400th episode! Manchin Is MAD, Insane NYC Toyota/Lexus Store, College Grads Actually Writing Cover Letters

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SPEAKERS

Paul Daly, Michael Cirillo, Santosh Viswanathan, Kyle Mountsier, Alex Vetter, Scott Simons

Michael Cirillo  00:33

Gather the whole dealership and your families for live tonight with the Soto. It's a Tonight Show for automotive live on Wednesday, April 5, at 730. Eastern

Scott Simons  00:43

23 is going to be a fantastic year. But I think we're going to have to work harder than we've worked previously, the ones with grip are going to win.

Alex Vetter  00:52

We need to amplify our customer voices to let people know that we're the place you want to go.

Santosh Viswanathan  01:02

All of this has to mean something to the consumer. Because if you're singing a song, that doesn't resonate with them, they're not listening to

Michael Cirillo  01:09

tune in on LinkedIn, YouTube or Facebook. We'll see you there.

Paul Daly  01:13

YO, that's not a way to start our 400th episode of his show. I don't know what it is, I was smiling ear to ear throughout that whole video. But we're gonna talk about the car things today, and some other things, but the intro first, and all that the people really, and that 100 episodes, we wouldn't be able to pull off a successful instrument.

Kyle Mountsier  01:39

After 400 I'm telling you what, like it, you just don't think about doing many things. 400 times. And some some people, you know, they'll say to us, like how do you do a show every day? Like, what? What does that take how much production and like, there's some level of it, that's like, yo, it's really hard to do every day and some level of it's like, it's just 400 Already we do and we keep moving through the day, you know, it's, there's this like weird balance of really, really tough, but also really, really regular, you know, and it's just been a part of what we do. And I'll tell you that, go ahead. And you'll tell me, I'll tell you, when I'm like on vacation or out or can't be on the show. For some reason. I feel like my whole day is different, like everything is weird.

Paul Daly  02:27

You know, it is it is for sure we're not, it's funny that you bring that up about this dichotomy of it being like a whole lot of work, and takes a lot of discipline and challenge. But at the same time, it's one of the most rewarding parts of of what we do just be able to do the show with one another every day with our production team with all the people that tune in on the live stream or listen on the podcast. And that's just the way it is in all of life. Right? The things that are challenging and take discipline and work are actually the things that bring you the most fulfillment. So it is our honor to spend episode 400 on just a Thursday, it's just a Thursday in the car business. And so we got a lot of stuff to talk about. But we're going to be on the ground with so many of you next week in Arlington, Texas for us. So do live tonight. If you are in the Arlington area or can get there easily please join us in person, we're going to be at the Arlington Music Hall on Wednesday night, we're going to put on this entire event, we'll bring the live band from Nashville, we have amazing guests lined up. And we hope you can join us in person for that if you can't join us in person, we got you covered, we're going to do an entire live stream which you just saw the ad for. So it's our first evening event. So you can gather the family around the Smart TV, watch it on YouTube, stream it live, and you can show your family like this is actually what I'm a part of. I'm not I don't do whatever it is you think I do every day.

Kyle Mountsier  03:44

It's not stale and stuffy, this, this this industry is rockin and we're going to try and bring that to a stage next week. We are not we're going to try. We're gonna

Paul Daly  03:55

we're doing it every everything's in line, the band is in the truck and the audio gear and the rental and the food's on its way and the tele everything, everything's coming together. What do you think your kids would say? If someone asked him what is your daddy do for a living?

Kyle Mountsier  04:12

Man, they're like,

Paul Daly  04:13

they would have a hard time.

Kyle Mountsier  04:16

Like, they'd be like, here's the 90 things right? They've got a good, I mean, they they love just everything that we get to put our heart and soul into. I'll tell you this last night, this is we're gonna leave a little bit more space for this one. Sorry for this. Sorry for the stories this morning. But my son last night, my daughter goes, Daddy, what's an entrepreneur? And my son without blinking goes me. And I was like, Oh, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that son? And he goes, Well, you know, I'm a part of the soda crew, like, I'm gonna help out at the conference and like, we shipped stuff and he's like, I'm an entrepreneur here this year.

Paul Daly  04:59

You know? All around it good. Yes. Oh my goodness. I love that story. Speaking of energy all right. We have three awesome stories today. So it looks like Senator Joe Manchin, you know who he is he's ready for a showdown as dealers and auto consumers are also in the midst of the showdown. So he has threatened to take legal action over how the US Treasury Department is interpreting the rules around evey battery sourcing and the inflation reductions X consumer tax credit. So basically, he thinks the Treasury is going to interpret the manufacturing requirements very liberally, and let things be manufactured and battery components be in raw materials be mined overseas and then just assembled in us. But I don't know if you've noticed, but it's pretty hard to get something by Joe Manchin these days,

Kyle Mountsier  05:50

way hard. That guy is reading every line of every document, just checking on things because he wants to bring manufacturing right on home soil, for sure.

Paul Daly  05:59

Pretty. My favorite part of this whole story is the quote from Joe Manchin in his words, I think they're going to try to screw me on this. I'm willing to go to court, I'm willing to stop it all. Well, manufacturing, manufacturing back to the United States, it's not basically allowing everyone to put all the parts and build everything you can for the battery somewhere else. And then sending it here for assembly. I like how he takes it. So personally, I don't

Kyle Mountsier  06:26

think does take it personally. Yeah, he's they're trying to screw me not the corporations, not the not the taxpayers. None of that makes sense.

Paul Daly  06:35

I love the fight in that. But the other part is like, maybe this is a little too much about you at this point. But exactly. He

Kyle Mountsier  06:42

said interesting to me. And I get it like I think that I think that moving some of this manufacturing here is important. I you know, there's worry about cost. But what's interesting to me is that we've already seen multiple manufacturers start to point and create factories and crease points for manufacturing here. So I think that the spirit of it at the manufacturer level, maybe not the Treasury level is being understood and ingested, and then after that is very, very apparent. So I feel like the spirit of this thing that's coming around is going to be you know, impacted there. I understand his worry about, you know, the Treasury and the legality and the tax credits and all that. But I think the OEMs are taking the spirit of this law and going Yep, we are going to bring some level of manufacturing back here.

Paul Daly  07:32

Agreed. And obviously all the confusion it could possibly create about tax credits, you know, so the Treasury is expected to release the guidelines on the critical mineral and battery component requirements, which is the most complicated part of like, is this vehicle, you know, is it does it qualify them for the tax credit or doesn't, but the Treasury has already missed the statutory year end deadline, which was in December of 2022. And they didn't realize it's about to be April. So I don't know if the word statutory actually means that. Yeah, who knows? Oh, man, well, I'm trying to think of a segue because this next story is just so freakin awesome. Speaking of things that are freaking awesome. Segway All right. We all know dealers will find a way to make it work. Right. That's something we know. Well, John Iacono and his partners at Bram Auto Group have just raised the bar as they've opened a joint get this a joint Lexus Toyota store. Yes, this is a Lexus Toyota joint store, in one of the most expensive and complicated places to put a dealership. It's got a view of the Hudson River that I'll give you a little hint. And it's in Hell's Kitchen in New York City. So basically, the US cars are on the roof the new cars are in New Jersey and more than 200 vehicles are in line for service on any given day are stacked three high in lifts like Matchbox cars, like little bit of that language came from the Automotive News.

Kyle Mountsier  09:01

Can you imagine there's like 800 porters actually in there. They're like a machine I'm sure on a busy day.

Paul Daly  09:09

The auto news article is really well written and it's a lot of fun to read. It talks about like it calls it it calls it a dance right when you drive in you go up like this helix ramp into the service area where reporter takes parked your car on a lift, you get shuttled to this and that. So look,

Kyle Mountsier  09:24

here's the thing, whoever wrote this, I gotta give kudos to the auditors because when you drop in a Bolshoi Ballet

Paul Daly  09:33

reference, you know, when he dropped that in I was like, Kyle's gonna know what that that is because his wife is a professional ballerina.

Kyle Mountsier  09:39

Exactly. Like you drop that in you are cultured, you know, a thing or two like it and not just that, but like, yeah, ballet in New York is a thing. It's a whole lot of sense. But, you know, they're doing a lot of things that we've been talking a lot about putting in customer cafe in FedEx staging facility. multispace 35 floors of luxury apartments mean their meaning they are syncing their retail environment with the with the cultural environment. So they're doing a lot of the things that are like drawing people together for more reasons than just buying or servicing cars.

Paul Daly  10:15

Exactly. So the 35 floors of apartment space don't exist yet. Actually, they built five floors. And you can see it's like kind of a largely glass building their service bays are actually natural light. What the heck is that all about? You imagine have floor to ceiling windows in your service bay and all that natural light coming in. We are just so you know, we are going to visit you. If you're watching, we're coming to New York, it's gotta go meet the family. The picture in the article is great to see the family all the smiling faces. So the new vehicles, some logistic for all you logistics nurse because I know you care. The vehicles are stored six miles away, and drivers are paid a $42 flat fee to get them into the city that could take as little as 15 minutes. Or who knows? Who knows? I mean, the Lincoln Tunnel? Yeah. Which is, which is pretty much right there. It's right by Hudson Yards or VaynerMedia offices are you come right in the Lincoln Tunnel? It's not too far from that. Now, the only way Toyota would agree to the joint venture is if the Lexus standard was upheld. So they basically said the whole store has to, you know, what would you like? Well, how does anybody lose? In that a quote from the owner says it's expected, that kind of service is expected in the premium brands. It's not expected in the mass market. And when mass market customer gets treated in a way they didn't expect, the impact is just immense, right? Because way, right now, you have control over that and your store right now, right? You don't need Lexus and Toyota to sign off on it, I don't care if I don't care if you're a Ford store at Nissan or whatever, right, that piece of little piece of advice and insight there is deployable, right now in your store in every area, and little things, then you can work up to big things.

Kyle Mountsier  11:58

So I'm telling you what one of the most impactful stories I ever had for my career at in, like in the retail side of the business was the moment that I got the opportunity to kind of be in the sales manager role for a day. Um, at that point, I was in business development, but I was in sales manager role for the day. And I went to greet a customer that was buying, like a, just a, like, inexpensive vehicle that, you know, was a second car for their kid and like, shouldn't have meant anything. And like, gave them a little bit more white glove than they would have expected. And I remember that customer going, what you know what I'm here to buy, right? Like, you don't need to do that. And, and, I mean, obviously, like they they ended up buying the car very quickly. And it was a very easy transaction. But that's, that's just that's, that's a very anecdotal piece that this is pointing to, to saying, hey, look, we recognize that the business impact of having to lean in on the luxury store experience for even our mid market store is going to totally change the game for all those mid market customers, they're going to feel elevated important and have an experience that makes a whole lot of sense to create a customer lifecycle immediately. Let's go.

Paul Daly  13:12

So there is a Japanese word for this called Omotenashi. And Lexus uses this is basically created unexpected delight with what amounts to random acts of kindness, little things, little intentional things, right Lexus uses the word for it. But it's actually just the reality. We've been talking a lot about hospitality. You know, we're probably gonna have some hospitality influence at a soda con that's coming in. And, you know, some good speakers, but it doesn't take a lot to make the impression that you just said, Kyle, in your case, it was just words. Right? It was just words you didn't go for the gift or gift card or anything. You just treated them the way they want to be funny thing about that. So we're definitely coming to visit that Toyota Lexus store to be a great trip, visit the store it gets something eat, visit our friends at Vayner. It'll be a whole thing. But it's just a little encouragement to the industry. If we're not paying attention to the little things to improve our business in a time and a season when we're saying we have to get back to the basics then what are we even doing out here? What are we good? Speaking of people saying what are we even doing that here?

Kyle Mountsier  14:16

Yeah, soon to be college grads are facing a much tougher job market than they were at the beginning of the year as many of the companies that were in bidding wars for them in September have since laid off 1000s including companies like Amazon Wayfair Mehta, McKinsey, a couple that you might have heard of, that were on hiring sprees over the last couple of years as big tech was growing. And people that were graduating college were getting, you know, job offers left and right. They were bidding wars for some of these people because there was a limited pool of applicants. But the tides have turned so there's rejection letters happening. People, companies like Amazon have had freeze on hiring or start dates and homeruns so that yes, There's just a lot of uncertainty in the job market for young job seekers, especially right out of college. You know, young lady Rachel Kushner, associate director of Ohio State University's engineering and Career Services commented that in the past, the students were asked to write a cover letter, they would balk at the job alter, they were just like, No, I don't

Paul Daly  15:22

need all that. Like, oh, cover letter. Now I got

Kyle Mountsier  15:26

another level out there. And and you know, people are looking for jobs in new places for sure.

Paul Daly  15:32

Well, here's the here's the punch line. Here comes shot GPG rights covered letters. Whoa, whoa, yeah. You probably already know that. Yeah, just a little training there. Um, so, um, get this nearly 97%. So almost all of the 1000 college seniors surveyed by recruiting software firm, I see IMS said they have considered alternative options in this job market weighing graduate school gig work or taking a job outside of their major there's, there's a big punchline to this whole article, the college graduate unemployment rate has doubled from 2.3 to 4.6%. Just just like the last six months. So the company waste management, we all know who they are gibberish, the CEO. Describe the situation in this way. We can hire a truck driver to drive a truck for $90,000 a year in Houston. But I can hire an MBA from a small school for $60,000. And I can get them to work all day long. Isn't that wild? That college debt Bill's going to look a little different after that quote, a little

Kyle Mountsier  16:39

bit different, a little bit different. But here's the thing. I mean, you start thinking about what I mean, this is perfect timing. It's March, April, May this is job seeking time. Everybody's as an industry, we should be looking at this this is the these are the blocking and tackling of HR and recruiting. And we're going oh, wait a second. We need people we're having a tough time hiring where do we go find quality applicants give them jobs that make sense. Give them opportunity for career growth, talk about a different career path outside of there. They're probably their major maybe maybe business people, maybe people in majors that don't have anything to do with business finance tech, right like go to career fairs call every every every placement person to every college in your local in your local city and let them know what's up give them a heads up you're hiring maybe walk in go in meet some people meet some seniors go do some some college tours. This is a prime opportunity to go grab quality apps, especially

Paul Daly  17:36

on the business side, right? Interpersonal make manual labor, things like that. Technicians, different story, right, we saw it actually I was passed out Kabuto pass this ad to me today. And it's a sponsored post on LinkedIn, we have it can we throw it up? Right up there to get up there. We have it. Maybe we don't have it? Well, it was an ad from the Hendrick Automotive Group for a $10,000 sign on bonus per technician. 10 grand, some people think they could even go higher. So whatever it is, like you got to make your moves. Now if you need the technicians, you gotta get those. If it's business financing, you might have some options that you never would and we know once they get into this industry,

Kyle Mountsier  18:17

they're gonna stay never getting out. Just tell him to call us right quick, you know? Yes, yeah.

Paul Daly  18:21

Thank you for being with us for 400 episodes. Today's a Thursday we got a couple of days left. So go out there and get some

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