The Dealer Playbook (2026)

14/12/2025

“Commit thy works unto the Lord and thy thoughts shall be established.”
Proverbs 16:3

There is a powerful promise in this verse that speaks directly to leaders, creators, and anyone building something meaningful.

When you commit your work to God, you are not handing over responsibility.
You are inviting alignment.
You are choosing to anchor your plans, your actions, and your ambitions in something higher than pressure, algorithms, or industry noise.

In business and in life, clarity is one of the greatest advantages you can have.
This verse reminds us that clarity does not come from hustling harder.
It comes from placing your work in the Lord’s hands and letting Him shape your perspective.
Once your intentions are aligned, your thoughts become sharper.
Your ideas become more focused.
Your decisions become more confident.

That is when your leadership feels different.
That is when your impact becomes noticeable.
That is when your work carries a sense of purpose that people can recognize immediately.

Happy Sunday gang!

13/12/2025

I was surprised by this.

Ford surveyed 4,008 people and asked how many genuinely enjoy the current car buying process.

The number was 18.

Not 18 percent.
Eighteen individuals out of more than four thousand.

When I heard JB Burnett share that, it made me pause.

If so few people enjoy the process, it raises a bigger question.
What would happen if more dealerships focused on making the experience feel better, not just faster?

JB compared it to Apple.
People upgrade their phones regularly because the process feels simple and enjoyable.

It made me wonder what the ripple effect could be in automotive if the buying experience followed a similar path.

The Playbook:

1.) Look closer at how guests feel during the process.
Sometimes the data reveals what we miss.

2.) Explore where friction shows up.
Even small improvements can change the entire perception of a visit.

3.) Consider the long-term impact of experience.
When people enjoy working with you, they come back sooner and more often.

Hearing this study reminded me how much opportunity there still is in our industry to rethink the familiar.

12/12/2025

Most people talk about resilience like it’s a skill you pick up later in life.

But for JB Burnett, resilience was the only way to survive.

No safety net.
No backup plan.
No option to fail.

When you grow up like that, you stop waiting for perfect conditions.
You start building the mindset that gets you through anything.

“Failure was never even a consideration. Whatever comes up, you have to figure it out.”

That line matters, because it exposes a truth most leaders avoid.

Resilience is not built when life is stable.
It is built when life gives you no choice but to grow.

And that is the lesson.

If you want to lead at a higher level, you cannot rely on comfort.
Comfort does not create clarity.
Comfort does not create capability.

The pressure does.
The challenges do.
The moments where you look around and realize the only way out is through.

The Playbook:

1.) Stop protecting yourself from hard things.
Resilience is built by exposure, not avoidance.

2.) Decide that you’re going to figure it out.
When failure is not an option, creativity becomes one.

3.) Let pressure shape you, not shrink you.
Every challenge is a rehearsal for the next level of leadership.

JB’s story is not about hardship.
It is about the gift inside hardship.

The resilience you build today becomes the leader you become tomorrow.

11/12/2025

Most leaders avoid hard conversations.

And that is why their teams never improve.

JB Burnett shared a leadership hack every dealership needs to hear.

Hard conversations are not about calling people out.
They are about creating commitment.

“You don’t give people commitments. People won’t keep your commitment.”

They keep their own.

That is the shift.
That is the difference between managing people and developing them.

JB’s framework is simple and brutal in its clarity.

Start with what they do well.
Name the opportunity.
Guide them to the solution.
Then get their commitment to execute it.

When the employee designs the fix, the accountability sticks.

The Playbook:

1.) Start with strengths to open the mind.
2.) Frame the issue as opportunity, not attack.
3.) Make them build the plan so they own the change.

If you want a stronger culture and higher performance, master the hard conversation.

10/12/2025

Most dealers wait for the market to stabilize before they make a move.

JB Burnett did the opposite.

He opened the first Ford Signature 2.0 store in the world while moving 300 units, relocating service and parts, rebuilding processes, and preparing his team for a completely new guest experience.

All at once.
All in real time.

He called it building the plane in the air.
And somehow, his team pulled it off in four days.

Then they had one of the biggest sales weeks in store history.

This is not luck.
It is culture.
It is mindset.
It is leadership that refuses to panic in the unknown.

JB told me something that stuck.
There was no option to fail.
Every problem was simply an opportunity to figure out the next solution.

That is the muscle most dealerships never build.
Not because they lack process.
But because they lack psychological readiness.

Especially when people whisper about a looming recession.
JB is not preparing to survive it.
He is preparing to outperform through it.

Because a recession affects dealers who sell transactions.
It does not affect dealers who sell experiences worth returning for.

And his Signature store proves it.

The Playbook:

1.) Treat every operational challenge as solvable.
The team believes what the leader believes.
2.) Build hospitality into the sales process.
Guests respond to how you make them feel before they care about anything else.
3.) Lead from center, not from fear.
A stable mind produces stable results, even in unstable markets.
4.) Redefine professionalism inside the store.
Dress, tone, verbiage, environment. Everything communicates the culture you are building.

JB Burnett is rewriting what leadership looks like in a modern dealership.
And the results speak for themselves.

🎧 Listen to the full conversation on The Dealer Playbook to see how culture, hospitality, and mindset drive performance long before the market does.

09/12/2025

Most leaders talk about preparing for a recession.
A few build systems that make one irrelevant.

This week I sat down with JB Burnett to unpack how he moved an entire dealership eight and a half miles in four days, rebuilt every process on the fly, and still posted the second biggest week in the store’s history right out of the gate.

But the numbers weren’t the most surprising part.

It was how he did it.

He redesigned the entire guest experience around hospitality instead of pressure.
No cubicles.
No friction.
No “old dealership energy.”
Just an environment built for trust, calm, and real conversation.

And the results flipped fast.
People behaved differently the moment they walked in.
The team operated differently too.

We also got into how he keeps his mindset steady when everything around him is moving, how he trains buy-in during big change, and why he believes hospitality might be the strongest strategy for whatever the market does next.

If you lead a team, especially in a market this unpredictable, you’re going to want to hear this one.

08/12/2025

Most leaders talk about preparing for a recession.
A few build systems that make one irrelevant.

This week I sat down with JB Burnett to unpack how he moved an entire dealership eight and a half miles in four days, rebuilt every process on the fly, and still posted the second biggest week in the store’s history right out of the gate.

But the numbers weren’t the most surprising part.

It was how he did it.

He redesigned the entire guest experience around hospitality instead of pressure.
No cubicles.
No friction.
No “old dealership energy.”
Just an environment built for trust, calm, and real conversation.

And the results flipped fast.
People behaved differently the moment they walked in.
The team operated differently too.

We also got into how he keeps his mindset steady when everything around him is moving, how he trains buy-in during big change, and why he believes hospitality might be the strongest strategy for whatever the market does next.

Tomorrow at 9 AM, you’ll see exactly what that looks like in action.

If you lead a team, especially in a market this unpredictable, you’re going to want to hear this one.

08/12/2025

Some leaders talk about transformation.
Then there are the ones who build it while sprinting.

Imagine this.
Your entire operation is uprooted.
Parts. Service. Every backlogged vehicle.
Three hundred units shoved eight and a half miles down the road.
A new facility that feels like the future, except half of it is still waking up.
Electricians and technicians weaving around each other.
Systems being invented in real time.

And in the middle of this chaos, a team pulls off the entire migration in four days.
Not four weeks.
Four days.

And what happens?
In the very first week they’re able to inhale again, the store records the second-largest week in its entire lifetime.

If this is what happens before a team even stabilizes, imagine what happens when they do.

Tomorrow, you’ll understand why.
And who else to do it better than Jeff Burnett tomorrow 9 am central time!
And once you hear it, you’ll rethink what your team is actually capable of.

07/12/2025

“Be still and know that I am God.”
Psalm 46:10

Stillness is not weakness.
Stillness is clarity.
Stillness is what happens when you trust God enough to pause, listen, and move with purpose instead of pressure.

In a world that celebrates constant motion, God reminds us that real strength comes from being anchored.
Anchored in your identity.
Anchored in your values.
Anchored in the quiet confidence that He is in control even when you are taking bold steps.

This kind of stillness sharpens leaders.
It keeps your decisions clean.
It keeps your mind clear.
It keeps your influence steady because you are not reacting from fear, you are responding from faith.

When you build your life, your leadership, and your work from that place, people feel it.
It is the kind of calm authority that only comes from knowing exactly who stands behind you.

Happy Sunday gang!

06/12/2025

A while back, I interviewed Aaron Lange, the president of Lange & Fetter Motors. We were standing in another dealership during an 800% Club visit and I asked him what he learned by watching how that store operated.

He said something very profound.
He talked about giving people real authority.
The kind that lets people stumble, grow, and eventually own the lane you hired them for.

He told me, “Sometimes you just have to dive in. You start together. You get good together. And then everyone plays to their strengths.”

Fast forward to my conversation with Noella in this week's episode.
Out of nowhere, she describes Aaron the exact same way he described the leader he wanted to become.

The creative freedom.
The trust.
The room to experiment.
The confidence he places in her to run with ideas that most dealerships would never approve.

She said, “I am able to do the things I do because Aaron has the full faith in me. He lets me take it and make it my own.”

Hearing that felt like watching a leader live out the exact lesson he once articulated.
No buzzwords.
No pretending.
Just a man doing what he said he would do.

And hearing his philosophy echoed by his team, unprompted, might be one of the strongest indicators of real leadership I have ever come across in automotive.

If you want to understand why their content resonates and why their culture feels different, this episode says it better than I ever could.

05/12/2025

Most dealerships spend their energy trying to make customers notice them.
Noella did the opposite. She made customers feel like they already knew her.

That shift is not about marketing.
It is about anthropology.
Humans do not trust what is impressive.
They trust what feels familiar.

Specs and features live on websites.
Connection lives in the micro moments most brands never show.
The laugh behind the counter.
The personality behind the posts.
The culture behind the scenes that reveals whether you are worth visiting at all.

The brilliance of Noella’s approach is not the content.
It is the philosophy behind it.

Every post becomes a doorway.
Not into the product.
Into the people.

That is why it works.
People decide where to buy before they decide what to buy.
They buy the feeling first.
The vehicle comes second.

The Playbook:

Tell the story behind the store.
Let personality replace polish.
Build a world people want to walk into.
Become familiar enough that trust already exists before the first conversation begins.

When the community feels like it knows you, engagement is not an outcome.
It is a reflex.

04/12/2025

If you have ever seen someone try to drive a stick shift for the first time, you already know the exact kind of chaos we got ourselves into.

Yes, Noella and I watched it together.
And yes, the story behind this video is even better than the video itself.

But here is the thing.
We did not stop at one.
We reacted to multiple Lange and Fetter classics in the full episode and every single one came with a backstory that had me either laughing, confused, or questioning how their dealership has not been nominated for an Emmy yet.

Noella breaks down what inspires these moments, Why people love them, Why the community eats it up, and how all of this turned a small town store into a social media powerhouse.

If you want to see the rest of the reactions, the full episode is up now.

https://thedealerplaybook.com/episodes/what-dealers-can-learn-from-lange-fetters-social-media-strategy

The Dealer Playbook

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