Uh, so, I mean, is it you've gotta understand what's happening at your store in order to go to these resources, these vendors, partners, these partners that you have in order to understand how I wanna smooth it out, what, what, what's the connectivity?

John, I think what you're talking about is vision.

And I think, I think that's, at this point in my career, I think that's my, my biggest job is what's the vision that I see for the dealership, what's the direction, and then, you know, rallying the troops behind that.

For us, it's to create frictionless transactions, and I think that's aspirational.

You can never remove all the friction, but the core identity is that it should be aspirational, and it's, it's, it to be frictionless.

And then the outer ring, if that's, uh, your epicenter, the outer ring is going to be to have less friction in transactions.

Well, that is not aspirational.

What was it that in y- in your makeup that brought you to the point where this is what I'm gonna do, these are the people I'm gonna do it with, and this is how we're going to do it earlier on in your career from a leadership perspective, so that dealers that w- are gonna hear this message will kinda cross that line and step into that high-performing zone, the outlier status? Because I feel like that's what we're really missing in the industry.

S- so Brian, share with us this July of 2026, were you here, uh, talking to us and being around the campfire with the dealers? What concerns you most coming into the second half of 2026 when you communicate with your GMs? What are you watching out for? And then I'll ask the celebration question next.

You know, I think there's some, a volatility out there.

There's ups and downs.

We, you know, we have a couple great days and a couple really flat days.

I don't like that.

You know, we all thrive on regularity and consistency, and that's not there.

So what has to be consistent is our actions, our staying a- ahead of the game.

Yeah

Hmm

...

there are a couple of interesting ways that we can do that.

Um, and one of the ways that we're really, uh, leaning into is to take our new car inventory, put it into loaner car/rental cars, and wh- when you do that-Uh, you put it in r- m- loaner car/rent-a-car service for about, uh, 90 days.

At the end of that time, you transfer that, you take the money that you got from income from the rent-a-cars, use that to depreciate that loaner car, and put it into your CPO at a number that cuts everybody else's, the competition's legs out from under them.

Yeah

... uh, people at the level that I, that I think I need education.

So he's really doing a great job helping to organize us around, you know, one team, one mission, mission statements, uh, values, core, all this stuff that needs to be documented.

The other thing that's on many auto dealers' minds right now, Brian, is the threat of Chinese EVs subsidized by the state of China coming in across our borders, either from Canada or Mexico initially, and then maybe even being offered here in the U.S. What say you about that concern? Is it a much ado about nothing or is it something we need to watch?

It's a genuine concern.

If you take a look around the world, the Chinese automakers have taken over significant pieces of other industries' market share.

You look at countries like Norway, that's nearly 90% battery electric vehicles, and many of those, or the majority of those, are Chinese.

And this is being repeated around the globe.

I looked, I was in Kazakhstan, and Kazakhstan was initially, you know, in 92, the Soviet Union fell, and three supplies came in.

And the Japanese automakers had a pretty good monopoly there.

you can't pick