Who The F*ck is Car Dealership Guy

We live in a day and age where we're on the precipice of a lot of change. The auto industry is undergoing a major shift towards electric vehicles. Amazon announced it's going to allow auto dealers to sell cars on its site. The essence of our industry is a constant drum of change and innovation.

我们生活在一个即将发生大量变革的时代。汽车行业正在向电动车转变。亚马逊宣布将允许汽车销售商在其网站上销售车辆。我们行业的本质是不断变化和创新的节奏。

I'm seeing this content on Twitter and I'm thinking to myself, here's this guy who can unite the car buying community and the industry community and he's getting a massive amount of engagement. I kept watching the number of followers go up, been up, been up, been up. There's never been this personality who's able to connect every dot in our universe. There's never been a car dealership guy. He's an industry advocate who's listening to what's happening at the street level.

我在Twitter上看到这段内容，心里在想，这个人可以团结汽车购买群体和行业社群，而且他获得了大量的互动。我一直在关注他的粉丝数量上升，一直上升。从来没有一个人能够连接我们整个宇宙中的每个点。从来没有一个汽车经销商能够做到这一点。他是一个行业倡导者，倾听街头发生的事情。

The consumers are hungry for transparency. They want it, they need it, and the dealerships just aren't giving it to them fast enough. These anonymous Twitter handles are actually really cool. You know the car dealership guy. A viral tweet thread from car dealership guy. He's speeding the industry information sharing.

消费者渴望透明度。他们想要它，也需要它，但是经销商们却无法以足够快的速度提供给他们。这些匿名的Twitter账户实际上非常酷。你知道那个汽车经销商，他在通过病毒性的推文串加速行业信息的共享。

His reach has extended so quickly, co-signed from one Elon Musk yesterday. I don't know who he is and I ask him for advice. It was like, you're watching your favorite local bar van go mainstream. Let's hear from a car dealership guy. I think one of the greatest traits of our industry is a curiosity to see what's next. How is he unlocking this world that's never existed before? And I was like, who the f*** is car dealership guy? I'm just trying to figure it out. What the f*** is this car dealership guy? Who the f*** is this car dealership guy? Who is this car dealership guy?

他的影响力扩展得如此迅速，昨天连埃隆·马斯克都签署了他。我不知道他是谁，所以向他寻求建议。就像是你看着你最喜欢的本地酒吧变得大众化。我们来听听汽车经销商的看法。我认为我们行业最伟大的特点之一就是对未来的好奇心。他是如何打开这个从未存在过的世界的呢？我就像是在想，这个汽车经销商到底是谁啊？我只是想搞明白。这个他妈的汽车经销商到底是谁？这个他妈的汽车经销商到底是谁？这个汽车经销商到底是谁？

I'm the dealership guy. Hi, I'm Yosee Levy and I'm car dealership guy. Everything I've done has been fostering transparency in car business. I actually never cared for cars at all. I always loved the business style. My father had a small used car lot in Northeast Philadelphia. I joined when we were selling 10 cars a month. I cleaned cars, I didn't finance, I'd sold, I worked the shop, I bought cars. I think the only thing I didn't do was actually turn wrenches.

我是一家汽车经销商的人。嗨，我是约西·莱维，我是一名汽车经销商。我所做的一切都致力于促进汽车行业的透明度。实际上，我从来都对汽车不感兴趣。我一直热爱商业风格。我的父亲在费城东北部有一家小型二手车销售点。当时我们每月卖出10辆汽车的时候我加入了这个生意。我清洗汽车，我不负责融资，我销售，我在店里工作，我买车。我想我唯一没做过的事情就是实际上动手修理汽车。

Over time, we find out Yosee has an excellent idea with the marketing. I said, instead of doing this boring $99 a month, all this crap that you see all the time on TV, what if we just showcase experiences? Woo! And that was the first foray into like, you know, me bringing my creativity into business. He always was thinking, is he? You see him? You're talking to him and his wheel is turning, wheel is turning always.

随着时间的推移，我们发现Yosee在营销方面有一个非常好的想法。我说，不要再做这种每月99美元的无聊广告了，电视上一直看到这些垃圾了，我们能不能只展示真实的体验？哇！这是我第一次将创造力融入到商业中的尝试。他总是在思考，你看见他了吗？当你和他交谈时，他的脑袋总是在转动。

So he started to post on Facebook and educate people the way they should buy a car. Your credit is not the most important factor. If you're trading in a car, should you clean it before, should you fix that bumper, should you replace the brakes, or should you not? Right? Well, it depends. It depends on the dealership, it depends on the appraisal process. There are certainly things that will not add value though.

所以他开始在Facebook上发布帖子，并教育人们应该如何购买汽车。你的信用并不是最重要的因素。如果你要以一辆车作为交换，你在之前应该打扫干净车辆，修复那个保险杠，更换刹车，还是不需要呢？对吗？那么，这取决于具体的经销商，取决于估价流程。当然，有一些事情是不会增加价值的。

I told him, Yosee, you can build enemies like that because you give consumer important information, which I think some dealers not going to be happy to hear about it. I made a video showing that vehicle history reports are actually flawed in nature in many respects. And they don't, you know, there's many ways where they don't show blemishes, accidents, whatever you want to say about a vehicle. And I shared that, right? And it was very taboo at the time to share that with the public.

我告诉他，Yosee，你这样做会树立敌人，因为你提供了消费者重要的信息，我认为一些经销商不会高兴听到这些。我制作了一个视频，展示了车辆历史报告在很多方面实际上存在缺陷。你知道的，它们有很多方式不能显示车辆的瑕疵、事故，或者你想对一辆车说的任何事情。然后我分享了这些内容。当时这种与公众分享的行为是非常禁忌的。

Since Yosee go up, it's like an entrepreneur. And I know he should hide very high. I had operated the dealership for four or five years. I'd build his confidence. And at that point, I was ready to take on, you know, a bigger risk and do it for a bigger reward. And that was when I had the idea for GataCon. I know to build big company, I need executives that have been at big companies and have done it. So I just got my ass on LinkedIn and I started cold mess with people.

自从Yosee开始崭露头角，他就像一名创业者一样。我知道他应该隐藏得非常低调。我经营经销商已经有四五年了。我培养了他的自信心。在那时，我已准备迎接更大的风险，以换取更大的回报。正是在那个时候，我有了GataCon的想法。我知道要建立一家大公司，我需要那些在大公司工作过并且拥有丰富经验的高管。所以，我灵机一动，开始在LinkedIn上与人们进行冷推。

Yosee sent me a message at 9pm on a Sunday night saying he was looking for an HR executive. I went from, you know, I've brick and mortar, family business, one location, to raising capital every nine months, expanding, expanding, expanding. It was a big shift in operating. GataCon had a seven-day return policy. It had a 90-day warranty, which he then extended to one year. It had all these features that just had embedded transparency in them. And that allowed, you know, that allowed the company to also break through the noise early on.

星期天晚上9点，Yosee给我发了一条消息说他在寻找一位人力资源高管。对我来说，这是一个很大的转变，因为我之前一直经营着一家实体家族企业，只有一个地点，而现在却需要每九个月筹集资金，不断扩张业务。这是一个营运方式上的巨大变革。GataCon公司有一个七天的退货政策，还有90天的质保期，在这之后他又延长到一年。它还有其他很多功能，这些功能都有内置的透明度，使得公司早期就能在噪音中脱颖而出。

When I first met Yosee, it was funny to me how interested he was in the marketing side of the business. That's the first time I'd experienced a CEO like that. He was always trying to take a risk and do something different. I remember we filmed this commercial and he was basically the star. I'm here to blow your mind. It's really easy to see why he's in media now because that's really what makes sense for Yosee in terms of being CEO.

当我第一次遇见Yosee时，他对于企业的营销方面非常感兴趣，这让我感到很有趣。这是我第一次遇到像他这样的CEO。他总是试图冒险并做些与众不同的事情。我记得我们拍摄了一部广告，他基本上是明星。我来震撼你们。很容易看出为什么他现在从事媒体行业了，因为这是对于Yosee来说作为CEO的合乎情理之处。

GataCon grew like a rocket ship until it didn't. More bad news this week. The shortage, it was supposed to end. It's not ending. Suddenly, nobody wanted to go to a car dealership and everybody wanted a car dropped off at their house. And we were at a point where we couldn't acquire used cars fast enough. We stuck around for two years trying to pivot the company, right-sized the company, many, many different things. But at a certain point, we had to pull the plug and say, look, this is not the right direction. We're trying to force something that in the current market conditions, we're not positioned to deliver.

GataCon 一度像火箭般迅速增长，直到停止不前。这个星期我们又传来了坏消息。原本预计短缺将要结束，但现实是它并没有结束。突然间，没人愿意去汽车经销商那里购车，而每个人都希望有人把车送到家里。而我们正好处在无法快速获取二手车的状态下。我们坚持了两年来试图使公司转型，并适应公司规模，尝试了很多不同的方法。但在某个时刻，我们不得不做出决定，看，这不是正确的方向。我们试图强行推动一些在当前市场条件下我们无法实现的事情。

In business, it's not success all the time. Sometimes, things not going to work out and it's going to be a failure. And you have to know how to pick up yourself and to continue. I was living personally in the state of cognitive dissonance because there's nothing fun about a year and a half of laying off people and this and that. And so I kind of found myself in a situation where I needed some outlet. I was sitting in bed one night and I see this account that I was following. It's called Strip Mall Guy. It was just a real estate account on Twitter that was sharing a bunch of insights. And I said, I've been in this industry for a good amount of time. I think I could probably share some cool, funny, insightful stuff. And so that was sort of the, you know, that was the impetus for that. Like, I thought all those experiences I had at Danny's and got a car just culminated into what is Card dealership guy now.

在商业领域，并非一直都能获得成功。有时候事情不会顺利，会以失败告终。而你必须知道如何振作起来继续前行。个人而言，我一直处于认知失调的状态，因为裁员一年半并不是什么有趣的事情。所以我发现自己需要找到一种发泄的方式。有天晚上，我躺在床上，看到我一直在关注的一个账号，叫做“购物中心小伙子”。这只是一个在Twitter上分享一些房地产见解的账号。我想，我在这个行业工作了相当长时间，或许我也可以分享一些有趣、幽默、有见地的东西。所以这就是那种激励我开始创作的动力。我想那些在丹尼汽车公司的经历，最终汇集成了现在的“汽车经销商哥”。

I can't tell you exactly where I was the first time I came across Card dealership guy's content. I knew right away that as a car dealer, I may actually be in the minority of his followers, right? Because there's not a ton of car dealers out there. But there was a lot of consumers. And I just thought it was fascinating because I'd never seen anything like it. The crazy thing about starting as an anonymous Twitter account was that I was being judged solely by my content. The more I retweeted Card dealership guy's content, I'd have friends text me and call me and be like, you're a car dealership guy, right? And I took that as a compliment. People slowly started to pick up. You saw that there was like lots of interest and there would be days where I'd have spikes of followers.

我不能确切告诉你我第一次接触到卡车经销商的内容时身处何处。我立刻就意识到，作为一名汽车经销商，我可能是他的追随者中的少数派，对吧？因为汽车经销商并不多见。但是却很多消费者。我觉得这很有趣，因为我之前从未见过这样的东西。以匿名的Twitter账号开始的有趣之处就在于，我所被评判的仅仅是我的内容。当我转发了卡车经销商的内容后，我的朋友们给我发短信、打电话给我，说，你是汽车经销商对吧？我把这当作是一种夸奖。人们慢慢开始注意到我。你会发现有很多人感兴趣，有些日子我的粉丝数量会急剧增加。

But then there were clear inflection points. The amount of followers you got in one ear is amazing. People ever hunger for information. People are curious. They want to know what is the next thing in the industry. I had a tweet and this is how the tweet went. You heard it here first. The car business is starting to slow down. You won't hear this in the news. Now that was grounded in my personal experience. I saw that at the car auctions prices were coming down. And I was like, this has not happened in like two and a half years. It got retweeted by some really big accounts and share and this and that. That was when I was like, whoa, the market is heavily rewarding just this insight. And at that point I started realizing the power of social media.

但是后来发生了明显的转折点。你在一个晚上获得的粉丝数量令人惊讶。人们渴望获取信息。人们好奇。他们想知道行业的下一个趋势是什么。我发了一条推文，内容是这样的：“你先在这里听到了。汽车业正在开始放缓。你在新闻中听不到这个消息。” 这是基于我的个人经验得出的结论。我看到汽车拍卖会上价格在下降。我对此感到惊讶，这已经有两年半没有发生过了。一些非常大的账号转发了我的推文，并进行了分享。那时我才意识到社交媒体的力量。

We've never certainly ever had a personality that kind of understood what goes on inside the doors of a dealership. That could also be appealing equally to all stakeholders in the business and make it exciting. I realized again, people are craving transparency and it wasn't just consumers. It was dealers and consumers. And so I realized that this is real. I think with all of us today, we're struggling to understand all of the sources of information. There's so much misinformation out there. And so finding people that communicate genuinely and authentically and importantly, they lead with data.

我们从未真正拥有过一个能理解经销商内部运作的个性，这个个性可以吸引所有业务相关者并让其充满激情。我再次意识到，人们渴望透明度，而不仅仅是消费者，还有经销商。所以我意识到这是真实存在的。我认为，如今我们都在努力理解所有信息来源。有太多的错误信息存在。因此，找到那些真实、真诚沟通、并且重要的是以数据为依据的人变得十分重要。

So it's April 2023 and one of my social media buddies gives me a call. He's like, you really should think about launching a podcast. It all boils down to inventory. I was a little nervous because it was the first time I was putting my voice out there. I was like, you know, what are you going to say? I mean, all these things go through your mind. But I was myself. I was having fun with these conversations, meeting people on a weekly basis. He had done a podcast with Alan Hagg, who's a friend of mine. And I just thought it was one of the best podcasts I've ever listened to.

所以现在是2023年4月，我的一个社交媒体好友给我打电话。他说，你真的应该考虑开办一个播客节目。最重要的是拥有内容。这让我有点紧张，因为这是我第一次将自己的声音展示出来。我在想，你要说些什么呢？毕竟你会有很多这样的想法。但我还是保持自己。我在这些对话中感到开心，每周都能与不同的人见面。他之前与我的朋友艾伦·哈格一起做了一个播客节目，我觉得那是我听过的最好的播客之一。

As the weeks went on, I really started embracing this podcast thing. The wisdom of what's happening at the local level is being amplified through Cardioshipi's community. And as a national company supporting thousands of retailers across the country, it's important for me to have my ears to the ground, always listening.

随着时间的推移，我真的开始喜欢上这个播客。Cardioshipi的社区通过放大地方层面的智慧。作为一家支持全国各地数千家零售商的全国性公司，对我来说，始终保持关注情况、倾听意见是非常重要的。

And Cardioshipi does a fantastic job connecting me to what's happening on the street. We've never had a voice that could hop on with the chairman of a dealer council about Amazon in their Hyundai beta. And really, I felt like that was informative, educational. I felt like he was doing a public service because half the world was flipping out because the media didn't represent what was the dynamics of what was happening there properly.

Cardioshipi在将我与街上发生的事情连接起来方面做得非常出色。我们从未有过一个声音能够与经销商委员会的主席一起讨论他们在现代beta中与亚马逊的合作。真的，我觉得这非常有趣和富有教育意义。我觉得他在履行公共职责，因为半个世界正在翻腾，因为媒体没有正确地呈现那里发生的动态情况。

What a community can do is help curate a marketplace. And so whether you're a consumer, a customer, or an industry participant, hearing the wisdom of the crowd always helps bring truth and transparency to topics and issues that matter.

一个社区可以做的是协助策划一个市场。因此，无论你是消费者、客户还是行业从业者，倾听群体智慧总能帮助揭示那些重要的话题和问题的真相和透明度。

Six months into the podcast, I realized that this is way bigger than me. Cardioshipi is a platform that's enabling other people in the industry, in the car business, that have different experiences in mind to share their stories.

六个月进行播客后，我意识到这比我个人更重要。Cardioshipi 是一个平台，让汽车行业中有不同经历的人能够分享他们的故事。它帮助其他人在汽车业这个领域有机会展示自己的经验。

I think we're entering a period of massive change. The consumer is spending six hours a day on digital platforms. And so where a Cardioshipi can help us evolve as an industry is to keep us more connected, more tech forward. And on top of emerging trends that embrace the changes in consumer behavior.

我认为我们正在进入一个巨大变革的时期。消费者每天在数字平台上花费六小时。所以，Cardioshipi能够帮助我们作为一个产业更加紧密地联系在一起，更加向科技前沿发展。并且还能顺应消费者行为变化的新兴趋势。

The love affair with the car is, you know, I think it's burning brighter today than ever. It's just a really exciting time to be in and around automotive. And here's Cardioshipi really having these amazing conversations and engaging people on all sides of the fence. I think he's the voice of the industry.

对于汽车的热爱，我认为它比以往任何时候都更加火热。现在是一个非常令人兴奋的时刻，无论是与汽车相关的行业内还是周围。而Cardioshipi正通过这些令人惊叹的对话和吸引人的方式，与各方展开交流。我认为他是这个行业的代表声音。

If you really think about it, it's essentially the same thing I was doing 15 years ago. It was us against the world, right? We were in a trailer. We had no funding. We had no banking relationships. We couldn't get consumers financed. But you just every day figure out one more step. And I feel like that tenacity has stayed with me through Cardioshipi and allowed me to build this foundation for what will be the largest global destination of automotive insights. Cardioshipi and the world of insights.

如果你真的仔细想想，这实质上和我15年前所做的事情是一样的。我们曾经是世界的对手，对吧？我们工作在一个拖车里，没有资金，没有银行渠道。我们无法为消费者提供融资。但是你每天都会想出一步更进的方法。我觉得这种坚韧不拔的精神一直伴随着我通过Cardioshipi建立了这个将成为最大全球汽车洞察力目的地的基础。Cardioshipi和洞察力的世界。