Latest / Auto Collabs / Why Most ‘Guest Experience’ Programs Fail... and What Actually Works

Transcript

Why Most ‘Guest Experience’ Programs Fail... and What Actually Works · Auto Collabs

• 0:00
  Do you guys notice anything different about me today? [upbeat music] This is Auto Collabs. [laughs] Did you, did you, uh- You shaved... hot comb your beard? I trimmed my beard. Very- You trimmed your beard. We see it...
• 0:16
  very snug. The coolest part about this hat, I still can't remember the name of it, is that the two of you have a matching one. And we got these in Kazakhstan. Not that... It, this is made... Oh, yeah. Oh, we're bros.
• 0:28
  How did you have them- You didn't even know... that you have them handy. And the fox tail on the back. Well, this is a fox. Our friends in Kazakhstan bought us these on the way home. We'd made it home in one piece.
• 0:39
  And, uh, it's just a, a subtle reminder that I wear every day of the, the fun that we had together. My wife's getting a little sick of it, though. Yeah. Is she really? My wife loved it. And- No, my wife loves it...
• 0:49
  I'm gonna wear mine to the side like this, like the Napol- the, what's her name from Napoleon Dynamite- You can-... with the side. [laughs] Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh my goodness. Sell it sideways. Yeah.
• 0:57
  She's like, "I'm, I'm selling these boondoggles to go to college," and Kip's like, "Your mom goes to college." I wanna see Kyle segue out of this into our guest today. No, well...
• 1:05
  [laughs] Uh, try new things, meeting new people. I've never met, met today's guest. Kyle did. No, I've- And-... I've met today's guest. And, you know, us COOs, we gotta stick together, right?
• 1:19
  [laughs] We're operational people. Yeah. And so when we get on a Z- on a Google Meet together, we're like, "I see you. I get it." I love that for you.
• 1:26
  And, uh, I just knew, like, w- we needed to have a deeper conversation than even what he and I got to go into. Mm-hmm. So I can't wait to kinda, like, dive into his story a bit more and understand where he comes from.
• 1:36
  So, uh, hey, we hope you have a wonderful time hanging out with us and Adam today. I can't wait for him to see my hat. I'm not gonna wear this. That's stupid.
• 1:45
  [upbeat music] All right, Adam, thank you so much for joining us here on Auto Collabs today. We're excited to get into the convo. Thanks for having me. Absolutely.
• 1:56
  Okay, so you and I, uh, the story goes, we swiped right on LinkedIn. It was great. [laughs] You can do that? We had a date over Google Meet. And it was wonderful. But, no, but Adam and I, like, I im- immediately
• 2:13
  it was very clear that, that we, we had so much similarity in our passion for the industry. I just wanna thank you for reaching out and connecting.
• 2:22
  I think that in our industry or in any industry, like, that first step of, like, "Hey, look, there's someone else that I'm thinking I'm a...
• 2:28
  I don't know what we're doing together, but w- we need to chat," I think that's such a, a cool place. I've met so many incredible people because someone took the initiative to go, "I think we need to just talk."
• 2:39
  So first of all- Mm... thanks for that. Um, but roll back, 'cause I'd love for people to get to know you just a little bit in, in, in our community.
• 2:47
  Like, roll back to getting in the industry and, and where you kind of, like, cut your teeth. Yeah. So I started with the Van Horn Automotive Group 22 years ago. And before that, I was a, I was a teacher.
• 3:01
  I taught middle school and high school. So went to college and, uh, decided that I didn't wanna teach. Taught for six whole months. And then- [laughs]... decided that wasn't- That good, huh? [laughs] Yeah, it's not good.
• 3:14
  So, uh, through a connection, I ended up talking to the owner of the, the dealership at the time that I went to work for. So he said, "Hey, why don't you come work for me, sell cars?"
• 3:25
  And at the time, I thought, "I'm going from this respected career of being a t- a professional and a teacher, and I'm gonna go into car sales?" And I, I really went back and forth on it.
• 3:36
  And then, uh, you know, I looked at, kinda looked at my, my checking account and decided I needed to do something. [laughs] So- I think a lot of auto careers-... made the leap... started that way. [laughs] Oh, yeah.
• 3:49
  So- "Uh, I don't think this is right." [laughs] "I was looking at my checking account and..." [laughs] I ma- I make the leap. And I was in... I started in June. Worked half a month. Worked in July.
• 4:02
  And in July, I sold, I set a record for the store. What? Made, made more money than I've made in six months- [laughs]... of teaching. And I was hooked.
• 4:12
  You're like, "I think I might actually be able to pay off this college debt after all." [laughs] Yeah. So I'm looking at it and I'm like, "Wow, this is actually, could be something more than just a summer gig."
• 4:24
  So the guy that I worked for, great guy. And at the time, he had one location. And I could see, though, that there was something, you know, maybe in him that he wanted to keep growing.
• 4:36
  And he, he kind of included me in a lot of stuff that maybe was way above my head. And as we started to grow, it was very evident.
• 4:45
  He'd bring me to meetings where we're doing acquisitions, and I'm just praying that nobody asks me any questions in that room. [laughs] Yeah, you're like, "Any moment they're gonna realize it's me in this room," right?
• 4:55
  Yes. Yeah, I'm just trying to, like, hide as much as I can and not- [laughs]... make eye contact. So [laughs] I'm with...
• 5:03
  I sold cars for four years, which I think at, at, you know, in this day and age, people wanna advance quicker in the business. Four years is a long time. Mm-hmm. So I learned a lot, though.
• 5:13
  And then I, I made my way through the ranks as we grew. So we slowly... We grew slow at first, but then all of a sudden, we just had rapid growth. I think we did, in 18 months, we did eight acquisitions.
• 5:26
  [whistles] So we added- Look at that... a ton. And we went from 1 all the way up to 18. We went from having 25 employees to having over 800. Oh my goodness.
• 5:37
  So we, I was with the organization through this whole big change. And the other thing that we went through was in 2018, he wanted to get out.
• 5:49
  So he had no, um, no, no real plan and no family to take over, so he sold it to the employees.
• 5:58
  So, uh, I was on the board of directors during that time and learned a ton about what it means to go from being-A privately held company to being an ESOP, being an employee-owned company. Mm.
• 6:11
  So I was on the board during that whole time, worked through that trans- that transition. Not only... It's not just an ownership transition, it's a whole cultural shift within the organization. Mm-hmm.
• 6:23
  So, um, you know, my path was, it was really big.
• 6:29
  And the reason I reached out to Kyle was, number one, uh, you know, I really like the movement in the industry now about collaborating and sharing things because where I came from, y- you didn't do that, right?
• 6:41
  Like, in the early days, you protected your territory. You didn't tell- Mm-hmm... anybody anything. You didn't share anything. Yeah.
• 6:47
  And the industry is moving more towards collaboration as well as, you know, my story in growing through the dealership is what I shared with Kyle. So I'll give you kind of a snippet of it.
• 7:00
  When I became a general manager, the owner called me up to his office and he said, "Okay, you know, today's the day. You're the general manager, you know. How you wanna run this place?"
• 7:11
  And I said, "You know, I, I, I see an opportunity to sell more new cars, but I think the path to do it is to really pay attention to each person and, like, try to really," and I use the word try to love each person that comes through the door.
• 7:24
  And I didn't really know what that meant at the time. Mm. I just kinda had this concept of, if I really pay attention to each one and care about what they wanna do each time, maybe we can build this reputation. Mm.
• 7:38
  And he just looked at me, like, real serious, and he goes- [laughs]... "That's really cute, but what are you gonna do?" [laughs] That's funny. I know that response. I've gotten that response several times in my life.
• 7:51
  We've heard that. Yeah. Like, he wanted a tactic, not just, like, a, a- He's like, "Aw"... a concept. [laughs] Right.
• 7:59
  So I looked, you know, like, we talked about it and I go, "I think, Chuck, I think this is what I can do." And he was, he had faith in me enough to let me do it, and it ultimately became the culture of the group. So- Mm.
• 8:10
  [laughs]... um, we moved to that culture and we moved dealerships away from the old school ways, and moved them into a model of really caring about the guest experience, and that's still how the group functions.
• 8:22
  So- W- can we dive into that for a second? But all the way I connected with Kyle. There's a few things we gotta unpack here, Paul. Yeah. There, there's, there's a lot. Yeah. I've got so many questions- Yeah...
• 8:30
  so you just get yourself situated, okay? [laughs] There's a lot in there. Um, okay. What... When you said, "We made it a part of the culture," right?
• 8:45
  That's a really broad blanket statement, and I think this is why a lot of people struggle with thinking of things this way.
• 8:51
  When we, when we say, "Love people more than cars," when we say, "Focus on the guest experience," it's so broad that often people don't have a starting point or an ending point or markers along the way.
• 9:04
  How did you take it from saying that in that conversation to the point where you're like, "It's actually a part of the dealership culture now"?
• 9:11
  What are the, what are the markers within there and the, the strategic change points that you could point out?
• 9:17
  You know, obviously, it's complicated, but, like, what are some of the basics that a listener today would be like, "Ah, I understand. Focus on this type of thing"? You know, what it comes down to is
• 9:29
  it, you can't focus on the normal metrics that everybody wants to look at. Like, you can look at CSI, and there's a way to game CSI. Absolutely. You can look at Google reviews. There's a way to game Google reviews.
• 9:41
  You really have to just get everybody's mind wrapped around creating this atmosphere of, of, of the guest experience. And it means- Mm...
• 9:51
  something different to everybody, but it also is creating process around it as well. Mm-hmm. So monitoring, you know, it's all the little touch points of what you, what you wanna do.
• 10:01
  So when the customer arrives at the dealership, it's simple things. It's nothing like... It's nothing this big, grand plan, right? Mm.
• 10:10
  It's simple little touch points of, "Hey, guys, when somebody comes coming through the door, you have to get up out of your chair and greet them." Ah, see, now- You come to the door and you greet them... we got it.
• 10:19
  That's more relevant than you realize. [laughs] See? See? [laughs] You don't even know. I'ma yell at the screen right now because that's right. Like, everybody look up when somebody comes in the dealership. Ah. Dude.
• 10:33
  [laughs] Okay. Wait. Tell, tell him why. Tell him why Kyle's freaking out. You tell him, Michael. Tell him, Michael. Were you, were you in Kazakhstan with us recently? [laughs] That's what I'm asking.
• 10:41
  [laughs] That's what I'm wondering. Adam, we gotta tell you, one of the things that impressed us so much t- we, we toured, what, guys, 25, 30 dealerships over there? Oh, sure.
• 10:50
  It was insane amount of dealerships that we went into. It didn't, it did not matter what brand or OEM. It, from Kia to one of the Chinese m- manufacturers we don't have here yet.
• 11:03
  Every time we walked into a dealership, a well-dressed, well-groomed individual would stand up at the guests, like the Ritz Carlton, welcome us in, ask how they could direct us, where we could direct us.
• 11:15
  The environment, everything was... I, I wrote down and underlined what you said here. You said guest experience, and I can't tell you how much that's been on our mind to, to feel like a guest. Mm.
• 11:27
  Not, not customer experience, like guest experience. Not an interruption. Not an interruption. Yeah. The, every dealership we wa- went into in Kazakhstan, we were like, "What? What? What is going away? I feel so loved."
• 11:40
  So yeah. So I tried to give everybody, like, little, little things that would make big effect. So, like, one of them was, you know, everybody calls and confirms an appointment, right?
• 11:52
  So you can call in and go, "Hey, I'm confirming your appointment. Are you gonna be here at this time?" Now, the customer most of the time is just gonna say yes, even if they're coming or not. Mm-hmm.
• 12:02
  But if you change that and you send them an email or, or a text or a call and you say-"Hey, Paul, I'm calling to see what you would like to drink and if you want a snack when you arrive at the dealership" Come on. Ah.
• 12:13
  You know, that changes the experience drastically. Everybody has coffee, everybody has water, everybody has soda, everybody has snacks.
• 12:23
  But if I call you and I ask you what you would like and then I prepare it for you, and I go, "Hey, Paul, welcome. Come on over. I got your soda and your snacks ready to go. Come on over and have a seat.
• 12:32
  And I've got everything lined up for your kids too." [laughs] It's just the three of us shit going, huh? Well, yeah, "Will your kids be joining you?" Yeah. "Can I prepare some, some games or some art things for them?"
• 12:42
  Like, so where does this- Okay, but we work on all these little things, right? Like, all the little, little aspects is changing the culture of what you're doing. It's not... And it, it's time, right?
• 12:53
  Like, d- are we- You know what's interesting- It's something that's never done. You're constantly doing it and you're constantly working at it.
• 12:59
  Not one time yet have you said the words digital retailing, omnichannel- [laughs] Ah. Ah... CDP, CDP, one-to-one message. You haven't said that yet. Why aren't... [laughs] Well- No...
• 13:12
  'cause it's about when the customer arrives, right? Yeah. Like, all that other stuff is, it's a tactic to get them to the dealership. But if you wanna retain that person,
• 13:22
  the show is when they arrive, and that's when you have to create what you wanna... What your culture is, is what you have to deliver when they arrive at the door. I... See- Well, thanks for playing.
• 13:35
  [laughs] But here's why we, here's why we can't talk. Here's why we're struggling. This is why. [laughs] You guys know Steve CC on, on, uh, on LinkedIn? You ever seen this guy, Adam? Who is he?
• 13:46
  I can't even see it say his last name. His first name is Steve. His last name is- Cichowski? S- Cichow- Cich- Cichowski. Chikowski. Whatever. He's got a bunch of consonants at the beginning of his name.
• 13:55
  If you don't know him, it's fine. Yeah. Don't worry about it. I'm gonna give you the backstory. The backstory is- [laughs]... he's got two big things he talks about every single place.
• 14:02
  He's like, "When you talk about marketing, you gotta include the sign out front because that's part of the budget. It's telling your name. It's saying, 'Come, come to me.' Nobody includes that."
• 14:09
  The other big thing he harps on is he says, "Why do people keep saying experience? Experience, experience, experience. It's just a blank word" And
• 14:20
  what you just transitioned for me and for us, and what we've been, like, trying to find the words for since we went to Kazakhstan, is this, like, is this...
• 14:31
  It, it's a level of hospitality that we haven't been willing to talk about. The level of, like, training, intention. Like, what, what are the brass tacks about experience then contribute to a broader culture?
• 14:45
  Because- Mm-hmm... my guess is that when you start doing, like, that first thing, which is greet them at the door, then the next thing, and it's like when you call to cur- confirm the appointment, do this.
• 14:59
  By the time you get to thing four, five, or six that are similar in line with that, you don't have to actually train number seven, eight, nine, and 10. Yeah. They just become n- natural to the environment. Mm-hmm.
• 15:12
  You know, it's, it's another, another thing is just the belief that most every customer that arrives at your dealership, they intend to buy when they come, when they get to that point. Yes.
• 15:25
  And if you have that belief that everybody intends to buy when they get there, and it's all about creating the right experience for them to purchase.
• 15:35
  That's just another mindset shift of I need to listen and create the experience that they want when they're here.
• 15:43
  And if I do that, I have a really good chance of them purchasing the car, and then I have a good chance of retaining them as a customer. And them telling how amazing it was, 'cause you surprised them.
• 15:53
  When they expected one thing, they got another thing. Yes. Yeah. And it... There's something weird to me always about the way the automotive industry has worked about everything being so secretive.
• 16:06
  When you, when the customer sits down, you know, in my mind, I always just wanna ask the customer, "How would you like to purchase the car today?" I don't need to, like, beat around the bush about, "Are you here..."
• 16:20
  You know, at the end, surprise them with a, a purchase proposal. They should just tell me how they... And it... They might go, you know, "We're just looking today." "Okay, great.
• 16:29
  How much time do you have to work with us today?" "I've got two hours." "Okay, I wanna respect your time." Oh, that's a great question. "Let's get as much done as we can in two hours."
• 16:38
  So tell, how did you- You know what- Go ahead, I'm sorry. Finish your thought. When you roll through those things, sometimes people go, "This has been really great.
• 16:46
  Let's just get this done and over with and purchase the car today." Yeah. Like, weird things happen. How did you operationalize some of these things? Like, did you have scripts, just training in general?
• 16:56
  Like, did you, did you lay down the gauntlet and say, "This is the way we will do it"? Or... So we built out a whole customer... Uh, we built out this, this whole guest experience process that, that started...
• 17:14
  It, it just, it started differently from the moment that people arrived. And we built it at one location, and then we just rolled it out one by one and what that looked like. And it was not only
• 17:27
  how the interactions went, and we trained on those interactions, but then also what the follow-up looked like. So we would, we created a different follow-up for people in that location. So I shot a video.
• 17:41
  You know, we have 18 rooftops, and you can imagine how many visits we're getting. I shot a video, and I would give them my, my personal cell phone and my email address in that video.
• 17:55
  So we would text them the video or email out the video, and if they didn't purchase, it was asking them how their experience was and asking them, "Please provide feedback about what your experience was."
• 18:06
  Now, there's two great things about that. Number one, it's kind of an accountability measure for your people in the store.The other aspect of it is- Mm... you get honest feedback from people.
• 18:18
  And if you create a culture of we're not, nobody's in trouble, I want the feedback because all we're looking to do is improve. Mm-hmm.
• 18:25
  So you give me the feedback, we're gonna talk about it, but we're gonna talk about how we're, we're gonna use that feedback to improve what we're doing. And you constantly create that. Number one,
• 18:37
  y- at first you're gonna get some messages, right? But slowly over time, those messages just go down. Mm-hmm. Or you get messages that, the other th- the other half of it is I would get text messages
• 18:50
  or calls daily where people would be talking about how great it was and how much, even when they didn't buy a car. They wanted to just reach out and say, "I had the best experience.
• 19:01
  We didn't make a decision yet, but I wanna let you know this person, this person, this person were great." Well, then I would take the time, shoot them an email, say, "Hey, I got this message from your customer.
• 19:12
  Thanks a lot. They said everything was awesome." And you just reinforce that over and over and over again. And was it perfect? No. Nobody's ever perfect, right? Yeah, humans in the room.
• 19:23
  [laughs] But it's, you're just, you're just working on creating that, that type of atmosphere where the mentality is make it hard for them not to make a decision, right? Mm-hmm.
• 19:34
  Like, make them not wanna walk away because they know what the other guy's gonna do. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um- When- [laughs] I mean, the, the, the one- I, I'm like, can we just transfer all of this into...
• 19:49
  It's just so odd that we have somebody that we didn't know, or I didn't know prior to the show, that is just saying all the same things that we think and feel every day. Yeah.
• 20:00
  And that question of like, "I wonder if there's anyone else out there", you're just like proving the thesis that we always talk about. There's more and more out there.
• 20:08
  There are a lot of people who believe this that just don't know each other exist yet. I, I wanna, I, I- Yeah... the one thing I wanna double click on before we get out of here is
• 20:17
  there are so many groups right now that are finding success through scaling, through purchase, through acquisition, consolidation. Um, but a lot of that success is just like bottom line success.
• 20:30
  Acquired net new revenue by, by buying it. But you, y- you said like j- from going to one to 18, you were able to scale the culture as well.
• 20:41
  Um, especially in that 18-month timeline, what were some of like the intentional decisions that you had to make or the steps that you had to take to make sure you didn't lose that along the way?
• 20:54
  Um, you've kind of given us a few of those clear things, but especially in a tight timeline, eight stores, 18 months, you could really get lost in just like, "Whoa, that's a lot of people, and there they go, and there's some revenue", and, you know.
• 21:08
  W- what's the timeline and what are the intentional steps that you took along the way to make sure that that culture got scaled and didn't just like get lost as so many people came in? Yeah. So for us, we ran as a group.
• 21:21
  You know, some dealer groups don't run as a... They, they're a group, but they, everybody runs their own location. Mm. Yeah. We ran as a group.
• 21:30
  And the benefits of running as a group are you have a lot of supporting cast as far as, you know, you've got a, a, a BDC that is taking all the incoming to create the experience.
• 21:42
  You've got a c- a cast of people that train. Mm. You've got all these resources because you're able to save in other ways. You don't have a title person and a, and a controller in every location. Y- you never,
• 21:56
  no structure is ever gonna save you the overall spend. It's just how you spend your money. Mm. So we had people, when we would, when we would acquire a store, we had a process and a team.
• 22:08
  So we would go in, we had an interview process for every person in the dealership, and this is maybe one of the areas that is not so friendly, but if you didn't fit, we knew and we just parted ways with you right away.
• 22:23
  Mm. We had a process to come in and go, "This person is not"- You're not gonna be a culture fit. Yeah... "You're not a culture fit. You're not gonna be right for this", and then that was it. And we, we also built,
• 22:34
  every time we'd go into an acquisition, we relatively had the leadership team for that store built. So we would be heavy in employees in one area. They knew our culture. They knew what to expect.
• 22:45
  They would be the leaders in the location. Mm. So when we would go in one after another, we're not, we're not bringing on or getting to know the, the upper level people.
• 22:55
  We'd bring them in, and that was the way we would duplicate one after another, because they knew the expectation.
• 23:00
  I think, I think that some people would look at that and be like, "Oh, that's so harsh to go in and, and operate in that way."
• 23:06
  But I think what it is is that it's actually the most loving thing that you could do for those people that maybe weren't a culture fit- Mm-hmm... because there would constantly be a rub. They would feel out of place.
• 23:15
  You would feel they're out of place. Be, there'd be constantly a struggle and a fight. And it's actually the most loving thing to say, "You know what? I think you need to find employment elsewhere."
• 23:23
  Um, that's a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people, but that's a big deal. It's a big- It-... like culture protector, you know? We've done it the other way, and
• 23:32
  to be honest, it's just a slow, it's just a slow exit versus a quick exit. Mm. They, they learn and you learn that it's not a fit. And if you just kind of
• 23:42
  y- you, you come to grips with it right away, it's, it's easier on both parties. I know this is gonna be the first of many times we get to spend some time together, whether that's on podcast.
• 23:53
  I can't wait to meet in person, and hopefully we can get you out to a SOTACon in May. That would be amazing too, to- Yeah...
• 23:58
  have you meet some of the other people that you may or may not know believe the same things that you do. Uh, Adam, it's been a real pleasure to, to talk with you and get to know you for the first time, for me anyway.
• 24:07
  Uh, live here, thank you for joining us on AutoCast. It was great. Thank you, guys.
• 24:11
  [upbeat music]Okay, I love it how I wish I had the hat on because when he mentioned standing up when people walk into a dealership- Ah, it was right there... we didn't get to talk about it much in the episode.
• 24:25
  We talked about it a little bit. But one of the most impactful things for us was one of the very basics of hospitality. When we walked in these dealerships, they stood up. It was so impactful.
• 24:35
  We talked about it a little bit in the show, but I like, I don't think I can talk about how that made us feel and how they thought it was normal when we brought it out there. Like, "Oh."
• 24:43
  Everyone there was like, "Well, yeah, of course they did." "Oh." "Why wouldn't they?" And that's something that regardless- You entered their space. Yeah... every single dealership can do right now.
• 24:52
  But really- Right now... the question is will you do it? And hospitality, the differences in hospitality always come out in the smallest things, period, end of story. Yeah.
• 25:01
  Here, here's a small thing that I- it was one of the first things, he told a story about approaching his leader at the auto group and saying, "Hey, here's some changes we have to make." And
• 25:14
  we, we kind of glossed over it. There was so much to unpack in his first, you know, dialogue. Um, what I wrote down is, so he tells a story about his leader, and his leader's like,
• 25:28
  "Okay, I hear what you're saying, and..." And what I took from that is sometimes the leader may not have the full vision, but they may have faith in you to round- Mm... out the vision.
• 25:46
  Yeah. And, and I wrote faith in you because I was like, actually, this is, y- you know, for those that maybe heard it and said, "See?
• 25:53
  That typical car dealer owner who didn't see the path to revenue," actually what I took from it is, but, but the owner was like, "But I have faith in you to go and try this thing and, and it's gonna go work out."
• 26:06
  That doesn't mean there wasn't accountability and all that, but-
• 26:09
  I think there's nothing better, there's literally, I can say this as a leader, there's nothing better for a leader to have a member of their team that they trust with a vision and not a specific thing, knowing that that person and their gifts and their talents and their abilities will come back with a version of the vision that's better or beyond- More refined and, yes, yes...
• 26:30
  what you thought even the vision was. Like, I can't think of a better quality to have. Even for an employee to have a vision. To be like, "No-" Period..."trust me, I have a vision for this." I think this could be better.
• 26:41
  I gotta tell you- I think it could be greater than this... one other thing that stood out to me from this call, and I don't know why it hasn't hit me yet.
• 26:46
  The th- the three of us have been doing this now for how many year- I, I don't know, two years, let's say. More. Um- Almost four now. Okay. Nice try, though. Has it been f- almost four years- You, you thought...
• 26:56
  we've been doing this show? Yeah. We, the first episode was in Philly, live. We recorded it in Philly. Oh my gosh, you're right. [laughs] That's crazy. Before the first ASOTU CON, and we're on number five this year.
• 27:03
  It's okay. You guys, you, you immigrated- You immigrated from Canada to America in that time. [laughs] Oh my gosh, you're right. Nice. Uh, we, we often joke, right?
• 27:12
  Like, Paul, you and I joke when Kyle gets, like, super, like, nerdy and operational. We're like, "Yeah, here he goes." Every day, yes. Okay. You know what, you know what dawned on me though?
• 27:21
  Like, we, we are, this hit me today when we were talking about all of this, that the three of us are incapable of approaching a conversation from our vantage point as a CEO, a COO, and a chief of staff.
• 27:37
  Like, all of our questioning is either, like, very operational, very vision-based, and very like- [laughs] People. People... "Tell me how you arrived on that." Like, "What, what's going on in your mind?"
• 27:47
  Well, that means- That was, wow, Kyle, you just hit me with that. That just blew my mind right now. That's called right seat on the bus for all of us. Right seat on the bus. We know we're doing something.
• 27:56
  Well, listen, we hope you had fun with us. We sure had a great time if you couldn't tell. As always, thank you for listening to Auto Collabs.
• 28:03
  On behalf of Kyle, myself, and Michael Cirillo, who just thinks he's only been here for two years, we'll see you next time. [laughs] Time flies when you're having fun, boys. Ba-doo.
• 28:13
  Sign up for our free and fun-to-read daily email for a free shot of relevant news in automotive, retail, media, and pop culture. You can get it now at asotu.com. That's A-S-O-T-U.com.
• 28:26
  If you love this podcast, please leave us a review and share it with a friend. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.
• 28:34
  [upbeat music] Welcome to Auto Collabs. Welcome to Auto Collabs. [laughs] [laughs] Kyle, are we recording yet? Are we rolling yet? Not yet.