In this episode, Perdikis walks through the real math behind that $8,500 mistake, then hands over results most dealers would never show on record: 3 rooftops, 9,102 past customers, 120 booked appointments, just under $191,000 in gross. Zero added headcount.

Here's the uncomfortable truth this episode exposes: dealers have had DMS, CRM, e-commerce, social, and now AI. The average is still 10 cars a month. Same as the '80s. The technology changed. The dealers didn't.

Jill Shulman is a former U.S. Marine Corps combat engineer officer, one of the first women ever commissioned into the role, who led platoons through mine-clearing and bridge-building operations at 23 years old. She went on to spend over a decade in corporate leadership development at Abbott Laboratories, earned a master's in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, and has since trained more than 30,000 leaders across 1,000+ speaking engagements. Her book, The Bravery Effect, makes a research-backed case that bravery isn't a personality trait. It's a trainable skill.

Last month, the average new car payment broke $800 for the first time ever. Prices are up from $39,000 to over $50,000 in a few years. And in the middle of that, David posted a reel calling Mazda a "sleeper brand." Mazda's own account replied. So David brought on the person actually running the numbers behind that reel: Tim Manning, Senior VP of Retail Operations for Mazda North American Operations.

If you've bought AI tools this year and still can't answer "what did this actually do for my business," you need this conversation. Gabriel breaks down the five questions almost no dealer asks a vendor before signing, and why skipping them is how a $50,000 contract turns into a liability nobody saw coming.

In this episode, David Spisak sits down with the Force Marketing co-founder to break down exactly where dealership ad dollars go to die, why 99% of stores spend $5,000 or less marketing the department that drives 75% of their profit, and what's coming next as AI search reshapes how car buyers find dealerships.

She started at $6 an hour in a daycare. Today she's running one of the most talked-about dealership models in the country.

David sits down with Napo Rumteen, the guy who scaled Tekion from zero to $100M+ ARR and built Interactive EQ, a platform that puts candidates and employees inside immersive, high-pressure simulations instead of asking them to describe themselves on paper.

He's advised on over 315 dealership transactions worth more than $22 billion. He's watched Park Place, one of the largest deals in industry history, fall apart at the height of COVID and come back together within weeks. And right now, he's telling us this could be the most active M&A year the auto industry has ever seen.

I've interviewed hundreds of people in this industry. This is the first time I've ever done a two-part episode. After sitting down with Matt Leone, CEO of DriveCentric, I didn't have a choice. There was too much here, too much story, too much substance, too much that this industry needs to hear, and I refused to cut a single thing.

In Part 1 of this 5-part episode series, David Spisak opens with the foundation: five questions designed to expose the truth about your business before the market does it for you.

I've interviewed hundreds of people in this industry. This is the first time I've ever done a two-part episode. After sitting down with Matt Leone, CEO of DriveCentric, I didn't have a choice. There was too much here, too much story, too much substance, too much that this industry needs to hear, and I refused to cut a single thing.

In this episode, David takes you inside Carvana's CDJR store in Sacramento for an unscripted, unfiltered walkthrough that challenged assumptions he didn't even know he was carrying. What he found wasn't a gimmick. It wasn't smoke and mirrors. It was something far more unsettling for the industry: a different set of questions producing radically different outcomes.

We talk about why 30–40% of car buyers are already finding dealerships through AI search — and why your SEO budget is becoming irrelevant. Why your empty service drive at 2am is actually a revenue opportunity sitting right on your lot. And why the dealers who figure out the mobility dollar shift now are going to look like geniuses in five years.

Jim Fitzpatrick sits down with David Spisak, CEO of Disruptive Growth Solutions, and they don't soften it. Sixteen categories of violations. Salespeople's Instagram posts counted as advertising. Third-party listings you don't control triggering fines you can't afford. Vendors with zero legal exposure leaving dealers to absorb every hit alone.

This episode is the keynote David delivered at ASOTUCON, and it's the most personal thing he's ever said on a stage.

Paul Faletti has led NCM Associates for 17 years — the company that invented the automotive 20 Group. He came into NCM in 2009 with an outsider's eye and an operator's instincts. And instead of riding a 78-year winning formula into slow decline, he started dismantling what was working before anyone told him he had to.

In this episode Matt Ober Shares what the world's smartest investors figured out about data that most businesses are only now waking up to. The decision separating winners from everyone else over the next five years. Why EQ is overtaking IQ in the age of AI. And the one thing most companies are doing right now they'll deeply regret.

Danny Chaves didn't go to college. He didn't have a business plan. He didn't have investors, a mentor, or a safety net. What he had was $400, a couch in his mother's house, and a stubbornness that would quietly build one of the most remarkable service companies in the automotive industry.

Every day, dealerships across the country are writing checks they don't know they owe, buying trade-ins with hidden mechanical problems, guessing at reconditioning costs, and unknowingly rewarding the customers who know exactly how to game the system. One group scanned over 2,000 vehicles last month and discovered the average reconditioning cost was double what they'd been accounting for. Double.