Apple Battles Autonomy, Side Hustles the New Norm, and Culture Produces Results

‍SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly

Kyle Mountsier  00:23

All right, we're coming to you a little late this morning. But we're talking about a lot of things pausing dealerships today I was in dealerships yesterday we're talking about Apple pulling back on autonomous side hustles and you know some culture stuff

Paul Daly  00:37

totally I you know, kind of you know what I wrote into work today an airplane I was gonna say the struggle bus that's what my hands backwards already.

Kyle Mountsier  00:51

I tell the people about your woes ball.

Paul Daly  00:53

Tell them how they can they can hear it because I got this beautiful mic that isn't plugged in. I haven't beautiful camera, but I'm using my face. I'm in the Princeton Marriott right now I'm going to speak to siopa dealerships that 16 to their fixed ops departments tonight at their awards that are so I'm pumped just to be on the ground deal with some dealers. But yeah, struggle plus hats backwards already. It's just for doing the thing.

Kyle Mountsier  01:16

That's amazing. Yeah. You know, it's funny, I was actually I was on a call with another partner earlier this week. And they were like, you're a media company. You can figure it out. Right? And it's like, yeah, we're a scrappy media company. And probably we'll figure it out. But it might take some tweaking. We got a couple of things to talk about. We, you know, if you haven't heard, we're doing this thing called the year end extravaganza. And it's gonna be full on tonight's show style. Like we got a band. We got Michael Cirillo coming in. We got people flying in just for it. The whole crews gonna be there. And it's kind of like, Paul, when when our show producer was like, Yeah, at at, you know, one o'clock 130 and 33 seconds we'll flip to we're like, oh, this is a whole new thing. A lot of fun. Our producer

Paul Daly  02:08

was out of out of we caught him yesterday. And we're like, oh, he's out of out of out of comms today because he was producing the People's Choice Awards.

Kyle Mountsier  02:17

Oh, big deal, no big deal. The really cool thing that we're going to be doing there is we got a little call from a little company called True car. And true car is doing a really cool giveaway for the end of the year. It's called the I need a true car campaign. And so if you want to you can go to the link in our show notes. Actually, what we're saying is like hey, you should tell your customers about this because they're giving away 10 $5,000 down payments Oh yeah, hey look if it pays for a car which that'd be surprising these days. We're getting given that away for a little Instagram tick tock chant competition so the links in the show notes for that we'll share some more stuff but we're gonna be announcing the 10 winners at the urine extravaganza last night and so we're excited to help out with that and and hey, look we love when industry partners or dealers are given back around a holiday times we've been sharing a bunch of stories in our daily email about that so also hey, look, if you're given back shoot us an email let us know crew at a soda.com I want to know about what's going on. Great One

Paul Daly  03:20

great one you can also search the hashtag I need a true car and there's some fun ones to start watching they got some they got some influencers the dude on the on the longboard with the cranberry juice dog face 208 I think it is. Yeah, they got this catchy little song that they made that it was like literally stuck in my brain for like I needed to, to anchor Great Gatsby. We got some news to talk about today, though, because the world is spinning regardless of what we're doing rocking and rolling. So yeah, though this is a fun one. This has fallen not so fast on that fully autonomous Apple Car. According to sources at Bloomberg, the company is pushing the plan release their first vehicle from 2525 back to 2026. And scaling back the aspiration saying this is going to be a full level five autonomous vehicle with no steering wheel, and no pedals. Ain't nobody getting in the car like that.

Kyle Mountsier  04:09

Not a chance.

Paul Daly  04:12

It's still gonna only operate autonomously on the highways with the steering wheel and the pedals. But the kind of goal is saying we want people to be able to concentrate on other things other than driving while they're in the car. It's kind of cool.

Kyle Mountsier  04:24

I you know, I think it's still it's a good aspiration, I think someone's gonna get it sooner than maybe we even recognize is going to happen. But it's still you know, hey look, being a manufacturer is not an easy thing like Apple card and keep pushing this back, right? There's been even with, you know, looking at companies like rivian or, or vinfast. Like it's not just an out and out play to be like, Oh, now we make cars and now we sell them right? It's like it takes a lot to get there. That's why these legacy manufacturers that are making shifts in the evey or autonomous space or just continue doing the kind of like, toppled topple bricks and get there a little bit faster. Now the processor that they're putting in these vehicles is their name and it's Denali. No, yeah, obvious rock right now, in North America highest peak in North America is four times more powerful than Apple's current highest and think about like, and like, every time they come to, you know, the worldwide developer conference, or they do their keynote, and they're like, we just created the fastest chip ever, and they're like, it's eight times faster than the fastest thing you've ever seen in your whole life. Now, like, none of them know, in order to operate all these Lidar and radar and cameras all around the vehicle to do the autonomous driving, we're gonna Forex that and if I had to guess, by the time they get to 2026, it's probably going to be 4x or 8x, that they're just reading. You know,

Paul Daly  06:01

I wonder, you know, how people say, when you like, there's already the next like, three or four generations of technology developed, and they just released them a little bit at a time. That way, it gives consumers an excuse to buy the new one, right? Like, if I can skip three generations, why would I want all the ones in between? Right? Unless, so I'm thinking like, they just know that if this car isn't coming out to 2026, they just gotta like, throw the house at it. You know what I mean? Oh, have

Kyle Mountsier  06:25

to? Yeah,

Paul Daly  06:26

so they got him, they got him, they gotta put them in the car, though, which is

Kyle Mountsier  06:30

the interesting piece. And I think that this is something that a lot of subscription models are going to look at is Apple is also planning on offering insurance.

Paul Daly  06:39

A couple of bucks floating around the insurance world, I

Kyle Mountsier  06:41

think just a couple of bucks. Actually, we're seeing a lot of dealers and and even banks kind of dip their toe in that insurance game and understand that there's a profit center there. And, you know, got it got to pick up a couple bucks on the side of your main engagement. And, hey, Paul, speaking of picking up some extra bucks on the side. Or Americans right now are taking on side hustles to deal with the rising costs of literally everything. If you haven't heard, inflation is the thing. And interest rates are raising and the ability to buy is getting a lot less. Even though in November the economy added 260,000 jobs taking over and topping economists prediction of 200,000 jobs, according to doubt, to the Dow Jones due to inflation, which is causing rising household debt, lower savings 60% plus of Americans are either already or considering picking up a side job to kind of buffer income. Yeah.

Paul Daly  07:52

It's I wonder how many people have already doing this obviously, you know, and noted in the article too, that most of the jobs are like ride hailing food delivery. You know, renting out your house on a Airbnb, they count that. You see so many people, it's just so much easier to do it. Yeah. And so it's like, actually easier to be recorded. But I mean, it makes complete sense people, especially the main demographic, right, between 18 and 40. I think, like side hustle has become a part of just common vernacular. Yeah, right. Where it's just like a really accepted thing. People used to say, I have two jobs. I have three jobs right now that like I have a side hustle. So I think it's been around for a long time, but like the popularity of it and the ease of like, literally on your phone, you just flip on my side job, flip it, flip it off.

Kyle Mountsier  08:36

Well, anecdotally, like just it just, we do some like grocery delivery stuff. Like that's how we like to get grocery these days. And like just the people that are now showing up in our driveway dropping off the delivery groceries,

Paul Daly  08:50

the other people other parents from this other soccer team, like oh, hey, yes, exactly. Like

Kyle Mountsier  08:54

the demographic has totally changed in in like the people that are doing the shopping people that are dropping off these these groceries. And so, like, I'm sure that that demographic is shifting across even like, you know, our Uber home from the airport, right? And, like, it's school teachers, and it's people that have primary jobs, doing, you know, night pickup or weekend pickup and stuff like that. So it's anecdotally I'm seeing that happening a lot. You know, it's it's not something that you need experience for. It's not something that you need a resume for. You don't have to go do applications and job search and beyond indeed, and all that type of stuff. It's just like, like you said, flip on my phone. Now I've got a side hustle. So

Paul Daly  09:39

I bought I bought an Apple Watch. I ended up taking it back. But besides the point, but four months ago, I bought an Apple Watch and I was like, Oh, I can have this delivered today from the Apple Store. And literally a whole family brought up by they were just like, they were just like a family you know, like in the minivan on their way somewhere and they just pulled up and like the dad's driving and the kids are in the back. Back play and they're like iPads and mom just like froze down or window has to be the bag and they're off to, you know, like,

Kyle Mountsier  10:06

unbelievable. I have I've we've seen I've seen a couple of families coming by with Yeah, it's just like hey, this is what we got to do to make ends meet especially if

Paul Daly  10:13

we have the mall right like maybe they were at the mall already. Make 20 bucks right now going the way we were going anyway, on the way to the soccer game.

Kyle Mountsier  10:22

Speaking of soccer games I figured something like that was coming when we were already talking about soccer moms. Hey, look, this story is near and dear to my heart. But I promise it has a connection to what we're all doing in business every single day yesterday. A soccer team that was not even supposed to make it out of the knockout rounds of the World Cup has moved on to the quarterfinals. So pass the round of 16 into the quarterfinals. Thanks to an inspiring coach. That media in Morocco, which is the Moroccan soccer team has dubbed Mr. Avocado head. So check this out. If you're looking at video right now.

Paul Daly  11:09

Yeah, put me on Isaac

Kyle Mountsier  11:14

we got a new name for Paul Mr. Avocado head of the US. So a few months back when they announced this coach, he was not you know, he's not like a high end or or big coach. That's been a big clubs, but he's just kind of that steady, steady person. Kind of like not not your TED last guy, but kind of a general encourage or understand soccer landscape. But the the media dubbed him Mr. Avocado had because they were just like, there's no way this guy's going to do anything with this team heading into the World Cup. But he's really placed an emphasis in the team on team culture and its relationship with the country. So they are the first Arab nation to make the quarterfinals. And people that are close to the team have essentially said like, they've seen how he has really taken a team that actually out of the 26 players, only 12 of them were born in Morocco, the rest were born overseas and have have citizenship in Morocco. He's taken that team and said like, No, you're playing on behalf of the country. You know, like that's like, that's the mood, the mood and the mood around the culture of the soccer team right now. The you know, back to the head piece like they'll you know, one of the fun things that they do in in the practices is they'll come around and slap his bald head. And but even to the point of you know, when when you're when you're talking like world copper Olympics, most most teams don't travel with their families. He invited all of the families of all the players to stay with them in Qatar. Yeah, so it's just this like, extension of culture into the soccer team that's really created this bond among among the soccer team is kind of the storyline here. And they were able to beat one of the best teams in the world, Spain, hold them to not scoring and then beat them on penalty kicks. So just a really cool thing that can happen when maybe you don't have the 100% star players. You're not the big team. You're not that you're you know, you're kind of the New Kids on the Block. You're not expected to do anything and come from behind and win based on a story and culture was just like, had to throw this one in here.

Paul Daly  13:25

That's amazing. It's amazing. You know, I mean, to see like the impact of a family oriented team at the World Cup, right? It's not easy to take the family to Qatar during the World Cup. Not a chance. It's certainly not easy to take a whole team's worth of families to Qatar for the World Cup. But how can you not root for this team? I don't know much about soccer, but I'm rooting for the team.

Kyle Mountsier  13:47

And I like that team now right there. Like if your team is lost you like let's go Morocco,

Paul Daly  13:53

rice rice all day.

Kyle Mountsier  13:56

Perfect. Well, hey, look, that's all we've got time for today. We apologize for being a little late on your schedule. If you were listening and you're a regular listener. With that said, Hey, bring your family to work. Bring your family along, get the culture together. We know that it can help successful teams win

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