Pharr on Recruiting, Ferri on Inbound Challenges, Westrum on Team Dev | Daily Dealer Live

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Daily Dealer Live!

Hi, I'm your host, Sam Dark, and welcome to this space where Automotive comes together to learn, to share, and most importantly, as you know, to execute.

Thanks for choosing to be here on this Monday, January 5th. It's 2026, and guess what?

Welcome to this 100th episode of Daily Dealer Live! Can you believe it?

100 episodes in solid, high-value content!

So what do we have today on this 100th episode?

So today, you'll hear from operators and CEOs in the trenches breaking down how top stores build teams,

stop leaking revenue, and win in pressure-tested markets.

If you're a dealer or GM who wants an edge in 2026, don't blink.

This 100th episode of Daily Dealer Live is for you.

And first to today's auto industry headlines.

First up today, new vehicle affordability has taken another hit, as Nissan confirms that the Versa,

America's cheapest new car, will be discontinued.

The reason? Compact and sub-compact cars have been steadily losing relevance,

and for many shoppers, lightly used or certified pre-owned vehicles with better features and similar payments,

make more sense than a bare-bones new sedan.

Now, the cheapest new car on sale in 2026 thus far is the, get it, Kia K4. It's just over $23,000.

However, Nissan still sells two of the 10 most affordable new vehicles in the US,

including the 9th generation Sentra, which starts at $23,845,

and the Kix SUV priced at $23,925.

Looking ahead, the company's keeping Versa alive in Mexico and other markets,

where the compact sedan segment is still large, and pricing and regulations make the car more viable.

Next up today, new vehicle retail sales ended 2025 on a soft note,

but dealers still closed out the year with higher full-year retail volume,

and slightly better pricing discipline, according to a new report from JD Powers and Global Data.

Full year retail sales volume finished up about 4% against 2024,

even after a choppy, uneven back half due to tariff fears and the EV tax credit expiration.

December itself was soft. Retail sales are tracking down more than 7% year over year.

EV shares slid to just 6.6%, and monthly payments hit a record $776,

despite only modest price increases, and between the lines longer loan terms

are doing most of the work to keep deals together.

What's the bottom line here? Well, lower interest rates, more lease returns,

and OEM production adjustments to tariff and EV realities could help boost demand

and reduce pressure on margins in 2026.

Next up today, President Donald Trump's administration enacted a host of policies in 2025

that impacted the US auto industry, but there are more measures left on his agenda

that he's likely to pick up in the coming year, 2026. The biggest wildcard is the USMCA,

what was supposed to be a routine review is now turning into a high stakes

renegotiation with Trump openly signaling frustration with Mexico and with Canada.

Layer tariffs on top of that and suddenly factory sourcing vehicle mix and pricing

pressures are back in flux, especially for models that rely on cross-border supply chains.

Beyond trade, the administration is also lining up moves on autonomy,

safety mandates, critical minerals, and environmental rules,

everything from easing AV deployment to revisiting automatic emergency braking requirements

and fighting California on emissions. What's the big picture here? Well,

if 2025 was about dismantling old rules, then 2026 is about rewriting those rules.

Finally up today, Amazon is catching heat on Capitol Hill as it pushes further into auto

retail, this time over used vehicles listed with open safety recalls. In a letter sent to CEO

Andy Jassy, three US senators argue that Amazon auto shouldn't be selling cars with unrepared

recalls and say telling shoppers to check NHTSA themselves is just not good enough. However,

Amazon is almost certainly operating within current federal law. Used vehicles can still

be sold with open recalls and Amazon's marketplace model sits in the same gray zone

dealers and listing sites have operated in for years. That's why this looks less like a legal

shot and more like a pressure play. The senators backing the letter are also pushing legislation

that would ban the sale of used cars with open recalls altogether, which would be a big burden

for automotive and the entire industry. And Amazon, they point out, makes a very visible target.

At the end of the day, Amazon auto grows beyond new hundays

into used cars, financing and more brands. It's stepping into the same regulatory and

political crosshairs dealers have lived with for decades. And that's a wrap on today's industry

headlines. Yuli, happy new year. Happy new year, my friend. Great to see you. We're back. It is

2026. It's awesome that we're here. I'm going to tease something for Wednesday, Yuli. So

over the holiday, some of you saw a post from me on LinkedIn. You can check out my LinkedIn profile

if you want. And I had a little beef with vendors, not quite servicing maybe in the right way

through the holidays. Not for today, but I'll bring that up on Wednesday. Guess what we have

for today, Yuli? Today, we're launching something big. You remember when we talked about video

technology in automotive? There are people who are elite, and there are people who are still

trying to figure out what the heck is video technology. But a separator between elite and

ordinary is the ability to connect with a customer using video technology in 2026. So guess what we

have, Yuli? We have a contest. It's the CDG Co-Video Dealer Video Excellence Challenge.

And this is a cool contest because we're going to give dealers, dealerships, salespeople, sales

managers, service, BDC, fixed ops, FNI, everybody and anybody in automotive that uses a video to

communicate and connect better with your customers. We're going to give you a chance to compete in

the month of January. You ready for this, Yuli? I was born ready. All right, let's go. Here's the

deal. Create a video. So if you're a salesperson, you're a service writer, you're a service technician,

you're a BDC agent, you're a finance manager. Create a video in which you connect with the

customer in some way, shape, or another. It could be a walk around. It could be a product demo. It

follow up. It could be anything and send it into CDG. And here's what we're going to do. We're going

to take all those submissions. We're going to take the top four videos and we're going to allow the

top four. We're going to tell the world who those top four videos are, who won top four. And then

we're going to have them on the show to talk about how they created the video, why they created the

video, and then guess what the funnest part is? In the final round, after we have our four winners,

we're going to do a cage match with those last four to create the ultimate video of all videos to

connect with the customer. And guess who wins in all of this, Yuli? I mean, we all win, of course.

We all win. Yeah. I'm going to tell you something, Yuli. I'm going to figure out a way to get Yosi

to come to Ziggler remotely or whatever and launch the contest within our group. And we're going to

compete, hopefully every auto group in the entire country competes. And we're all going to get to

see the best of the best out there. Kind of cool, right? It's really cool. I mean, we always talk

about this steel, sharpened steel. So I'm looking forward to seeing what other people are pushing

out there. So will you be a judge, Yuli? I'll be a judge. I'll be a judge. Yeah, I'd like to be a

participant too. Oh, wait, are you going to make a video? I would love to make a video. What would

you make a video of? What are you going to do a video of? I'm thinking there's a there's a nice

Ferrari showroom I want to do a walk around on. Yeah, come over. We I know where that one is.

I know where that one is. So you're going to be a judge. I'll be a judge, although I'm going to

recuse myself from judging on any Ziggler stuff like this, I obviously would vote us the best of

everything. So I'm going to I'm going to play the the middle on that. But Yosi will be a judge,

we've got another surprise judge. And then guess what else we have? We have the people's choice

element. So all of you, our daily dealer live audience will also get a vote on the best video

out there. And we're all going to win. So you know, don't stand by on the sidelines get involved in

this. You can submit the video by clicking the link in the show notes below. There's also a

submission site at cdg.fyi cdg.fyi. But I would actually go to clicking on the the the show notes

to to submit your video. Again, up to two minutes, it can be about anything you want as long as it

helps you communicate with the customer. Alright, so I'm excited to see what we get. It's going to

be fun. We'll talk to our guests today a little bit about that as well. And thanks to all the

comments. As always, you can post your comments across cdg social media platforms everywhere.

I love this by the way yoga car says 100. Next stop 1000. I like that. Yes. Paul Salisman says

congrats on hitting 100 episodes and Lauren Klein says to all of our listeners happy 2026.

So if you're in a dealership right now, you're a salesperson, your whatever role you are,

post into the comments. Are you in this thing? Are you going to come join us for this?

This video competition to crown the winner of the video that connects best with a customer

January 2026. Sean Hopper says yoga cards beat me to it. Yoga cars is fast, Sean.

Yoga cars is super, super fast. So, all right, well, should we dive into today's content

and interview? So, all right, first up today, COO, partner of P4 Automotive, Scott Far. Welcome

to the show, Scott. Hey, Scott. Thanks for having me. Scott, thanks for being here. So,

tell us a little bit about yourself. How's biz and tell our daily dealer live audience a little

bit about you, your group and what you do there. Yeah. So, we're a relatively newer group. My

partner Leo started this company about 10 years ago. And really, it started with three smaller

stores in Columbus, Indiana. And he's got a vision to move forward and to grow and to

make an impact in bigger markets. And we connected over the summer was definitely not looking to

connect with anyone, but kind of fell for Leo's charm and his energy and everything that he was

about. And it's been a really good, really good start. So, the last 18 months, he's more than

doubled the size of his group. Went from three stores to nine. Wow. So, yeah. So, he had planned,

but he's jumping on good opportunity. So, I was going to say expansion at that scale,

tripling the size like that three to nine is massive and culture is ground zero for a successful

organization. Automotive industry is no difference. How do you preserve culture when you expand so

quickly? I think really visibility and having a dealer like Leo that he lives in all of the

showrooms. That was one thing when he and I were talking about kind of joining forces and me being

a partner with him on this journey was I'm extremely intentional on the relationship side

of the business. I don't think there's anything more important. You could process yourself into

profits and wins or you can relate to people and get on the ground and work. And Leo provided that

as a foundation. And I think that's something I've always done in my career. I'm in an office to do

this podcast. I'm not really here very often. Yeah. So, growing that fast, you're hiring a lot

of team members probably. So, you're gaining through acquisition and you're also intentionally

hiring out there. What's the hardest position to hire for in January 2026? And what are you

doing to overcome the challenge of hiring for that position? Yeah, quite honestly, I mean,

the easy answer here is to say technicians because nobody has enough of those, right?

I think we figured that out. You just got to pay them. But really and truly, the biggest,

the toughest spot I think recently has been sales managers. Okay. And there's a,

the value that a sales manager brings to the floor is maybe the most, I don't know,

unappreciated value. They do a lot of the work for the finance departments. They're coaching,

they're training, they're mentoring, they're making deals happen, they're appraising,

they're managing inventory, they're doing a million, million things. And I think it's no

secret in most cases, the last seven to 10 years, in a lot of situations, they make less money than

finance spot that they came from, right? So, right now, we're trying to talk the best finance

managers that are really good at closing, that spend a lot of time at the desk trying to help

us test deals. We're like, hey, you want that promotion? It's just going to take you about a

30% pay cut. So then when you go out and try to recruit from the outside, which isn't really a

practice that you like to do, but I think you have to, you always have to be open to it.

It seems like, you know, the post COVID bubble burst has put folks into fake

pay expectations, unfortunately. Or they're all chasing it, everybody's chasing a title.

So, you know, we're having really open, transparent conversations with people.

So, it's interesting, you bring up something great. I love this, by the way, you remember

the old commercial back when great taste less filling, nobody could figure out which it was,

great. I don't even remember it was a beer of some sort, right? That debate in automotive

is one of those eternal debates. Who generates the FNI revenue? Is it the sales desk? Is it the

sales person? Is it the finance manager? What save? Yeah, I've done this for a long time.

And I take a lot of pride in both the finance piece. I think that's the one thing that we get

to control nowadays. So I'm extremely cautious to take any of the performance away from finance,

because I think most of the men and women that are doing that in these dealerships,

they're absolute studs. But we demand and I expect that my sales managers be the best

in that realm. And we like sales managers that can get their hands dirty and get the toughest

deals done and can manage the inventory and put the customer and their needs on the right vehicle,

maximize the opportunity, the gross opportunity, and do all of that really, really fast while

coaching the sales person through word tracks and how to say those things. So again, I'm not

taking anything away from finance departments. I mean, again, they're the big revenue generators,

at least with P4. But I would say that the sales manager is probably more important to the entire

wheel. Yeah, you know, what's interesting is I agree with you, like I think FNI is a great path

to come through finance before you become a sales manager in learning to lead without having a title,

because you don't get a higher fire anybody as a finance manager, you sit there and you generate

income on an intangible product. And then as a sales manager, you're leading a team,

but but everybody's got to be pushing in that same direction, right? So as you sit down with

that sales manager, toughest position to hire for, how do you figure out is this person a good

candidate for this role? Yeah, so, you know, you got to check a couple boxes for me to be a sales

manager. I almost I would call them leaders, more than managers. And, and quite honestly, I think

leadership, I coach on this a lot, leadership versus management, those are two completely

different things. 100% agree. Yeah, when you have the right person that is really good at both,

they end up running a store for you and become your gentleman, right? Or your fixed directors,

or, or somebody that you put in charge of a department, no variable ops director, because

they were really good at everything. So you give them a few stores to operate. I think those are

becoming fewer and far between, because the management side of our business has become

difficult. It's it's not really just A's and B's and C's anymore. Now you've, you've got to check

a million boxes every day. There's 1000 things to do. You know, recently, somebody said, what are

the top five things that your manager should be looking at every day? Yeah, what are they? I mean,

I wrote down like 30 things, narrowed it down, and then I did like an NCA March Madness Bracket

to get down to five, and I'm going to give you six, because I can't, you know, and, and I don't know

that this is right. Everybody's listening to calls going to be like, no way, this doesn't make sense.

So let's provide context for this. If I'm a general manager, a general sales manager, there are

things that I have to watch every single day. I've got to be cognizant of. And you're going to state

what are the top five. By the way, I've had this exercise with GM's and sales managers I work with,

and it is a debate. So give me your, give me your six. Let's see what you got.

Well, I did, I got to five. Okay, context. But, you know, this is, if I'm running a store or

department in a store, this is, I get in the morning, these are the things I'm logging on my

computer to look at. And I'm probably, I'm probably looking at it every single night before I leave

in most of these things as well. Number one, I'm going to my OEM site and I'm looking at my CSI.

I want to find out where our surveys are, what surveys are still outstanding. And if you're

doing really well and actually passionate about winning in the CSI game for sales and service,

you've got somebody in your company that's tracking these. So we have a superstar that works for us

named Emily that put together what is like the simplest spreadsheet ever. And I've been almost

30 years in the business and never had a spreadsheet like this. And I got here and Emily's like,

Hey, I'm building this for you. Do you think we should use it? I'm like, Oh my God, where have you

been? My whole family? Shout out to Emily. She's a superstar for us. But CSI, I think this is the

first thing. It's the easiest thing to look for. You go to the same spot every day. You just want

to know that I get surveys in and where we are and then attack based on we won them or we lost them.

Number two, for me, this was drilled into me militant style way back in the day when I started

with Fantile years ago. There's nothing in your store that affects your production more than

appointment stats. So every single day, sales and service, I'm looking at our appointment data.

Today is set in confirmed numbers. Yesterday is shown results and missed appointments.

And then tomorrow, how are we set up today for tomorrow? I believe really, really at a high

level believe in same day next day appointments. I can high five somebody on a Monday when they

set an appointment for Friday or Saturday, but I'll re high five them and fist found them on

Friday morning when they get it confirmed. I don't love appointments five and six days down the

road. Those are tough. Number three is the production reality. This is where we're currently

at versus where we're tracking versus our forecast and versus I always track what the stores records

are in like every single KPI. So whatever the highest volume new cars we've done, whatever the

highest used, variable gross, finance gross, I track all of that stuff because I'm a little bit

of a psycho when it comes to data. So production reality is the number three. Number four, I believe

in being a really good partner to the accounting department. So deal flow is really important.

Contracts and transit, right? CITs, but also open our roads on the server side. That's something

that that is shared every single day in our company. And everybody that that needs to be on

that email thread is on that email thread. And it's like a constant conversation for two or three

hours. So unfortunately, we email people to death with that stuff. But it's easy. You don't have

to respond if you're on top of your stuff. So deal flow, getting deals upstairs into the office,

into accounting. We've got payoffs to make. We've got floor plan to pay off. We've got all these

things I don't like when deals are sitting in finance offices for three and four days.

That just doesn't that doesn't work. So we've got some pretty strict rules and policies. I can't

say that they're always followed. I think our folks do a really good job of trying to follow

those though. And then, you know, one thing that's really big here that I don't know was big to me

prior to joining Leo, his his experience, he grew up in the fixed side of the business.

So he was a started doing window tinting details and moved his way up to service advisor service

manager. Yeah, his dad was a master tech actually. And Leo was his boss. So they used his dad wasn't

allowed to say son at work. And he couldn't, you know, that was pretty cool. A big Honda store for

Penske. So, but the trade and recon variants. So we have a very specific, very detailed report

that, you know, in the auto, the little blue box where you can go in and put all the data points

of what each vehicle needs and recon, we train our appraising managers, anybody that appraises,

we train them on how to really, really get into what our recon should set up. But we have

centralized reconditioning. And what that does is it really speeds everything up. There's no

wait time for the recon department to wait for the sales manager that's off and at a golf course

and can't answer, you know, nobody can approve the MPI and all this stuff. None of that happens

as long as they're spending less than up to the amount of the money that we set up in recon

within the guideline of the, you know, 121 point inspection or depending on the level of

certification that we're doing. What's your average variance on that report? And what's

unacceptable to you? I think that's fascinating. Yeah, it's actually under $300. And I would have

never guessed that when I got here and Leo told me about this, I thought this was probably a

train wreck. It's, it's absolutely not. These folks are disciplined. They do a really good job.

We've got somebody that manages this, this recon variance report. And I would tell you that right

now, we just looked at this because we're, we're kind of going through as we, as we jumped into

the Indianapolis market, we're jumping into some other buckets of used cars. So we're redefining

what our reconditioning standards were. It was either kind of a P for select or an as traded

that that was it. So we're going to, we're redoing all of our buckets. And that's,

you know, to come. So any of my team members that watch this surprise, but it's coming,

but it's all really good stuff. But I lost my train of thought on that. But the

So let me ask you this. Do you think there's a risk in tracking that variance and holding it to

about 100 bucks of under bidding on customer trade ends of saying, you know, getting too

conservative and not aggressive enough, getting those the best trades, which are customer service

lane off the cars? I don't because we're not holding anybody to this. We're not,

we haven't set a bar that said, Hey, we only want a $100 variance. Yeah. We haven't do this.

All this is doing for us is giving us a snapshot of what it is. But I remember what I was going

to say is as we're going through this, we are only needing approval on three and a half out of every

10 vehicles that go through a recap. And two of those three and a half are purchases off site

that we're not not trade ends. So you know, we're yeah, auction cars or stuff that we've

got coming in. So we're, you know, I feel like we're doing a really good job. I don't know what

the best of the best is. I couldn't tell you what the standard should be. It feels like only being

off by 300 bucks is it feels like we're winning. What's your average recon in that area? 1650.

Yeah, 1650. So eager case as online average recon bill nowadays is 1000 plus. So based on

his take that 1650, that's high. That's good. And then eager says, What's your use car pack? I'll

audience, you know what, our audience asks tough questions. So

all right, I'll I'll I'll over share our use car is $1,000. Okay, all right. So you've got healthy

recon. So you're putting a lot into reconditioning that probably drives your CSI. I mean, obviously

use car, a satisfaction relative to new car. The first item you quoted as being important to you

is CSI. Why did you put that number one, like you've got to sell cars in order to, you know,

keep the doors open, the lights on. But CSI is number one, even behind, you know, appointments,

and then even behind tracking year over year a month over month. So for those that may not know,

P four has nothing to do with my last name or Leo's last name starting with the letter P.

So P four stands for the four principles that guide us every day, which is process, passion,

product. And it's okay. And it's in that order. And this isn't about, you know, the again, a layup

answer or discussion is all man, people are everything people are everything. That's that's

that's true. But having the right people are ever is a right now people process passion is a big

one. So we just think we have a bunch of people that just do the right thing. We don't make it

brain damage for them to do their job. A culture of CSI, if you're winning, I would tell you look

at your sales team, look at your service advisors. It's a younger crowd. I'm 46 years old. I used

forever in my career. I was been the youngest guy, right? I was the youngest salesperson. I was the

youngest finance guy. That was the youngest. Now I look down, like we're hiring people that were

born in 95. Yeah, it's like, I'm surprised by the same thing in my world. Yeah, it's crazy. When did

I become a when did I become the older? And but a culture of CSI when you're trying to make sure

that you take care of the customer, especially we can have a discussion on millennials forever.

But don't want to come to work and do a job that they're forced to that they don't believe them.

What is something that everybody can rally behind taking care of the guest, taking care of the

customer, then our internal employee satisfaction. There's no way to engage employee satisfaction.

But to me, there's not one thing more important. I have it written up on my board.

You set the standard and be the standard for your team. There's nothing more important than team

member satisfaction comes first for us. Then employee satisfaction profit is just that that's

one of the four keys. That's looking at the that's looking at the the score. They talk about it in

atomic habits all the time. We brought it up numerous times on the show. You don't focus on the

score, right? You focus on the process and the score takes care of itself. So it sounds like

you guys are focused on on the right KPIs. The atomic habits is my favorite book. I'm not a big

reader. I'm not a big reader. It's one of the only books that I've read more than a couple times.

So a lot of great comments coming in online. Paul Salisman says, I just said the other day,

realized that people born in 2000 could be 26 already. 26 born in 2000. Igor Kay says,

I'm old now two 33 years in the biz. And Kamiram says, and if you're using V auto for pricing,

do you come out of the gate with aggressive pricing? What V rank does appraiser use when

bringing this car in? Well, we don't have again, we try to not set too many things in stone. We

want everybody to be able to be an entrepreneur. We're going to price the car based on day supply

and availability for the first 15 days. We again, we're not real hard pressed on anything. We let

we let the folks in the store try to run their store. But we are definitely pricing to market.

We're not waiting to price cars to see what recon costs. If you're doing that, then you're just

pricing from cost up and good luck keeping on wasting time. Yeah. So as we wrap up our time,

just a couple of questions relative to the different brands you have, you've got Chevy,

you have Buick GMC, you've got CDJR. So you've got Stellanus Ford Nissan. And you've got Harley

Davidson as part of the group, I believe. What brand are you winning with the most coming into

January 2026? What brand is just crushing it for you in your market? And why?

So let me just touch that Harley Davidson piece first. We that was purchased a couple of months

before I was here. When he told me he had that, I'm thinking, Oh, well, Leo, you have to be a Harley

rider. Nope. No, he just his answer was, man, I thought it would be fun. So he brought an operator in

named Angela and he came over and built a team. And that thing is winning. I mean, the store was

never on the map. You couldn't you couldn't find any ranking report where the previous store was

ranked. And she is got to be one of the fastest growing Harley stores in the Midwest. She's doing

an awesome job. We feel really, really good, super bullish on that. The brand that we're doing the

best with, I think that's pretty easy for us as the GM brands. So our store in Muncie is just

killing it and Buick GMC, we're wildly sales effective. And then we've got a great Chevy

store in Columbus. And then we just bought these two Chevy stores in Indianapolis and Lebanon.

Lebanon's a smaller town, smaller market, but that thing's undoubtedly getting rolling.

But the big store, we're calling it the big store. There's 86 Chevy dealers in the state of Indiana.

And I think we finished fourth last month. Wow. In our first month. Now, we're nowhere near the

first three. We got our brains kicked in, but there's a big line of delineation and separation

there. But we're not chasing the number one spot. I mean, the other stores that are in those spots,

the Andy Moores and the Hare Chevy, they do a fantastic job. They run great businesses. We take

care of their customers and we're just going to participate at a high level. So just as we wrap

up last last question here, what do most people miss about the Chevy brand that's allowed you to

get top five in a state that is so heavily populated by GM? Yeah. Are you talking about

dealers or customers? You know, you're winning in a way that not everybody is. What's something

that you're doing right now that is causing you to be able to do that? What do most people miss

about that brand that that I would say about? Yeah, I would say I wish I could say it was

inventory, but we have no inventory yet. We took the store over with 27 new cars on the ground.

So we had some coming. We have a lot more coming now. So we, you know, we should be

in the triple digit Chevys. I would say maybe hopeful this month, but don't bet against us in

February and March. We have plenty of inventory coming. But honestly, we're just making it easy

on the customer. We have a goal that we want to be the easiest place to do business for the team

member and for the customer. We talk about it every day. Literally that quote is said

every single day on a call in a physical conversation. Our internal quote is every customer

every time. If you are here at one of our dealerships with the intention to buy a new Chevrolet

outside of a bank saying that you can't, there should not be a reason. So I've given all of my

teams a green light. I'm not going to beat them up on their PVR. I'm not going to beat them up on

profitability. I'm not reading them up on anything. Sell the cars. All the rest will fall into place.

So, you know, we were profitable on our new cars. We obviously crushed the SFE Stairstep last month,

but we also ran a little over $3,500 a copy in finance. And we did it. So Stairstep is a topic,

and I lied. I'm going to do one more question because you brought up Stairstep. It's a topic

we've been talking a lot about on the show. Some dealers love it. Others don't like it.

You've got a couple brands that are deep into Stairstep. The Chevy, Hyundai, whatnot. What's

your take on winning in the Stairstep environment, Scott? Well, it's real easy. Just make the decision

you're going to participate or you're not going to matter to you. Yeah. That's it. I mean, we're

chasing sales effectiveness all the time. And if we're sales effective, then we want to move that

by 10%. Then we want to get to 20%. Most of our stores are 25 plus percent retail sales effective.

Obviously, the stores that we just bought were less than 50% sales effective. So there's no number

that matters more than putting our license plate and sticker on the road here. So we're going to

take every deal that comes across our plate if it's doable. We're never going to say no because

of the gross. Yeah, I love it. All right, Scott Farr, COO partner of P4 Automotive. Thanks for

coming on the show. Sharing your perspectives. Love to have you back one day to hear as you continue

the success. So I appreciate it. Thank you guys very much. Thanks, Scott. God bless.

That's healthy recon, Uli. Yeah, that's healthy. Less than I thought it would be with all that heavy

metal on the ground. I mean, 1600 a copy with a lot of that trucks. That's yeah, it seems like.

I wonder if the heart I should ask them is Harley bringing down your average, but I'm sure they

don't recombin the same facility. No, probably not. Probably not. So all right, well, let's talk

Stream Companies. Today's episode is brought to you by Stream Companies. Dealers, stop chasing

incentives. Retail ready from Stream Companies. Updates your offers in as fast as four hours

and keeps them compliant. Stay current. Feed out competitors and drive more leads. Headed to NADA.

Visit us at booth 3113W. By the way, I love that always. Remember that booth number 3113W. You

get the map and you got to go on a hunting expedition. I'm sure the Stream Companies booth

is living large. Or learn more at streamcompanies.com slash retail ready. We appreciate Stream

Companies for supporting today's content, including that great conversation we just had with Scott

Farr. I thought that was super interesting. Yeah. So Uli, let's not stop here. Let's go to Stefan

Farie, president and CEO of Car Wars, a company name, which I love, by the way.

Great name. What a great company name. Stefan, Car Wars. Welcome to the show.

Hello. Hello. Hello. I enjoyed the last session. That was pretty good. Scott gave some really nice

tidbits. I really enjoyed to hear that he came from a Larry Van Tiles store background. That was

Berkshire Hathaway now. Yeah. Yeah. We are. So for your audience that you may not know is

that is one of our board members, Larry Van Tiles. He's had this organization for 20 plus years.

So a lot of good story and backdrop on that one, but it was great to hear his name.

Well, as we begin the conversation, you're president and CEO of Car Wars. Tell us a little bit

about how's biz at Car Wars and maybe a little bit about yourself, how you got here and what

you're doing at Car Wars. Yeah. Thank you, Sam. Julie, pleasure to have you here or have me here

and happy new year to you both. Happy new year. I got here, been here for two years, three months,

and I started my career with Asbury Automotive Group. Back then we were only 90 stores,

still very connected to the group. Really pleased of how back in the day at Asbury,

we signed Car Wars to handle all the traffic management of the phone calls for all of our

dealerships. So having been a end user of their product and now having the opportunity to lead,

it's been a great opportunity for me. So it's super exciting. Last year was an awesome year for us,

25. We are looking forward to a much better and less ice NADA than we all experienced last year.

That was awful last year, by the way, for everybody that ended up making it there.

I don't know if we'll ever go back to New Orleans. Vegas just seems like such a great,

easy place. Good weather, easy transportation in. That's right, and they're designed and set up for

it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you get a get out and you move on. Well, hey, tell us this.

You've talked a lot, Stefan. Dealers in our world obsess over digital leads. We ask everybody,

hey, who's your best lead provider? How's it converting? We want to know this. All your data

says the phone is still the highest intent channel. Why do so many stores ignore the phone and treat it

like a black hole? I think some of it is a bit of intimidation, to be honest with you. Being in

stores, I have seen the directors of First Impression not only have one person at the front desk,

but maybe even three people at the front desk. I would ask any dealer principle, the simple

question, how many rings at your dealership? Is it okay to have it ring before it's picked up?

Is it one? Is it three? Is it five? In today's world, it's got to be one to something, one to two,

one to three. But here's the reality. All the data we see and report out on this show is we are really

bad at picking up that phone. We just as an industry, like in service, that eight, nine minute

wait average wait time is insane. Yeah. So think through that right now. Think about the dollars

spent every month to make the phone ring. And what do we choose to do? We choose to point size,

point blames. Listen, we're a privately held company. We are one of the few assets that wasn't

sold to BHA because Larry believes in this product so very much. You wonder where the

Car Wars name comes? It's because we allow dealership groups to compete against one another

or internally against different brands. It's about Chris. And if you've been around the business a

little bit, you've heard of Chris. Connect, request, invite, set, and pursue. And we do an incredible

job of trafficking and monitoring how this happens. There's some things before the show ends that I

want to make sure that we cover because everybody uses these two new letters of the alphabet,

like it's some magical. Oh, let me guess. AI. Yes. What do you want to tell us about AI?

So what I want to tell you is that transcriptions is something that our business has been doing now

for 12 years. Okay. 12 years, we have been transcribing the phone call from beginning to end.

And when you transcribe it from beginning to end and you take this data and then share it with your

audience, do you remember in the day, or at least I do, when you say, well, I don't want to listen

to these phone calls? Well, we don't want you to listen to those phone calls either. We want to help

you take action. And so the words that really need to be discussed inside of our world of AI

is really call containment and add-ons. What does that mean? Okay, great. Call containment is when

conversational AI takes the call from beginning to end, cradle to grave with complete assistance.

Now, one of your questions may be, well, that seems easy enough, Stefan. Why doesn't everybody

understand that? Because there is reluctancy in the automotive space. Historically, we trailed

many industries by a few years, unfortunately, but the real reality is this simple. If we can take

a phone call for a dealer, and if a dealer doesn't want the call to be handled immediately,

then tell us when. Are you okay with two rings? You want one ring? You want four rings? Do you

want just from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.? Because it doesn't matter. You've already spent the marketing

dollars, so the highest intent. We know that your client is not calling to ask how your health is.

Trying to spend money at your dealership, so what do you want them to do?

So from your perspective, Stefan, what's the answer? What is the number of rings in today's

world where AI is becoming more of a force within rooftops? It's a great separator

in speed to answering the call, whether it's by a human or by an AI agent. How many rings?

Well, I like two because if I'm a bit of a traditionalist, I got started in this industry

by a gentleman who helped form Asbury Automotive, and he likes the front desk, the directors of

first impressions, to be able to talk. But none of us like waste and elimination of marketing

dollars to not pick up the phone call. So I like two. I'm a big fan of two. Two seems good.

And when we talk about containment, that cradle to grave to end the phone call appropriately

is massive to get it to a solution. We are booking north at some brands because we do do

independent OEM brands on who and which customers adapt better to conversational AI.

All of this data, we do so many white papers. I'd be reluctant if I didn't tell your audience.

Go to carwars.com and go read some of our white papers. And when you asked earlier,

Yuli, about what an add-on is, an add-on is when we take a shop code, like an oil change,

and we have our conversational AI by the name of Kerry, book an additional service,

whether it's windshield wipers, tire rotation, brakes, and it gets done there on the call

without any assistance. We have some stores averaging over 35% add-on with zero human interaction.

So where is the most pressure in automotive today? You just had a gentleman on the phone talk about

fixed ops. We can go down the path of fixed absorption and how important it is for the

dealership. But the real reality is that's the hardest job in the dealership is to work on the

service drive, servicing the customer that's in front of you without ignoring them, giving more

time and opportunity to serve those that want to spend money with your dealership to keep the flow

going. The reason he's selling so many huge cars is because he has no new car inventory. So we need

we got to find the middle ground, which is if you increase fixed absorption of your dealership,

it puts less stress on variable operations. And if we can put less stress there,

then we're doing something better for your clientele and for the dealership.

So Stefan Yossi, the car dealership guy himself, came into the comments listening to today's

show. He says, there's a cool delight to picking up in under two rings. If you can implement a

process that allows for that, it positively surprises many customers quote, oh, wow, you answered

fast, close quote. So one thing we hear a lot of Stefan in automotive is, hey, customers hate AI,

but your data as you described this suggests different. What separates the AI that works and

creates this delight that Yossi is talking about, and then the AI that fails to deliver?

Sam, great question. The question that you're really hitting on is not that people dislike

AI, they dislike bad AI. We were not first to market, but as a company that's recording over

900 million minutes a year, guess what? We listened to everybody in the industry,

and we have heard and recorded every single one of their calls, good batter and different

that they're on our lines. And so when we built ours, we knew what the consumer did not like off

the rip and what we would not construct and what we would construct. If they asked to get out of

the phone call, because people, some people, there's a couple of AI properties, not even an

automotive, they might be with some large airlines that start the consumer off with two straight

nodes. Like, no, I'm a diamond with Delta, please, no, don't ask me, do I want to be called back?

You start hitting 0, 0, 0, 0. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hope, hope, help, help, get me out. But the real reality is, we've learned to build the systems

we have today by listening to everybody in the space, and not all are created equal. We are so

different than everybody else in the space. Sam, you said it yourself just a second ago,

there's so many in the space. We started as a telephony company, routing all phone calls

in traffic for the dealerships. It's what our specialty is, it's what we do. And so our dealer

advisory board challenged us in 2023 to build our own conversational AI. We are now working on

outbound and outbound texting. As long as it is within the safety and confines of what

10 DLC and stir shaken is asking for, I think you're going to see a lot more pressure come down

those paths as well. And I think you'll start to see many of these startups that we all talk about

will have pressure because they're owned by private equity. You don't want me to go through

private equity versus privately owned. So, Stefan, you're getting comments in our social

media comments. Ben says, Stefan's the man kudos to him and the team for innovating

and disrupting themselves. 900 million minutes recorded. My only question is, what kept you

from hitting a billion? I mean, if you're going to do 900 million, you might as well click the

billion button. In all seriousness, looking ahead a year or two, if I'm a dealer and I haven't

implemented conversational AI into my operations, into service, into sales, into other parts,

how am I going to be separated? How am I going to be kind of left behind if you think a year or

two? It's evolving so quickly. What's going to be my problem a year down the road?

Sam, I think I would ask you as an operator yourself, how do you want to handle your marketing

dollars that you're spending if we all know and agree that the phone call is the last intent

before I transact? Yeah, I want that phone call answered. And I want to answer it well. And I do

realize, Stefan, that some of the actual employees that work for me, we talked about this earlier,

those born 2000 and later, they're 26 years old. They're used to snapping and tick-talking and

tweeting and LinkedIn. They don't even like LinkedIn or Facebook. Yeah, there needs to be

training on the phone skills. And so it is a compelling argument to get that second ring picked

up and handled more efficiently stuff on. Yeah, Sam, but in usually what I want y'all to think

about, it's really based upon the dealer's needs. And I think there's roles in the dealership that

have yet to be defined. There are certain groups across the country that we are partnered with

that are testing it and then have someone who's operating all their telephony behind the scenes

and really invested into A-B testing, trying different patterns, maybe first ring, maybe second

ring. What if somebody's on a heat case with a customer, how in the world would you not want

that call picked up right away? You want it picked up, yeah. You want it picked up right away. Or

like every dealer principle says, if they make it to my door, I'm giving them everything. So why

don't we try to handle the pressure of the moment at the moment instead of waiting at the end to

get hit in the face with a bigger problem? And it's interesting, Stefan, if you select two rings

for the pickup, and it's a sales call, now all of a sudden, I'm competing as a salesperson to

pick up that call or I'm competing as a BDC agent to pick up with that call. And competition makes

us all better. Right? Yeah, yeah. So think about this, we have two different versions. One is a

scheduler that can book appointments with every known, well, not every known, because I'm sure

there's already two that have been created last week that I'm not familiar with, but every major

service, you know, XTime, Micarma, Update Promise, the list goes on and on, but we are

integrated with all of them. But then we have carry receptionists to back up your main receptionists.

And as the phone tree is set up, if your consumers we build carry, if they say operator, help, or

any disconcerting word, guess what? They're going to somebody directly. And the uniqueness of

understanding how a phone system, forget AI, because this is a bigger story. It's how the

communication and the telephony inside the dealership happens. What happens if all my service

advisors are with somebody? Yeah. Right? Shouldn't they have a do not disturb, or they kick them out,

or they get first ring, or give them third ring. But I'm telling you, we just did a study in October

of 2025, over 500 rooftops. And we saw that nine out of 10 consumers of dealers who missed their

appointment called another dealership in market. Yeah. So say no more. Don't say that the company

that you're that you're missing your fixed absorption number. Don't say that your service

ROs aren't high enough, because I assure you that the majority of dealers are missing real

opportunities in dollars to convert. This is a conversion thing. So Stefan, last question and

honest, the producers are pushing me, we've gone way over. But I love this topic. And I think it's

super relevant to everybody in 2026. Lauren Klein made a great comment in the comments. So she says,

this is the solution to replace AI rather than develop these young people. They're the future.

And you're not saying replace them with AI, you're saying competition will create a better

experience for the consumer. And by having a, a strategy that says, Hey, if they don't pick up

on the second ring, we're going to roll it over to automation, or we're going to send it to a

different attendant. That's your strategy. It's not to replace it's to train and bulk up the way

we respond to the consumer fair, fair. Sam, Larry van Tile tells me at every board meeting,

always look for opportunities to do business, which means you should look at your current

operating platform, and always make event creations that create better events for the

people set the dealership. Period. Yeah. Stefan Ferry, President and CEO,

Car Wars. Thanks for being on the show, sharing your perspectives today about all things,

answering phones and responding to the customer. Thank you for being here. Sam, thank you so much.

Thanks, Stefan. Thank you. Thank you. By the way, you leave some great comments in the,

in the chat here. Eager case as we train, we, we dealers train sales staff 10 to 12 steps to

close a deal, but no phone up skills. We need to change this customers, judge dealers the way

customers get spoken to. And I agree 100%. We've got to do better in automotive. So,

you know, January, we've got our video contest, we're going to crown the champion of automotive

video connecting. Maybe we need to do like a phone skills competition sometime later on in the year

or something like that. You know, when you pick up the phone, a, I think one of the cool things

about agentic AI and voice AI that's really good as you can barely tell it's AI, like it gets human

emotion. It will get you apologizing to it if you say something that wasn't nice or whatever.

But, but I agree, Eager. Thanks for saying that. Like we still need to learn and hold ourselves

to a high standard of being able to speak on the phone and connect with that customer on the phone.

So, January is the video competition, and maybe we need to look forward at some point

to a phone competition. But let's, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. But, but let's move

on. And to everybody remember, you can go into the, you can go into the, the, the chat and our

notes for today's show. You can get the link to upload your video again, a two minute video.

We're going to be excited to crown the champion for, and then we'll go into the cage match

to see who is the winner of these four. But before that, let's turn to Micah Westrom,

General Manager of Ramsey Mazda. Micah, welcome to the show.

Welcome. Good to be on. Thank you for having me.

We love the setup. We talked about it a little bit before. We won't get into that. We want,

we want to ask you the signature question, you know, how's biz? And as you're answering that,

tell us a little bit about yourself, Micah, and where you're at, what you guys are doing.

Yeah, absolutely. Business is great. I tell you what, it's, I had the opportunity about

three years ago to come into Lithia Automotive was never with a national organization of this size.

I was exclusively with private dealership groups. And it's been really, really fun to see exactly

the autonomy that's given to you through Lithia. I've really enjoyed specifically the focus they

have, especially here in Urbandale, Iowa, and I'm at Ramsey Mazda here, the focus on exactly what

your previous, previous guest was talking about fixed absorption. I mean, that's really been what

we've hung our hat on here at the Mazda store. I love that. And let's pull on that thread from

that conversation, because there's still a lot of questions that need to be asked. So if you're

focusing there, what are you doing? Are you leveraging any technologies to kind of solve

this problem that we're talking about, you know, the phones going unanswered in the service

department, maybe services not being offered consistently? Yeah, absolutely. That's, you

know, it's, it's easy at times to look and see your data because we use car wars as well,

but to see your data and wonder, Hey, why are we not on the phones? Why are we not answering? And I

heard at the time from a platform fixed operations manager saying, why would we not 90% of the time,

especially in the service department, they're calling to give you money. I mean, at the end of

the day, they're calling to transact with you. So I started observing actually within our store,

and I saw my advisors were consistently with guests. This wasn't a, Hey, I don't want to,

this was, I'm taking care of that person that's directly in front of you. And I don't care what

area of the business you're in, when you have someone that's flesh and blood right in front of

you, you want to handle that person's issues. They're trusting. You want to be a good steward

of that trust. So what's your ring count? As Stefan said, we have our set about two as well.

Yeah. So we use an AI system within our service department, they can still get through to the

service advisors, if they have some of those more complex questions and even have it set up where

they can get there to their specific advisor. But we're finding a lot of people just want that

ease of, Hey, I just need my problem solved. At the end of the day, I need to get in connection.

I need to know that, you know, folks have lives going on, and they need to be able to

check off that individual, check off that issue, check off the fact that

that's done after they make the call. Yeah, they don't want to be on the call for nine minutes. We

reported the data from CDK saying that customers calling service departments and automotive,

I don't remember the exact stat, eight or nine minutes, which is insane, right? So

in your, it where what caused you to see a need to utilize this AI service in your

service department? And what's the bailout prompt? How does a customer get to a real

live person if they don't want to continue with the with the AI in the process?

Yeah, absolutely. So one is, you know, the typical like, Hey, let me talk to my advisor

or a specific name of an advisor will kick you over. But the main reason we found is most folks

were not, they weren't asking complex questions. I mean, we, it's so many times it's a little bit

like sales or service or whatever it may be. In the beginning, you kind of believe, Oh man,

there's this vast world of all these things a guest could ask for. The reality is they're calling

for three or four things. And most of them were just setting up their normal service. So we just

needed to meet that need where the guest was reaching out to us. Yeah, routine maintenance,

add on stuff, like they're talking about my brakes are making a little squeak. And it's

right. We think about it in the sales department. If your sales rep is sitting with a customer,

we tell them, don't you even look at that phone, you dedicate yourself to the customer

that's sitting there, right? So we think about it a little backwards in the service department,

because now you're pulling your hair out. Well, not yours, you have great hair, but

you're pulling your hair out going the phone's ringing, man. Like, I know you got a customer

in front of you, but that's money on the line. It's great, you know, good on you to be forward

thinking, you know, to be solving these problems. Have you seen a quantifiable lift in, you know,

your dollars per RO and things like that since adopting a technology like this?

Yeah, that was that was part of really a multi pronged approach. We put an emphasis in 2025 on

really focusing on making our service department as efficient as possible. And specifically from

the dollars and cents standpoint, we set out within Lithia, we wanted to be the number one

net to gross percentage in the company. And so we really had to, if you guys have ever seen,

oh, gosh, they talked about it just recently, the books escaping me. But it was actually this,

the chef talks in this book and unreasonable hospitality. That's what it is. That's awesome.

Great. We saw him speak Mazda actually hired him in to talk about the process of becoming that

Michelin three star restaurant. And one of the things he talked about is you have to really

dive in and interrogate your process. And so, frankly, I had a my sister-in-law who ended up,

she decided to get her oil changed and two or three times I caught her going to a local Jiffy

Lover LF or whatever the case may be. And I said, why don't you come to why don't you come to my

dealership? Yeah, and she's like, Oh, I didn't think of it. I just thought this would be quicker.

And so immediately I thought, Well, shoot, if she's thinking that other people are thinking that.

So how can I be quicker? So when you start really interrogating that process,

you have to, it hurts a little bit, but it exposes a lot of opportunity.

You've talked about some of the greatest progress you've made toward that goal is training and

mentorship one on one training and mentorship with your teams. A lot of people talk about training,

but in your store, what is the X's and O's of your training strategy? Who does it? What do you

train on and how often do you do it? Yeah, so I was very fortunate when I came into my store,

I had a store that was not doing particularly well tons of potential, but just just not doing

particularly well. And I had a lot of youth, whether that be just by age, but also a lot by

frankly, I had my all my managers have been with me for this last three years. So they were brand

new into a management role. So frankly, it was a lot of just the golden rule and putting the shoe

on the other foot and asking, Hey, what do you wish when you started as an advisor, when you

started as a salesperson, what do you wish someone would have told you that would have saved you

so much time? Because we've, we've all gone through that scenario of starting in sales,

starting as an advisor, really excited you start working with customers. And then you get into a

spot. I don't quite know what to do. And a lot of times you get your hand slapped for doing the

wrong thing, when the right thing hasn't been outlined for you. So that's, that's really what

my focus was. So with my managers, we have every single week, they do a one on one where we focus

number one on, Hey, what's going well, what's not going well for you, I want to connect with that

other person, because if they have other stuff going on outside, they're not going to zero in.

So I connect with them on the human level. We then look at the metrics. I mean, the X's and O's

in the black and white of how are you performing versus how should you be performing? And

you want to obviously praise the positive and then dig into the negative because

And how often are you doing this? How often are you doing these conversations?

Once a week. Once a week. So how do you stay consistent on that? Because it sounds great

to sit down and go through your performance and ask about about any training deficits you have.

But what I've found is an automotive when we get super busy, a lot of those basics peel away. How

do you hold yourself accountable to doing it even when business is blowing? Business is hot and you

got a ton of customers all over the place. You're under, you know, you've got your understaffed,

you're underutilized. Yeah, I found so I originally got that idea from traction

that that book in the reality is having a specific time every single week was important,

but that has evolved into, hey, we need to get together at least once per week. Yeah, it doesn't

have to be a specific time because if you have 9am, you know, 10pm, whatever, or 10pm, 10am,

whatever it may be, and you have a customer coming in, we're both going to drop that and we're

going to handle what's in front of us. So we have a minimum, we have to have 10, 15 minutes.

And earlier on in that week, if you say, hey, I'm going to need a little bit more,

can I hollow out this time? No worries. But we have a set time for exactly when that meeting is.

But we're flexible on that. I mean, this is the car business. It's not something that's

always particularly rigid. You have to be flexible with the business.

So, so let me challenge that. Should you be flexible? I mean, at some point,

you've got to be flexible. But here's what I found too at Ziggler here at my auto group.

There's a culture of we train first. And sometimes we've got to make sure staffing is right so that

we get the customers taken care of. But working on ourselves and training is actually one of the

most important things we do. Because there will always be something more urgent. There will always

be something that needs our attention more than training. And nobody likes to train. But if we

don't train, we're never going to get better. We're never going to get great, right? Thoughts on

that. What do you think of my pushback there? No, I think that's we have kind of a multi-layered

approach. But I will tell you, you said something really close to my dad, actually. So my dad was

in the car business from he started selling cars when he was 16 out of a gas station parking lot,

and ended up retiring and selling his dealership here recently to my brother,

I'm youngest to seven comes bottom of the totem pole there. But no, it's funny because my dad

always talked about he's like, don't let in life things that are urgent come before things that

are important. Those are the things you have to key in on. And one simple way we do that is we do

have a time that we get together all as a group as well to be able to train. But that one on one

time with that individual sales consultant service advisor, whatever it may be, we need to at least

have the availability. I mean, that's why we have that open door policy is ultimately we're

going to connect today, we'll dive in and we'll do other training corporately. But there needs to be

some one on one time as well. Yeah, I think that is absolutely crucially important. You get a lot

of comments in the field. Lauren Klein says story of our life as it relates to training eager says

one on one training session with everyone at the dealership will make a huge impact. Every person

learns differently and needs individual guidance and approach to learning things correctly.

And I think as a leader, sometimes we get fatigued going back to step one back to zero,

because we've in our mind, and this is not accurate, sometimes we think we've trained and we've

trained and we've trained and we trained. And we can get a little bit of fatigue having to go

through it again, but it's got to be shared. It's got to be set again. Your Mazda OEM. Mazda is a

sleeper of a brand. Tell us a little bit about what do most people in January of 2026 not know

about Mazda from a dealer perspective? Oh, man. I mean, I tell you what, I had had no exposure

to Mazda prior to working here. Other than I had a couple of service advisors at other dealerships

that had Mazdas, and it said, Oh, great cars. And it was a new news is good news kind of a thing.

When I came over to the brand, I came from another dealer group that was, I mean, you had Lexus,

Cadillac, Jag Land Rover, you had some some relatively high end high end OEMs in that luxury

space. And coming over and looking at Mazda, the number one thing that floored me was the value

for the money in the product. And I mean, they just do such a good job. And it's, it's really a

brand that surprised me in multiple ways. Because that's one of the focuses they have this fixed

absorption side for me. That is a focus overall for Mazda is they want to really take care and

nurture their service customers and value them. So as a result, what's your fixed absorption?

Last question, because we're way over the producers are killing me. No worries. No worries. So we're

just just shy of 100%. We're 95 currently, I think I'll see how it ends up washing out here. But

that was the goal. That was the goal for the year. So it's to basically cover it,

fixed absorption, cover all your expenses by fixed operations, and then everything sales

does is plus plus, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, that's awesome. Michael Westrom,

General Manager Ramsey Mazda. Thanks for being on the show and sharing your perspectives with us

today. Thank you for having me. Thanks, Mike. By the way, I love his mic. Isn't that cool? And

I love that he I was about to go down the road. He's like, Yeah, what you just said reminded me

of something my dad said. We talked about feeling old. I felt old in that moment because I also

got into automotive basically when I was in high school. Not at a gas station, but in the

Suzu dealership. Nobody remembers the Suzu. I remember Suzu. I remember the Suzu rodeo and

the ego and stuff. Yeah, he said something super important, though. Let's do it. I think is is

often overlooked in all facets of life, right? We do it with kids. We tell kids and employees

what not to do, but it's so much more meaningful to teach and train on what to do. So when you get

into that positive reinforcement loop of, Hey, this is what we do in this scenario. This is what

we do in the scenario. Now the truth or what the positive results should be becomes evident,

like seamlessly rather than, Oh, no, I shouldn't do that. I shouldn't do that. Yeah,

just a more meaningful way to coach. You run them towards what you want, not away from what

you don't. I love that. Eager K says, That's my story. I started at 16 years old out of a gas

station with a mechanic shop selling used cars 5 to 10 on the lot and grew to be a franchise dealer

principle. And CalChasteno13 says, Pepperidge Farms remembers. Julie, this is our 100th episode.

Thank you all. We are here because of you. Everybody that gets into our comments, Eager K,

Lauren Klein, yoga cars, Ben, everybody that watches the show every single Monday, Wednesday,

Friday at 1pm. We are so grateful to you. And for the first 100, Julie, I like the idea of the

1000, 1000, 1000. And don't forget, if you're listening to this after the fact going to the

show notes, get the link for the co-video, video competition. It's going on right now.

You can learn more details by clicking the link in the show notes. And we'd love to see your

videos. We'll crown the four champions and then we'll find the number one CDG Cardiola ship guy,

video competition challenge winner coming up. But to all of our audience, thanks for watching

Daily Deal Live where we break down the biggest moves in the car business as they happen. Don't

forget, we're here live every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 1pm Eastern. So if this is your world,

hit like, hit subscribe, turn on those notifications so you never ever miss a beat.

And we'll see you next episode, everybody. Thanks for being here 100. Thanks guys.

Pharr on Recruiting, Ferri on Inbound Challenges, Westrum on Team Dev | Daily Dealer Live

About this episode

Nissan Versa

Kia K4

Kix SUV

Nissan Sentra

Ferrari

Chevrolet

Buick

GMC

Stellantis

Ford

Harley-Davidson

Asbury Automotive

add-on

fixed ops

fixed absorption

variable operations

routine maintenance

oil change

Jiffy Lube

OEM

value for the money

Suzuki

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