at some point. And we're gonna talk to him about,you know, really what is I think an extremely monumental moment that he wascool enough to give us a front row seat for on Friday was Friday, right? Yeah,that Friday on Friday, executed his team executed the very first retailautomotive transaction in the metaverse like a real car was slow in themetaverse, I was explaining it to my wife. She's like, wait a minute, fake car,real card, no real car, fake world real signatures, kind of real world. Realpayments are about to start for this guy, or gal. So Kyle, we'll talk aboutwith Brian. But why don't you set this up. Since we know he's coming in, youhad a little bit of a front row. And you know, obviously we have a saw video.And if you haven't seen it yet, other our show, there's a full article writtenin the background, you can check it out in the show note links are in the linksin the stream, or just go to a soda calm and go to articles. Or you reallyshould be on the email list anyway, if you go to a asotu.com and sign up forthe email, you'll get one once a day Monday through Friday with breaking newslike this. So Kyle, you were you were kind of close to this one. Well, no, sois real cool. So I get a call from Brian on Friday afternoon. He's like, Yo,you ready? In 15 minutes. I was like, yes. Where do I Where do I look? Soundslike I'm talking and then and then all of a sudden things got really weird,right? Because he was like, I'm gonna send you an email. It's gonna give you alink. It's gonna be like this Ready Player One type feel. And then make sureyou take a good picture of yourself, because you're going to create your avatarand I'm like, Oh, I'm getting in real now. Let's go. So I do I get a link. Itsends me to a website. I had to login sign in. And so I have my very firstAvatar in spatial.io. We have a place. I have a question that I really careabout with the avatar. Did you get the hat right? No, it gave me a beanie. Itgave me a straight beanie. I was like, Oh man, I look like a like a 2017 Coldplayfan? Right, exactly. Actually, I looked like Bano. Without the glasses. It waslike, you know, they're their worst looks. Right? Worst. So I have the avatar,I go into the conference room. It was actually funny because I'm waiting therein the conference room. And I'll ruin the end of the story. I didn't actuallyget to stay because I had to roll to another meeting. But I was in theconference room. And there's this massive Rubik's cube in the middle, which Iknow what that is about. I don't know what that's I think it's like setting thespace right. So that so that you know what's going on and maybe it's just acenterpiece, we can ask him what he did there. Which was cool to me, becausethat's real nerdy to me. I can do a Rubik's Cube pretty quickly. And so it waspretty far there. Yes. There's a live stream. You can kind of see it in thevideo. There's Yeah, yes. So what was what was really funny was over in thecorner, I found this little spot was kind of walking around. And I could go toBrian Kramer's like Lake or beach house. I think it was like to that. And allthe sudden at this like Lake House in this gorgeous setting, I can hear thewaterfall. Actually the spatial audio as I turned was was happening. So I couldimagine that the spatial audio is so clean in, in this conference room as well.So that's, I think that's a really interesting part of this. But so yeah, so ifyou're watching the stream, you're kind of seeing how, and we asked him in thearticle this, how the technology kind of comes together. Right. So you have tohave all the plumbing in the real world. Yeah, like watching the stream, andI'm seeing like a domain Toyota contract. Exactly up in there. Somebody'slooking at the screen. Is that the customer? Yes. So yeah, so customers lookingat the screen, the f&i manager is kind of scrolling through everything. Soit's actually utilizing software and hardware in the real world. So on aMacBook with all of the VinSolutions route, one prodigy, you know, software'sthat are happening at the dealership level, and then implementing them in themetaverse via a screen that everybody can see. So if you're not watching thevideo, just imagine, you know, like a fake room like a fictitious 3d room.There are characters around our avatars around which represent the real people.There's a screen on the wall looking like you were in a conference room,there's a presentation screen and on that screen, is basically what you wouldsee on an iPad, or the f&i manager is showing options is scrolling through thecontract. You know, you can see the customer is able to see where he asked tosign and sign. And so and there's a interesting Brian Kramer, Brian Kramer hasa collar like it's 1999 and he's got this gametime face on. It's amazing. Okay,so you will show you that you can link out to the video to see that. But yeah,I just wanted to explain it for anyone that wasn't listening. Yeah, exactly.Yeah. So it was a really neat experience. I was actually I was kind ofimpressed even because I wasn't obviously on an Oculus. I was sitting in frontof my Mac in this space. And so you know, I was just impressed at how the audioworked in my in ears and and how the space looked and felt it was easy tomaneuver around. Oh, there we go. We got Brian actually joining the show now soexcited to bring him on in. What's up?

Brian Kramer 07:18

Hey,what's up?

Paul Daly 07:18

We havethe real world Brian Kramer. We were just looking at the metaverse Brian Krameris working on is audio. The audio now? Okay. We're looking at the real world.Brian Kramer. We're just looking at metaphors. Brian Kramer and you don't lookanything like it because your collar isn't popped. Like it is in the middle.Right. I was like that Brian Kramer is from 1999 Don't that ain't fun? Anybodyasked?

Brian Kramer 07:43

Coldplayconcert?

Paul Daly 07:45

It'sfunny. You were listening, right? Because I mean, I might not be in themetaverse so they figure out the flat brim hat thing. I'm just saying. Bob.Like that does suck right. Oh,

Brian Kramer 07:54

you gotto get an NFT ASOTU deal.

Paul Daly 07:57

What doyou mean? Yeah. So then when you buy the NFT Metaverse and slap the hat on. Oh,right, right. Oh, yeah, you're right. There's

Brian Kramer 08:04

so muchavatar gear. There's there's a I forget what the the RGF KR rocker, something.Yeah. Brand for Avatar.

Paul Daly 08:15

Yeah,no, we actually talked about it's artifact. It's like a artifact. Yeah, theybought that sneaker company. And all of a sudden it's sitting there next tolike the Nike logo and the Jordan logo and the converse logo or like, shoe.Okay, that that fixes it. Right? Forgot about the NFT sink in the metaverse, Iget the asoto hats.

Brian Kramer 08:32

And youcan jump from decentraland to the sandbox and yes, okay. So the whole waythrough.

Paul Daly 08:38

You'relike the expert. Now all of a sudden, you're the resident expert in automotiveon the metaverse, right?

Brian Kramer 08:42

60 days.It's kind of like in the matrix of kung fu. Yeah.

Paul Daly 08:48

No, I mean,this is days, days makes you an expert. Like when we were talking about NF T'sand po apps. I was like said the cause like we're kind of experts on this rightnow. Why? Because no one else has put more than

Brian Kramer 08:57

60 days.And

Kyle Mountsier 09:00

that'sall it is. Well, here you are.

Paul Daly 09:01

So wejust kind of walked through the transaction a little bit, right? We was talkingabout all the plumbing that needed to be in place. Give us give us your take onlike how the day went down how the customer reacted, and just, you know whatyour experience was going through it the first time.

Brian Kramer 09:16

So Iwould say that the plumbing is the it's not the sexiest thing. It's not thething that anybody wants, you know, it's not newsworthy, but it's the mostimportant thing. Because without that, nothing else the shiny stuff doesn't,you know, can't happen. Yeah. So the transaction was with one of our associateswe made we turned it into like a party basically. So on the on that the versionthat you were showing, we've got test just to you know, protect the PII andthat sort of thing. But everybody was I you know, obviously it was a wowfactor. There was a couple interesting ones, you know, Wendell Hardy, who'skind of like the he's the transmission of our dealership, so I mean, he putsthe power and the torque to the road. As I was showing him the goggles, he hewalked in, I don't know, two, three weeks ago and he saw me in or four o'clockon a Saturday. And I was trying to get it set up and, you know, check this outwindow. And he goes Kramer, I'm not going down that rabbit hole with you.Because that's your deal.

Paul Daly 10:15

He'slike, not going, like I'm out metaverse. He's like, this is this seat and I sitin it.

Brian Kramer 10:20

He'slike, once, once you figure all that stuff out, then come get me at the end.But I'm not going down that rabbit hole. Somebody still got to make sure thateverything's running. Some

Paul Daly 10:31

boltsare working Translation The adults are working.

Brian Kramer 10:36

So hi. Ihad to look through those goggles and I go, you gotta just check this out. Andit looks pretty goes. And I go here, come back so I can show you somethingelse. And he goes, hold on a second. What the hell am I looking at? He's justrealized. Oh, you know, so he's in Venezuela on a drone thing going up onYouTube VR up Angel Falls. And I go, I go here. Let me show you the offices andhe's like, it's like stiff arm. He goes, hold on. Let me just figure out exactlywhat

Paul Daly 11:07

like I'mstanding right here. Right, meanwhile for paging him on a hardy, right. He'slike later.

Brian Kramer 11:17

So then,you know, Mr. Germain was looking through. And I and I, his son John told me hesaid good luck with that.

Paul Daly 11:24

How oldis Mr. Germain?

Brian Kramer 11:26

He is amid 60s. Okay. So, and he's always been innovative for you know, I've known himfor shit almost 30 years. And he's always been extremely innovative. And so,but um, he's also hesitant to not go chasing shiny objects at the same right?Yeah, he's done enough of that. Right? So he puts those things on. He's lookingaround, he's like, okay. And very quickly, you know, just like anybody who'sput these goggles on, he said, So walk me through what the plan is with this.And we had PBS here. Now the problem is PBS, I couldn't get it going while theywere here. So I had to send them the after shot, they took some shots of partsof the elements or whatever. But the actual f&i delivery, it obviouslywasn't as smooth as we have Dr. Now, but it's no different than how Dr was thefirst year back in 17. And 18, when we did that, so it was clunky, it was kindof, you know, you got jammed up two or three times, I'm like, hold on, hold on,and postpone two or three people's dinner, you know, because of this, you know,Max Headroom moment, but, you know, it went down and up. And it was, it wasvery cool, because the staff here was not willing to let up either. They'relike, No, we can figure this out. We're gonna, you know, we had to switch froman iPad Pro to a MacBook, because we couldn't get that to display up on thescreen. Little snags like that. But we got tagging title, we've got thecontracts, we got the, you know, all that stuff. And it's, it's veryinteresting as you're going through it. I had a buddy of mine from JMA, jumpin, had another buddy of mine from the Dimmitt Luxury Collection jump in. And Iwas asking them at the end, I said, What do you think? And you know, andthey're pretty tech savvy. And they said, this is just, you know, blowing meaway. That you, you know, because the one my one friend Kevin, who's up inSarasota, he, he does remote deals on St. Pete all the time. Yeah, like on adaily basis. So he said, so I could literally have them do the deliveries upthere with my customers here, put a pair of goggles on, and they and there's nobetter form of transparency, you can see obviously, the size of that you arereturning and the right I mean, it's like this, the Willy Wonka signing thing,and you're signing away all the fine print, etc, etc, etc. Real

Paul Daly 13:47

big infront of everyone's writing questions. There's group accountability, there'sall kinds of good stuff going on.

Brian Kramer 13:52

Nobodycan say they didn't see it, or didn't know what was going on. Right. Right.That's

Paul Daly 13:57

a greatpoint. Yeah, it's way stronger than like delivering a vehicle and sending adelivery driver with a notary to to go sign it, it's actually it's actually amore secure transaction than going and getting the paper signed, probably atthis point.

Brian Kramer 14:09

It is ittotally is because there's a attestation trail so you can see the IP addressesback and forth. And, you know, to and from whatever. The other misconceptionis, is that you have to have the goggles on, because half the people that werein that audience did not have goggles on, right? They were just looking at itthe way that that oh, okay, you know, we were just looking at it so you canhave a 2d or 3d version. Right.

Paul Daly 14:34

So thattotally takes out the hardware. Hold up. That's awesome. So, you know, you saidsomething and I asked you this question after you sent us the final video ofeverything. But you said something about you know, this feeling just as clunkyas Dr. did a couple years ago and I asked this question of, you know, what,what's the intentionality around slowing down to speed up? And I think thatthat's really important for a lot of people automotive right now, for you tohear you kind of answer that question live. Because a lot of times we thinkabout this as well, we're trying to get a faster transaction, fastertransaction, we're trying to utilize technology and Dr. And we're trying tofigure all of this out. And you're going wait, we can put we actually, becausewe've sped up so quickly. On the other side of things, we can actually pullback right now, because we know what's coming in the future. Talk a little bitabout the mentality around that, and how you know how the whole dealership isembracing that type of feel.

Brian Kramer 15:32

So it'skind of it's kind of like coming up with a battle plan. When you're in thebattle when the bullets are flying. Obviously, your adrenaline's pumping, itsucks different parts of your brain, you know, the blood flow goes to youramygdala instead of your prefrontal cortex, which is logic and reason. So whenthat blood draw starts happening, you've got to, you're just in a fight orflight mode, that's the worst possible time to figure out any sort of strategicinitiative, or any type of game plan game plan should be in a calm environmentlike this, where, okay, so here's friction point number one, here's friction,point number two, we're not going to talk about friction point number two,until we get past friction point number one. And figuring that out at a salesdesk, which is what most dealerships tried to do. Okay, we're gonna do this. Soyou got two or three people going on, and then all of a sudden, you starthaving some sort of, you know, progress going on, and all of a sudden, somebodycomes up to you, Hey, I got a heat case out here, I got this, you know, fivealarm fire going on this atomic bomb going off, I need somebody to go out thereand jump on this grenade. And then everybody starts scrambling, it never getsdone. Right. You know, the good thing for me is that, you know, I've gotWendell Hardy in the whole rest of this management team that are like my lefttackle. So I got plenty of time in the pocket, which, you know, I haven'talways had in my career. But if I don't have that, then this other stuffdoesn't happen. And we all have to have conversations about who's doing whatrole clarity, in order for that to happen, they've got to do this, and this andthis, but at least they see that, you know, Hey, as long as I it makes themjust better leaders owning it, and having the empowerment to see things throughand me not micromanaging that stuff. And, but we've all got to make sure thatwe're all aligned, even though we're all going in different directions towardsa common goal. But there's a big difference between strategic planning. And,you know, working on the business and working in the business. And knowing thedifference.

Paul Daly 17:29

What doyou think is the real adoption curve? Right? Yeah, there's obviously a big pushto say like, Can we do this? Right? Is it possible to do it and then you startputting the pieces together, get all the plumbing connected? And you're like,Oh, we can do this, right. And then on Friday, you have to do the first one,right? And you'll learn a lot when you do the first one, right? We do the firstone, what does the next six to 12 months look like for for you? And the team atyour main? Like, what do you think this is actually going to do? Right? Oh, wefound that we can do it like what's the real world application over the next 12months, as you see it?

Brian Kramer 18:01

So it'skind of like getting to a, you know, you think you're getting up to the summonoffice and you're at this base camp, and you're looking around, you're like,oh, like Everest, you know, see, I realized there was that much more to goabove the clouds. And it's almost limitless. But it's also daunting. I nowrealize that before the mass adoption of 5g, which is going, you know, some ofthem have already happened, but I guess Verizon sunsetting 3g phones, flipphones, June 1. So what comes after that is obviously a 5g, you know,transformation in 5g is, is 1000 times faster than the 3g to 4g, or I'm sorry,it's 1000 times faster than 4g, going from three to four was a 500. Timeincrease. Well, if you remember, if you remember 3g, that was hard to send youto wait a while to get a picture. One picture. I remember you had you had totext you had hit the button three times, right. And you wait for this, thisdesktop site to slowly process. You couldn't schedule airfare. You couldn't buya car you couldn't get you know, do you couldn't do a lot of things that youcan do on 4g Will 5g is 1000 times bigger, more exponential than that. So it'skind of once I got into that Metaverse, and there's some latency issues, a lotof latency issues and a lot of things that are going slow because it's hard topicture and it's like being on a 56k modem right now compared to what it'sgoing to be. But you see all the different

Paul Daly 19:31

matterso much like if you're in sick because like say, you know you're in a store,right? Someone's likely going to be in their home. Why does 5g matter to that?Or do you just think, go ahead?

19:42

I'msorry, it. It matters in so many different ways. The what, what it's going todo in terms of the processing capability of IOT connected car, how everythingis going to connect to it and the amount of massive exponential growth that isgoing to allow not just Since the processing power is so big, you don't needHTML coders and you don't need Python, you know, coding specialists in order tobuild websites. It's, it's already and you've got people that are gonna there'sgonna be businesses within businesses, producing NF T's of houses, and, and,and hats and chairs, that you can just build things out in, like, you know, Ispot that property decentraland, you can sit there and just have that allspecked out. So it's not just going to be a few website, web developersbuilding this from the ground, all of us and everybody else, it's going to be amassive undertaking, you're not gonna have to be that, that. What so

Paul Daly 20:35

what I'mhearing, what I'm kind of pulling out of that is that 5g, although it's notgoing to make like, it might make the transaction that you just executed like alittle bit faster, easier. The real benefit is once 5g opens up, you're justsaying that there's going to be a kind of like a flood of development, andpeople jumping into the space. So all of the surrounding their surroundingtechnologies and availabilities. And that's all going to see a massive pushforward once 5g. Yes,

Brian Kramer 21:03

andyou'll see mass adoption. Yeah, you know, I lost Mr. Germain, as it couldn'thappen fast enough. And he said, it's just, it's not easy enough. Yeah, untilthe iPhone came out, it wasn't easy enough to be able to browse online stuff.So that was really the hold up. And that was the the 4g transition, it's gonnabe the same thing like this, but times 1000. The the other pieces, the behindthe scenes plumbing that has to happen, that I realized, wow, this is going towin. When this thing hits, it's going to be so fast. It's so easy, that there'sso much more infrastructure work behind the scenes and the plumbing that needsto be done that I hadn't thought about. That's what was daunting. Gotcha. We'renot, we're not ready for the

Paul Daly 21:48

exampleof a plumbing piece that needs to be put in place.

Brian Kramer 21:51

So whensomebody Well, if you're walking around, and you want to click on a car, and inthere, there's discords, and different links, or whatever to get it to look ata vehicle. So obviously, the signing ceremony is one thing, we had that downand once we get some more bandwidth, that'll be fine that that actually waspretty smooth. It's the other pieces of calculating your own payments,appraising your own car, and making sure that those things are connected,because ideally is I'm in there, I'm looking at it as I want somebody to walkup to a vehicle, if that vehicle is a digital twin, of a vehicle that's on mylot. I want them to be able to, to click on the Monroney label, go right intoa, you know, calculating their own payment building out their own deal.Selecting their, you know, f&i products, all of those different things, andeach one of those has to be checked. And you know, and on the mobile side andthe Dr. tool now you've got not just, Oh, it's my mobile site, and my desktopsite setup is my Metaverse is the metaverse friendly

Paul Daly 22:53

and allthat's API's. And it's actually it's not just enough to build an API at thispoint, you have to build an API that can be hit quick enough. Right, right.Because a lot of people have built API's, but there's still latency in simplyhaving the API in the wrong like writing it in the the wrong version, right?I'm actually dealing with this in a project that I'm working on where we'rehitting an API, but it's it's taking about six times too long than it needs tobe to be able to implement correctly. And so that that's like 18. And we'rebuilding on web 2.0. That's 18 times too slow for the metaverse to catch.

Brian Kramer 23:29

And aswe're going through that, everybody who's who's in there, it's a pressurecooker, you know, that I felt because everybody said they're going hey, youknow what, why isn't happen faster? What's taking so long, you know, cuz you'refumbling along the way. So to do that at scale, it's kind of what caused us tokeep pulling back when we initially were doing digital retail. Okay, let's goback to the drawing board. Before we come, you know, we're ready again. Becauseyou go in there and you're like, Okay, there's definitely something here. Butwe got to, you know, tighten up all these leaks.

Paul Daly 23:58

If therewas ever a time to press this button, it's right now. I wish I had a hyped upversion of that, but right now because there's so much going on right now,which is great, which is great. And you know, there are people that like indevelopment companies right now you automotive tech companies, like we just gotto the point where we thought we were gonna figure out this one thing and I'mlike like, how about 18 times to slow he thought six times too slow. There's obviouslyso much more conversation to be had around this. I think that it's a monumentalmoment. I'm glad that we're kind of like putting the little hash mark on thetimeline right here with this interview with the article with the video thatyou shared, kind of as as we wrap this conversation the this part for today. Doyou have another transaction plan as of this point?

Brian Kramer 24:56

Yeah, soright now we're just going to do them with with associates Yep. That way we canbeta test it. We don't have to be again, unless there's a customer. And I had abuddy of mine that came in the other day during the filming of the delivery,trying to figure out what we were doing and what was going on. Yeah. So ifsomebody like that comes in they in there, and they want to be patient and gothrough it, or if anybody on this, you know, listen to this podcast, wants tobe a part of it, and has some patience and wants to go through that transition.

Paul Daly 25:24

I haveactually, I have somebody in mind, that would be a very high profile one. We'regoing to come back to that, but that okay. It's something in my mind, we'lltalk about that offline. But Brian, as usual, thanks for being a troublemaker.Thanks for letting us be included in this process. And they will say years fromnow. It happened right here.

Brian Kramer 25:45

That'sright.

Paul Daly 25:46

Theywill say, Brian, have an awesome day. If you need anything. Let us let us know.And let's just keep rocking it.

Brian Kramer 25:52

See youguys.

Paul Daly 25:53

See youlater. You know, man, he's just just so good buttoned up and ready to rockready to go. It's It's really exciting. It's really fun. I'm glad we got tokind of cover it and see it firsthand and be a part of it. Because yeah, likeit is. It's clunky right now, but someone has to be first. And someone has togo through the clunky Yeah. Heck yeah. Oh, we missed a Ben Hadley this delay.Buy my Tesla first traded in the metaverse, probably, probably the answer isyes. But again, later, Hey, um, we'll cut this out. I know the streams gettinga little long. It was a monumental moment. We think we can we can go for there.Um, let's talk about a little bit of news because we can cut this up and put itout later, too. Oh, we have a few other things to talk about today. Yeah, firstof all, let's maybe Ev price hikes. Wow. Yeah. So like, I think it's the thirdor fourth one in two or two and a half, three weeks at this point. Everybodyrealizes now like the dam has been broken. So if you're going to announce it,announce it now. Gotta go do it right now. Right? Because Rivia rivian hurteveryone the way they did. So let's just let's not do it, like rivian will doit the right way. Everyone else is like, thanks. Thank you so much. It's sogood. Yeah, I mean, we talked about this when Tesla did it. But it's it. Thereality is, is that because these manufacturers are not getting the opportunityto mark cars up like retail, retail auto dealers, they're not getting theprofit margins. And then I can in the margins on the on all of the the supplychain issues or lack of product out there in the market. And so they've got todo something about it. And you know, everybody's hiking prices, so the Eviemanufacturers should be able to as well. And if you go about if they're goingabout it the right way. Not not a bad plan. Yeah, I mean, and so just to giveyou a little review, if you didn't here last week, so Tesla's cheapest model.Now is $48,190, which is the model three if you ever drove it is a cool car.It's a tiny little car, though. It's a tiny little car. So you look at otherother sedans you're getting for 50 grand, right? All of a sudden, like, man,that's an expensive sedan. And I think it's also and then rivian, obviouslylast week, Chinese Evie maker um, what's the name? xpeng. Yep. Fang. How do youhow do you pronounce it? Do you even know?

Kyle Mountsier 28:13

There'sno clue.

Paul Daly 28:14

Okay, Iguess I gave you I gave you two. But so they they're increasing as well. Soit's like going across the board. Lucis set, lucid said they're teed up to goin a price hike. And my kids were talking about gas prices this week as we'redriving around, right? And we're like, wow, Evie. EVS look like a much betteridea right now. It's like, well, until you see that, like there's now anotherbetween three and and I mean, some some Tesla models have gone up as much as$12,000. Right. So the other model x. So if you think about it's like, well,how expensive really is gas if now you pay like five grand more for the car.Right? It's an Eevee. Like, the savings will always I think it will alwaysequalize. Right. I think the savings on the fuel or the electric that powersit. I think it's always going to equalize for a market condition. That's justmy thought. And looking at these price hikes, right? I mean, yeah, gas isgetting more expensive. But chances of gas going back down in the next, youknow, 12 to 24 months, I think are a lot higher than these Evie prices goingdown again, or they're already down gas prices already down 20 cents in mymarket. Once you establish the Eevee price, it's going to go down slowly. Yes.Right. So say we tacked on 567 grand, it's probably not going to go backwardsand any kind of meaningful trajectory or meaningful speed. So I think that'skind of offset that whole argument. You know? Yeah, until until the the thelegacy OEMs are doing it at scale. You're not gonna see Evie price drops,right? Well, even when they are doing it at scale, like I think Matea I mean, look,Tesla, I mean, it's a premium brand, right? So they're gonna hold a premiumvalue, but even the cost of the raw materials especially I mean, most of theEVS think of battery like the cost is so high on the battery like you can onlyget so efficient on that and the pain and all that stuff. Right? And so, itonly time will tell, only time will tell. Here's another article that that weincluded today, just because you know, like to follow technology and disruptionand defy or decentralized finance, you know, has been taking a huge swingforward also disruption in the banking industry like fintech. Right, it's beenseeing a massive, massive swing in the last five years. And a little contextfor that came out in an article in the Wall Street Journal today, talking aboutnow that the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates. So little educationhere, Federal Reserve raises interest rates, this is the rate at which banksborrow from one another, or can borrow from the government or buy bonds. So theFed is raising interest rates, meaning money is getting more expensive forbanks to borrow for from one another, which means they have to charge you theconsumer more to borrow it from them. Well, when there was a 0% interestenvironment, all these FinTech companies are able to leverage very low costmoney, right? And then lend it out at very low cost. So they're reallydisrupting banks and speeding technology people like oh, well, why wouldn't Igo with one of these banks, I get more interest in my savings account. Right?It's a lot faster and easier. However, the pendulum swings. Yep. Now thatinterest rates are rising, banks are resuming some of their leverage. Becauseback in the old days, the real money that you borrowed from the bank actuallycame from someone else who deposited their money in the bank. So deposits wereliteral money that you would borrow. And so now banks have all this moneythat's deposited in them and now have some leverage over the financial techsavings because savings account have have more money in them than they have inhistory in the US, right. Know that. You read the art. I think it's in history.I think I read that. I mean, it's it's a sense, skyrocketed, number, right?That's a lot of people saved over the pandemic, right? Yep, pandemic happens,people are just starting to save hoarders, a lot of a lot of it's not insteadof money with a call that money that everybody got relief money, when they callthat stimulus, stimulus, money, stimulus money, they got to me checks, me. Sothere's a lot of that in the bank. So now the bank can basically take thatmoney and lend it out to other people and charge a lower interest rate, lowerinterest rate, because they have the money instead of lending from other banks,which is based on the Fed rate. So your ruler, right, the local bank mightactually start to get a lot more competitive than some of these national banksthat don't take deposits or FinTech companies that don't take deposits. Watchcredit union rates drop. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And so so we thought that was anice little little morsel to you know, plug in. We learned a little somethingabout macro economic banking today didn't wait, man. We learned we learned alot of things today. And man if it is keeping your head up, but I love and Iwant to get back to this because I think this is the key point that Brian keepssaying is there there have to be people in your organization working on thebusiness and in the business simultaneously that we call that one foot in todayand one foot in tomorrow. Keeping your eyes up but keeping your nose down tothe ground and making sure that you are focusing on each area because if youlean too far to one or the other, you can go in a ditch really quickly. Well, Ithink that is all we can handle. on a Monday morning show the longest one inhistory. Monumental one worth it. Look, Monday is the day you make a decisionnot can you but will you we're going to be here making trouble. Hope you joinus

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