Ep 270: Things That Didn't Age Well

I just got back from ASOTU CON. Six to seven hundred people in Hanover, Maryland, and every major outlet in the retail auto industry was there too. Three days of content, connection, and of course, a lot of talk about AI.

As I took a few days to digest what just happened, some themes began to emerge.

We have a couple of neot signs in our office that have been up for about seven years. One says "Connection Agency." One says "Make It Meaningful." I put those up when I was running my creative agency, Congruent (now called "More Than Cars Creative", long before ASOTU, long before More Than Cars, long before any of this.

I walked back in after the event and looked at those signs and thought: "those aged really well."

Because everything that was resonating at ASOTU CON, every post people made, every moment people are talking about, it was about the humans. Not the AI summit. Not the tech. The people.

Meanwhile, the metaverse didn't age well. Zoom-only workplaces didn't age well. The CDP craze from 24 months ago didn't age well. They didn't age well because they were built on technology as the point, not the human.

Now we have AI. Not that AI isn't real and powerful. It is. It does belong on a shelf in our took room,  just not the top shelf.

Connection and meaning have been and will always belong the top shelf. That's what gets people out of bed. That's what carries you through hard times. That's what makes someone say "I see what you're building, and I want to be a part of it."

Hundreds people showed up to our event not because of the tech we talked about. They showed up because of what we're building together.

Pay attention to the humans around you. It's highly likely they'll be around longer than the latest tech. 

Pursue Clarity, Paul.

Connect with me at www.pauljdaly.com

Check out the More Than Cars Movement here. 

Transcript

I think this is episode 270 the Clarity Compressed Podcast. I'm Paul J. Daly. I'll be your host. I've had a lot of time to think about things that age well and things that don't age well, and I think I have a little insight on which is which. I'm going to share that, but the good times roll. This is Clarity Compressed. All right, I cut myself off there with the intro, but that's okay. I've only done 270 I shouldn't know the timing by now, but I don't. Just got back last week from a rip roaring event, a Soducon. If for some reason you get this podcast and you don't know what that is. I have a company called More Than Cars, and also a brand started as ASOTU ASOTU, Automotive State of the Union. Got some business partners, stood that sucker up during COVID, but either way, over the last five years, been growing a community in the retail auto industry that is centered on the human element, big surprise if you followed me for any amount of time. And we got last week, we had between 606 and 700 people together in Hanover, Maryland, at this beautiful venue, the live casino hotel, and the response to the intentionality that went into the event and the culture that we've been building over the last five years in this community, it's probably - I would probably consider it a niche community. I mean, it's probably between people who subscribe to the email and follow and engage on a regular basis. It's probably under 10,000 so sizable, but not like by any means huge. Just reminded the power of niche community, the power of people rallied around a unified perspective, a unified thesis on anything, because the thesis is the filter, which you hear, you know, we think about, and you view everything else from it's like the overlay, and so the six 700 people got together, six seven, I can see when you have kids, Gen Z years, like you can't, you just hear that. So we got together, and we had three days of keynotes, a bombastic made stage, tons of side stages. We had a bunch of influencers there, live streaming and making content. We had dealers, we had industry partners, vendors, press, every major outlet in the retail auto industry attended and participated in our event, which I believe is the only event, other than the NADA show, where that happens, because it is a wide open door to anyone in the industry. Yes, we're out there, yes, we're a media company, yes, we're a for-profit business, and we compete, but there's nothing more important than community if we are going to realize our vision for that, for more than cars, and that is to make the retail auto industry an industry that people fight to join, that it's such an amazing place to be, and that people see it as that, that they are trying to get into it, not as a last resort, but as a first, first choice, and we're starting to see that switch. It's a lot of work, it'll take a lot of work, but we'll get there. If you didn't know, we have a docu series. Best place to find it is on YouTube. You can also find it on Amazon Prime Video called The Truth About Car Dealers. Go to The Truth About Car dealers.com or Truth About Car dealers.com I don't know which one it is. I think it's Truth About Car dealers.com We probably bought both and redirected it. Either way, I'm not going to check. So, thinking about things that age well and things that don't age well is really where I'm at right now. And on our office here we have a few signs, they've been up. I originally built and renovated this building, or renovated it, and I didn't build it for at the time was my creative agency called Congruent, and we had some values and I just put some sayings, I said I said we're not a marketing agency, we're not a brand aid agency, we're actually a connection agency, because that's what I believe about brand - brand is the connector that makes people move to or toward step toward or step away from who you are, and then buy, because people buy from people they connect with, and brand isn't even about us telling you what we believe. It is like a mirror that holds our values up, and you look at the mirror. Anyone can look at the mirror and say, does this reflect, do I see my own reflection in it? Does it reflect my values back at me? Because that's really what brand is. You have to say what it stands for, but then people decide whether or not it reflects their values back to them, and that's how they interpret your brand. So, we put a sign on, say we're a connection agency in our meeting room. We have a big sign, these are neon signs that says make it meaningful, and the reason I'm bringing this up now, because those signs were purchased and put up seven years ago, something like that. Six years ago, and so it was a long time. Was before Asotto existed, before more than cars, before the dream for these events, or building this subculture, this vision for the retail auto industry. And now we certainly couldn't predict AI or technology, or in the sense that it's around today, and now someone. Of what we talked about at that event was AI. We actually had an AI auto industry.ai summit before the event, which was packed, and we had Zach Schefska, CEO of Car Edge, present, and he's doing some amazing things over there too. But I digress. All the talk about AI, all the talk about how can we leverage AI, you can't go on social media without, you know, a headline saying Claude Co just killed fill in the blank industry. We're seeing layoffs, we're having people say, I want to build the single person billion dollar company, and there's all this stuff that naturally I think lends to separation of person to person contact and leaning more into technology because of the allure or the promise that it gives us of success or money or efficiency or our time back and all the things, it's not the first time that's happened in culture AI, it's just the latest iteration and the most powerful iteration we've ever seen, but was thinking about what happened at Asotakon, our subtext or theme for the year was the year of the human talking about how the human is the thing that brings meaning to everything else, and focusing on the human and connection, collaboration is the only reason technology can actually have any meaning to begin with, and we had some of the most progressive tech minds in the industry, and beyond, there we were talking about some of the most progressive things happening, we had some, you know, Zach Shefska mystery shopped 100 dealers live from his keynote with 100 AI agents talking about serious integrations, serious use of the technology, but every post that we've seen from Asoda Con, and there are hundreds and hundreds of posts of people posting about Asotoccon. I think everyone that went posted like five things. That's why it seems like there were 10,000 people there. There were only six or 700 And so I was sitting and I was looking at the signs when we got back in our office and said connection agency, and I just thought to myself that aged well because the premise hasn't changed at all. And then I saw them make it meaningful sign in the boardroom, and I said, well, that age well too, because connection and meaning are what make the human experience the human experience are what bring value to our lives, are the thing that gets us out of bed every morning, that gives us hope for the future, that helps us push through hard times that enable us to push through hard times, because we have people, humans next to us, carrying us along, picking us up when we need, and then they give us meaning and value in our lives when they need something, and we can pick them up, and we can carry them, and then we can have an idea, and someone else can come alongside us and say, "Wow, I want to help you build that, I see that too, and then you connect over that, and you build something that brings value to somebody else's life, and I'm not just talking about the value that you know, you know, businesses tend to use that word value, which has some kind of monetary implication, or some kind of, you know, just intent, or maybe it's tangible, but it's just not deep, you know, values can be deep, all that say the connection agency make it meaningful science aged incredibly well, because the human element and the human experience is and always will be the most important thing, and people will always, always gravitate back to where they're actually always rebel. I'm going to say back to it. Let's talk about a few things that didn't age well. The metaverse, oh my gosh, remember the metaverse? There was only a couple of years ago when Facebook was dedicating billions, and all these companies dedicating billions to developing and building out the metaverse. Friends of mine buying real estate in the metaverse for a lot of money, and guess what, you know, people are people are just gonna not need to be anywhere, they experience the world from the comfort of their own home, and in this headset, right, like you, Ready Player One, guess what, you haven't heard mentioned in the last 12 months, aside from this show right here, the metaverse that did not age well, I think that people rebelled against the notion that they would just live in this fake world, and they started to do it, and they didn't like it, and so they stopped using it, and they started getting back to real world. Remember, like, Zoom call, oh, we're never gonna have live events again, people just gonna have Zoom calls, there's not gonna be any in-person. This is too great, it's too easy. Guess what, humans rebelled against it. Everything in our DNA rebelled against it. I mean, surely there's some people who loved it, right? Just introverts, or they just like being hermit kind of people, just fine. Nothing against them, they're friends of the show too. Second thing that didn't age well. I mean, you can fill in your technology thing. I was just thinking about this, and this is maybe a little bit nerdier than everybody in the audience, but a CDP, CDP is a data platform that businesses use to keep all their data centralized, so that then they can leverage that data in their CRM, or in their marketing, or in their operations analytics, and that was all we. Talked about 24 months ago. It was the bit. Do you have a CDP? I need a CDAP. I need two CDP. You don't need two CDPs, by the way. If you have two, you're doing it wrong. That didn't age well either. You know why these things don't age well. They don't age well because they're not based on the human. They are based on some technology or some fleeting thing that doesn't actually contribute to the overall human experience in a direct way, we put those things on the top shelf as if they're the most important thing, when actually they're just belong on a shelf, yes, but not definitely not the top shelf, and so AI is the latest one, AI agents, personal shoppers, personal, this, you know, virtual employees, yes, those are all going to be incredible pieces of technology that are part of our future, but they will never ever ever replace what people crave as human beings. They will never ever ever replace the creativity of a human, because creativity is about interpreting the world you're in, interpreting what has happened before, and then through that lens, imagining what could be in the future, and AI just simply cannot do it, because it doesn't have emotions, it doesn't have experience, all it has is data and inferences and algorithms. So people are going, you're already seeing it, people are starting to flock back to experiences, we're talking about a first party data, people that post things being a trust layer that we interpret everything else through. Trust can only be built through human experience, and the interpretation. We're going to get so good at smelling out the fakes, we're going to get so good at rebelling against it, and so we're going to see more of each other in person, more events, more conversations like this, more people rallying around how we can increase and enrich our experience as humans together. That's my little rant for episode 270 I'm so glad that you joined us. Join me today, and I hope that you pay attention to the humans out there and the relationships out there, because those are going to be the things that carry us forward. I will see you here next week. In the meantime, let's connect. Send me a DM. Let's do it.