Social rails means tailoring your content to fit how each social app expects videos to be. It’s basically repackaging long content into shorter posts that do better there.
Term
opus clips
Opus Clips is software that helps you turn a long video or podcast into short clips for social media. It saves time when you want to post frequently.
The Lamborghini Urus is a luxury SUV made by Lamborghini. It’s designed to be comfortable for daily driving, but it’s also very fast. People talk about it because it’s a Lamborghini that you can use like a regular SUV, not just a low-slung sports car.
Term
Midway Plus index
An “index” is a way to rank or compare businesses using the same rules. If your company isn’t included, you can’t directly compare yourself to the benchmark, so you need other ways to measure what’s happening.
Market share means how much of the total customer demand a brand gets. If a brand gains market share, it’s selling a bigger slice of the market than before.
An online store lets customers purchase or start buying right on your website. If you don’t offer that, some people won’t wait to call and will go elsewhere.
Your “tool stack” is the collection of apps and systems you use to do your work—like marketing and lead follow-up. If results are down, you may need to change which tools you’re using or how you use them.
“Summer slows” means business tends to be slower in the summer. In this conversation, they’re saying fewer people are calling for turbo upgrades, and things pick up again later.
The Ford F-150 is a very common full-size pickup truck. Here, they’re talking about people adding performance upgrades to it, like a turbo kit, which can cost a lot of money.
A turbo kit is a set of parts that adds a turbo to a car’s engine. It usually includes more than one piece, so the install can be a bigger job than simple upgrades.
The fuel system is how the car gets gasoline to the engine. If you add a turbo, the engine may need more fuel, so the fuel system may need changes too.
The transmission is what helps the car put power to the wheels in the right gear. If you add a turbo and make more torque, it can put extra strain on the transmission.
Raw data is the original information before anyone organizes it into charts or summaries. The idea is to give AI the original stuff so it can spot patterns for you.
Notion is an app people use to keep organized notes and databases. In this case, they use it to log projects so they can later analyze the information.
Term
database of all these projects
A “database” is a structured collection of records that can be queried and analyzed. In this context, the project database is what makes it possible to ask AI questions like month-over-month changes or typical project duration.
“Trend watching” is the practice of monitoring changes over time to spot patterns in performance or demand. The hosts describe using AI to analyze internal workload data and also market trends.
A supercharger is a forced-induction device that uses a belt-driven compressor to push more air into an engine. More air generally enables more fuel to be burned, which can increase power output.
“Vehicle trends” refers to changes in vehicle-related metrics over time, such as pickup sales moving up or down. The speaker frames this as a market signal AI can help summarize.
Term
reading contracts
“Reading contracts” here is about analyzing contract documents to extract meaning and relevant details. The speaker is setting up a workflow using AI to interpret contract text and then verify claims.
Term
reading intent
“Reading intent” means interpreting what someone is trying to do or communicate in a document, not just the literal wording. In contract review, this can help identify obligations, risks, or implied meanings.
HPX seems to be a tool or platform the host uses to organize content and campaigns. They mention tagging it and making sure the right challenge details show up in their written materials.
A press release is a written announcement a company sends out to news outlets. It explains what happened and why it matters, and in this segment the host says AI can help draft it.
AI agents are smarter AI tools that can do tasks for you, not just answer questions. They can help with things like drafting and improving marketing content based on what’s working.
Analytics are the numbers and insights that tell you how well something performed. Here, the host is saying AI is better when it can connect content to performance data.
Meta is the company behind platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and it also provides ad/post performance tracking. The host is saying you can connect your content to those results so you know what worked.
Concept
boundaries for what's going on
This is the idea of putting limits on AI so it only operates within safe, validated conditions. For car building, that means AI shouldn’t be allowed to “guess” without human expertise, real-world data, and engineering constraints.
Machine learning means a computer learns from lots of examples. Instead of being programmed with every rule, it figures out patterns from data—like what usually happens when parts are built a certain way.
A CNC machine is a shop tool that uses a computer to make very precise cuts. If it’s set up wrong or pushed beyond what it can handle, it can break—so people with experience know what to watch for.
Term
EPA emissions felons
The EPA is the U.S. agency that sets and enforces air-pollution rules. If people are involved in serious emissions rule violations, changes in enforcement or rulings can affect what carmakers have to do next.
Emissions regulations are laws that limit how dirty a vehicle can be. If the rules change, car companies often have to update their engines and exhaust systems to meet the new limits.
The intake brings air into the engine and the exhaust carries gases out. If emissions rules get stricter, engineers may change these parts so the engine burns fuel more cleanly.
Corey Willis is mentioned as a person who speaks up about EPA emissions issues. The host suggests listeners follow what he’s sharing because it may affect how cars are regulated and built.
The EPA is the U.S. agency that sets rules for vehicle emissions. A certification pathway is the official process you have to follow to prove something meets those emissions rules. The host is saying an aftermarket shop can now help with that official approval process.
A seven-year loan means you’re paying for the car over about seven years. That usually costs more overall because of interest, and it can make it easy to trade into the next car before you’re done paying. The hosts are basically saying that’s a bad deal for buyers.
The World Cup is a huge international soccer tournament. It gets a lot of viewers and attention worldwide. The host is using it as an example of how big events can teach marketers how to think about branding and engagement.
The Dodge Demon is a super-quick drag-race version of a Dodge muscle car. The story here is that it was running very fast, but it didn’t meet NHRA safety rules at the time—so the NHRA told Dodge it couldn’t race it anymore until it was compliant.
A roll cage is a metal safety frame inside the car. It helps protect the driver if the car flips or crashes hard, and racing rules may require one for faster cars.
NHRA is the organization that runs and regulates drag racing in the U.S. They make the rules about what cars must have to race safely, and they can stop a car from competing if it doesn’t follow those rules.
Automotive brand recall is how easily people remember an automotive brand after seeing ads or sponsorships. In marketing measurement, it’s often tracked as a percentage of respondents who can recall the brand, and it’s used to judge how effective campaigns are during major events.
Running boards are the side steps on some vehicles. They make it easier to climb into the car, and here they’re used as an example of a product you could market creatively.
Major League Soccer is the main pro soccer league in the U.S. and Canada. The host is saying Audi uses it as a way to get attention with fun, soccer-themed marketing.
Brand activation means using a big event or trend in a concrete way to get attention. It’s not just “posting”—it’s doing something that connects your brand to what people are already talking about.
Algorithms are the rules apps use to decide what posts to show you. The host is saying that if you tag the right sports topics, your content may get recommended to more viewers.
LIVE
If you see a document that contains this type of upper thing, it's from AI.
No one ever, it's from Claude.
No one has ever formatted a piece of paper like this until now.
And everyone thinks, oh, this is it.
As soon as I see anything that looks like this, I immediately know where it came from
and it bothers me.
So, anyway.
Why does it bother you?
I just don't like it.
No one does this.
You just preached about how great AI is.
I know, but not for this.
This isn't on brand for me.
I don't like it.
Looks like AI's slop.
I hate it.
I'm going.
Welcome to the Automotive Advantage.
Grow your business and get smarter in just one hour.
All right, we got a big show today, everybody, because, Justin, it's a one-year anniversary
of the Automotive Advantage.
Can you believe it?
Does it feel like a year or longer than a year?
We've been doing a lot of this for longer than a year, but the podcast, how does it feel?
How does it feel?
It feels shorter than a year, but, yeah, our first video post published was July 3, 2025,
which, thinking back, is a dumb day to launch a podcast the day before the 4th of July.
So, I don't know where our heads were there, but, yeah, in a year since July 3, 2025, we've
done 39 episodes, which is not quite once a week, but, honestly, pretty good, pretty
consistent.
That's about all you could ask for.
So, 39 episodes, I can get into the numbers here, but, no, I would say it does not feel
like it's been a year.
It's been a really cool experience so far.
Where are you at on this?
Does it feel like a year?
Yeah, it's good.
It's been really rewarding.
I think we'll probably talk about it beyond the numbers, but it's a great platform to
reach the industry and talk to people, and we've helped a bunch of people.
In fact, it's a big announcement.
No, don't.
What?
We'll do that after we talk about it.
We're going to go to the numbers and then do the big announcement.
Yeah, yeah.
We get to do some ad read today too, right?
I thought that's what you were doing.
Okay, go ahead.
Yeah.
So, I'll start with YouTube.
This is 39 episodes.
Many of these have really good guests.
Many of them are just you and me talking, so it's surprising that anybody has watched
these at all to me a lot of the time, but YouTube, 1.3 million impressions in this year.
96,560 views, so almost 100,000 views.
If this one pops off, I'm going to count it in the year.
I think doing 96,000 views in a year on a startup podcast is pretty good, so I'm happy
about that.
1,236 subscribers now, which is great.
We were very excited at 1,000, and now we're almost a quarter past that, which is awesome.
And then average view duration, this is a big one, 14 minutes and 32 seconds.
So people who are watching them are sticking around to watch them.
Yeah, so how do you feel about that?
Almost 100,000 video views on YouTube, and of those, a 14-minute average duration is
pretty awesome.
Oh, it's awesome because we don't have a general channel.
You got to be in the automotive industry, automotive aftermarket, you got to be really
into the business, you're going to want to improve your game.
That's just a really small slice of people, and we know we're talking to the right people
and helping the right people, and we get good feedback, and thank you to everybody that's
made this possible, so it's awesome.
It's funny, I was talking to the person who didn't invite you to the racetrack yesterday,
and me and that person were having a discussion about how do you get views, and it's like,
well, you have to be funny, or you have to be confrontational, or we've seen the best
results where we have a hot take, and they're like, but I don't want to do that, I just
want to be honest with people, and I just want to give them good advice, and sometimes
that's longer form, like yeah, well then you just have to take the views that you get,
and know that every one of those viewers is really hopefully taking something from it,
and if you want to just have a trillion views, there's ways to do that, but yeah, I don't
think we've ever gone down that road, and I'm pretty proud of almost 100,000 views,
which is great, and then, on Spotify, we've had 16,560 plays and downloads.
We've had 5,719 different people tune in at one point or the other over the course of
a year, which is pretty crazy, and this one is amazing to me, a 32.2% completion rate
on Spotify. Apple Podcast is the bigger stack there, so it's like 80% Apple Podcast and 10%
Spotify, which is funny because we hosted on Spotify, so they got to be salty about that,
but if you add 16,096,000 together, then we are over 100,000 video views, which is great,
and then we didn't put in here, but the social has been hitting really hard as well, so give me
your thoughts on the big videos, the big long-form audio, and then cutting those down into social
rails. Yeah, without a doubt, what we've learned, and a lot of this is from Alan Johnson who came
on, and we just watched him run this experiment of just chopping up our interview with Alan and
just went crazy, and that launched his whole social platform, but yeah, you give me the
opus clips, we still use that, and then I'll use one a day before eight o'clock in the morning,
I get something up, I use Claude, I'll put the transcript in the Claude, it writes a pretty
catchy copy, I put it out on Instagram, and I've learned to not do it too often on LinkedIn,
they really punish you for putting a lot of stuff out, and they don't like videos, and they
they just want you to say, I had an experience at my job, or I have lifelong learnings I want to
share. Instagram, the more you do, get rewarded, the more people tune in, so some of
what I would call just regular clips from you and me, most of them are a thousand views, they will
go up to 15,000, if you like shit talk suppressors or something like that, people tend to like that.
We did, yeah, there were some comments in there like, well, so you're saying a regular baffle and
blah blah blah, and that isn't what I'm saying, but it also is what I'm saying, so yes, yeah,
but again, hot takes get the views for sure, and all of this hard work, which didn't really
feel like hard work along the way, has netted us two sponsors for this 40th podcast episode,
so it's very exciting to tell the people. Well, we have a loyal listener out there, Brandon Knight,
he's out of Missouri, and he wrote this, he's written this a couple times, but the one this week
was, you know, I really appreciate what you guys are doing, you guys have changed my life. I started
a company, and I want to give back to the automotive advantage, and we have our first official sponsor
of the automotive advantage is spec coffee, a coffee from automotive enthusiasts for
automotive enthusiasts, so Justin, we're going to have to have some product placement, you're
going to have to have some spec coffee in front of you, we have a sponsor now. I like it, this is
exciting, this has previously been unsponsored by Monster, but I'll start drinking in spec coffee
in here, we can get ramped up for sure. I did read that email, I don't think he mentioned that
we've changed his life, that might have been a little, you might have editorialized, I read
in both between the lines. Got it, but maybe after we start selling barrels of spec coffee out of
this place, that would be life-changing for him, so that's really cool though, again, that's one
viewer, right, and then they listen, we've interacted with them, and now they've got a little brand
going, it's super cool, and then our second one is, yeah, we've got Midway Plus's back, we've got a
Midway Plus index, so we're going to be talking about where we are for the first half of 2026,
thanks to Midway Plus, thanks guys. Awesome, so we've made it through our sponsor reads,
feels weird to do, I kind of like it. That's good, should we do those, like the 32nd,
this episode of Automotive Advantage is brought to you by spec coffee. I think we do those once
the checks start clearing, yeah, for now maybe just put it in the background, yeah, we are thankful
though. I wanted to talk to you about, we did experiment at HPX with a live Automotive Advantage,
we're going to put that out, are you going to put that out this week, which means this
recording now comes out the week after, what are we doing? I don't know, I don't know.
This is where your creative nature comes in conflict with putting out content to help
our people, is that what's going on? Yeah, we have a brand and we always tell everybody that the
brand is only as strong as its weakest element, so when you're creating a brand you want everything
to be cohesive, we talk about this with speed shops like you might have the best website and
YouTube channel, blah, blah, and then you write your business card on the back of a piece of paper
and you hand it to someone and they're like, okay, and then they show up at the shop and then the
shop's dirty and then the brand starts to erode, so we don't want to put out content that doesn't
look on brand for us, although you could argue that two episodes ago I was out of focus and your
mic didn't work, but we still put that one out. The HPX one was good, I think doing it in front
of a live audience is fun, but I just, I did edit it and I hate it, so if it ever sees a live day,
I don't want to be judged for how it looks, it was just one camera, the two of us kind of
sitting there, but there was some cool content. Maybe it would be good as like a primer to HPX
3, I'm calling it, or HPX 27, maybe as people ramping up for that show to be like, okay,
because we went through kind of, for each audience segment, what's the best way to approach a trade
show, so then we'll hold that one, use it in the vault. Okay, well, I can accept that, but here's
the caveat, is now we've been invited to do other live podcasts. One is Cars at the Station, which
is the Z-Performance produced amazing event downtown Detroit train station. That's actually
an amazing venue, it's quite an honor to be asked to do our podcast down there, so we've got to
figure that out, and we've got a manufacturer that's approached us to do the podcast live from
the SEMA show, so I don't have an answer for what we're going to have to do to do this live,
you're the creative person, so maybe coach some folks at home, what's the difference from the
studio to when we go on the road with a podcast? It's just a microphone, a camera, right? What's
the big deal? Yeah, well, it is, but you just got to get the camera angles right, you got to get
the audio right, and one of the hardest parts about shooting event audio is even if you're wearing a
like the Pal mic, like we are, if you have a microphone, you know, you're talking to that,
but then the room is getting the speaker tone as well, so you end up with this like almost echo,
it's not really an echo, but it's just got that, if anyone's ever listened to a video of someone
giving a speech, you've heard it before. The way around that is to plug your audio device into
the actual board, so like it's only picking up what the microphone receives, not what the speakers
put out, that's how we do it at live events, and then you get crystal clear audio, and it's great,
so we'll do that in the future, and then having two cameras, you know, like if we're going to do cars
at the station building how we sit and all that so that you can shoot kind of across each other,
like we do in here, just makes it more engaging. When you have a single cam, we've all seen interviews
that are just shot straight on single cam, it's just, it's hard to stay engaged in it. As an audio
only thing, cool, but then you have this echo thing, so if you're listening to it in your car,
I'd be like, okay, I can't, I don't want to do this anymore, so it's just a lot of pre-production
to do this right. We've shot podcasts on the road quite a bit, obviously we shoot all of our video
content on the road all the time, and you can get it to be really solid, but just need a little bit
of pre-production, so it'll be cool to figure out how we're going to do it at cars at the station,
what the stage would look like, how we want to set all that up, and then,
yeah, but it's funny, I was talking to someone the other day, they were like,
man, I shot all these interviews, and it's just really hard to edit them because they kind of
suck, I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's harder than it seems sometimes, but the quality that everyone's
used to now is so high that when you make something that's bad, it's pretty obvious today, so yeah,
but it'll be cool to do them live for sure. Okay, yeah, as long as you know that it's coming,
and we'll figure it out, but some great opportunities, and thanks to our listeners,
we're glad you're digging this stuff, and keep giving us feedback, and we'll keep putting on
what you want. We do have some really big data, we've got, we got to talk about the first half of
2026, but I thought, what's your feel for the first half of 2026, Justin? Like, you're in touch
with a lot of companies here in Detroit and around the world, where are we at before you look at
these numbers? I would say it feels good. I feel like, again, I always caveat this with like, it
shouldn't, if you read the news, if you think about anything, it seems like the bubble is here,
and it's all going to, whatever, but everyone of our clients is just like moving ahead. I think
the pace of everything this year has been accelerated for sure, like it's hard to believe it's already
August, effectively, it seems like, but I would guess, I actually would guess that people are up
20%, moving my guess, yeah. All right, well, it's interesting.
I think with HPX in our pocket, we have a little better insight into where folks are coming, like,
we were really talking numbers in Charlotte, it wasn't make-believe, and it's, there are
some surveys out there that are really good. I've always said they're directionally correct,
and they're super valuable tools, and you can find them. What we have today,
Midway Plus has given us our index. We haven't had one for a while, and I'm going to explain why,
but we also have kind of this anecdotal feedback. So, John Urus gave me his numbers for the first
half of 2026 at Hellion Turbo, and I think as you and I progress, and this community feels more
comfortable with us, like, it really doesn't matter if we talk about these numbers. I think
people will be embarrassed if they're doing bad, but really, knowing car people the way we know
them, it's also an opportunity to open up and say, hey, I'm struggling with distribution, or I wish
I had a real website team, or my product just didn't hit hard this year, and someone will help you
figure out what's going on. So, my vibe for the first half of 2026 is pretty good. I think there
was a lot of tariff stuff that still hit, and we're going to touch on some of that feedback,
but I think overall, I'm really pleased with where everybody's at. I think in my business,
the activities increased real heavily in the last 30 days. Even if I take out some of the HPX
stuff that's driven that, I think overall, things are on the upward trajectory. So, yeah, and I mean,
like, we're used to hearing from clients early summer that, oh man, our budget just got cut,
or oh, we thought we had this, but I had to give up this for that, and I'm not hearing a lot of
that. I'm not hearing a lot of our budget got pulled. I'm kind of hearing like, hey, we've got
this another opportunity, or hey, that went really well, let's do another thing. So, it does seem like
at least the finance teams at the big companies aren't like, hey, we've got to really pull in
the reins here. So, that seems positive. Yeah, you said it earlier, and I can't remember the report,
but it was something like American Express went on NBC News and said, what we're seeing is an
incredible amount of complaints within the American economy, but everybody's spending 5% more,
and it wasn't because things are more expensive, it's just people are spending more money.
Americans are spending more money, and I think that's what we're going to see.
Well, and cars are cool right now. Like, to regular people, cars are cool right now. So,
we are in a wave right now where car culture is cool. I think we've been in waves where it
wasn't cool, and having cool cars was not a thing, but like, again, every cars and coffee I go to,
young people, hip people, professional people, well-dressed people, C-suite people, like,
everyone's into cars right now, and it's cool to have a classic car again, and it's cool to modify
cars. So, like, it seems like culturally, this is where money is getting funneled in years past,
maybe it's been somewhere else, but right now it seems like car culture is hot.
Well, let's be honest, the product right now is unbelievable, right? These are the greatest cars
and trucks we've ever had access to. You know, I would take out the technical issues that we
talked about last week, which I didn't think about the context, but with 22 million recalls in the
first half of 26, that's more than the vehicle, the total number of vehicles sold in the United
States in 2025, just to put that in context of this tsunami of broken vehicles that are
hitting us. So, there's some still context in the numbers we're going to talk about.
All right, so, Justin, let's dive into the Midway Plus Wholesale Index. This is the H2
Financial Report. Now, who's Midway Plus? A super-talented group of folks, and I don't think we've
talked about the incredible loss to the industry, but in February, Brian Lounsbury, who was the
founder and CEO of Midway Plus, died of a heart attack at 49. Brian was on our show. I'm very
grateful that he came in. It was, for me, one of the best podcasts we've ever done because it allowed
a real expert talk through the game of wholesale and distribution and really open up where these
parts get sold in the industry. So, Brian's a huge loss, but I will tell you, Albert Rita,
his business partner, has stepped in, and Albert's just an awesome human being. He's got a really big
job ahead of him to take over from an incredible talent like Brian. But Albert and we've been
staying in touch with him, and I kept saying, hey, it would be awesome. We love it. You and I love to
get a sense of what's going on. So, you have the report in your hand. It's a four-page white paper.
I highly recommend people to go to midwayplus.com, get ahold of Albert, request this document.
There's a lot of details in what this is and how to use it, and as you skim it, I'm going to buy
some time because I sent this to you in the middle of the day. You didn't have time to read this,
so I'm not going to break your balls this week like I usually do, but anyways, I'm going to read
through the findings, but there's a few things in here that I think people will find absolutely
fascinating. So, midwayplus.com is a B2B portal. They allow brands to come on, do an e-commerce
solution. These brands are talking to shops, installers, retailers. It is an incredible
tool that Albert has to sell more product. An important caveat is 24 hours a day also. So,
and I want to say we're going to do our best to report this.
All of the accuracy and the real professionals are midwayplus.com. So, if I make a mistake or
Justin, if somehow you were to make a mistake, I want to make sure that we don't screw this up,
but midwayplus is the true experts here. So, B2B, it's 24 participating brands. It represents
thousands of verified wholesale buyers. This is the North American brands with global
buyers, okay, just kind of as the caveat, and powered by actual wholesale transaction data.
This is super important. What we're going to report are actual sales. It isn't, sometimes you see
surveys that are like, how do you feel your sales are going to be for the next 90 days? It doesn't
mean, it means nothing. So, again, this is tracking real sales, all right? So, year to date,
wholesale sales growth is up almost 12.5% year to date versus 2025. Participating brands generated
12.3% more wholesale revenue during the first half of 2026 compared to the same period of 2025.
12% is the number of the industry right now for aftermarket parts.
Justin, you said 20. I would have said that that was a little ambitious, but we did have people
at HPX, like for now, they say I'm going to be up 20% this year. So, I think that number is well
within range, but react to 12.5% up for wholesale sales. I mean, yeah, the most important thing to
me about this is that this is sitting on top of a platform and it is not a survey, it's not a,
this is just real money moving across. So, these numbers are the best that you can get as far as
I'm concerned. 12.38%, I'd call that 15. It's pretty close to 20. So, yeah, that feels about right.
And again, this isn't the first half, we're not even into end of year buying and all that nonsense.
So, yeah, I mean, it's compared period over period, but still 15%, I'm going to call it,
really impressive. Yeah. So, all right, let me back it up and here comes the year to date wholesale
order volume growth. Okay, number of units is up 52% year to date over 2025, a staggering number.
Wholesale order volume increased significantly faster than revenue growth, indicating more
frequent ordering and replenishment behavior among buyers. So, my guess is they may have let
volume sell down at the end of 25, right? So, not a ton of inventory or not big orders,
but still volume is up 52%. That's a number I'm shocked to see.
This is where, yeah, this is where it would be so good to have more time with the Midway Plus
guys because like, okay, how do you, if wholesale order volume is up 50%, then revenue should be up
50%. I would think, does this mean that people are ordering in smaller quantities but more often?
That's kind of what's saying here, indicating more frequent ordering. So, it's like, okay,
instead of ordering 500 or something, I'm going to order 100 of it but a bunch of times because I
don't really know what's happening. Or does this mean people are buying cheaper stuff but more of
it? Like if people go down market and that, you know, so like, I would love to know more about
this and I'm sure we can get this info for later, but crazy. It kind of does feel that way though.
In general, like it just feels like more is happening. We talked about this H1 feels faster
than ever before. So, like, yeah, maybe there's just more activity, there's more people churn,
there's more all of that. So, yeah, 52% is insane though. Yeah. And I, you need Albert's
expertise to read into the tea leaves, right? And tell you what the buyers and the shops and
everybody's doing. And I think the best thing for folks is we need your feedback when you hear
that number. If we haven't explained it clearly, which I'm sure we're lacking, but drop a question
or get us a note and maybe we can come on again or we'll have Albert put something else together.
We've got a couple more here. This one, they titled monthly momentum up 27, almost 28% versus
June of 2025. So, this is June versus June. June sales activity remains strong with the
median participating brand experiencing 28% growth compared to the same month last year.
I'm really surprised by that, but it speaks to the momentum that you mentioned, Justin. I also
think about the cyclic nature of the industry. And again, go back and we're going to have to,
can we link to the interview with Brian because he talked incredibly well about the cycle of sales.
We're coming into the slow season. That's why that number is really interesting to me.
They usually load up first quarter, second quarter, still some momentum. We're now halfway
through the race season. Car show season is kind of hitting hard here in Michigan. But to be up 28%
month, June over June, that says we're heading into a really good Q3, I think.
I don't have any feedback on it. It's just, that's huge, right? I mean, for June over June,
if you had a good June last year, which everyone kind of said they did, or even if they're flat,
now you're up 30% when I put marketing numbers on this, is incredible. Even if you staffed up,
that's a huge revenue increase. So yeah, it's great.
All right. And there's one more big number in here. This is the after hours
commerce. And I think this is a chance for you and me to really reinforce what good marketing and
customer service looks like. But 31.9, 32% of wholesale activity occurred outside normal business
hours. Nearly one third of all wholesale transactions occurred while manufacturers were
closed, reinforcing the growing importance of self-service digital commerce. I mean,
I think everybody's been talking about this for more than a decade, but people shop 24 hours a day.
You can imagine shops that are working on project cars going late into the night.
They identify a part they got to have. They get on midwayplus.com, bang.
But to have 32% of your business being done when you're not even at the shop or you're not even
open, that's a game changer. You have to pay attention to what's going on and folks like
midwayplus are making this possible. So 32% just if you're on this platform.
I mean, that makes total sense to me because like, let's say a typical manufacturer closes at 5pm,
it's like every shop on the planet is still working and you've been putting to this side,
like, okay, I need to order a bunch of radiators. I need to order a bunch of radiators. Okay,
oh wait, we need one more. Okay. And then at 6.30 before you leave, you're like, I got to get that
order in. If you have a choice between waiting until tomorrow morning, who knows what's going
to happen between now and tomorrow morning, or going online is going, done. I got my PO back
and I'm ready to go. And then I can check that box before I leave for the day. Yeah, that makes
total sense. And if you, I mean, just that alone contributes to these top numbers too, right?
Because if they were closed, you would see that here as well. Yeah. So I think everything feels
always on. That's why everything feels faster and more churny. I know I'm working all hours,
all the time. And it's like, if I have a choice between waiting until tomorrow or doing this
online at two in the morning, I'm going to do it online because I need to move on from it.
So yeah, the always on approach is huge. I'm thinking about people that listen to this,
Justin. They're like, there's no way people are up 12%. That's not how I'm having a shit year.
Like there's no way some group of people on a fancy website are up 12%. You know, the things
aren't the same. We're at war in Iran. We got tariffs. Like, I don't know. My sense, you know,
we've been around like, I think this is a really good indicator. Like I, it's more,
actually it's more than I thought. I would have said somewhere around 10. This is 12 and a half,
15. What would you tell someone if they came in and said, man, I need help. I'm not keeping up
with the Midway Plus index. My company's not there. What do I do? It's funny. I was talking to
someone at CanCon, one of our good, good friends in the industry, and he was telling me like,
yeah, I'm listening to your pod. I believe all your numbers, but I think they're all bullshit
because what I'm experiencing is different than that. It's like, great. That's the type of feedback
we want. And the point that he made was, yes, some companies are up 40%. Maybe let's take a group of
20 companies. Three of them are up 40%. 10 of them are bankrupt and out of business,
and the others are at zero. And that's where you're coming up with this number. And it's like,
that might well be the case. You know, it's in business, there are winners and losers. And
there are certainly people that are down 80% wondering, well, what happened? I don't understand.
How can anyone be up? But people take market share, things change, the market shifts, brands
get hot and then don't get hot. So one is like, what's the health of your brand?
Right? What's the health of your product? What's your website look like? Are you always on or
does your phones turn off at five? Because you just read 32% of all activities happening after
hours, right? So like, oh, shit, yeah, my website doesn't have an online store. They got to call
me and I'm always busy. Okay, well then, you know, they might be calling, but you're missing the sale.
So there are winners and losers. Again, this data just wants you to have more data because I would
love to know like, okay, of the 24 participating brands is someone up 100%. And everyone else is
down 80. And that was that gets us to 12. Like what is the what's the median, I guess, in there?
So yeah, you can't take these, but when every number is positive and every number is bigger than
10%, again, directionally, okay, something's happening, right? And then it's like, well,
where am I? Am I up or down? If I'm down, what are these guys doing that I'm not doing?
If I'm up, do I feel good? Am I more up than this? And I'm like, ha, suckers or am I like,
okay, I'm trending with the industry, you know, so I think if you're down and you're in this space,
particularly, you know, look at your tool stack, look at what you're doing, look at
where these things are happening and adjust. Yeah, I'm keying in on the June number because I think
part of our job is to predict for our folks or as best we can, what does Q3 look like? And if
June over June is up almost 30%, that means the industry is smoking hot right now. Remember,
we had terrible weather in Q1, like the season was delayed, there were a lot of races that
didn't happen, there were a lot of car shows that got shut down in the north, so maybe this is just
a later spring that we're seeing. I don't know, the industry is hot at almost 30% up, so you
got to move right now. If stuff isn't moving for your company, I'm telling you the industry from
this and our feel, like we're telling you the industry is moving and you can get caught up in
this and you can be up 10%, you can be up 30%, you just got to catch that wave.
Yeah, we have a client that is not in any of this space at all, so outside of automotive and
outside of firearms, they had their best June ever, it was their best month ever and it was June
as well, so they were up 30% roughly. And again, not in this space at all, so it was like
kind of out of nowhere, like May was a really good month for them and we were like, okay,
the marketing is working, all this is working, that's great, if we could do that again,
that would be killer. No changes to the marketing, no changes in ad spend, no, just like,
let's carry a great May into June and if we can just do that again, we'd be in a great spot,
up 30% in June, so like there was a lot of just cash moving around in June, it feels like.
So let's move to the anecdotal numbers as well, and this is John Urus just being a friend calling
us and saying, here's my numbers. I would like more of these, John Runes Hellion Turbo, so a
high-end turbo company, these are expensive items, Nietzsche Street Performance Racing,
but John is a young, intelligent, really aggressive marketer, business operator,
it's his business, he's the manufacturer, so I need like five or six more companies to step up.
I need an accessory company, I'd like a used car dealer that did the same thing for us,
maybe just a faster company or kind of more of a commodity company, they give you an idea
of like how many gaskets are you moving, stuff like that, but anyways, here's John's numbers,
and again, thank you for John for sharing this, but year to date, including June, he's up 10%,
pretty damn close to what we just told you, right? He's down 66% from March, so he's seeing
a really slow Q2, he's noticed, he noted a decreased volume of calls, so he's one of the guys that
he wants to get on the phone with you, and he's moving into what they come, they describe as
the summer slows, which is that low period that we talked about and that Brian mapped out for us,
but he said it should pick up in the fall, and he really blamed just this unpredictable economy
and a war with Iran that is scaring away people from dropping 10 or 15 grand on an F-150 twin
turbo kit, so up 10%, but you can tell he's got some rough waters in the second quarter,
got reaction to that one? I mean, I'm just thinking about turbo kits specifically here,
and John would know better, obviously he's been doing this a long time, but it feels like a turbo
kit is not something you just do in the middle of summer, because up here, we have a limited car
season, it's quite the tear up, like I know that the guys can install them very quickly, but for
me, it's like that's an end of the year, okay, let me get through the car season, I'm going to order
this turbo kit, we're going to do this over the winter, then I'm going to be the coolest guy come
spring, like so it does seem like if I were to guess what that looks like, versus like wheels,
you know, you can order wheels and put them on your car in an hour, it's not a huge tear up, so
it does feel like most people have already sorted their combo by the time June hits,
so it makes sense that he would be busy in the Q1, and then slow down, so I'd be interested to know
like seasonally, is it always kind of that same curve, and also a turbo kit for the most part is
like you also need other things, fuel system, you know, so it's like maybe that's the thing you
order at the end, I don't know, that would be interesting to know kind of what is what the
flow looks like year over year, it would be like a big engine build, like that kind of large project,
the turbo kit, you know, nothing, I'm not, this has nothing to do with John, it's just
you get into it dude, you know, you never know what happens, right, you break something, you
don't have the right part, the transmission goes away, you know, like there's just, that's a big
tear up, so you're right, like maybe that's, you're about to make the most fun you've ever had in a
car, but you're also going to break something, and then it's like summer's almost over, I'm already
committed to XYZ races, I don't want to tear up the thing, so like I could see the a summer slump
making sense there, but crazy to still be up 10%, so you must have had an awesome Q1, and I was
going to say that earlier, remember if June was your best month ever, do not be sad next month
when you're down 10% month over month, it's like, well you just had your best month ever,
you're down 10% from the best, so you're really still up, you know, we saw that during COVID too,
where people just couldn't account because they were like, well I'm down 200%, you're over here,
it's like, well you've never made as much money as you made last year, so you know, I think just look
at the macro too. Yeah, and maybe then something we can ask Albert to do is we'd like, like maybe for
Q3, what's the chart look like for 26, right, like a huge first quarter, but it looks like
everybody's doing pretty well going into Q3, so keep it going, crew. All right,
you want to get into some automotive news? Yeah, we can do that, or we can do our AI, it's up to you.
No, I like to give you options, do you want to go right into AI?
Let's go into AI because I wanted to do this because we haven't talked about AI a lot,
so five ways to use AI today, and I think coming out of what we just talked about, I'm going to
skip to my number 31 but trends, I think you can use Claude, I'm just going to use Claude
generally here today, I think you can use Claude to do so much trend spotting and in ways where it
is impartial to the results and it can just do this for you, so like, I know a lot of me,
like we don't have a sophisticated accounting system, we don't have a bookkeeper, we don't really
have any of that stuff, so I can go into Claude and give it all of my invoices and all of the
payments for the first half of the year and just say, what do you see here? What trends are you
noticing? Like, oh, I'm noticing that you get large chunks of money this time,
and then there's dwells here and here and here, and you're actually up here, but you're down here,
I noticed that compared to last year, if you have that data, you're up here and here, so like,
things that would have taken forever to do, or maybe aren't even noticeable to someone with
the type of accounting skills that I have, it can do that really well, so I think using AI,
feeding it a bunch of raw data that you have and then being like, what trends do you see?
We use a tool called Notion to track all of our projects, so every project that comes into the
agency gets entered into Notion and then there's a database of all these projects, so I was using
Claude the other day, like, how much work did we do in 25? How many projects did we complete
month over month versus this month? And you know, oh, you're up here, it's like, okay, that's why it
feels busier. What was the length of those projects in general? Did we have more big projects here and
compute that instantaneously? Is it a thing you've never had before? You could have went to
someone and had them look at this and they would have gone away for months and then come back and
then if you had a question on the fly, you'd have to try to figure that out again. Being able to feed
data to Claude and say, I need help identifying trends here, I need help, there's so many ways
to use it, like, if you have hourly employees, how many hours are they spending on all of the
tasks that they're recording during the day? Where are gaps? Where can I be more efficient?
Does one person, you know, there's just, so I think for trend watching,
it's an amazing way to use AI right now. Are you doing any of this on your end?
Well, that's interesting because you're talking about trends specific for your business, but
there's trends for the market. So you can ask Claude, hey, tell me what the best supercharger
companies are because I'm a manufacturer of superchargers and tell me what they're doing.
It will also take a shot at estimating sales for some of these things and I don't know how they do
that, but maybe they make it up, maybe the AI makes it up, but you can also look at vehicle trends,
right, like what's, you know, our pickup sales up or down, those numbers are out there, the AI's
will go find those things. So yeah, trends in the market is actually a great way to use AI.
Yeah. The next one we're going to go to was, since we're talking about data,
we had written down reading contracts and then I kind of added to that reading tone,
reading intent and then kind of fact checking is what I'll call it, but how are you using Claude
today to read contracts? Well, I'm not a lawyer and I'm not trained. I've just read a lot of
contracts and it takes me a long time to look at, it takes me several hours, especially something
that's, you know, got a lot of money in it, got a lot of promises in it. You can put that thing
into an AI, a Claude, I use Claude now and it tells you, hey, this would be concerning to me,
here's something that you need to make more clear, here's something that you should have access to,
make sure that you know this number before you sign up for it. And it's been, you know,
I told you, it's a superpower for me to throw a contract in the Claude and let it tell me.
And it'll first say, I'm not a lawyer and you should go get a lawyer. That's good advice. We
would give that to, I don't want to fool people on this podcast, but yeah, to get the basic read
of a contract unbelievably valuable. Yeah, we do this too here. We get a lot of contracts and
most of the time the contracts are very one-sided. So we're a small company, a Fortune 5 company
sends you a contract. You don't really have much room to be changing the contract and
you can't really even talk to their legal team. It's just like, this is the contract,
sign it or don't do the work. What I've been using Claude to do is be like, okay, explain to me my
exposure here. Like, what should I be looking out for in this contract that is unfair to me?
And it'll come back and say, well, there's a thing in here about a identification or I'm like,
what is it? Right? Explain that to me. So like, yeah, even if you're not using it to like,
make changes, it's like, explain to me, is this one-sided? Is this a fair contract? We've also
had somewhere it's been like, Hey, man, you are kind of overly exposed right here. I would push
back with this question. I took it, emailed them. They were like, no, that's actually really fair.
And they did change the contract in that case. So like, yeah, a lawyer would be better, of course,
but a lawyer is not up at midnight when I'm trying to do this as my last task of the day.
And a lawyer is going to charge me a ton of money to do that. And I've had huge success there. I
think it's been great for that. I've also found it to be useful when we get pitches now. We had
someone send over a pitch the other day. I was like, Hey, we're looking for this, this, and this.
These are the deliverables. This is the dates. This is kind of our rate. Are you,
what do you think about that? And I put it in and was like,
you know, like, what kind of questions, what am I missing here? What kind of questions should I
ask? And it's like, well, they actually didn't specify the timeframe. And they said there's 30
days on this thing, but they don't, is that from the beginning of the contract or the end of the
contract? And, you know, it's like, Oh, yeah, those are good questions. Some of them, I know the
answer to because we've worked together before, got it. But some of them I actually should use
as clarifying questions. So like, in that case, awesome. Again, that would be if you had a lawyer
on staff, they could read it and be like, Hey, they didn't even tell you what the terms are,
you know, but huge for both of those things. And again, it's kind of impartial. It doesn't really
care. It's just going to tell you, Hey, this feels lopsided in one way or the other. And then you
can say, well, I'm willing to take that risk or, Oh, okay, how do I push back on that? I think
it's great for that. Yeah, I think that's excellent advice. I want to say something about how Claude
has been better than a lot of lawyers that I've worked with, but I don't want to insult the good
lawyers that I've worked with. But I think it's a great start. And I think those are great applications.
You said tone. And I think you do something or just you've learned to do something with AI
partners that it's not immediately, people don't know that there's a user's guide to these things,
right? But you can get in the back end and work on the settings with these things. So
I went to CISO, a trade show for people who have trade shows. And I run into Zach John,
who is the cryptocurrency trade show king who's addicted to Claude. This is a year ago,
like crazy over the top, Claude runs a company. But he said, and he built a 15 page document
of how to use Claude. And one of the key elements in there was, if you can tell Claude
who you are, what the key requirements are, what your big accounts are and tone, and they
completely changed how Claude works with me. And I know you did that early on. And for each brand,
I'm guessing you have a brand guide and the tone and how it puts out content for that client,
right? Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. I wrote down tone in a different way. I use it to check
sometimes for, hey, read this email and see if I think there's a subtext to it that you see as
well. And I've had it be like, oh, yeah, it sounds like what they were really angling for is this.
I'm like, yeah, that's what I thought too. Okay, cool. I can use it there. But no, one of the
biggest complaints that we hear about AI all the time is, well, it just doesn't, it's stupid or
it's hard to, it just sounds one way and I don't want it to do that or it makes designs that are
terrible or whatever. And like we were talking off camera earlier, it's kind of like, when you hire
intern or when you hire a new employee, the first thing you do is like, does this person fit with
my company culture? Like does this person fit the way that we are at this company? And with AI,
you have to do the same thing. The cool thing with AI is you can just tell it to be that way and it
will be that way. You can't change a person's entire personality, right? So that's why you got
to find the right fit. But an AI can act like a caveman, an AI can act like a professor, an AI
can act like a doctor, an AI can act like a cool friend. But it needs to know what you want it to
act like. So the first step to anybody using this is like, hey, this is who I am. And then this is
who you're going to be. In early prompting, it was like, you are a lawyer. Talk to me like, now
you don't really have to do that anymore. It can kind of like get the intent. But you do have to
something. And this is where like having a brand guide is absolutely huge. And this is why Claude,
I think, is winning the race. Because within Claude, you can have projects. And within each project,
you can have a different brand guide and a different tone look and feel and
a different objective. And the projects never intermix. So you can be over here, hey, when I'm
coding, I want you to talk to me like a caveman because it saves me tokens. And then over here,
when we're talking about finance stuff, I want you to sound like a lawyer because I really have to
understand it. Two separate things, not going to intermingle. So yeah, setting up the tone,
if you're frustrated, it's kind of like training a dog. If the dog isn't sitting, it's probably not
the dog's fault. It's probably the teacher's fault because you haven't taught it how to sit yet.
If you're frustrated with some of these things, sometimes it's like, okay, what am I doing wrong?
And here's the coolest part. You can literally just type. I don't like the way you sound. What
am I doing wrong? And it'll say, oh, well, I don't have a style guide for me. I don't have tone for
me. What would you like me to sound like? Upload a bunch of documents that you've written in the
past. And this is the first ever self-learning, self-reflecting tool we've had. So yeah, I think
that's a huge one. Well, I have something to add there because I'll use Claude to write emails for
me, right? Like, hey, I'm writing this person. Here's what I want to do. Here's what I'm going to
ask. You know, do it. And it'll give you what I would consider a draft. And then you edit it. It's
really good idea to put that back into Claude and say, here's the edits I made. And it'll recognize
and be like, oh, okay, I see you changed this. You're right. That was probably a little too aggressive.
I should have put more detail in there. I'll remember it for next time. So yeah, your spot.
Yeah, another cool thing to do, which this can hurt your feelings, but I do it like once every
couple of weeks. I'll ask it like, hey, what do you think about me? Like, what are you,
what is in your training data about me? And it'll say like, oh, Justin really likes to be given
something, but then he's going to edit it. And then I won't hear from him for a while. And then he'll
drop in the final thing. Like, I'm not one that goes back and forth a bunch of times. It was like,
okay, that's close enough to what I need. I'm going to move it into Word. I'm going to do it.
I'm going to send it. But then I will at the end be like, here's what I sent. And it'll be like,
oh, okay, you took out all these things you like dots instead of m dashes, whatever.
And it remembers those things. So the more time you give it feedback, just like anyone else in
the world, the better feedback machine you are to people around you, the more they're going to
understand what you're going after. So yeah. Yeah, that's good. I think we'll remind everybody
they're getting better every day. And you got to maybe like PowerPoints weren't great six months
ago. Now they're amazing. So like some of those things can can really improve over time and you
can help. Yeah, 100%. All right, next 15 ways to use AI today. If you have a Shopify store,
Klod's connector to Shopify or Shopify is connector to Klod, however you want to say it,
is like literally magic game changing goodness. It's unbelievable. So you can go into Klod,
go to customize and then connectors and you can find the Shopify connector and you can connect
your Shopify account to your Klod account. And then within Klod, you can say,
pull up this specific t shirt. It'll pull it in. I need to edit all of the images. Here's all the
images. I want to change the description up. Here's the new product description. The supplier
changed. Here's the tech sheet. Take all of this, make all new content, make it SEO friendly, make
it SEO friendly, change the variance. I want small, medium, large, but I want large to be plus five
dollars. And then you're still in Klod, Klod. And then you say, cool, approved,
write it, hit refresh on your Shopify store. And the whole new thing is in Shopify. You're not
copying descriptions, pasting them into Shopify. I was talking to someone earlier today. They said,
they have had an issue on their Shopify store for five years that they could not figure out.
The developers had looked at it. Everyone had looked at it. When in Klod connected it,
hey, I'm having this issue, five minutes, problem solved, gone. It just figured it out,
totally fixed it. So like the fact that you can interact with a Shopify store, which Shopify
is great, but it is frustrating for a lot of people, especially when you're dealing with big
catalogs and like, hey, I need to change the product description on 50 hats because we changed
our logo on the hats. You have to do that one at a time, save next one. It was very hard to do it.
Now you can just pull it up in Klod, tell it to do all 50 hats. These are the things I want,
it'll go through and do them, put them as drafts. Okay, they look good, approve them,
they're live on their store. So like, it feels like magic to work with it this way.
So we got to do that on the cart illustrated site, right?
100%. 100%. Like the fact that let's take cars illustrated, for example, if we wanted to go in
make wholesale changes, if we wanted to take the PDF, put it into Klod, summarize this entire
magazine, read through all of it, give me a table of contents, give me all of the things,
and then apply that to the product page in Shopify. You can do that in Klod without ever
leaving now. Absolutely incredible. If you have a Shopify store, you have to be using this. It's
crazy to do it any other way. And if you've always wanted a store and you never did it because
you're not a web developer, you can do it. And it's like very simple to do. And I would expect
that there would be errors. I would expect like to go, you know, the first time I did it, I went
to Shopify, I'm like, it's just going to be jacked up. The formatting is going to suck. Everything's
going to be terrible. Perfect. You know, so that's a huge one for me. Yeah. Love it. That's great.
The next one for me was Google Analytics or Google Ads or Meta. But the Meta connector
isn't great yet. So I'm going to stick with Google right now. If anybody has ever run a
Google ad campaign, it might be the worst thing to set up on planet Earth. It is so frustrating.
There's so many steps. different nuance, little things you have to do. You can
connect a Google Ads account or Google Analytics search console to Claude,
and you can chat with it like you would a normal person. And if you're not an analytics person
and you look at analytics, we talk about this all the time, you can make it say whatever you want.
And if you're a very good analytics person, you can definitely make it say whatever you want.
But Claude's not going to do that. So we have all of our Google Analytics account by client hooked
up. And we can go in there and say, pull me a report for the last 30 days. What's working? What's
not? And then, oh, it looks like this page isn't SEOing very well. Search volumes way down. Great.
Guess what we're about to do? We're going to work on the SEO for that page. What would increase
the SEO on that page? Oh, this, this, and this. Cool. Let's update it. So to be able to talk to
analytics now is what people hired entire agencies to do for decades, right? And now you can do it
whenever you need to do it. The other nice thing is, I was thinking about this the other day,
five years ago, if you hire a social media team or a website team, and you don't really understand
what you're hiring for, they can make reports that make it look like things are really successful,
and you would have no way of really knowing if it's working or not. And we've been in a lot of
meetings together and separately where I've seen teams who have an incentive to look like they
performed really well, give you these performance reviews that look stunning. But if you know enough
about it, you realize that it's all bullshit. What's cool now is you can take that and put it in
to your AI choice and say, what do you see in these numbers? And I think what's good about this is
it's going to force the agencies to know that there's a fact checker at every client now. So I can't
bullshit this thing because I know they're going to put it into Claude. And Claude's going to say,
actually, they're burying that the CTR is miserable. They didn't mention it at all because it was bad.
And here's what I see in this thing. So I love that there's this independent fact checker thing
going on now. So I can pull it, I can look at it. Yeah, that looks right. I can send it to the client.
The client can look at it. They can question query make sure what we're
saying is the truth. So I think that's super cool. And this type of access has never been possible
unless you had a Google Analytics expert on staff. So huge. You ought to do that as a quick video to
put out on your Instagram channel, just like, hey, I got some stats on a company or maybe just
try to find it off a company, right? Like pick one of our favorite automotive aftermarket companies
and then just throw it in to see what's going on. Just do a quick like 20 second Instagram video.
People would be like, oh, shit. Yeah, we could do it with the raw numbers from our pod, really.
You know, and just tell me what it is. Okay, the last one here, number five. This one's really
important though. Copy. Obviously, everyone knows one of the first things that LLM was good at was
creating copy. But the copy was kind of bad to start. It sounded very AI written. We went over how to
get the right tone, how to get all that stuff. But Jamie, how are you using it to create copy today?
And then like, there's the raw copy and then there's all these downstream copies. So what are you
doing? Well, I think you're going to remind everybody the secret is to make sure you put
the tone conversation, right? And what is the voice of what you're writing the copy for?
The best example probably is this podcast, right? So I do that daily post and it's learned,
you know, hey, sometimes I want to promote the podcast. Sometimes I want to promote the company
of whoever we interviewed. We did a lot with HPX. So we were tagging HPX every day for a couple
months. But yeah, I have used it for emails. I have written press releases entirely in Claude,
right? With a heavy prompt. I think I pride myself on how long the prompt is where I'm writing
the bulk of the press release. But it's good at catching stuff that, oh, don't forget,
you also had the shopcar challenge at HPX. You should have that in the press release. I'm like,
oh yeah, good. Yes, of course. So it can be extremely powerful. I still think good human
writers have quite an advantage. But the AI agents are real clever in closing the gap. So if you're
a good writer right now, and remember a copy can be long form or it could be the right sentence
fragment that catches the eye on TikTok. So either way, AI is a great partner.
Yeah, I think it's good. You mentioned learned and that's important. I asked Claude the other day.
We have like a boardroom. I'll get into that on another podcast. But we have a boardroom
within Claude that can see all of the projects that are going on. And I was like, hey, what can
you do for me that I'm not currently asking you to do? And it was like, well, I have a lot of the
final deliverables. Those are sorted and I can see them. But I don't have a lot of the analytics
to link to those things. So what you can do is you can have it make every post that you're going
to make for all of the clips that we make for automotive advantage. But then if you link it
to meta, it can then see, okay, this post did really well. This post did not well. What am I
doing wrong between these two posts? Oh, well, this one was boring and this one was fun. So like
this loop of being able to feed it data and have it go like, oh, I thought that was on brand,
but actually it didn't resonate with the audience. Like that's a huge gap that I think a lot of people
they're either using it for analytics, or they're using it to create, but they're not really looping
the two together. So I think that's a big one, for sure. And then I agree with you,
good creatives are going to become even more in demand, because now anyone can create,
but no one can stand out. We're going to get into this when we talk about the world cup a little
bit here. But like, it's easy now to make a website. It's hard now to make the best website,
because you really have to know your audience and you really have to like, so I think for a
long time people were scared like, oh, well, there go the copywriters, writers,
there go the graphic designers. It's like, yeah, the bad ones probably are easy to replace now,
but the best of the best are going to be even more and more in demand. So I think everybody
should be using Claude to create copy. It's just a faster way to do it. I do have one other weird
example here. Yesterday, there was a big announcement from a brand and there was an embargo on it. So
I had written an article. I was specifically instructed not to use AI, so I didn't use AI,
just to prove that I could still write an article. But the embargo lifted at 11 a.m.
and when the embargo lifted, that's when the actual specs got released of this product that
I've written an article about. So wrote the article with what I knew at 11 o'clock, took the press
release, dropped it into Claude, took the article, dropped it in Claude, said fact check my article
versus what just got released. By 1101, I knew, okay, all that was correct. Oh, they actually
changed the date on this one thing, update in the story, get it out. Like, could you have read
the whole thing? Yeah, but you would have been 10 minutes behind the industry at that point,
and missed it. So even if you're like, I'm never going to have it write anything for me,
you can still use it as a fact checker. You can still use it as a copywriter. So I think
that's a really cool use case there as well. I'm thinking about copywriters and how you use AI.
Not that AI is going to replace you, but if you think about in Detroit, right, copywriters in the
70s, 80s, 90s, like the Ty Damon kind of legacy agencies, you had a lead writer and you probably
had two or three sub writer associate writers, and they were all on just one brand or one product,
or they might have had six months to work on one vehicle launch. No agency does that now. So I
think the great copywriters going forward are going to be able to
know the product, know who they're writing the article or the press release for,
know that consumer, know the tone, understand what language connects the two, what platform will
figure that out, but they're going to have to do it on multiple brands. They're going to have to do
it on multiple products and they're going to have to be maybe automotive and cover multiple segments,
or like you, you write about three or four or five different industries every day. And I think if
you're out there trying to figure out where do I fit into this space as a creative, I think you're
going to have to find a way to make yourself super valuable across many, many segments of an industry.
Yeah. The other really cool thing, like let's say you're a copywriter, you're a brilliant copywriter,
you're across 10 brands. It's really hard to remember all of the brand rules. And a lot of brands,
good brands, have very particular rules. We don't do this. We don't
use contractions. We do use contraction, whatever the things are. And if you're day to day just
writing all the time, sometimes it doesn't work that way. So again, this goes back to the brand
guide, but what you can do is you write a piece totally outside of any AI assistance. It's beautiful.
You can just say, hey, bang this against the brand guide really quick, bang this against the style
guide and make sure that I'm not breaking any rules. And we do this and it'll come back and say,
like, yeah, the brand guide says to never use exclamation points, but you have one in here.
And it's like, oh, well, this is an important announcement or I did that for a reason or
it's like, oh, shit, that does break the brand rule, right? So it's like having a miniature
creative director who can just be like, nope, the brand doesn't do that. But it's not going to forget
one of the rules and it doesn't have to go look them up. It has them. So I think that's a cool way
to do it too. Like, hey, is this on brand for the brand that I'm writing about right now? Because
in 20 minutes, I have to swap to a different brand. And I have a brilliant tagline for that. And
it's going to be a great story. But oh, yeah, they don't use parentheses. And I have a section in
here with parentheses, like, shit, I would have forgotten that. So huge for that too.
My AI news was that the Ford Motor Company is bringing back more than 300 experienced engineers
after its push to automate quality control ran into trouble. The automaker had leaned heavily on
artificial intelligence to catch design and manufacturing defects. But the systems missed
key issues that only experienced engineers could spot. I don't think they had anything to do with
Ford. I think they're the first ones to catch it. But to be honest with you, and it's like,
oh, wait a minute, maybe AI can't make an entire vehicle without experienced humans who've done
this for 25 years really weighing in on how we build a car. So in all the great things with AI,
there's the caution flag of make sure you got boundaries for what's going on.
It's crazy because anyone who's been around cars for any length of time knows that the old
shirtless guy that's just standing around near the track can look at a car and be like, yeah,
I wouldn't do that. And you're like, well, I'm an engineer. And I'm like, yeah, well,
someone tried that before. And actually the thing is the heat from that thing will affect this one
bolt over here, which will then do that. And then this will fail. It's like an AI, unless it had all
those case studies and all that data would not know that. But the machine learning of the old guy
who's been in the plant, who's seen 15 young people try this and break the CNC machine over
and over again, you need that. And we talked about that last week, but unless you have that built-in
knowledge, they are not going to catch all that stuff. It's crazy. Good. I've got two headlines,
and then let's jump to lessons that the automotive industry can learn from the World Cup, just as
a teaser as we're probably, I don't know, we're an hour into this one. So last week, President
Trump, or maybe this week, pardoned EPA emissions felons. So there's a bunch of changing emissions
requirements. I am not going to cover that in this podcast, but I think for people that are into
intake exhaust, superchargers, engines, building cars that go on a street, the platforms are really
changing on regulations. The guy that is really the advocate and the mouthpiece for this is Corey
Willis, who I don't think he was on the pardoned list, but has been a victim in the current
administration's words, a victim of EPA overreach. So get plugged into what Corey Willis is doing
and some of the stuff he's sharing. We had him at HPX. He told his story. It was awesome. He had a
bunch of people there that really wanted to learn more from a guy who's been there and done that.
So I think good news, it looks like there may be changes and some clarity that are coming to some
of these emissions regulations that affect everything in the automotive industry. And then
some of our diesel friends may have a new life outside of some of this overreach. So
anything there that you've picked up on? Additionally, the Seema Garage looks like
it's been awarded the ability to be an official kind of EPA certification pathway,
which is cool, because formally it was just the EPA. That was ridiculous. So the fact that
like parts of the aftermarket are gaining real authority and real trust there is great as well.
So yeah. Good. Here's another headline I caught today. I thought I would just share it with you.
Jalopnik's story reads, almost a quarter of new car buyers got seven-year loans last quarter.
React to that. Yeah, bad.
Seven years. Pay off your car.
Yeah, because you're not going to have it for seven years. So you're just guaranteeing to
roll it into the next one. We will pay for all this at some point. I just don't know when.
Justin, there is a sporting event apparently going on that involves the world coming to
America to play a game where they kick a ball around. And the whole objective is to get the
ball in the net. Are you aware of the sport? Yeah. Are you a soccer fan? No. I'm not either.
I don't care about it at all. Okay. I'm kind of in that camp. It's been entertaining. The fact
that it's here, USA is gone now. But I actually asked Claude, like, hey, what can I learn?
What can I learn from the World Cup as a marketer, as a brander? Like what lessons?
And it's got some gems. You ready? Okay. You have a sheet in front of you. Did you find it yet?
The one that says $10.5 billion? By the way, if you see a document that
contains this type of upper thing, it's from AI. No one ever... It's from Claude. No one has ever
formatted a piece of paper like this until now. I don't like it. And everyone thinks, oh, this is
it. As soon as I see anything that looks like this, I immediately know where it came from and it
bothers me. So, anyway. Why does it bother you? I just don't like it. No one does this.
You just preached about how great AI is. I know, but not for this. This is an on brand for me.
I don't like it. This looks like AI's slop. I hate it. Go on. Something. All right. What the World
Cup teaches the automotive aftermarket about marketing. You ready? $10.5 billion in global
ad spend. However, here's the punchline. The brands that won didn't always have the biggest check.
This is an underdog story. Justin, it's an underdog story. And we love underdog stories.
All right. There's a couple examples. So, apparently, you've got to be signed up with
FIFA to be considered an official sponsor. This is key to all these underdog stories.
So, some of these brands are not official sponsors. Now, they're big brands, but imagine
like Nike was left out of the official sponsorship. I think Adidas is the official
shoe or foot or whatever. So, Nike did something called the rip the script around not having FIFA
rights. So, instead of crying about it, it was like, no, we're actually going to play up that we're
not allowed to market it within FIFA. So, they made the restrictions, the creative premise,
and now the most shared social post in Nike's history with over 250 million views is about
them being shut out of FIFA. We have seen this in the automotive space where a racer is not allowed
to race somewhere because of a rules change or rules violation. And we actually have seen
some campaigns like this where the racer gets a ton of notoriety while they get kicked out.
I like this turnabout. Any feel for this? I mean, is this a part of the playbook now for
you or is this just a neat agency spin on a bad situation? I missed the Nike one, but Gillette
also did a really fun thing here. So, it is wild to me that FIFA is as crazy as they are about the
brands that can and can't be involved. Like, there was a stadium that had 82,000 seats in it.
Oh, that Levi's. And yeah, they had to cover all of the branding. Gillette covered their branding
in like shaving cream foam is what it looked like. And it's like there, it's covered, but it's like,
that's so clever, right? Because I know it's Gillette. And like, Gillette was the only one that
made it to me because it came through like an ad week or something like that. So, the rest of this,
I'm not in this target market, I don't think. So, it didn't really resonate with me.
But the Gillette one was a really fun way to do that. And yeah, racers have been great at this
forever. They do something that they know is against the rules. They get in trouble for it.
And then they make controversy around the whole thing. And then people love it. So, like, yeah,
I think the playing on the, like what's allowed, what's not allowed, being a little
outside of the rules is really cool. Yeah, Levi's is a similar story, right,
where they had to cover their branding at Levi's Stadium, wherever that is. And the white cover
became the most commented and shared post in Levi's history. Constraint became the campaign.
It's just one of those things, you know, one of those, you put it in your bag of tricks and
when you run into this. The other one I would think about is the Dodge Demon,
when it ran nines and didn't have a roll cage at NHRA. That's not legal at the time.
So, there was a NHRA letter that went to Dodge that said, hey, you can't run this thing at our
racetracks anymore. But they, Dodge asked to certify that. And that's part of the history
and legacy of that car so fast it got kicked out of the NHRA drag strip. So, that's a good example.
Then they made ads with the ad in it and the title said, sorry, not sorry, which is just,
again, we just talked about how good copywriters will forever live on. An AI would never make that
from that. Just like an AI probably wouldn't think, hey, we should cover our Gillette sign
in shaving cream. Like those are things that human nature can come up with that's so cool.
And I think a lot of the winning ones here were just cool creatives sitting around and being like,
all right, we're not allowed to do it. All right, what are we going to do then? So, I love that.
Yeah, there's a big fight for attention of beer drinkers, Anheuser-Busch versus Molson Cores.
Anheuser-Busch got the account as the official beer sponsor, spent a ton of money,
so did Molson Cores. And it looks like they're going to win the attention battle. So,
it's just neat to see how this plays out. The one other thing I caught from the Claude report
that you have in your hand, automotive brand recall, which is, do you remember the ads that you
saw during the World Cup games? That ranked third at the 2022 World Cup with 27% behind,
so third behind food and snacks and alcohol, but ahead of finance, tourism and fashion.
So, is it important to advertise during some of these moments for the big brands?
It's a big deal. You do get attention for your brand. So, I think that's talking at the automotive
manufacturer level, but with so much interest in soccer, did you shoot your product on the
soccer field? Did you put your cylinder heads with some soccer balls? Did you try to grab some
attention for your running boards using the hype that is in America right now? Some of these things
can really make a difference in a brand. Yeah. Jeremy Cliff, who does most of the photo work
in North America for Audi, has done a series with them around MLS because Audi sponsors the
Major League Soccer. And they've shot them covered in balls in a soccer net or on us. It's just a
cool, it's like the combining of the two things in a really fun way. So, brands like that have been
doing it, but small brands can definitely do this even faster, almost. It's funny, like,
automotive brand recall at three behind food, snacks and alcohol. I feel like automotive television
commercials are some of those boring. You could just remove the logo and put a different logo in
there and you wouldn't know the difference. So, I have yet to see an automotive brand really do
one of these very well where it's like, oh man, they're getting a ton of press out of this thing.
They just kind of play it too safe for me, but speed shops don't have to do that.
You know, there's a lot of places where you can stand out and like, okay, so if you're at this
point, you're like, yeah, I don't care about the World Cup, bro. No one at my shop cares about it.
Why would I do that? It's like, okay, you don't care about this World Cup, but, you know, there
are races coming up named World Cup. Like, how are you activating around that? What kind of cool,
fun thing could you do around that that would make your brand stand out whether you're there or not?
Right? So, yeah, catch that momentum and, you know, you can be shocked because I think some of the
algorithms, you know, you tag a soccer or a USA and it might drag it along. You might get a higher
attention than you thought. Yeah. Also, if your competitors are spending a bunch of money,
this is the old school, like we'll let them spend all the money and we'll just kind of ride along.
If you know your competitors are going to spend a bunch of money hyping up XYZ thing,
what's your play to be there at less spend but use some of their spend to get attention? So, yeah.
Good. Well, it's been a fun first year, Justin. Thank you for making it possible with all of your
great lighting and creative and bringing in your knowledge for our audience. Here's to many more.
It has been a good first year. It's, again, surprising. It feels shorter. I was, like, shocked.
By the way, we didn't know it was a year. YouTube just sent an email with a little
gift and it said happy one-year anniversary and I was like, oh boy. So, like, I think it's not
got on both of us but, yeah, and thanks to everybody who's joined in. Thanks to everybody who
takes the time to say, oh, I listened to you guys or comment on things. It's great. So,
yeah, I think by year 10, we might have a big audience here.
All right. Good job. We'll keep doing this. All right. That's the pod.
About this episode
The hosts kick off with a candid take on AI-generated formatting, then zoom out to recap their show’s first year and performance metrics across YouTube and Spotify. The conversation pivots into practical “AI to grow” workflows: using Claude for invoice and project trend spotting, repurposing transcripts for social, and tightening contract review with better tone and requirements. They also dig into aftermarket wholesale data, after-hours ordering, and why digital responsiveness beats phone-only sales—plus reminders that AI needs real human expertise in engineering.
Year one is in the books. In this one-year anniversary episode of Automotive Advantage, Jamie and Justin lay out five practical ways to use AI in your automotive business in 2026, share hard numbers on where the aftermarket actually stands at the halfway mark, and pull the marketing lessons hiding inside the World Cup.
This is the business side of the automotive aftermarket. Real strategy for shop owners, builders, manufacturers, and marketers who want to grow. From using Claude to read contracts, spot revenue trends, manage Shopify catalogs, and audit Google Analytics, to the Midway Plus Wholesale Index showing the industry up 12.3% through the first half of 2026, this one is packed with things you can use Monday morning.
5 ways to use AI in your automotive business
1. Spot revenue and market trends in your own data
2. Read contracts, flag your exposure, and prep pitches
3. Lock in brand voice, tone, and style-guide compliance
4. Connect Shopify + Google Analytics to run catalogs and reporting
5. Write copy — press releases, emails, social — that doesn't sound like AI
State of the aftermarket, first half of 2026 (Midway Plus Wholesale Index)
- Wholesale revenue up 12.3% year-to-date vs. 2025
- Wholesale order volume up 52% year-to-date
- June-over-June sales up ~28%
- 32% of all wholesale transactions happen after business hours
What the World Cup teaches the aftermarket about marketing
$10.5B in global ad spend — and the brands that won didn't always have the biggest check. Nike, Gillette, Levi's, and the Dodge Demon on how constraints become campaigns.
Plus: our first-ever sponsors — welcome Spec Coffee and Midway Plus — and a tribute to Brian Loundsbury, founder of Midway Plus.
Chapters
0:00 Cold Open: The Great AI "Slop" Debate
0:41 One Year of Automotive Advantage
1:58 Year One by the Numbers
6:50 First-Ever Sponsors: Spec Coffee & Midway Plus
10:19 Taking the Podcast Live (Cars at the Station, SEMA)
13:02 State of the Industry: First Half of 2026
17:26 Midway Plus Wholesale Index + Tribute to Brian Lounsbury
37:56 5 Ways to Use AI — #1 Trend Spotting
41:22 #2 Reading Contracts & Pitches
46:17 #3 Brand Voice, Tone & Style Guides
50:47 #4 Connectors: Shopify & Google Analytics
57:37 #5 Writing Copy That Doesn't Sound Like AI
1:05:53 AI News: Ford Recalls 300+ Engineers
1:07:39 Automotive News: EPA Pardons & 7-Year Car Loans
1:10:22 World Cup Marketing Lessons for the Aftermarket
1:18:42 Here's to Year Two
Automotive Advantage is a business-first automotive podcast for owners, operators, builders, and marketers in the performance aftermarket. Grow your business and get smarter in about an hour.
Subscribe for a new episode every week(ish).
Hosted by Justin Cesler (Driveline Studios) and Dr. Jamie Meyer (6757 Consulting).
