Writing
Essays from the floor.
Operator notes on acquisition and the systems that compound — written for GMs, UCMs, and the people who actually run stores.
Acquisition
Buy from the service drive, not sell on it
Most dealers focus on “selling” on the service drive, when the only thing they should focus on is “buying” from the service drive.
4 min read→AI search
Why AI can't cite your VDP — and what it's costing you
Structured data, canonical stability, and the invisible tax dealers pay when ChatGPT and Perplexity skip their inventory.
4 min read→Appraisal
The Look-to-Book number every dealer should track
You know your close rate on retail. Do you know your close rate on appraisal? That gap is still under-measured in used-car acquisition.
2 min read→Trust
The digital trust audit: what your store looks like before a customer walks in
Many shoppers form a dealer preference before they call. If you have not audited what they see, you are running blind.
2 min read→AI search
Dealer AI schema: the boring work that decides if ChatGPT names you
Structured data is one of the machine-readable inputs models can use. In audits I have run, broken or missing schema is common enough to treat as a design problem, not a marketing problem.
2 min read→Digital transformation
What paperless actually taught me about dealer operations
Helping lead an early end-to-end paperless transaction was never about the PDF. It was about removing friction that operators had learned to live with.
2 min read→
Visual Doctrine → — four graphics that carry the acquisition argument.