EP025: - Born Free. Born Car Guy. Roundtable | 1 Year Strong

[00:00:01] Welcome everybody to True Confessions of a Car Guy. My name is Badgie. Alongside me in studio is our host John Gavin. This is show number 25 and we've been on the air for exactly about a year and so we're here to celebrate. John, how's it going?

[00:00:18] Hey Badgie, thanks. Yeah, you believe it? It's been one year and a month that we've been on. I think we got about 10,000 views across multiple, multiple platforms. And today we're gonna have a couple guests on. So if you wouldn't mind.

[00:00:35] Yeah, we'll bring them on. What better way to celebrate than with a roundtable of car guys just talking about what's going on and sharing some stories. So we're gonna bring them on here in just a second here. But we thank you for all of your support for this past year. And we look forward to some great things in the future. So with that, let's bring in our guests.

[00:00:57] All right. All right. All right. Steve's dressed. I was worried. Back naked, Stevie. So for all the listeners, I was just saying we've gotten over 10,000 views across multiple platforms. We've got Lane Campbell, who's the co-founder and CEO of Zenzio AI on with us. Welcome again.

[00:01:28] Thank you. Great to be back. Great to be back. Congratulations on a year. That's quite an accomplishment, man. You know, when car guys keep their attention on something for as long as a year, it must be pretty special.

[00:01:41] Yeah, because we all are ADD. And then we have Steve Forresta, who is not only one of my closest friends for 30 plus years. He's been in the car business 49 and a half years. And he just recently retired from the car business, went from a mechanic to running multiple stores. Welcome, Steve Forresta. Hi, guys. How you doing? Good.

[00:02:11] Badgie and I were just talking about the state of the car business today. And one of the things that they were talking about that was, I think, on the cover of Auto News or something was fraud in the car business, which is like it's a brand new thing. I mean, number one problem is income.

[00:02:35] You know, people lying about their income and fake pay stubs. How long is that going on? It's really hard to do nowadays because you run a guy's credit. They know how much he makes. They have more information than NASA. It's amazing what's out there with the information these banks have. So I can't believe, unless it's, you know, some mom pop going to some local bank or something, I can't believe that a fraud is saying, but hang on, let me grab you automotive news. Hang on.

[00:03:04] Yeah. Yeah. And with AI, that was one of the problems. One of the things is called synthetic identity is the new one of the problems. They called it synthetic identity. And I had to look it up there, actually, because I was like, is that like a fake customer? And yeah, it is. So how easy is that to do today? You know what? I don't, I don't, I don't know anything much about that, but I'd be eager to learn.

[00:03:32] Well, just before, just before I left, we had a Toyota Tundra go to Minnesota guy called in out of state, ran his credit, sent a copy of his license, gone finance. The whole works only find out two weeks later, total fraud deal. We had to buy it back. So it still happens. It's hard to do it. And he did it and they, they got it.

[00:03:55] They got the car and I'm sure it probably ended up in Guatemala or somewhere, somewhere it's, it's, it's going to, you know, a $50,000 pickup truck used, gone. However, so I just left, I've been out, I've been out of the business for about a month and I knew, I knew before I pulled the plug and said, I'm going to give you my notice that our guy was going to sell.

[00:04:18] So how did I know it's every, there's been a lot of bad, a lot of bad business the last year and a half, you know, maybe the last year typically, you know, not typically, but just, you know, the business has been declining because we had no cars. It went crazy, right? You could make as much money as you want. Every car you had, you sold for over. Then they started to trickle in and things stayed at sticker.

[00:04:45] And what the manufacturers kind of told us was that we're never going to overbuild again. We like the flow. 60 days supply. Everybody can make money. You guys can sell your cars and get sticker or close to it. You know, you know, you're not going to be overstocked. Well, when I left a month ago, we had a, a, probably a six month supply of one days and probably pretty now probably a four month supply of Mazdas.

[00:05:15] And nobody's, nobody's hitting their objectives. No one's getting their backend money from the manufacturer. So it's, it's, things are, things are not in great shape. What I was going to ask you was you went in the AI and we were talking about this before show started that, you know, there's dealers who, who aren't adapting to this.

[00:05:32] But in, as far as you went in around AI 15 years, I think part of the problem of the dealerships today is that the ones who did switch to AI are doing better than the ones who didn't. And when I say switch to AI, I mean, at least accepted it to do certain things. I mean, you've had probably a million conversations with customers with your tool, right? Is that fair to say?

[00:06:02] At least a million. But yeah. And climbing. So, yeah. So what your tool, your tool is mostly for, because Steve, you used actually. Oh, I guess. Oh, I did. Vin Solutions cranked AI into there and they, we did our, we changed our processes to the AI process, which was, which was pretty robust. It was, it was good.

[00:06:25] You know, of course you always have to make a few tweaks, you know, Johnny, how with, even with, even with, you know, everybody's, everybody's vision of V auto, you know, you as a rep and other guys, the rep would do a completely different, right? I mean, market day supplies and the zero to 10 and 10 to 20. And, you know, you, you always had your own way. And I always followed your way because I always thought it was best. And you've made a few changes over the years with how you set up the programming.

[00:06:49] However, you know, all in all, if you, you know, if you paid attention to it and, and, and, and trusted in it and used it the way it was supposed to be used, you know, you were pretty, pretty successful nine out of 10 times. You know, you just, it just worked. And that's where, that's where experience in the business, you know, I've had these, these, these, you know, V auto reps call me and tell me, well, let's look at your, let's look at your sales history.

[00:07:12] And, you know, there's one Mustang convertible in there and there's one Buick convertible in there that, you know, that a guy traded with 10,000. You used to get 11 of those. Yeah. Well, they, they only come in once every six years. Jackass. Right. I mean, yeah. Yeah. But, um, you know, you, you have to pay attention. The AI did a lot of good things. So maybe this is, this just popped up. So auto nation prices, all of their used cars via AI.

[00:07:38] And they don't let car managers price them and they don't, they don't discount. So they go market search car for car over the whole country and see what they're selling for. And of course there's always the exceptions, right? But overall they AI price their cars. I guess it's working out pretty good for them. We'll find out when they get their, their stock report, I guess for second quarter, right? See what their used car market looks like, but they're using it. And if they said it, they said it's working well.

[00:08:10] You're listening to true confessions of a car guy. Well, I, you know, I, I found, uh, um, Lane's product probably four years ago, Lane? Three? Yeah. Three years ago. Now, um, we, uh, Zenzio launched in July of 2023.

[00:08:34] And, uh, man, has it changed a lot and it's about to get even more exponentially different over the next year to, um, the, the frontier models are doing things that now even the government has taken action on to pump the brakes and the very people that are pouring billions of dollars into these frontier AI models.

[00:08:55] Like Gemini, like, um, uh, I think, of course, uh, open AI and anthropic well known for, uh, about to go public. So, uh, in the last three years, we've gone from AI amazing people to AI doing things that even the people who are building it did not know that it could do.

[00:09:20] You know, the government got involved recently because, uh, anthropic had released a model that they call mythos, M-Y-T-H-O-S. And that it was able to find what they call zero day exploits in legacy software. In other words, back doors and things as old as windows that no one had found that kind of stuff. And they had found massive exploitation opportunities that the companies had never even, uh, known about.

[00:09:50] And the, the key in the punchline to that is that anthropic did not train the model to do that. They trained it to do something else and that's the emergent technology. And so it got to the point where even Sam Altman, CEO of open AI, even Dario, the CEO of anthropic. And of course, Google's well also known as saying, Hey, we need to regulate this.

[00:10:16] We need to figure out how to be able to pump the brakes and slow down on it. But the problem is the genie's out of the bottle because there is no way at all to be able to enforce global restrictions. And with that in mind, that means that the good guys will always lose because the bad actors have an insurmountable advantage in that regard.

[00:10:39] So we're in a space where AI has to continue to evolve, not to rewrite emails, not to invite a customer in for a test drive and follow up. Right. AI doesn't need to evolve in order to put fake faces on fake bodies and stuff, but it's really the military advantage.

[00:10:59] Well, people in the showroom, you get people in the showroom for shopping for a car and they'll put on who's got the best price at a 2026 Mazda CX-9 within 50 miles of Elmhurst. And it'll pop up and it'll take it right out. You know, now here, all the online prices, they can't be under invoice.

[00:11:24] However, AI picks up what the discounts are once a customer calls in, right, or once a customer gets an email back. Somehow they grab a hold of that and they know, you know, they know that, you know, Mazda down the road in Schaumburg is discounting two Gs on their invoice. And they'll say, I can go there and buy the car for this. Can you match that? I mean, right in the showroom, they have no shame. They don't care. Remember the old commercial?

[00:11:48] The guy was at the Best Buy or whatever is looking at a washing machine and they show him on his cell phone calling, hey, how much is your eligible? Right. And we used to laugh about it. And that was probably 15 or 20 years ago. Yeah. You go to AI and say, who's got the best price on a 2026 Hyundai Sonata Limited? And it'll tell you who's got the best deal. Yeah. They go ahead and they copy and paste it directly from the AI. And they put in their email saying that this is what I'm looking for.

[00:12:17] So they're going in there saying, this is what I want. Looking for it. Whatever the answer is, they copy and paste it. And then they say, okay, can you match or beat that? And then they shop that. They send that email out to every dealer. And then looking for if that's possible. I used to have a yellow pad that I would refer to when I was a V auto rep. And I was looking at them because I was working part time. I looked in 16, there was a word in there, showrooming.

[00:12:45] And I had forgot what that was when I did this. But they've been showrooming, like you just said, Steve, which is taking their phone and shopping you while you're working a deal. Since 2000, it's been 10 years. 10 years they've been showrooming. But now I use, you know, AI almost to do everything with my phone when I look something up. Somebody, if I take me home, Siri, you know, Siri, take me home, Siri.

[00:13:14] My wife and I were in the car. I said, how old is Denzel Washington? It told me like that. I mean, so it's just the future. That's why when I hear, I was talking with Lane earlier and he was saying that everybody was adapting to adopting AI. I'm like, how could you not in this market? And what I think about AI as a car guy, and I'm sure Steve, you'll agree, and probably even Badgie. It's still the car business is still people.

[00:13:42] If you don't have good people, I don't give a shit how good the AI is. You're not going to win. And that's the problem is the AI is there that because you need whoever gets there first is going to win 90 percent of the time. If I talk to that customer first, because they got the same car somewhere else, unless it's a used one, but there's something similar. So what AI did for me was get to that customer first and pass it to me right away.

[00:14:09] And I knew everything that was going on because the conversation was pretty fluid of what they wanted. They came right out in the AI tool, told them, and then you take over. So if dealers aren't adopting that with you, I'm shocked. I really am when I hear that a guy is not using the tool, at least for that, for service. Well, 20 years ago, we went to O'Hare Honda, and very few dealers had a BDC.

[00:14:38] We had 10 people working upstairs, and we made a big BDC office. Everybody had a computer and phones, and we were working. I remember going to a Honda meeting, and they were talking, and the people from Honda were saying, if you people don't have a BDC, you're behind the apron. I'm looking around like, how could you not? But same thing. If you don't embrace it, some people are like, oh, that AI is bullshit. It doesn't do anything. Okay. Well, you better open your eyes.

[00:15:02] But however, I digress because 9 out of 10 franchise dealers now are big, big, big, you know, they're 10, 30 guys. So they've got a lot of layers of extremely intelligent people who go to the, like, you know, like to say, let's say Ed Napleton, right? He's got guys underneath him that are probably way smarter than him that make him look really good and make him a lot of money, and they go, we need to do this.

[00:15:32] We need to do that. We need to do that. And it'll work. Because if it doesn't work, they get fired. So they make it work. And there's a lot of sharp guys out there in our business that figure it out. They figure it out fast, and they put it into motion. But, for instance, like, you don't need to come in to buy a car. So, you know, AutoNation bought our store in 2016 or 15 right in there at O'Hare. And one of the, like our first year there, they came out with this.

[00:16:01] You don't need to come in to buy a car. You do everything online, on the telephone and online. And just they came in. They made parking spaces, reserve space. They spent millions of dollars on this program. Nobody did it. Nobody did not come in and buy the car without car. No one went online and bought a car. They came in, and they bought their cars just as usual. But, you know, it's evolving today. I think, like, even with Carvana now, they're offering a test drive because people buy these used cars, and they have problems.

[00:16:30] And then they got to, you know, then there's an issue. I think Carvana will drop off a car. You can have it for five days. And if you're good, you'll cash the check. Well, I think, Lane, one thing, and you'll have to tell me if this is true. How many guys do you actually talk to, Lane? And I'm going to insult my car brethren in a minute. But how many guys do you actually talk to, understand your tool when they have it and how it all works? How many of those customers? Hello.

[00:16:59] How many of them have the time? That's the problem, right? Yeah. So I would say that the huge advantage that I've been able to enjoy so far is just being able to show them what they're doing now versus what's possible. And you do it with what I call the customer experience check. But in this case, I mean, I don't know if you guys were at NADA. You know, NADA 2023, there were no vendors talking about AI.

[00:17:28] Now in 2026, I think there were over 40. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and that's just... How many were there? Sorry? How many AI vendors? I think there were over 40, Steve. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, AI vendors gets thrown around a lot, you know, because there are AI products. People say they have AI in their product and stuff. And so there's a lot of confusion. You know, when Steve, the first time I ever showed you our product, there wasn't a lot of confusion because it was all brand new.

[00:17:58] Yeah. Now... We had issues right away, right away with the brakes on. And you were a gentleman and said, is that working? Get it off and we'll move on. Yeah. And looking back at it now from, you know, three years perspective, a lot of the things that we wanted to do with AI simply weren't possible at scale simply because the AI was too nascent. Now it's a different story.

[00:18:23] But, you know, to wrap up the answer to your question, John, is that everybody's too busy. There's way too much to focus on. Nothing ever gets easier except going broke. And a lot of people don't have the time to really explore all the different options of AI. So what they do is they make a decision based on a product and a person that they know. And I'll end by saying that, as I mentioned before in the other visit, AI is bigger than a product and a process.

[00:18:52] And the car business hasn't had the time or the inclination to refocus on exactly what that's going to mean. I'm glad to hear AutoNation has used AI to start pricing their cars because I think that's smart. Well, V Auto is coming out. I mean, they've had profit time for a long time already, but I know they're coming out with a tool that prices cars automatically with no involvement from the user at all. So that's coming.

[00:19:21] But getting back to the whole AI tool, I think AI in the next three years or maybe less, there's going to be parts department, service department, finance department, BDC, and AI department. I think you have to have it because everything's connecting together now or at least trying to. And the problem with the car business, no offense, guys, but we're not really educated.

[00:19:51] You know, we're not college guys, most of them. I mean, there's a few out there. But we're street guys who figured out we can make a lot of money, same as a doctor or a dentist or a lawyer selling cars. So we got ADD. We really look at every deal the same exact way almost. It's just how we're going to structure it. And we don't take the time to learn the tools. And that's got to change.

[00:20:19] That's where I think the car business is floundering the most is the training of people that work in the car business and all the new technology that's coming aboard. You got to know this stuff. And you got to have somebody who's in-house who can help you with that. Real important. Well, you know me, Jenny. So I met with Bin Solutions every week. Yep. My old rep, Bruce Olson. You know Bruce or no? Do you know Bruce Olson? I do.

[00:20:49] I know Bruce, yes. Bruce called me yesterday just to check up. I haven't talked to him. He hasn't been my rep in a year, but he called to check in because he said you were one of my favorite guys ever, but I met on my calendar every Wednesday at 7.30 a.m. because it was 8.30 Eastern where he was. I did my Bin Solutions. We talked about doing, you know, we would do campaigns. We would just say, let's look at some reports.

[00:21:14] I mean, there was always something new to learn or figure out or just re-look at, right? And the same thing with Viato, John. And I mean, look at the stuff that you and I did up until six months ago, right? I mean, we went and we kind of restructured my Viato a little bit. You gave me a quick refresher course on, not that I had any trouble with appraising, but stuff that I could take back to the managers and rework it with them without me stumbling, right?

[00:21:44] I knew how everything worked. Like we would look and you say, okay, we have a previously sold and currently for sale, right? And then we'd put the mileage in there and, you know, from if a guy's shopping for a car, it's under 20,000 miles. It's two years old. You put those numbers in and it's amazing what changes when you do that. Yeah. I tried to bring it to the guys and do a refresher with you, John, and always stay fresh. New, you know, maybe give me a new report or give me one that I forgot about or, you know, we always did that.

[00:22:13] And I tried to pass it along, but like, like Lance says, nobody has a time, but I always made the time because I would go at seven o'clock in the morning and do it. I still talk to my PM buddies. You know, it's kind of when you go to Viato as a PM. I mean, now everybody's a PM. It's like a doctor. You're all peppers because they call every division a PM.

[00:22:36] But the PMs I still talk to, their biggest problem is meetings with people showing up. I mean, to the point where they'll get motherfucked about not, you know, their PM doesn't do enough here, not enough here. And they'll go through all the trouble to set everybody up for meetings and nobody shows up. So that's always been a problem. When I was a PM, I drove there.

[00:23:04] I would drive in everywhere because I would, I wouldn't do it online. Everything was close to the free. I was fortunate, but that's the only way I was able to really help dealers. And cause I'd be in there and they're busy. They all got, like you said, Lane, they're doing, they're always busy because in the car business and Steve, you did every job in the car business pretty much except the porter and you clean cars up when you needed to. When you, at Wix, I know you did.

[00:23:32] But we do so many things in the car business. We kind of take for granted the vendors in a sense that they really are an ally and we don't use them the way we should in the car business. That's a problem. The training is there. It's free. Take it. You know, I just, I don't understand it at all. But I did. Cause I want to get my money's worth. Yeah. I'm paying four G's for your product.

[00:24:03] As well as you do, if not better. Yeah. I mean, but you look at the, like, even with the appraisals, Johnny, I tell these guys and I probably have emails I could probably look up within the last, multiple times in the last year of here's my process for an appraisal. Go out there. You know, it's almost impossible to get a guy to walk around the car with the customer. We always want them to. No one does it. But look at the car. I want eight or 10 pictures when you're doing it. I want a picture of the wheels. I want a picture of the tire.

[00:24:32] That's if to make sure that they're good. I want a picture of the odometer. I want to take a picture of the sunroof, make sure it goes from the inside of the car. So I can, if you appraise it and the next morning or that night when I'm home, I can put that car online and put it for sale. Exactly. You got 30 days to sell them. You need those days. They're real important. Days are critical. Critical. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's impossible to teach it to anybody. I mean, it's probably like you said, giant, be auto will price your cars.

[00:25:02] Auto nations, AI, you don't need to use car manager. Right. Andrew for them. Yeah. You know, there's a problem too with the high turnover rate, you know, in some stores that, you know, you're constantly having new people and they're not, and they're not educated. They don't even know, you know, there may be a work that best buyer somewhere else. So they're not even knowledgeable. They're not true like car people with years of experience. And so you plop them in their situation and there's no training. It's, it's a disaster.

[00:25:32] Well, that's the dealer. And that, and that's their, their fault. Cause here, here's what you fucking got. A guy comes in and this is what we offer him. Okay. Your schedule, buddy. It's on the window, whatever we're open. Those are your hours, because if you do sell a car and you're not there to deliver it, you lose half the deal. They don't understand that part yet, but that's first. Number one, what's my salary? Oh, there is none. We're going to give you a draw. What's a draw.

[00:25:59] We're going to give you a little bit of money, maybe 250 bucks a week. And then when you do get a commission, we're going to take it back. And until you make that draw, we're going to, we're going to, it's going to add up. You've got to pay me back. Okay, great. What about insurance? Well, insurance is very high and you get it in 90 days. Okay. What's, what about holidays and time off? You get none. If you call in sick, I'll fire you.

[00:26:27] And don't worry about a holiday because you're going to spend it with me. Every holiday, we have a bar. You're going to get a burger or a hot dog or sausage and you'll be with me. Oh, and then by the way, I got some guys that work up at the desk. They're going to motherfuck you. They're going to scream at you. They're going to hit you. They're going to yell at you, but that's just them. They're good guys. That's just how it is. So that's what we offer people. We'll never get people in the car business till we get into the 21st century and fucking

[00:26:56] give a salary, start insurance on day one, have PTO pay. You know, at Cox, you have unlimited PTO paid time off unlimited. I could take off a year if I want, but if you do it right, you hire the right quality person. Steve, how many days off you take? Never. You don't take a day off. You really don't. I didn't take days off because that's in our DNA. And you get the guy in the car business who's successful.

[00:27:25] You don't need to worry about them taking weeks off and days off because they want to make money. But that's not what the world is today. So until we upgrade that, we're going to continue to get what you're talking about, Steve, is that turnover and the lack of training is terrible. So it's just got to change. But I want to shift gears a little bit. I've been seeing this for 20 years. Nobody should have to work nine to nine, two nine to nine, three nine to nines,

[00:27:55] midnight on Saturday. No one should have to do it. And it's never changed. No. It's never changed. It's never changed. And it's never going to. It's never going to because they don't get in their head. They just, it's, it's done. I don't even know what to call it, but it's the same, which I didn't know. It's the same on the East coast. It's the same in Florida. It's not like that in Wisconsin or Michigan. They're close early in some like small towns, smaller towns.

[00:28:23] They, they close at six and seven and stuff like that. But any major metropolitan, they do the same shit. They're, they're open as much. They like, they're going to, you know, they, they, the guys get beat up. Eventually they're, they're more open. Real car guys don't even care about hours. They never, they don't ask it. Never. They want to know the pay plan. And then they work because they got to make deals. They're going to be doing the customers there, but to get new people into this industry, you

[00:28:51] got to offer them something that's equivalent to what they're getting offered. And to get somebody better, you need to give them more than what's being offered out there. I mean, you shouldn't make more working at a white castle than you do as a car salesman. In some places, that's an easy one. You do. So it's kind of ridiculous, but anyhow.

[00:29:17] I saw the sign of Dairy Queen, $19 an hour to put ice cream in the cone, right? So you figure if they let you work full time, you can make $3,200 a month putting ice cream in the cone. That's what I mean. You can do it. You can do it nine to nine times a week and luckily you make three grand. Yeah, people don't realize, the public doesn't realize that some of these guys will work a whole deal, spend three hours to make $100 or $150. They don't get that. They always think that, oh, we're making all the money.

[00:29:46] No, no, that's not how it works. It's like painting fabric, Johnny. So when I got at Wilkin seven years ago, I said to Tom, I said, listen, if you want to motivate guys and want them to make money and you want to make money, it's hard to make it on new cars. We know used cars is going to make money and there's always a guy who flops for a new car. Some people just don't shop or you can grab enough on the trade. I said, let's sell paint and fabric, okay?

[00:30:13] A real product that comes with a warranty and give the guys 50-50 from 500 bucks. After 500, split it with them. So you can ask $19.95. If you sell it for $7.95, who cares? The product was free, right? They give you the free product. You pay for the warranty, whatever, buck and a quarter, buck and a half, whatever it is. Let the guys make money. Let them. So I used to go in the meetings at Sarah and go, guys, you'll spend four hours, sell a guy a car.

[00:30:41] If it's an internet deal, you're going to make a hundred bucks and you won't pitch a product that you can pick up $750 out. The guy says, I want it. Here's the problem though, Steve. Now, so Jimmy Dubas was on the show with us. FTC is suing him for $216 million for doing exactly what you just said. Exactly what you just said. He's there. They're selling stuff after market.

[00:31:06] The guys are trying to sell product A, product B, product C. And because of that, the dealership paid $20 million. Now, if it was forced, they would have had a hundred percent, right? They would have sold every single customer. You know, Johnny, we didn't do any kinks. Zero. But they didn't either. So did they. So did they. It was there. They don't them. It's on there. They didn't force anybody to take anything.

[00:31:36] But if they did, they'd have a hundred percent closing. They're only closing 35%. So how could they? But anyhow, my point is the FTC filed a lawsuit against WPATH. And this is off the car business right now. That is the World Professional Association of Transgender Health. That's what they just did. They filed a lawsuit because they were telling kids and parents how to become transgender,

[00:32:03] you know, at a very young age, et cetera, et cetera. That's what the FTC should be fucking doing is that kind of stuff. Going after Grubhub for bullshit, this PH, premium home services, making fake businesses. Not after a car guy who's selling rustproof dent repair, wheel repair, because you can't make any money on a car.

[00:32:31] And they're just trying to sell a fucking product. That's it. So FTC, get off Jim's ass. Keep doing the good stuff you're doing. They're not doing. He didn't do anything wrong. He didn't even bill out a car. So I don't know how you can blame him. But he couldn't come on because he still has this open case. So it just, he's got to fit. It still hasn't happened. But they're suing the poor guy for $216 million. And he didn't do nothing. Yeah.

[00:33:01] Did he run the place? Yeah. But Steve, you ran many of dealerships. Lane, you have people work for you. Are you responsible for every single thing they do? No. No. He worked for a corporate environment. It wasn't just, you know. Yeah. But they paid $100 million. $20 million. They paid $20 million. Unless they got sued for $100 million. Yeah. $20 million. So, but they're a Canadian company. They want to get out of Dodge.

[00:33:30] I think they did finally sell everything and left. So. So. And he made $25 million for them the first year. So, the first year he made $25 million net profit. So, they gave him, he gave back 20 of it. They kept five and threw him under the bus. Which is terrible as a company to do that to somebody. But this is what you got to worry about today, Steve. If you try to sell a car and then sell the aftermarket stuff.

[00:34:00] If they're not, if you sell customer A, rusty, dusty, musty for $17.95. Customer B for $7.95. That is illegal today. You cannot do that anymore. So, it's like with the dock fee. Remember, we never took the dock fee out. Why? Because we didn't want the lawsuit. Because then everybody could sue because they didn't pay the dock fee. Right? So, what you end up doing. You take the $146. When I was, that's how long ago I sold. It's probably $300 now.

[00:34:29] But $146 is the last I can remember. You take it out at a selling price so you didn't end up in court. It's just, it's really tough for car dealers. And I'm not crying for car dealers. Because the dealers make their money. But the guys in it, it's a fucking hard job to sell cars every day. Beat the, you know, beat the pavement all day. You're on the phone. You're, you're, you're, if you're good enough or you're smart enough, you're in the service department.

[00:34:57] You're answering every lead that comes in or trying to get every lead that comes in. And you've got the help of AI to at least make that initial say hello because somebody else says hello for you. And they get better for them. You lost the deal. I wanted to add real quickly too. Salespeople can take initiatives too, you know. They can use AI for themselves. I know for me, like sometimes you encounter someone who's, you know, very wealthy. And they work things a certain way.

[00:35:26] And I'm like, I'm, you know, as you said, I'm not really an educated guy. And I don't want to, I don't want to first upset them or, or, or, or, you know, make them mad. Or, you know, I don't want to come across as that. And so sometimes in these conversations, I'll put, I'll put it in AI and say, you know what? Here's how I want to respond. Could you write it out for me? And, you know, it works like a charm because it, because, you know, people are looking to entice you. They want, they want to get you upset. They want to be yelling at you.

[00:35:55] But this will actually, you know, tone them down to where they'll, they'll back off considerably. But there's stuff that you can do individually as a salesperson that you don't always have to rely on, you know, oh, the store's not going to give it to me. I'm not going to use it or I'm not going to, you can read, because you're your own small business in itself. Yeah. So I think people need to realize that, too, that there's stuff that you can do for yourself that can, you know, get your name out there to do it and also using AI as a tool for yourself.

[00:36:24] Everything on the retail side, nothing in service. But I was offered a couple of stores a couple of times, but I was afraid I might have to work as hard as Steve. Do you remember when we started in the car business, part of the pitch was it's your own business inside a business? Yeah. Do you remember? Yeah. Yeah, I do. I do want to speak to what Baji said, because it's funny that you mentioned that, Baji,

[00:36:50] because we're actually seeing a resurgence of that at the individual sales rep level. I'm not giving an example. So I have a client and I would done an install about teaching individual salespeople, get in where you fit in, only the willing, how to be able to use AI and Claude at the individual lead level, just like you talked about. So he tells me about this phone up that he takes. Lady calls up and this is a Subaru store. She says, I'm retired. It's Florida. I'm retired.

[00:37:20] I have an 08 Camry Solara. It's a convertible. I never put the top down, but I'm looking for a sedan. So she's calling the Subaru store. They got an Impreza, a hatchback, and of course, the WRX. It's got four doors, but it's no sedan. Right? So he says, well, you know, what were you looking for? New or pre-owned? She said, no, I'm looking for a certified pre-owned. They got zero in stock. So, but he has the opportunity and the policy is, hey, if you try and land someone a used car you don't have,

[00:37:50] you can sell them something else in one of the other stores. So this guy, he says, I'm going to send you a couple of different things. Tell me what you're looking for. Look for four door. Definitely don't want anything fancy. I got to be under 25. I'm going to trade the Solara as well. So he writes all this down. He puts it into Claude using a skill. Bajie, if you don't know about skills yet in Claude.

[00:38:15] And this skill that I set up for him actually built an interactive website and a link to send in the text message in the email. Claude wrote the email and the text message for him, and he sends it out. And the lady's name, let's call her Jane. Jane, this has been made for you so that you can get from your 08 Solara. Let me tell you about some of the differences that you're going to look at in these three CPOs from other lots.

[00:38:44] And it's got little mini VDPs set up in it. It's got a MPG calculator. It doesn't use a payment calculator because I told him not to do that because that displaces it. But anyway, she had this own personal little website that that salesperson had set up that allowed this retired lady to pick what was more important for her and to build pitches for these cars that still had links to the VDPs on the website.

[00:39:12] But it created a personal experience that took a moment of the salesperson's time and the ambition to want to work a lead harder instead of just faster to fire off a template and sometimes not even answer the question. So, Baji, for Hustlers, the new Hustlers like us guys are AI Hustlers.

[00:39:37] They're the ones that are figuring out how to work smarter instead of harder, especially when you're not in control of anything. But you're talking one-on-one to a customer. But there's an extra step that you need to take. And the opportunity has never been better for Hustlers to use technology now to take that extra step. I was going to say there has to be one of the best salespeople there because the best salespeople figure it out. And that's what I'd be doing.

[00:40:06] I'd be – because you can do a comparison of cars. Just ask Siri and it'll tell you in less than five seconds everything you need. You sound like – because I don't know shit about cars. I call steam for every car. I almost called today about my lawnmower because I kept clicking. I still can't get a fucking start. Got it. He's going to have to come over. Got it.

[00:40:27] But my point is you can do anything with AI today and you need to adapt it into your business because it's just – it's a necessity. I don't know how you don't use it. You know, you said people don't use email, rich piece of rich. Those people, they have so many layers that they don't even care. They don't want the email. That's why I don't have it. They don't want it. Because they don't want to talk to anybody.

[00:40:56] They're afraid to talk to somebody. But, I mean, I'm retired now. I don't carry my phone anymore. I don't really look at email anymore. I delete everything as soon as it comes. I just delete it. And I only have my phone set to answer it only, you know, certain times of day. And I shut it off. So, I get it. But in this world with the way the business is, because, again, we get back to that.

[00:41:24] But now, when you tell a guy, how many – you ask a dealer, how many do you do? Oh, we might hit 100. If you would have told me you're going to hit a fucking 100, I would have laughed in your face. Because 100 cars is two Saturdays or in one week for me. That's what I would look at. But today, those are big numbers. If you get to 100 cars, you do 70 cars, everybody's got the jamborees out. Woo-hoo! It's 70.

[00:41:52] It's because there's no inventory. I mean, look at the Chevy. You said the lawsuit with GM. There's a lawsuit, I guess. Embellish a little bit on that. Do you know more about this lawsuit? Yeah, there's a lawsuit that just launched. It's a dealership out east. They're suing GM because they were saying, like, we were required to sell, you know, 1,000 units a year. But you only gave us 500 units a year.

[00:42:22] And so, they're like, how can we maintain these numbers and you're not giving us the allocation? So, now insiders are saying that this lawsuit is going to maybe open up a Pandora's box on how manufacturers go about distributing their allocations, which has been a big secret, I guess, for a long year. You guys probably know you guys are older than I am in the business of how this allocation process works. It was turning. It was turning.

[00:42:51] It was turning. Turning and earn. You get them. Well, you've got to click your sales every day, like with Honda. If you dragged your feet and didn't click your cars, you could lose allocation with Honda the way it was set up. It's simple, but it's a little complicated. So, you had to pay attention to it. You had to punch your cars. You had to keep it flowing. And you'd get your cars. And the way you'd pick up extras is like I went to an NCM 20 group meeting and guys had too much of an allocation. And they'd sit there and go, I need to get rid of 30 Civics.

[00:43:20] I raised my house and I'll take them off. Yeah. And that's how I got more cars. Or, you know, they'd have some stuff left over and they'd say, okay, we'll give you 15 more Accords, but you got to take two Ridgelines. You're never going to be able to sell. You say, okay, I'll take them. Back in the day, I think my reps all got new TVs all the time. They got a new TV or a trip or Cubs tickets or Bears tickets.

[00:43:50] I can tell you at one point, the store I worked for, the big, this, I'm talking like GMAC, TMCC, NEMAC, that kind of group were all driving my demos, my loaners. They were driving my car, somebody in their house, and that's how we got cars is we got more than everybody else because we paid everybody off. You could do that back then. You can't get away with that anymore. It's very difficult.

[00:44:16] That lawsuit, Badgie, I don't know that it's going to hold any water. I'm not sure of all the dynamics of it. However, if they say you have to sell 1,000 cars or your franchise could be in jeopardy of us closing your point, but they only supplied you with 500. That's all you can sell. So I don't know. There's got to be a little more to it than that.

[00:44:39] Well, what I can tell you, so I've worked part-time in the last three years, and I worked for a 15-franchise group and a 6-franchise group. And I can tell you, absolutely, the only ones with cars were Hyundai, Kia, Honda, and Subaru. And Toyota has no cars. Chevy has no cars. GMC has no cars.

[00:45:09] CDJR has cars, but they all got a fucking recall on. They're all junk. They're all shit. Yeah, nothing there. Buick, you can't get cars. Who am I missing? Nissan's got cars. Nissan's got cars. But nobody wants them, unfortunately. And I think Hyundai had the most. And I think they put a G-note on the hood, right, two months ago? All kinds of things. Johnny, there's zero for 72.

[00:45:39] And there's still not going. Yeah, and nobody else has that. So Hyundai should be, because I'm not aware of anybody else having zero for 72 G-note rebates, because rebates all went away because there's no cars. But Hyundai did. Yeah, I mean, here, I mean, a lot of people got free engines. They're still getting free engines from Hyundai from 20 years ago. They stood behind all their cars. However, I think it scared a lot of people away.

[00:46:04] I'm not sure, but, you know, it's just wild. I mean, here, at the end of the month, I've got guys in Kenosha at the Hyundai dealer up there talking to our BDC girl because they used to work together. The GM at the store said, on the speakerphone, he said to me, I don't care how much I lose on selling a new car. And the way I got it was, we had deposited on a Tucson.

[00:46:30] And she went up to Kenosha, and she called from there and put the guy on the phone. He said, I'm going to lose three Gs on this car because I have to sell cars. I need to move units, and I don't get paid on the bottom line, so I don't care. My order is to keep these cars moving, whatever it's got to be. That's the deal. Guy lose three Gs under invoice on a brand-new car. Why?

[00:46:54] Toyota dealers, Chevy dealers are buying cars from other dealers for MSRP Plus just to get inventory. There's none out there. And the guy who is the stair step, for those of you who don't know what that means, is they give you a stair step. Let's say they make your number 150. So as soon as I hit 75, I'm going to make it easy, $25 for the first 50, $50 for the next 50, and $100 if I hit that retro back to one.

[00:47:22] Well, guys come out of the box losing $150, let's say, at zero hour and then pray that they hit that number. Yeah. So that's what's going on with Hyundai right now. Same thing. It's really ridiculous. And then everybody's pricing the cars in the soup or cheap to get you to come in and then put you on an elevator to sell your product. Because that's the only way they can make money today. They can't be legit.

[00:47:48] Like, I got to say, Steve's one of the only guys I know that I talk to in a regular basis who's 100% legit when he prices. What I mean by that is the price you see, the price you get. There's nothing else to worry about. Tax, that's it. That's a hard thing to do and be successful. Believe it or not. Go to the website right now. Go to Wilkins' website. And I had that in the auto. First thing you see is the price you see. My managers hated it.

[00:48:17] And I'm like, hey, we're not messing around. We just see what's the price you get. Well, even Carvana now just released it. You know, since it's a race to the bottom, there's been a lot of complaints as of July 14th that when you advertise, I'm sorry, on CarGurus, you've got to have your complete price, dock fee, and everything on there. Because that's a whole big mess in itself. It's a race to the bottom. And, you know, customers are like, well, why is their car $3,000 cheaper than your car?

[00:48:47] But, you know, they're just, like you said, taking them on the elevator ride. It's all FTC rules, though. They sent the letter to 97 dealers. I don't know if you heard about that. Yeah. They sent out the 97 dealers telling them this is what it is, which I agree with it all. I do. But you can't single out a GM or an employee unless they actually do wrong. They actually do something, and you've got that, you know, that's different.

[00:49:12] But to go after car dealers just because they're trying to sell products, there's every single, I don't care what you go to buy. I don't care what it is. They're going to hit you for a warranty. If you buy something on Prime, you buy something from Amazon, there's a warranty available. They use the same one for all of them, but there's a warranty. Go buy a couch. Go buy a couch. The first thing they tell you is they want to sell you paint and fabric. Yeah.

[00:49:41] Every single thing you buy. But car dealers, we're the devil because we do it. And I never understood that. I mean, I do. You know, when I started in the car business, I was embarrassed to say I was in the car business. Maybe because my wife was a dentist. I don't like to tell anybody. But after a while, when I started making more than a dentist, I really didn't give a fuck. But it took a while. It did take a while. I didn't say anything at first. But anyhow, hey, it's been great having you guys on.

[00:50:10] I really appreciate your guys' time. I'd like anything you want to pitch, Wayne. I don't know what Claude is. You want to maybe let me in on that, what Claude is? I know Badgie knows, but yeah. Claude is by a company named Anthropic that was in the news recently because they had had sort of a tussle with the Department of Defense that wanted to use their AI in a certain way that Anthropic rejected, right?

[00:50:36] And so they make a tool called Claude that as from December of 2025 until right up about a month ago, they had 9x to their revenue in a way that went from $1 billion a month to $9 billion a month and became one of the fastest growing companies in history.

[00:51:01] ChadGBT, Claude has about 20% market share compared to ChadGBT, but the companies are worth almost the same. And that's how powerful Claude is when it comes to people who really want to go deep and dive into it. It's easy to fall in love with Claude, and they have really, really made a lot of waves in the industry in the last year. Publicly traded? You have to pay for it? You have to pay for Claude?

[00:51:30] They're about to go IPO at an estimated valuation of around $950 billion. Steve, no, they do have a free user account, but when you get a paid account, there's a lot more features, just like every other software. And then there's APIs like my companies use where you have a wholesale pipeline as to the way you're using it so that you're distributing AI to other users. That's the way. C-L-A-U-D? Yeah, C-L-A-U-D-E is what it is.

[00:52:00] C-L-A-U-D-E, okay. I'm going to check that out, Tony. I'm going to check it out and I'm going to investigate you, John Gavin. I'm officially retired, by the way, as of June 1st. So, officially, officially. I don't work anywhere now. Congratulations. You're great. Anyhow, thanks for coming on. We really appreciate it. This is the one year. And we'll do it again, though. Yeah. We'll do it again. It was a good talk. It was a good talk.

[00:52:29] And we want to thank everyone for all of their support this past year. It's not easy trying to get a podcast up and running. They said there's 40 million podcasts out there. So, we want to thank all of you for your support, all of our new listeners. And, you know, spread the message. Share the word of the show. We look forward to some great things coming up on Season 2. So, follow us to find out more about that. But with that, thank you guys for shows over. Thanks for joining us. All right. See you, guys.

[00:52:59] Goodbye, everybody. Bye. See you, Wayne. Bye, Steve. See you. Bye. Bye. Download this podcast on all your favorite podcast platforms. And follow us online at TrueConfessionsOfACarGuy.com.