Welcome To April

Paul and Kyle apparently have quit and handed the reigns over to me, Chris. I haven't hear from them since David Long's All Things Used Cars yesterday. Don't worry, we are already planning on how we will use a ChatGPT bot to interview everyone at Live Tonight with ASOTU next Wednesday on the ASOTUx tour...

Help me find Paul & Kyle-Chris (lonely over here)

INDUSTRY HIGHLIGHT

Darren Doane: Artist, Friend, Dealer…?

Our fearless leaders, Paul and Kyle, spent some time with the owner of the fastest-growing car dealership in the country, Darren Doane.

Darren gave us some, frankly, questionable advice to reaching success, but masterminds be like that sometimes. So maybe don’t be such a skeptical curmudgeon all the time, and open up to some new ideas, okay? Geez.

Check out the full video interview on Youtube!

Kyle Mountsier: This is In the Dirt with ASOTU. We're here with Darren Doane who has been acquiring stores at a record pace. How many stores are you up to at this point?

Darren Doane: We started with 47 stores. We’re up to about 438 now.

KM: Wow! So, largest in the country?

DD: Pretty much.

Paul Daly: I just, I can’t believe it! I never thought we’d talk about this.

DD: Well, there's so much bravado in this industry; we wanted to come in and become the quiet killer. So, it’s intentional to lower my voice.

KM: I know that you've been talking about how much you're pressing into used cars with all of the OEM mandates and direct-to-consumer business coming into play. We're seeing inventory turns start to be a real big problem, and we're seeing day supply and days-in-market grow. What's your strategy as we go into 2023 as the used-car market is becoming more volatile?

DD: It's pretty simple. First of all, we look at all of our employees as family. Okay, which is key. I mean, just from a cultural standpoint.

PD: Ah, that’s unique.

DD: What you're touching on is what we call the start to finish. Yeah, that's pretty much how we've dealt with it. We call it the start to finish. And it takes care of a lot.

PD: Every time I think Darren is going to get complicated on us, he goes simple. The simplicity of start to finish! Back when he just made content, he used to talk about beginning, middle, and end. And now he’s like, we don't even need the middle part anymore!

DD: We spent a lot of time really looking at the data of our OEMs in regards to specifically, what was the buyback and then the return on the data with the buyback that the OEMs were giving us. And we could track that with a pixel to the customer, so when they enter, we can track them. The OEM had no idea we were doing that, and then we end up tracking the OEM.

KM: So, now you have that first-party data in your CRMs to sell back to the OEMs, and you can leverage that data for more VDP views?

DD: Exactly. We saw that with the PBVs and the OTTs. Pretty much anything with three letters we were going to go all in on — AIO.

KM: That's great because that makes communication so efficient at that point. You’re really only using “three-letter words” so you shorten emails and you just speed up. The level of efficiency that's gained with people in your organization is paramount.

*Darren’s phone dings*

DD: Oh, I just got a text. We’re at 640 stores now.

PD: You bought Lithia?? That’s unbelievable!

DD: Yeah, we just thought it was a good fit. And what we're looking to do, I think, coming out of the pandemic, and I think we all know, look, inventories gonna go up. A lot of people aren’t talking about it, but inventory is gonna go up.

KM: I've been telling people recently that they really should be paying attention to interest rates. Because when you pay attention to interest rates, you know what they are. And, and knowing is half the battle.

PD: What’s the other half?

DD: The other half is bringing somebody in that has no idea what they're doing in regards to buying a car. If you can just tell them, “Look, this is the best interest rate,” most of the time they'll just go with it.

PD: Is that your target market? Those who don't know anything?

DD: Absolutely. Because when you do that, what you find you can do, is you can pretty much sell them anything.

But, that’s not what we’re all about. We want to make sure that once we sell them something they maybe didn't even want, the trick was going to be could we service that vehicle? And we have found, we can.

PD: If you can sell somebody something they don't want and can service that vehicle, how can you sell them service that they don't need?

DD: The answer to that is volume. That solves everything.

KM: What’s your CPS?

DD: Our CPS right now is about 4.

PD: 4 dollars?

DD: 4 billion.

PD: I’ve never seen a CAC that high!

DD: Well, I don't try to give a lot of advice to the industry in general, but I think there's principles that still apply no matter what you're doing. We’ll call them best practices. What we’re learning is that when it comes to cars is…

KM: Everyone drives one?

DD: Pretty much.

PD: Except for New York City.

DD: Even then, there are still a lot of vehicles. Cause if you look at footage of New York like, they’re there.

KM: So, is your TAM is super high?

DD: We don't even call it the TAM anymore. We call it the Tammy. We made it personal.

KM: You wanted to personify it.

DD: Right. And we wanted Tammy to party. Cause when you think: who’s a Tammy? Tammy’s gonna party. Who are you going out with? Tammy! Tammy is a lot of fun. And that’s kind of been our motto — we want to have fun. You guys know my dealerships, we just want to have a lot of fun.

We’re actually talking to Cyndi Lauper. We're thinking about maybe bringing a little collab in there. If we could get her it'd be great, but she’s doing a lot of farmer stuff right now.

KM: You’re crossing the verticals, not thinking in siloed matrixes.

DD: Yeah, that's what happens when you build brand and bring someone like Cyndi Lauper in. Then you can go to “True Colors” and work on the colors of the cars. Because we love them all, and we want to sell them all. Except for Tesla. We don't want to sell Tesla.

PD: Why is that?

DD: We have found that in trying to sell Teslas that, uh, only Teslas sells them. Which is weird.

PD: There’s something up there. Somebody should investigate.

DD: Yeah, it seems like a monopoly.

PD: I love that game.

DD: We’re actually hiring people now to maybe just look into it.

KM: Do you just want to be the transportation partner of the world?

DD: Right. We believe ultimately, where this all leads to, and it's a weird play, but we have a small, minority share in some really amazing backpack gear. Reason being is we think ultimately people are going to stop driving in general and so this is all a play to build brand to sell backpacks We'll sell everything and we're gonna go all in on like outdoor apparel backpacks once everyone starts walking again. And, we’d like to bring Tammy.

People say you can do anything and be anything you want to be. I think I want people to look at me, but see beyond me, but in seeing me see that you can do anything and be anything like me, but then I want to be the light but not the light that brings attention. I want the light to expose what opportunities look like.

KM: You are just dropping gems today! I’ll give you flowers for that.

DD: I appreciate that. Listen guys, I’m really busy. I have to go, but I appreciate the time.

CONTENT RECAP

Some News You May Have Missed

• David Long and the All Things Used Car’s community set a Guinness record for “Most Faces On A Promo Image.” The world is equal parts impressed and terrified.

• Tesla announces another EV charging breakthrough. A series of twelve dozen hamster wheels can bring a Tesla Model 3 from 10% to 80% in less than 10 days.

• Beaver Toyota of Cumming adds mammoth meat to the menu of its in-store restaurant. Brendan Fraser is thrilled.

CAPTION CONTEST

Theme Song Contest

ASOTU is moving on up and never going to stop believing until we reach the higher ground. One thing missing from our full ensemble of harmonious things to offer our community, is a theme song.

Get on your phone, open the voice recorder, and hit that big beautiful red button. Send us what you think the ideal theme song would be. A tune, lyric, or 16-bar free style that you think perfectly captures and communicates the ASOTU-Verse!

What day is it again?