From the Cheesecake Factory to your local new car dealer....what makes you loyal to, or leave a business?

From the Cheesecake Factory to your local new car dealer....what makes you loyal to, or leave a business? My Car Guru Podcast · Jun 15, 2026

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24:08

Brand

Carvana

Carvana is a company that sells used cars online and brings the car to your home. The point here is that it tries to skip the usual dealership process.

Brand

Tesla is an electric-car brand that sells cars directly to customers. In this discussion, the key idea is that Tesla pricing is usually set (MSRP) instead of being heavily negotiated like at many dealerships.

Term

MSRP

MSRP is the official price listed by the manufacturer for the car. Here, it’s being used to say you usually don’t get a discount off that price with Tesla.

Brand

Champion Chevrolet

Champion Chevrolet is mentioned as an example of a regular car dealership. The point is that at places like this, people usually negotiate the price instead of paying the sticker price.

Car

Chevrolet Silverado

The Chevrolet Silverado is a large pickup truck. People use it for carrying things and towing, and it’s commonly sold with discounts. That’s why the conversation might focus on whether you’re paying the full sticker price or a lower “real” price after deals.

Term

invoice

The “invoice” is basically what the dealer pays the car company for the car. The host is saying dealers often work deals around that number, not the sticker price.

Term

rebate

A rebate is a discount the manufacturer gives you to lower the price. In this conversation, it’s one of the tools that can make the final price less than the sticker.

Term

dock fee

A dock fee is an extra charge a dealer adds for handling/shipping the car to the dealership. It can increase the final price beyond the base price you first hear.

Term

service department

A service department is where the dealership takes care of repairs and maintenance. The point is that even if buying changes, cars still need work done.

Term

body shop

A body shop fixes damage from crashes, like dents and broken panels. The host is saying accidents will keep creating work for these shops.

Term

change the oil

Changing the oil is routine maintenance that keeps the engine properly lubricated. The host is using it to make the broader point that cars still need regular upkeep.

Term

EVs

EVs are electric cars that run on batteries and electric motors. The host is saying they still need maintenance, just not the same kind as gas cars.

LIVE

Hey folks, Lenny Lawson here, the car guru.

I'm really curious about something.

Do you have a favorite restaurant?

You know, I do.

As far as I'm not going to tell you what it is in far.

Well, I am going to tell you what it is.

It's it's a cheesecake factory.

They're everywhere.

That's my favorite restaurant.

And I can tell you why and it's a lot of it has to do with just the atmosphere.

I love the atmosphere of the cheesecake factory, but I really love their food.

I'm a little bit overwhelmed by their menu.

I mean, it's like a tsunami of choices.

I like that.

Let's see.

I'm trying to think of the first cheesecake factory I've ever eaten.

It was in San Francisco on Union Square.

You had to run an elevator to get up to it.

That was the first cheesecake factory.

And I said, man, I wish they could get one of these near me.

Well, they built one in Knoxville, Tennessee.

And we go there quite often.

Great cheesecake, by the way.

You know, if you're going to call yourself the cheesecake factory, wouldn't you think that all that

you would sell would be cheesecake?

But no, they do have a wide selection of cheesecake and it's wonderful.

I mean, when we come through Knoxville on the way to our home in Greenville, Tennessee,

we stop at the cheesecake factory and get some cheesecake.

And I guess it'll always be my favorite restaurant.

But as far as in the Tri-Cities where we live, there's one that I could name.

It's my favorite.

But I'm not going to name it.

But the question on the table right now is what would make you leave your favorite restaurant and never go back?

How solid is your relationship with that restaurant?

You know, you could say this about your, well, other people that you do business with.

Let me think of one.

Okay, plumber.

You know, how solid is your relationship with your plumber?

Your dry cleaner.

Where you get gas, your 7-Eleven or whatever you want to call it.

Your car dealer or your car dealer's a service department.

You know, you buy a car maybe once every 45 10 years, 15 years for some people.

But if you stay loyal to that dealership and get all your service work, I mean, that's the connection.

That's what keeps you coming back is their service or runs you off because of, you know, something happens.

Or you think it's cheaper someplace else.

I've talked many times about the five attributes that differentiate businesses.

And I'm going to talk about how they operate, how they handle their inventory, purchasing, you know, all the back end stuff.

I'm talking about what the public perceives.

They're five attributes.

Price, product, quality, service, access and experience.

Now this class that I went to at the University of Tennessee, it was very interesting to me.

I'd like to take it over.

The professor's probably not around anymore, but it was in Glocker, which is the business, well, is the building where the business school was.

Now I think they tore it all down except for one wall.

They kept one wall so that they could remember their history.

Now I think it's Haslam School of Business, which, you know, it's named to Haslam because they own pilot.

And also the Cleveland Browns and several other professional sports teams, but the Haslam family, yeah.

So they paid for the business school and so that's what it's called now.

But that's where I took a class called buyer behavior.

It was my senior level course.

I was a marketing major.

Dr. Richard Reisenstein was the professor and it was very interesting.

You know, they talked about, you know, why people behave the way they do and how that drives them to certain types of businesses.

And we didn't talk about this particular book that I read called The Myth of Excellence.

I would recommend that you read it.

It talks about these, well, it's the first exposure I've ever had to this, this concept of five attributes that define the business.

But I was just thinking about just the restaurant or the car dealer.

What does it take for you to defect?

Now, as far as a restaurant is concerned, one food poisoning event and I'm done.

What about you?

Would that keep you from going back?

Boy, it would be me.

I've tried to get my wife to go back to this restaurant.

Not too far from here.

I'm not going to say what it was, but she got food poisoning when she was right at nine months pregnant.

And I've never seen anybody as miserable as she was.

And I don't know, that was probably, let's see, that was with Audra.

And Audra is 38 years old now.

Yeah, 38.

And I asked her the other day, I said, honey, is 38 years enough?

What do you mean?

I said, do you want to go back to such and such restaurant?

Heck no, I'll never go back there.

So I would feel the same way about food poisoning.

Would you?

What if it just took you a long time to get your food?

Would that keep you from ever going back?

Probably wouldn't me because it's taken a while to get some, to get food at my favorite restaurant.

It's just because they're busy.

You know, I have this, do you have this built in clock in your head that tells you when it's been too long?

Boy, I must.

I can't tell you what it is.

I really don't know the exact amount of time, but I'd say it's approaching probably 20 minutes.

That's, that's just beyond that.

I'm starting to, starting to squirm a little bit, but that won't keep me from going back.

You know, food quality goes down.

I'm out, you know, but before I do it.

And if I have a problem, I'm going to call the manager over because I want them to get things right.

I don't want to be run off.

I like the restaurant.

I'm in a groove and I like it.

Will I get bored with it after a period of time?

Yes.

You know what restaurants do then, don't you?

They change the menu.

They upgrade.

And there's a lot of different things that you can do.

You can change the experience at a restaurant, right?

You can change the quality of the food.

You can change the pricing.

You can change the level of service.

Those, those attributes are changeable by business.

If they stay the same over a period of time, people are going to get bored with it.

So why do you leave a car dealer?

Well, a lot of people will buy a new car.

And let's say they get so many free oil changes or they buy a maintenance package and they will continue to go back to that dealership.

But nationwide average is that about 52% of them will stop going to the dealership.

48% will continue to come back.

Why isn't that 90%?

It's usually not because of price.

A lot of people say, well, you know, it's a whole lot cheaper to get your car worked on at an independent shop.

No, it's not.

They're using aftermarket parts.

You know, if they use OEM parts, the cost is going to be similar.

The cost of labor is based on a labor time guide that all independent shops use, all new car dealers use.

The labor rate may be different.

You know, the dealership may charge $120 an hour or $140 an hour.

Independent shop may charge $80 an hour.

Why is there a difference there?

Well, you know, it could have to do with the overhead that the dealership has or that they have more modern tools, better equipment, the latest training.

You know, they're just, they have a lot more invested and hopefully they do a better job.

There's a lot of you out there saying, no, I get better service from an independent shop.

That's probably why you defected.

That's why you don't go to the dealership anymore.

Some people may say it's access.

You know, I'd rather just go to the fast loop place because I can just, I think about it.

I'm shopping. Oh, I need to get my oil change.

I just go get in line, get my oil change and that's something I can check off the list.

That's very appealing.

But what about quality?

What are you getting there?

See, the reason a lot of people go to those places is for the convenience that they don't think about quality because they don't think quality matters.

You know, if they think it's okay to put some cheap aftermarket filter on there and use oil that's very generic, that may not even be the right grade or, you know, the right viscosity for their particular vehicle.

So, you know, they just don't perceive it as a big deal.

They don't know about all the things that are supposed to be checked and adjusted on that vehicle.

And so they believe that just going through the fast loop place is okay and having some young person with very little experience working on their vehicle.

That's not where I'm going to get my work done.

I mean, if I buy a Honda, I'm going to Johnson City Honda.

You know, if I live in Johnson City or Kingsport Honda, whatever it's called, you know, I'm going to go back to the dealer because I know that they have the training and the expertise and the OEM parts and, you know, just, I don't mind calling and making an appointment and waiting for a little while.

But what if I go in to get my oil change and it takes three hours?

That's going to run me off.

Over time, I'm going to go tell them.

I'm going to say, listen, that was a terrible experience.

You know, thanks for doing my car, but it shouldn't take three hours to do an oil change and see what happens the next time.

I may give them another time.

It's not like food poisoning.

I'll be back in just one minute.

Okay, I am back.

Did you buy any Space X stock?

Some of you are saying, yeah, I got in on that.

Well, you know, I thought about it and I just don't see an advantage of betting against Elon Musk.

So I bought a very little bit.

I bought 58 shares and it must say he actually did the transaction around lunchtime.

And by the time the market closed, I had made $1,145.50.

That's pretty good return for like four hours.

But you know, the thing about that is, is it can go down a whole lot faster than it went up.

It's going to be a very volatile ride.

But, you know, if I had gotten in on Tesla real early, Tesla made a lot of people millionaires.

So, but the reason I bring that up is because, again, it's experience.

I called my broker and he answers when I call and I said, I want some Space X and he said, you don't need to do that.

I said, I know I don't need to do it, but I want to do it.

And I'm not going to do a lot and he said, okay, how much and I told him and he said, okay.

And boom, it was done.

It was the access that I had to the market was phenomenal at just about any time.

Now, you know, the problem with access is that sometimes it can, it's too easy and it'll get you in trouble, right?

That's why we need good advice.

We need people who can coach us.

He said, you don't need to do that.

I said, I know I want to, if, if I had done a whole lot more than that, he said, Lenny, come on.

He would have said, let's just not do that.

Because, you know, we're kind of partners.

You know why we're partners?

Because he gets a percentage of my entire portfolio every year.

I don't know when they take it, but he gets a percentage of it.

It's a very small percentage.

It's like one and a half percent or something like that.

But so is he motivated to swell my portfolio?

Yes, he is.

You know, it's nice to have somebody to be a partner with you.

And that's what I think a lot of businesses can be.

I think when we have relationships with a car dealer like me, then you've got a resource there or a plumber or an electrician or a lawyer or a neighbor.

You know, who knows a lot about life in general can give you good advice, good life experience.

I think we all need that.

I think there's a problem that brings up another thing I was thinking about the other day is that the young people that are around 30 or less, they don't listen to older people.

Because they don't engage with older people and they definitely, since they don't engage, they don't have the opportunity to listen and learn the lessons that these older people have already experienced.

Well, it's a different world.

Yeah, it's a different world.

There's a lot of differences, but there's way more similarities.

The only thing that's different is the technology which gets in the way of true relationship too often.

You know, I like seeing the same friendly faces at the grocery store.

I don't get that same feeling when the Amazon truck drives up the driveway and drops off the box full of toilet paper.

It's just, you know, you can make it an experience.

I love walking past the fruit always buy something extra at the grocery store.

Don't you something that I didn't intend on buying?

And that's probably a good reason to order from Amazon.

You know, why is Amazon successful?

Well, you can order something this afternoon.

It'll be delivered tomorrow.

You know, is that a great experience?

Yeah, pretty good.

Is the pricing better?

I don't know, is it?

I guess you can shop around and find out.

Is the product any better?

No, because you can get the same product.

You know, if you go to Best Buy, you can buy a Canon camera just like you can order the same thing on Amazon.

What's the advantage of Amazon because you don't have to get in your car and go to Best Buy?

You don't have to find a place to park.

Access is better online.

What's going to happen to the car business in, well, when my kids are my age, you know, they're working in the dealership.

They're in there, you know, approaching 40, maybe a couple of them are over.

What's it going to be like?

How are we going to compete?

Well, we're in a relatively small town, 16,000, 17,000 population, but we're surrounded by bigger cities.

Access is pretty easy, you know, as far as cars.

Carvana will deliver used cars to your house.

There's no new cars or new car companies like Carvana that bypass the dealer with the exception of some of these EV companies like Tesla.

You know, when you buy a Tesla, you pay MSRP.

There is no discount.

They may have some deals out there that some special lease deals or financing deals, but you're paying MSRP.

If you go to Champion Chevrolet and buy a Silverado, you paying MSRP?

No. Nobody's going to do that.

Well, some people might, but no, you're going to negotiate that down.

They're probably selling them an invoice right now minus the rebate.

They probably have a dock fee that you have to pay, but, you know, the experience is probably going to be good.

Tim Copenhaver and Andy Dietrich have anything to do with it.

They're going to make it a good experience.

It's a beautiful place, but you do have to park.

You know, you do have to engage with salespeople.

A lot of people don't like to do that.

So I don't know what's going to happen to the business.

We're going to have to make it a very smooth, easy process for people to buy cars, but we're still going to have to fix them.

There's still going to be a business case for a service department.

People are going to wreck them.

A case for a body shop.

You know, the cars are going to have to be, like I said, from a maintenance standpoint, still probably have to change the oil and stuff like that.

Even EVs are requiring a lot of maintenance.

A lot more than they thought they would.

So I don't think car dealers are going to go away, but we're going to have to evolve for sure.

Is it going to take a salesperson, a knowledgeable salesperson to sell a car?

I think so.

I don't think you're going to, it's not going to be like McDonald's when you walk up to a kiosk.

I mean, some young people that are so used to their cell phones and stuff.

Yeah, I mean, that'll be fine with them.

They don't want to talk to a human being anyway, unless it's in their friend group.

But you're going to have to adapt in order to survive.

Is AI going to be a big part of our business?

Absolutely, it already is.

I mean, AI can answer our phones right now.

We have a telephone operator, but are we going to need one when AI gets really good?

No, probably not.

I mean, are we going to need an office like somebody to input documents?

No, we don't need that now.

We can scan our documents and they can automatically be posted to our books with AI.

Now, do I still have office workers?

Yeah, we do, and we'll keep them for a long time.

But at some point, we won't need any of that staff.

What about parts department?

Will we need staff?

Probably not.

I mean, we'll need somebody to stock parts and bring the boxes out of there, but as far as ordering it, it could be all be automated.

And is that a good thing?

I don't know.

I guess I won't be around to find out.

I'll be back in just a minute.

I went back to a, I'm going to call it a 7-Eleven.

It's not a 7-Eleven, but I went back to it, swore I'd never go back.

It's in different hands now.

It was a Weigels, and I was putting gas in a gasoline can for my lawnmower.

And the hose burst on the pump and squirted gasoline into my eyes all over me.

I was soaked with gasoline.

Thank goodness nobody was smoking nearby, but I couldn't get them to really do anything for me.

I ended up talking to the insurance company and had to work out a deal, and I just wanted them to pay for my emergency room visit.

Initially that is, but because they stonewalled me and it was just not pleasant.

I don't think that they realized what this did to me and how traumatizing it was.

I got over it pretty quickly, but my eyes hurt and I didn't feel like going to the emergency room that day.

And all they had to do was say, sure, Mr. Lawson, we'll pay your emergency room bill.

But they didn't do anything and they wouldn't call me back.

And so I called my lawyer and I said, call these people and see if you can get them to do something.

Well, they did something all right.

It cost them a lot more.

It cost their insurance company a lot more.

My hospital bill was, I think, 1100

They paid me 5000 because they didn't respond.

You know, and when you have an issue with a business and they don't respond, then you do one of two things.

You sue them depending on the situation or you never go back.

I went to the Powell School.

I've talked about Powell's, you know, it's a regional drive-through food place, fast food, if you're not from this area.

I went to their school that they had.

It was called the Lean Mean Profit Machine.

They actually had a school that other businesses could come to.

One of the businesses that came down from Canada was A&W Root Beer.

That's actually the number one or number two fast food chain in Canada.

And they send all their managers to the Powell School in Kingsport.

I don't even know if they have the school still going or not.

But one of the points that they made was that the average person will spend over 30000 dollars in their lifetime on fast food.

And so what they wanted every employee that works at a window at Powell's to see in their mind 30000 dollars tattooed across the forehead of every customer that comes into that place.

And when you get their order wrong, think about that 30000 and losing it over accidentally putting cheese on a hamburger.

You know, how quickly are you going to respond to that mistake and what are you going to do to make it right for the customer so that you don't lose the potential of that 30000 dollars.

See, that's what businesses they lose sight of.

You know, somebody gets their order wrong or somebody comes into a dealership and they don't get their tags quick enough and they get really frustrated and they go back and they still don't have their tags.

And nobody told them why they don't have their tags because the previous customer had a payoff on their car and it just took a while to get the title.

And if they just explained that the customer would be exasperated, but because they didn't, they lose that customer for life.

And there's a whole lot more tattooed on their forehead than 30000 dollars when it comes to the car business.

Well, that's my rant for the day and I hope you enjoyed it.

If you have any questions about your car, about your car life, feel free to send me a text 423-552-2020 or you can send me an email to LennyLawson2020 at gmail.com and I'll see you next time.

0:00

24:08

Carvana

Tesla

MSRP

Champion Chevrolet

Chevrolet Silverado

invoice

rebate

dock fee

service department

body shop

change the oil

EVs

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