The Arbitrage
Everything else in your store is visible.
A weekly letter for owners, GMs, and anyone who has to hold a standard. One operating problem per issue, written from the floor — where gross actually leaks, what your morning meeting predicts, and why the answer is almost never "hire better people."
448 subscribers · published weekly · free
The archive
12 issues, newest first
Every issue is published in full on LinkedIn. Nothing here is gated.
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Follow-up isn't harassment. It's cadence. It's influence. It's the job.
Somewhere in the last ten years the automotive floor quietly lost buy-or-die and nobody in the meetings say the words out loud.
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Show me your morning meeting. I'll tell you what your month is going to look like.
There is a meeting that runs in your store every day at 8:30. It runs whether you plan it or not.
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Is volume a vanity metric?
I want to ask you a question this week. I'll give you my answer at the end.
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But this is how we have always done it!
The pay plan is not the problem. The scoreboard is.
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You cannot push a rope. Your problem is not the market. Not the people. It's your manager.
Every dealer principal in the country is telling the same three lies right now.
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F&I Isn't A Department. It's An Outcome. Retail intensity. No whirlwind.
Every store with a penetration problem thinks they have an F&I problem.
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Discount is a decision. Profit leaks are defined by bad habits. Train sales to build value and disclose numbers.
Every dealer in the country is telling themselves the same story right now:
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Features with benefit or copying a driver's license and pitching the keys.
Last week I stood on a dealer lot with a stopwatch.
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Where Gross Actually Leaks First: The math nobody's discussing — and why blocking and tackling is survival now, not strategy.
Last week I said price, supply, and information are gone, and the only thing left to compete on is the experience your team delivers. A few of you wrote back with the same honest question: okay, so where does it actually break down?
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Four forces are converging on every dealership in America. The ones who win won't be the cheapest — they'll be the best prepared.
Something is shifting under the feet of every dealer in America, and most of us don't want to say it out loud.
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From reading to running
The letter names the problem. The scorecard measures yours.
Twelve questions about your last thirty days. You get your number, your weakest pillar, and the four actions that fix it — on screen, before anyone contacts you.