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You’re Not in the Car Business (And You Never Were) · Auto Collabs

• 0:00
  [upbeat music] This is Auto Collabs. I think the More Than Cars mindset is just this understanding. I think you could have it in any industry.
• 0:15
  It's just whatever you're doing, like physically, if you're in service or sales or management, whatever you're doing isn't actually what you're doing, right?
• 0:24
  You're-- That-- What you're doing is playing a part in a much bigger thing, and More Than Cars mindset is trying to pull everyone as high up. Like, I think of the drone shot.
• 0:33
  How do we get the drone shot high enough that you're like, "Oh, that's where that building is"? That's like we actually have a community that we're building.
• 0:39
  We're not just, like, screwing on an oil filter, or we're not just, like, reviewing our lead gen and seeing what our, you know, our follow-through rate is. Yeah.
• 0:48
  We're trying to build something that affects people's lives in a different way, and you can't do that unless you look at the big picture.
• 0:54
  I saw a LinkedIn post, and I'm gonna point to this, uh, the other day, of a dealer principal or general manager, I can't remember, that hi- one of his, uh, sales managers sent him a picture
• 1:07
  from his Ring camera outside his house, and it was him getting in his car at his house, and he said, "I just want you to know that this is, like, the-- like a picture
• 1:24
  that's worth a, a million words about what
• 1:28
  your leadership, the ability to be in this business, has meant to me, from, like, I'm getting in the car after I just ki-kissed my wife and kids goodbye, and they're comfortable in m- in our home, and we had plenty of food on the table, and I'm getting in a nice car to drive to work in clothes that are upstanding, and that's something that I never dreamed I would have been able to do."
• 1:48
  Hmm. And I think what the More Than Cars mindset allows you to do is to zoom out in that way and go, "Okay, the, uh..."
• 1:57
  Whether I'm, you know, looking at yesterday's leads or looking at my business trajectory over the next five years or trying to figure out how to just follow up with a customer, if you can zoom out just enough to recognize that a lead is a person, right?
• 2:14
  That an employee has a family, that a-all of those interconnected things that are much more than just the thing that we have to do, which is sell and service cars, which is a-an, an end result- Mm-hmm...
• 2:26
  it's a product of the proof point of our why, um, that's adopting this More Than Cars mindset, the thing that we're asking people to, to come alongside. I love that visual of zoom out.
• 2:37
  I, I don't know why I think of an air traffic controller sitting in front of their radar. The radar has all these blips that represent airplanes on the air, and that's all they can see oftentimes.
• 2:48
  But it would be unsafe to assume that outside of their field of view, there are not also other blips- Hmm... in the air. There are other airplanes in the air, just not in their field of view.
• 2:58
  So this visual you're giving me about zooming out, well, what could those blips that I see on my radar-- It's the day-to-day operation, the minutia, the leads, the, "What are we doing with our marketing?
• 3:09
  What are we doing with these things?" But there's opportunities in the ancillary view that you won't see unless you zoom out.
• 3:16
  I also, for some reason, have this visual of helping, uh, th-this-- We had this one experience. We were helping somebody move, and they had a piano, and pianos are notoriously heavy objects.
• 3:28
  [laughs] And you know the best way- I was going to say... to move a piano is to circle it- Leave it... with a group of people. Oh. [laughs] Yeah, like chop it up with a hatchet.
• 3:35
  [laughs] Leave it where it's at and buy a new one.
• 3:37
  Um, the best way to move a piano, e-especially if you have to get it downstairs and stuff like that, is to circle it with a group of people who all have the same purpose of lifting the piano- Mm-hmm...
• 3:47
  and lift where you stand. Yeah. That's the best thing you can do to move a piano.
• 3:51
  Well, for me, the More Than Cars mindset is kind of this idea of an expanded viewpoint to recognize that there are so many opportunities available.
• 3:59
  There's an abundance of opportunities available for us to take advantage of, but also that we're coming together with a singular purpose as a group to lift a heavy object. Yeah.
• 4:09
  And the best way to do it is to know your line- Mm-hmm... and lift. Like, stand, stand in place and lift that thing, and lift in a concerted, you know, chor- uh, uh, choreographed way with other people. Yeah.
• 4:22
  We have a- And I just think of that... we have an internal value, you know, own your line, know the map, right? Which is, which is right in line with that. It's like we know the entire map, but I'm gonna own this line.
• 4:32
  And the more people that adopt a mindset in that, in that general direction- Yeah... this More Than Cars mindset, is you can have trust that there's enough other people lifting, right? Like, "I'm gonna lift this.
• 4:44
  This seems too heavy." Yeah. But there's enough other people across OEMs and industry partners and, and OEM suppliers and dealer networks and, uh, shipping, uh, you know, people.
• 4:57
  Like, the, uh, as more people come to adopt this level of mindset, the more people lifting, the lighter the load, right? You get four people around the piano, little tough.
• 5:06
  You get 12 people around a piano, it feels like you're lifting a little featherweight, right?
• 5:10
  And I think that that's the goal, is, is as we can draft more people into a mindset that is more than, that allows you to see more broadly.
• 5:18
  I think about, you know, people a lot of times may wonder, "Okay, what are you doing over there at More Than Cars? Why do you do the news one day, a webinar the next? You have a SoDeCon.
• 5:29
  You, you do all these different things." And just when you think about the news, understanding if you're an OEM, a dealer, or partner, how what others are doing impacts what you're doing, right?
• 5:43
  "Oh, this other manufacturer that I don't even sell just made this move," and that allows me to see more different, uh, something differently, something more clearly that I can serve my employees or my customers with.
• 5:56
  "Oh, I'm an industry partner, and broadly, the industry is moving in this direction.
• 6:01
  Even though I service this one point in a dealership, I see how that loops into so many other, you know, parts of, of the dealership operation." If you don't have that broad understanding, it's, it's really tough.
• 6:13
  You're at a disadvantage. Yeah. You know?
• 6:15
  Um, you know, just back to the More Than Cars for a minute.I do think that there's this level of shared lift that, like, we're trying to gather people around, saying like, "Hey, we can do this."
• 6:26
  But if we ignore the human element to what the essence of More Than Cars is, More Than Cars is something that, in my mind,
• 6:33
  I think people should be able to say as almost like a mantra, and that's why we talk about it that way.
• 6:40
  Because if someone's at home and they're dealing with a family situation, but they also have to balance this weight of the industry and the velocity it moves, right?
• 6:48
  There's this like, uh, what I'm doing is about more than cars, and that's like in a very localized and p- I think it can be a very personal thing.
• 6:56
  I also think it can be a responsibility that we see dealers take all, all the time, day in and day out, to wrap their arms around their community and say, "Oh, no, what we do is about more than cars." For sure.
• 7:06
  'Cause the stigma's like, just a car dealer. You know, that's why we sit outside with a sign that says, "Car dealers are amazing people, change my mind."
• 7:13
  Because taking responsibility for the people around you, and we've watched car dealers feed people, house them, provide toys, provide coats in the wintertime, provide bikes, build hospital wings. Yeah. Right?
• 7:27
  There is nothing more human, I think, than the work that dealers are doing day in and day out.
• 7:31
  So even, like that's the, that's the thing, like if we can look at it and say more than cars, like what we're doing isn't what we're doing. What we're doing is hard, right?
• 7:41
  It takes a lot of gathering and str- strategy, but when, when someone says more than cars, I kind of feel like I want it to help them look inward, right? Look up, and look forward.
• 7:52
  Like, those are the things that when we say that, it's something so much different, and that's what allows us to pay attention, because it's a requirement if we're gonna be excellent. Yeah.
• 8:00
  You have to be, have situational awareness. I once heard a, a US Army general say, "I want my knowledge to be a mile wide and an inch deep." Mm. Because he needs to understand all the things at play.
• 8:13
  He has specialists that understand this, he, they understand deep here. But if you're gonna be a general, and everyone, I, I don't care where you are in the industry, right? You can still have a general's mindset.
• 8:23
  You can, yeah.
• 8:23
  And we talk about leading from the middle all the time, and that's where the broad perspective comes in, 'cause all of that knowledge allows us to say, "Oh, this is how we can do the hard thing that we're doing in order that we can like raise it up," and like understand that what we're doing is just a means to serving and helping and all of us take steps forward in our lives.
• 8:42
  I think one of the challenges is that people can look at a movement that talks about human emotion as much as we do, and the people side of the business, and, um, I think it's easy to say it's not business savvy. Yeah.
• 8:57
  Right? It's not technically savvy. Discount it as, as just a bunch of feelers out there. It's the human element, right. Yeah. "That's fine. You do that over there, but I'm gonna run my business." Yeah.
• 9:05
  Yeah, and like they disassociate the two as if- Right... the two aren't equally important. Yep. I think that's one of the challenges. Um, and I think that as we've seen, they're all over the social media.
• 9:16
  We follow these people. We look at the, the Patrick Abads, and the Ed Roberts, and the Brian Bensacks. The people are saying, "I want to develop people. I want to invest in people."
• 9:26
  And their results you cannot argue with. Their longevity, their profitability, right? All of the legitimate business results that everyone says they want, their retention. Yep. They have them all.
• 9:37
  And so we're saying like the challenge is like, no, the human side is the pathway to consistent high performance across the board. I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges. Another challenge for me is,
• 9:51
  and this is something that we're, we're working to be more honest with ourselves and the whole industry, is there are still bad actors. Mm-hmm. Low level and high level bad actors. All the way through.
• 10:01
  I mean, ones that just like do the slightly not great thing, and then ones that are like full on bad actors that a lot of the, that are still profitable. Mm-hmm.
• 10:11
  That still have a lot of employee- Can be very profitable... that have a lot of employees, that make a lot of money. Um, and, and it's hard to turn that ship. Mm-hmm. Like, honestly.
• 10:24
  It is, it is very tough to look at that and be like, "Don't do that anymore," when a business person or, uh, is, is l- seemingly from like just a business perspective, successful. Mm-hmm. Right?
• 10:37
  And so, you know, we're, we're trying to call that out more often. Um, you know, we're not the like, you know, point it out in spades and, and walk into dealerships and be like, "Oh, you're a bad actor."
• 10:49
  But- There's actually a lot of, a lot of really successful people that you- Ask us to do that. [laughs]...
• 10:54
  that you would know if we said the name, and they have millions of followers, and we're like, "You know what you need to do." And they say exactly that. Yeah. And we were like, "Thanks for that input-" Yeah...
• 11:02
  "but that's not what we're trying to do." So but, but that's like there's dissonance there- Yeah... in, in what seems like y- you know, you could go either way.
• 11:12
  But so- I, I mean, that also leads to one of the things I think is most encouraging, uh, which is that then there are those who are not willing to
• 11:23
  give up or forsake what they believe is right in order to get the fast gain. Yeah.
• 11:31
  Like, we're seeing more and more level-headed thinking, more and more kind of infinite game thinking, more and more stability focus and, and, and that's encouraging to me because it is very tempting when you see somebody or th- these bad actors posting about their immediate gains and their big profits.
• 11:51
  And, and that can be challenging because you sit in your business and you're like, "Well, what am I doing wrong?" Mm. "Why, why have I chosen the slower path all the time?" Mm.
• 12:00
  To not give up on that is really encouraging to me because that's the long-term win. That, that is...
• 12:06
  Okay, this sounds kind of grim, but that is a funeral filled with people versus a funeral that nobody wanted to show up to. Yeah. You know? It, when you think about kind of that legacy play. So that's encouraging.
• 12:20
  The second thing that I think is encouraging about this is-Um, I'll note that the encouraging things started with the chief of staff of More Than Cars. He's like, "No, lift everybody up." [laughs] Well, no, no.
• 12:33
  But I, I really am- [laughs] I'm taking the cues from what you guys are saying because, because in that, y- you know, kudos to the two of you as, as the, you know, senior-most leaders of, of this, this work because
• 12:49
  you guys are... W- I mean, all of us are in dealerships a lot. We're out there a lot.
• 12:53
  But you're, you're in stores, you're interviewing the good actors, the people who ha- are driven by something bigger than just selling a car.
• 13:01
  We're having hundreds of conversations a week with people, and here we have the two of you, um, that I feel fortunate to be associated with, who are also not willing to forsake
• 13:13
  what you guys believe is right to just get a quick gain. Because it, it's so easy this d- this day and age. You know, I joke about social media in particular. It's where people post the best parts of their fake lives.
• 13:26
  Yeah. But we know that there's a lot of people that are really challenged by that because you're like, "Oh my gosh, they believe it." Mm-hmm.
• 13:33
  Uh, or at least they feel compelled to want to believe it, and then that can al- alter the course that they're on.
• 13:39
  Um, the two of you are great examples of sticking, sticking to the course and saying, "No, this is the mission." So I feel inspired by that.
• 13:47
  But also, look at the number of conversations that we've had, I mean, gosh, overseas. We went as far away from Syracuse- Pretty much. Pretty much... pretty close...
• 13:56
  as we can get, you know, barring, you know, going to Madagascar or something like that. Yeah, within one hour, like with one hour timezone. Yeah. We were really close. Um- Other side of the world... to Florida,
• 14:07
  the, the West Coast, parts of Canada. Um, more and more operators, I'm encouraged by the fact that they're thinking in terms of it's not about the car, it is about the person.
• 14:19
  It's about what the person can achieve in their life as a result of having this freedom utility. And, and so you're seeing more and more, um, vivid vision statements from dealers that are like, "Uh, w- we are,"
• 14:36
  you know, almost like we talk about in, in, um, the StoryBrand framework. Like, "We are the guide that is helping facilitate somebody living their dreams."
• 14:44
  And it's like, oh, you don't believe that, or you think that's cliche? Take a two-car household and remove one of those vehicles and watch what happens- See what happens... to that relationship. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
• 14:53
  Take a one-car household and remove the vehicle and see what happens. N- n- n- no pun intended, but like, they see the vehicle as a vehicle for change, for growth- Yeah... for prosperity.
• 15:06
  And, and so that's really encouraging to me, to see more and more dealers having, I think, what historically our industry would call very vulnerable open conversations, to be opening up and shedding a tear and feeling something deeper about how what they do builds a community.
• 15:24
  Like you said, building hospitals and things, you know, community sports and, and the things that they're involved in. Toys for Tots, which is big this time of year at time we're recording. Um,
• 15:35
  infrastructure, mining, fabrication. Yep. Factory jobs. All the downstream impact. All the downstream impact. Yeah. And there, there, there are more operators that are thinking about that- And, uh-...
• 15:45
  which is really encouraging... another encouraging thing for me, and I don't think...
• 15:50
  We're not uniquely responsible p- for this, but I think we've played a big part, and this mindset plays a big part in increasing the speed of collaboration across the industry. Mm-hmm.
• 16:02
  Yeah, it's almost like, it's like common vernacular now. But I remember- I mean, I remember a time-... when we first started talking about it- Yeah... and it certainly wasn't...
• 16:10
  when people would go, "Wait, you, I don't know about like con- connecting and working with them in that way." I mean, I remember a time very recently,
• 16:21
  I mean five, six years ago, where like there were no dealers- 20-- That's called 2019. It was- No dealers sharing what they did with another dealer. Like, your 20 group was about it.
• 16:32
  20 group, there's enough protection there. There was enough protection. Mm-hmm. Enough distance. You know, it was across the country. Yeah.
• 16:37
  But like, there are dealers that will share their, their quote unquote "secret sauce" with the dealer right down the street. Yeah. Right? And there are...
• 16:47
  I'm watching at a Sodukon three of the most intensely competitive companies- [laughs]... jamming in a circle together, right? Like, in what industry do you see that, right?
• 16:59
  That's, that's definitely the most encouraging thing for me, is that the language and the temperature around working together and lifting one another, I can legitimately say I've watched it change over the last five years.
• 17:09
  And we've watched it right before our eyes, because so much of it happens at our events or at a Sodukon or in our DM threads- Yeah...
• 17:16
  and the introductions that happen, which is one of the really exciting things now about, you know, when we, when we merged the agency and the media company together.
• 17:23
  Because now we're able to be, be in the mix and be in the weeds and actually help companies unlock that mentality inside it. And just like you hire anybody, whether it's a consultant, an agency, a supply- Yeah...
• 17:37
  like, you're like, "I want some of what you have injected into my organization." And to see that going forward more and more, and hear the language that people use change, to see the shirts, um- Yep...
• 17:49
  you know, the shirts change. People wear them. And even like John Bozella, right? CEO of Alliance for Automotive Innovation. He's like, "Where do I get one of those?" [laughs] No, he was, he was telling us stories.
• 17:57
  He was wearing it on the- Oh, that's right... on the trip in. And the conversations that are happening. So I, this is like,
• 18:03
  you know, rising tide is, is definitely that illustration does apply, but I think this is more meaningful than that because people are actually the ones- Yeah... contributing to that rising tide.
• 18:12
  The piano metaphor, I'm like, we're just gonna lock onto that one, right? Lift the piano. Yeah, 'cause it is a piano. Yeah. Yeah. And we're musicians, so you know- Yeah. Yeah, yeah.... it's kinda like...
• 18:22
  [laughs] What, what a fun thing to be in an industry where we can deal with these global dynamics, deal with local things, uh, deal with fierce competitors, deal with cutting edge tech, and still be able to like flex the creative muscle in it.
• 18:33
  Oh, it's so much fun. Right? Yeah. Like, I feel like there's really nowhere else where that exists. Yeah, you're right. You're right.
• 18:37
  So it's, it's, it's been an encouraging five years, and the next five years is, is shaping up to see a bunch of other people lifting the piano with us. [upbeat music] Welcome to Auto Collabs. Welcome to Auto Collabs.
• 18:53
  [laughs] Are we recording? Are we rolling yet? Not yet.