When dealership groups grow, people tend to focus on the acquisitions.
The new rooftops. The new markets. The announcements.
But after listening to John Osborne of Carter Myers Automotive on AutoCollabs, that's not where my attention landed.
CMA operates 29 dealerships across four states today. Yet when Osborne talks about growth, he spends surprisingly little time talking about expansion itself. He keeps coming back to something else: the foundation underneath it.
And that's worth paying attention to.
Growth Starts Long Before the Growth
One moment from the conversation stuck with me.
Michael Cirillo pointed out that everyone sees CMA's explosive growth over the last several years. What they don't see is the work that happened during the previous 90.
Osborne agreed.
A lot of organizations want the visible outcome. Few people get excited about decades of reputation building, leadership development, community involvement, and culture work.
Yet those are the things that compound.
CMA's story is a reminder that growth often arrives long after the habits that created it are already in place.
The acquisitions may feel sudden from the outside.
The preparation wasn't.
Relationships Create Opportunities
One detail Osborne shared almost in passing deserves more attention.
None of CMA's acquisitions have come through a broker.
Every transaction has been relationship-driven.
Think about that for a minute.
In an industry where buy-sell activity is increasingly competitive, relationships are still opening doors that spreadsheets can't.
That doesn't happen because someone decides to become relationship-focused during acquisition season. It happens because people spend years building trust, staying connected, and creating a reputation that others want to join.
The result shows up later.
Sometimes much later.
Developing Leaders Before You Need Them
Osborne repeatedly returned to one theme: developing the bench.
That's where his attention is today.
Not because it's a leadership cliché. Because growth creates demand.
New stores need leaders.
New opportunities need people ready to step into bigger roles.
And when he talked about an upcoming Honda store opening next year, his focus wasn't the facility. It was the leadership team.
That's telling.
A lot of organizations think growth is about finding opportunities.
The stronger organizations spend their energy preparing people.
The opportunity eventually arrives.
Culture Has to Survive Success
One challenge every growing organization faces is preserving its identity.
The bigger you get, the harder that becomes.
Osborne's answer was refreshingly straightforward. He talked about authenticity. About being the same person at work that you are at home. About leaders who can be kind, accountable, and consistent at the same time.
That philosophy shows up in how CMA approaches growth.
Promote from within when possible.
Bring in outside talent when it strengthens the organization.
Stay connected to the values that built the company in the first place.
Simple ideas.
Not always easy ones.
Even AI Comes Back to People
I expected the AI portion of the conversation to head in the same direction most AI conversations go.
Instead, Osborne described using Claude as an executive assistant.
His morning briefing pulls together:
OEM reports
Email trends
Calendar priorities
Performance data
The goal isn't to spend more time with technology.
The goal is to spend less time buried in information.
That distinction feels important.
The most practical AI use case he described wasn't generating content or building some elaborate workflow. It was helping him identify what needs attention faster so he could get back to leading people.
And maybe that's the thread connecting everything else we discussed.
Whether the topic was acquisitions, leadership development, culture, or technology, Osborne kept bringing the conversation back to people.
For a dealership group that has spent more than a century building its reputation and has grown to 29 stores, that feels less like a leadership philosophy and more like a strategy.
