GMs Carrot On A Stick, Brave or Stupid Salesman, Sued By Own Shareholders

Paul J Daly: 0:00

The first Friday of the month of the not the quarter, not the quarter. Today we're talking about GMOs carrot on a stick. Is this salesmen brave or stupid? And what's like to be sued by your own shareholders? mean that's happened? I guess Elon has been sued by his own shareholders. So different. They're a little more a little more context, though. A little more context.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:30

You know, is

Paul J Daly: 0:31

there soccer going on right now?

Kyle Mountsier: 0:33

Your soccer going on right now? I may or may not have it in one year. I'm kidding. I don't have it in one year. But yes, the US Men's National

Unknown: 0:42

Team actually has a bit of a shot at making it through this round.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:48

So it's good to see a little

Paul J Daly: 0:50

more rounds are they if they make it through this round, where

Kyle Mountsier: 0:52

does it put a horse? This is quarterfinals. Okay. Okay, so

Paul J Daly: 0:56

give me the semi finals. Yeah, take me one four shot could be crazy. I mean, look, once you get to the once you get to the semi finals, right, only one of those four teams isn't meddling, right. I know. So if you get there, it's pretty good chance that you're gonna could be wild the last time the men's team metal? Never. Oh, oh, wow. So this would be like a massive deal.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:16

Yeah, all of it would be a massive deal. It's still like pretty far, far shot.

Paul J Daly: 1:22

Hey, anything can happen. We saw the thing about that. There's that hockey team, the one year it's like,

Kyle Mountsier: 1:27

you know, yep, you know, you never know it's the Olympics. It's the Olympics,

Paul J Daly: 1:32

anything had happened. We've learned that over the summer Olympics. We have we have a new Auto Collabs episode dropping today Auto Collabs is one of our other podcasts a little bit longer form a little bit deeper conversation. Oh, didn't Oh, it's stream yesterday. It's on all the platforms today. Basically, we're talking with my friend Nick Schaefer, we had this conversation about applying farmer principles to the Service Drive like harvesting versus hunting. It was a really great conversation. And he's just a really sincere guy. So check that out. Also, we have a webinar coming up next Tuesday, or this Tuesday, I guess this Wednesday is Wednesday. Yep. On the seventh 2pm. Eastern, it's going to be we're going to make the casual, more fun than it's ever been made. That's it, I guess not made fun of it, make it make it fun. Go to a soda.com. If you've never been to one of our quick webinars, you need to check it out. It's different than any other webinar you've been to, we promise a soda.com. It's right there top of the fold, you can register. If you don't get everything you ever dreamed or desired out of this webinar, we will give you 100% of your money back

Kyle Mountsier: 2:31

every dollar that we have every oh, we're going to a pretty special place on Monday. That's right. We are going back to you know we've got some good friends over there at the Mohawk organization. And we've got a little bit more filming to do for for an episode more than cars. And if you haven't seen you should go to check out their tic tac and their Instagram and check out what they've been doing with their mini series called The dealership looks like actually, they they got the opportunity to hang out at Chevy headquarters. We saw this social media post yesterday. From from the team there. You got Nathaniel grace, though the whole nine yards there and yeah, so I'm excited. It's been

Paul J Daly: 3:17

it's been on the right. Yeah, Benzinga Grayson again, that's yeah, kind of primaries in the show. You didn't see all the people at Oh, and there's Mary Barra in there too. And Mary Barra she's in there what that's it's an awesome it's an awesome situation where a dealership who has been making content for you and Nathaniel Gregg has been leading the charge there for years. They've been working on it they finally made something it popped they'd been on at in at age they'd been like invited to the Today Show they've been invited to all this stuff USA Today Business Insider, and they got an invite to GM corporate headquarters so well they are we'll see what we'll get the details on the story when we're with them in person on Monday, but that's going to be so much fun. Speaking of General Motors. Segue right in. GM is revamping its US salaried employee performance ratings to reward top performers more generously and pressure low performers to improve or leave under the new system the top 5% of employees can now receive a 150% bonus surpass and invest significant that's an internal memo says quote to ensure GM has the talent needed to achieve our ambitious goals and more intentional processes required that sets clear expectations for performance and holds people accountable accountability works if you didn't know, um, employees are now rated on a five scale evaluation. So it's like significantly exceeds expectations exceeds expectations achieves expectations is in the middle partially meets or does not meet. They believe that approximately 70% of all its employees will fall right in the middle achieves which I guess makes sense. Right? They will receive 100% of their target bonus But if you start moving up the ladder, you can get up to 150% of the bonus. Similar adjustments being made in Ford. Jim Farley had a quote in this article. And he basically said, we've come to realize this isn't an exact quote. But if something like this, we've come to realize that having the right talent doesn't work, you need the right performance structure in place with the right talent in order for it to work. So they

Kyle Mountsier: 5:23

feel incentivized, you know, I mean, to be honest, like dealerships have been doing this for a hot minute, you know, the high performers, most monies, commissions, all that type of stuff. But this is, you know, obviously, the the competitive matrix of some of these new companies coming to market definitely changes the ballgame for legacy OEMs that are trying to attract talent, and not just attract out but keep talent, right. Make sure that they don't get poached. Hey, look, a Top Five Percenter of a big company like that shouldn't get rewarded. It's pretty good.

Paul J Daly: 5:54

I wonder I wonder if the the team from Mohawk Chevrolet, if they if they are in the mix? I mean, not GM employees, technically, yeah, they're not. They're not gym employees. But they are they probably could be at this point for at least the moment, something like that. Speaking of something like that, oh, we need you to weigh in on this one. Man, if you're in the comments, or if you see this afterwards, so a New Orleans man because I mean, it's so relevant right now, because we're all going to New Orleans in January, right or hit New Orleans. NADA is going to be there. It's about a New Orleans dealership in New Orleans man was arrested not a dealership employee after attempting to steal an Audi during the test drive on a couple days ago. In No, I'm not gonna say that right near New Orleans, New Orleans. The suspect reginal Vaughn encountered an unexpected resistance though from the dealership employee who was with him on the test drive. The car thief stopped the Audi abruptly during the test drive. And said basically, this is where you get out or I shoot you. Basically what he said? Yes, and he started reaching for his waistband. The dealership employee did he get out? He didn't get out. So this is where we're like, is this brave or stupid after a short struggle, you know, obviously, the guy's reaching for something. And he grabbed his arms, and he held his arms down. And then they you know, they actually got in like, started exchanging blows in the car. bystandard ran over. And like, brought some attention to it. So Vaughn the suspect fled the scene but was later arrested because you ran into an urgent care facility and is not the best place to hide. Jordan Cox on our team, his commentary said the only reason the employee fought back is he needed the sale to

Kyle Mountsier: 7:43

my bone bonus. You're gonna stop guys. Look, that's strong. I'm telling you what that is. That's impressive. Sounds like a very New Orleans thing to do, in my opinion, right? Yes. But hey, this, I'll tell you what, this has been a topic of conversation for a very long time when it comes to employees in test drives with strangers. Right. Like, I mean, many dealerships now are putting a lot more safeguards in place pre test drive, as far as like, doing background checking, doing, you know, quick checks on driver's licenses, all that because

Paul J Daly: 8:20

you are you try to know, especially for the female employee. Yep,

Kyle Mountsier: 8:24

exactly. We I mean, we had I remember female employees that would just straight up just say, hey, look, I don't feel comfortable on this test drive. And so we would send some someone else on that test drive, and we just had a policy that that wasn't like a split deal or anything. It just wasn't it was, you know, it's if you really stop and think about it for a quick minute. And 2024 jumping in the car with a stranger who you met three minutes ago.

Paul J Daly: 8:47

It's called Uber is a bit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But the Uber has been vetted. Right. Uber has been very raiding. Yeah, right.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:55

Yes, exactly. Yeah. Wild.

Paul J Daly: 8:58

I know. So what do you think? I don't know. Let us know. Brave or stupid. I think you don't know what you're gonna do in that situation till Right. Like journaling goes, Do you like this flight kick in? Right? We're like, I'm out. Right? Or are you like,

Kyle Mountsier: 9:12

just react like straight up fight or flight? That's all it is? Really?

Paul J Daly: 9:15

Is it really speaking to fight or flight? I think they chose fight on this one. So

Kyle Mountsier: 9:22

CrowdStrike you know, the one that went down in history for basically going down all of delta is being sued by its shareholders for a global software outage on July 19, it crashed over 8 million computers worldwide, claiming that CrowdStrike misled investors about the adequacy of its software testing. The lawsuit claims CrowdStrike failed to disclose deficient update controls and inadequate software testing, which created a substantial risk of major outages and ultimately caused significant reputational and legal harm to the company so the shareholders become impacted. The share price has fallen by 32% it and a CrowdStrike spokesperson said we believe this case lacks merit, and will vigorously defend the company. I mean,

Paul J Daly: 10:07

so obviously, this is super relevant because I mean, like the CDK thing is still fresh in our minds. Similar not not not an exact situation, right, very different situations, but a situation where software went down. And there's a lot of rigmarole and a lot of contention over who's liable for it. In this case, we have shareholders stepping up saying like the company didn't do a good enough job to let us know, like, they made us think that all these things were locked down, they were tested, they were fined. They weren't. And I think this is this is going to be a continued reality check for companies to have to be more careful and intentional about what they're doing and why. I think one of the best social media posts I saw from this is just somebody and I don't know, I don't know if it was real or fake in the background, but it was like CrowdStrike headquarters like front door. And it was a guy like given the piece and the copy said, you know, first day on the new job, just pushed a little update and taking the rest of the day. That's wrong. It was wrong, but we'll see where this falls out. I mean, Microsoft had a comment on this in the article and they said, Well, it did only affect 1% of all Microsoft computers. Right? Which is kind of a weird argument. poopers just just the only 1% that millions of people relied on, right? This isn't like the well

Kyle Mountsier: 11:18

it was a 1% of business of enterprise business software primarily. And that's it,

Paul J Daly: 11:23

or the 1% No, instead of all the 1% impacted

Kyle Mountsier: 11:27

a soft writers that primarily enterprise business

Paul J Daly: 11:30

was like a much bigger percent. Yeah, this wasn't like the elementary school or lab. Exactly, exactly. You know, it was like Kyle can't get to my place in Syracuse because delta is so crazy. I think that's my big beef.

Kyle Mountsier: 11:43

That's my biggest beef if that's what I'm most mad about. I wanted to go to Syracuse. So but it's gonna

Paul J Daly: 11:47

happen that you know what, we have been very, very fortunate. With flights, traveling.

Kyle Mountsier: 11:52

Yeah, both of us are normally very fortunate compared to here.

Paul J Daly: 11:57

You got kind of like, kind of stuck once and that was due to weather, but you got stuck like at home? Yep. I got stuck in DC once but I aside from that, like we always made home. Yep. I don't know when you can jinx us now.

Kyle Mountsier: 12:08

Don't stop it.

Paul J Daly: 12:11

We hope you have an amazing Friday and amazing Saturday, selling some cars. If you're working Sunday, sell some cars, if you're working or if you're resting, whatever you're doing. We got your back. We'll see you back here tomorrow morning.

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