Bonus: Jeff Miller - Mark Miller Subaru

A coin flip chose Subaru. The rest is strategy. Jeff Miller, fourth-generation owner of Mark Miller Subaru, joins us to share how a family dealership in Salt Lake City rewired the car-buying experience around trust, speed, and community. We dig into the city’s uniquely family-led dealership ecosystem, the moment the Outback transformed Subaru’s trajectory, and why the Miller team embraced one-price transparency and no-commission product specialists long before it was trendy.

We get candid about what most buyers already know: haggling drains time and rewards the worst behavior. Jeff breaks down how their Promise Price model shows payments up front, cuts deal time to under an hour, and lifts close rates to 40–45 percent. We also explore what “meeting customers where they are” looks like in practice—from full online checkout and home delivery to a new mobile service pilot designed for Park City owners who want maintenance done in the driveway.

Community sits at the heart of the story. During Subaru’s Share the Love event, each sale donates $250 to charity—and Mark Miller Subaru doubles that when customers choose local partners like Girls on the Run Utah and USARA, plus $5 from every oil change. Instead of spreading thin, they go deep: partners get showroom presence, media support, and introductions to collaborate for greater impact. It’s transparent, measurable, and local-first.

We also zoom out: why Salt Lake has remained a stronghold for family dealerships, how Subaru stacks up in Utah’s segments, and what national sales and scrap cycles signal about demand. If you care about easier car buying, ethical retail, or how a business can power real local change, this conversation delivers clear ideas you can feel.

Enjoy the episode, then help us spread the word—subscribe, leave a quick review, and share with a friend who’s car shopping or passionate about Utah nonprofits.

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (02:28):
So that's when Subaru really turned and became
the brand that it is now.
I went didn't go to college justassuming I was gonna be in the
car business by any means.
If we were to do that, it wouldmean that we're lying to them.
If you're gonna have a businessin the community, your job is to
support that community.
We actually got in trouble withSubaru last year because too
much of our money went to thelocal nonprofits.

SPEAKER_01 (02:46):
What is up, everybody, and welcome back to
another episode of the SmallLake City Podcast.
I'm your host, Eric Nilsen.
Now, this week's guest is JeffMiller.
Now, Jeff is the fourthgeneration owner of Mark Miller
Subaru.
Now, we talk a lot about theinteresting dynamics of Salt
Lake City and car dealerships,how a lot of them have
maintained these familyownerships for generations and a
lot of the names that you tendto see on a lot of the different

(03:08):
dealerships throughout thevalley.
But we also talk about how MarkMiller gives back to so much of
the community that has supportedit through the years, uh,
especially right now with theSubaru Share the Love event,
where with a new car purchase,can have up to$500 donated to a
local community, either Girls onthe Run, Utah or USARA.
Uh, but great guy, greatconversationalist, someone who

(03:28):
loves the community and does somuch for it, but definitely one
you all are gonna enjoy.
So let's hop into it.
Um the Olympics came in 2002,there was this property outside
of Snow Basin that was dedicatedto That's the military.
Yes.
Yeah, that's what's that's howthey got the land out there.
Yeah, it's crazy.
So sometimes like I have I havethis fault in myself where and
it's like the it gets it's likemy own unique flavor of hating

(03:50):
myself, where if I knowsomething, I assume everybody
knows something.
Yeah.
And so lately I've been tryingto do better without having
contact.
Yeah, that's literally it untilI like start talking.
They're like, how I mean,especially like as I'm gonna do
it.

SPEAKER_00 (04:02):
You talk to a lot of people too.

SPEAKER_01 (04:03):
Yeah, and like like I'll talk to people who like I
just meet and be like, oh well,did you know this?
Did you know that?
Like, how do you know so muchrandom shit about Salt Lake?
I'm like, well, like there'sthis thing called a podcast that
people do in their mid-30s whenyou're a white male, and the
next thing you know, you justcollect a bunch of of
information, and then sometimesit's worth something and
sometimes it's not.
Like there was uh, so there'sanother local podcast called

(04:25):
This Is a Place, and it'sessentially just like these two
guys that talk about, I mean,random, as you can imagine,
random places around Salt Lake.
And so they had me on and justkind of talk to me about my
journey.
And I guess one of them works ata company and their executive
team came out and he was givingme a tour of like Salt Lake, and
the guy's like, How do you knowall of this?
Like, what is this GilgalGardens and why is Joseph Snipp
on a Sphinx and like all ofthese random things?

(04:46):
He's like, you know, you juststart a podcast, and next thing
you know, you just kind of havea bunch of random information
that comes together.
I like it.
Cool.
Well, Jeff, I'm excited becausewhen I first because I mean I if
you're from Salt Lake, I meanSubaros are Subarus, first and
foremost.
And then you kind of know themthe major dealerships in
general.
And it wasn't until about lastyear, yes, because it was my

(05:11):
sister's boyfriend's birthday,and we were at Proper.
Okay.
And so he um oh my gosh, whatwas the old name?
Now it's I can't remember thenew name.
Um, uh David Garbett.
Uh and so we were there.
He's like, Oh, you got to getthe Suba Blue.
And I was like, tell me more.
And he's like, Well, fundraisingMark Miller Subaru, partnered at
Proper.

SPEAKER_00 (05:31):
The only car dealership out there in the
world with its own beer.

SPEAKER_01 (05:33):
Yeah.
Talk about diversification.
Isn't that right?
I mean, that's what a fourthgeneration car dealership owner
how we figure it out.
Yeah.
Trial and error, you know, andnow things we talked about, then
now there's coffee beans in themix.
We got thirst soda coming intoplay.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm a big fan of peoplethat partner because I mean, I
do want to get into it, maybenot right off the bat, but um

(05:53):
Salt Lake is a very unique placewith car dealerships.
And I don't know, and I'mcurious to get your take on it,
because I don't know if that's athing everywhere, and I just
haven't gotten to know like theall the different levers of the
economy, or if it's such like aunique Salt Lake thing.
Because I know, like, I mean,the Millers, like they've
expanded into so many differentthings, but it like started
here, you know.

SPEAKER_00 (06:14):
It's really interesting with the way it is
unique to Salt Lake.
Okay.
So the Garf and the Miller thingis very unique to Salt Lake.
So before the Miller sold, whenit was just Garf and Miller,
Garf and Miller were two of thetop 10 dealership groups in the
country based out of Salt LakeCity.
Why?
Which is crazy.
Because that was my hypothesis.
Is this like a that isabsolutely insane to think about

(06:35):
somewhere as small as Salt Lake,Salt Lake City?
Yeah, I see it.
So I threw that in for you.
Uh would have the two of the top10 dealer groups in the country.
Like that's insane to evenfathom.
And then there's just a lot oflongtime family dealerships in
Salt Lake.
There's a lot of family groupsthat have just never sold, and
there are not very many publics.
Yeah.
Like Asbury coming in and buyingLarry Miller was the first time

(06:57):
a public really came in.
So a publicly traded companycame in and bought into Utah.

SPEAKER_01 (07:01):
Because even in my head right now, I'm trying to
think of any public computer.

SPEAKER_00 (07:03):
Yeah, there's no Lithias, there's no AutoNation,
none of that has ever hit Utah.

SPEAKER_01 (07:08):
Yeah, because I mean there's a couple of like the
used people, like the uh Pro,what's the one in South, like
right by IKEA?

SPEAKER_00 (07:15):
There's like Carvana and Carmax and those guys are
the big ones, but no, none ofthe new car franchises.
And the re and the biggestreason for that is because how
strong the families were.

SPEAKER_02 (07:24):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (07:24):
Right.
Is that if a dealership everwent up for sale in Utah, it's
not getting past Ken Garf or oneof the other big groups, Young
Auto or one of the other ones,they're gonna buy it before it
ever hits a public.

SPEAKER_01 (07:35):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (07:35):
I mean, I mean, that's that's what was so
surprising when Asbury came inand bought all Larry Miller.

SPEAKER_01 (07:39):
But that's like that's that's also like a thing
with Utah in general, is like, Imean, for example, if someone's
like, hey, I think I'm gonnasell my house, it's usually
talked about in the ward in theneighborhood for a good month
before it ever goes on themarket.
In the same way, I mean youcatch a drift of, hey, I think
so-and-so is trying to sell adealership, it's like, well,
send them an email.

SPEAKER_00 (07:57):
And that's without question the way it's been here
for the last hundred years.

SPEAKER_01 (08:00):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (08:01):
So that's what that's why it became such a
closed environment to publics.
And the Asbury thing was a bighit in Utah.
If there was a big change in thecar world for a public to
finally be in the market, see,and this is where I like it.
And they never change the name.
So no one really realizes it'sAsbury yet.
Yeah, it's like there's stillLarry Miller on the name, which
I still I can't imagine thatmyself personally.
But I get like you just likeselling that's your family name.

unknown (08:23):
Right.

SPEAKER_00 (08:23):
I don't disagree.
I I assume it's I assume at somepoint it'll go away, but I don't
know.
It is what it is.

SPEAKER_01 (08:28):
You know, it's it'd be interesting to see.
I mean, it's one of those oneswhere like, let me see that
contract.
I'm gonna see there's value init.

SPEAKER_00 (08:34):
Without question, there's so much value in the
Larry Miller name.
I don't I don't blame Asbury forwanting to keep it.

SPEAKER_01 (08:38):
Oh, I mean, it's one of the like I'm trying to think
of more household names that arelocal than Larry H.
Miller.

SPEAKER_00 (08:44):
Mark Miller.

SPEAKER_01 (08:45):
There we go.
That's the one.
And it's a and it's a noteuphemism, uh Which has no
relation to Larry Miller at all.

SPEAKER_00 (08:52):
Because that's what I'm gonna ask.
I was curious, but I didn'tthink it did.
Yeah, there's zero relation.
So my so our family, we startedin the car business twenties.
So we're fourth generation.
So my great uncle.
How did he start?
Like what was his great uncle's.
I mean, if you really want to goback, you could probably go past
fourth generation.
And we were like horses andbuggies in Idaho in the late
like late.
Just like you moving into beer.

(09:12):
Ed Carlson.
I have a photo of Ed Carlsoncarriages in Idaho from the
1800s.
So like you really could go backthat far.
Oh my god, that's so really youcould go farther if you really
wanted to stretch it.
We should go to four becausethat's the easiest to talk
about.

SPEAKER_01 (09:25):
We gotta talk to your marketing guy and get that
in there.

SPEAKER_00 (09:27):
You gotta get that to the fifth and start doing ho
horses and buggies.

SPEAKER_01 (09:30):
Partner with uh like Family Search.

SPEAKER_00 (09:33):
Exactly.
So but it was my great uncle, soFred Carlson was his name.
And he he moved it from Idaho'sa Ford, he had the Ford
dealership in Idaho, and hemoved to Salt Lake to take over
the Ford distributorship for thestate of Utah.
So distributorship is the guysover the dealers.
Yes.
So that Pat hands out thefranchises to each of the
stores.
At this point, there's only fourdistributorships left in the

(09:55):
entire United States for anybrand.
So two of them are Subaru, and Ithink two of them are Toyota.
And other than that, every otherthey've all bought up all the
distributorships and they're allsold by their manufacturers.

SPEAKER_01 (10:06):
That makes sense, right?

SPEAKER_00 (10:07):
And so he was my great uncle, so my his brother,
Harry, would be mygreat-grandpa, and they were
partners in the business.
And then my my like this quickquick on it, but then my grandpa
was the son-in-law.
So he was the son-in-law,son-in-law sneaking in.
Son-in-law story, and he hadmarried the boss's daughter and
got one of the franchises.
So he got the Pontiac franchise,which is what is currently what

(10:29):
became Mark Miller Pontiac,which is what or became Larry,
it was Laurie Miller, which iscrazy.
That's insane.
My grandpa's name was Laurie.

SPEAKER_01 (10:35):
What was his middle name?
Do you know?

SPEAKER_00 (10:36):
Um his Laurie was actually his middle name.
Oh, okay.
His name was Glenn.
I was just curious, what's itlike in the city?
Yeah, Glenn Laurie Miller.
So so the funny thing is that'swhy there's an H.
That makes sense.
So when Larry Miller came totown in in 1979, my dad would
had taken over at that point,was the owner of the store.
And they were, let's just LarryMiller is where it is currently.

(10:56):
So 50th South and State, andwe're on 35th and state.
And one was called Laurie MillerToyota, one was called Larry
Miller Pontiac, or it was LarryMiller Pontiac and Larry Miller
Toyota.
And the some they sued him andsaid, You can't call yourself
that, it's too close.
You're getting phone calls,we're getting mail.
So the settlement in thesettlement for it before he went
to court was he had an H.

(11:18):
And this is in the state ofUtah, so in the state of Utah is
the only place that Larry Millerstores have an H.
If you go to any store in anyother state, there's no H.

SPEAKER_01 (11:29):
Insane.
Isn't that crazy?
That actually is.

SPEAKER_00 (11:31):
And six months later, my dad changed the name
to Mark Miller.

SPEAKER_01 (11:33):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (11:34):
And actually, another piece of contributor
who's changed to Mark Miller onmy the day I was born.

SPEAKER_01 (11:38):
That's important.

SPEAKER_00 (11:39):
The grand opening party for Lar Mark Miller
Pontiac was my birthday.

SPEAKER_01 (11:42):
Where do you fall in brief order?

SPEAKER_00 (11:44):
So I'm the youngest.

SPEAKER_01 (11:45):
So you've been the most liked, obviously.

SPEAKER_00 (11:47):
No, generally.

SPEAKER_01 (11:48):
So how the oldest sibling gets born like we're
changing in.
Hit or miss.
It depends on the season, age,general temperament.

SPEAKER_00 (11:54):
Yeah, so that's how we got in.
Then we end up picking up, wepicked up Subaru in 1971.

SPEAKER_01 (11:57):
And then Which honestly, like, that's a lot of
foresight, you know?
Like, imagine being like, youknow, I think there's gonna be
some Subaru equity in Utah forsure.

SPEAKER_00 (12:05):
So that was random.
So my dad would have been 21 atthe time, and he was like, uh,
sales manager, an officemanager, something like that,
where he was done.
His grandpa calls my my grandpa,his dad calls him his office and
says, We have a chance to pickup another franchise.
They were just Pontiac at thetime.
And he's like, it can be Subaruor Honda.
Those are the two options theyhad.
And this is 1971.
No one had any idea what thosewere.

(12:26):
They were just names.

SPEAKER_01 (12:27):
They're like, why would we abandon Pontiac for
these things?

SPEAKER_00 (12:30):
You weren't abandoning it.
You were gonna add it.
It was an add-on.
So it was an add-on.
So they literally pulled a coinout of the desk and flipped it.
That's how we ended up beingSubardealer.
There's no joke on that.
Like, that's a verified story.

SPEAKER_01 (12:41):
Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 (12:41):
And so we became a Subardealer off that.
And we always joke.
I actually joked at our grandopening last week with the
president of Subaru there.
That first 25 years of that coinflip was horrible.
It was a bad coin flip becauseHonda took off and Subaru was
tough.
And then about 1996, what cameout for Subaru was Subaroutback.
Yeah.
So that's when Subaru reallyturned and became the brand that

(13:03):
it is now.
And in the last 15 years, it'sjust gone through the roof.
And the the beauty of Subaru isjust it combined connects to who
we are a lot better than anyother brand would.
It's just how we run ourbusiness, community-based,
totally, nonprofits, more thanjust trying to make money.
Subaru's that brand.
And so it fits so great for usand just a great partnership.

SPEAKER_01 (13:22):
I just love that we're 10 minutes into this and
my jaw's already down and mymind's been blown by three
times.
Flipped a quarter.

SPEAKER_00 (13:27):
We actually had our 50th anniversary, we gave away
coins.
You hit a quarter?
Yeah, it was a coin.
That's little commemorativecoins for the flip.

SPEAKER_01 (13:34):
I just want to like, is someone who like has to
source things and try to find,like, I mean, like, my I gotta
have a merch guy, I gotta havethis.
Like, we gotta go find a coinguy, you know?
It's amazing what you can find.
Insane.
Um but I guess like it's thehistory is fascinating because
again, like to have I mean, downto a coin flip of hey, we're
gonna do this dealershipcompetitive.

(13:55):
I mean, in hindsight, both wouldhave done great.
One would have done bettergenerally, Subaru done even
better locally.
Yes.
Um But I'm curious of like yourstory and all this, because
obviously you get born, the namegets changed, it's like this uh
prophecy being written thatyou're gonna take the the helm
at some point.
But what was it like grow?

(14:15):
Like, did you were you prettyactive at the dealership?

SPEAKER_00 (14:18):
I worked I worked in the storage as a kid, just I
mean, little stuff, cart washingcars, worked in parts.
Used to joke that you'd put youin parts to go dust parts
shelves.
So I did that as a kid.
But it goes back, my dad wouldtell stories back to when we
were really little, like five,six, seven years old, and he'd
pay us, I think it was like anickel a car to lock cars on the
lot.
Yeah.
Because what they used to do oncar lots is every morning you

(14:39):
would go out, so this is beforeautomatic keys, right?
So you'd they'd bring a keyboardout, and everyone would go out
to the entire lot and unlockevery car on the lot so that the
customers could walk and get in.
Now we don't unlock the carsuntil a customer actually wants
to get in.
It's just a different world now.
But what would happen is at theend of a shift, when it's
closing time, six, seveno'clock, all of a sudden all the
cars have to get locked again.
So everyone has to go door bydoor and lock every car.

(15:01):
So we get paid a nickel a car togo lock doors.
That was my first job at thestore.
Interesting.
But um, I I really I I didn't goto I went to college just
assuming I was gonna be in thecar business by any means.
I mean, I went to USC for abusiness degree.
I wanted to be in some sort ofbusiness.
I didn't know what that part.
I don't know, just wanted to seewhat I liked and see what I was
interested in.

(15:21):
And met a lot of cool people atUSC, ended up working in uh some
healthcare stuff when I firstgraduated.
Um pendulum swing the completedirection.
That doing healthcare staffingstuff.
And then uh yeah, that washorrible.
And then worked for a couple cardealerships down in LA, which
there's a very big differencebetween a car dealership in Los
Angeles, California and a cardealership in Salt Lake City,

(15:43):
Utah.

SPEAKER_01 (15:44):
What's the TLDR of that?

SPEAKER_00 (15:45):
It is a lot shadier.
Yeah, I mean, I think I wasworking for a Porsche Audi store
at one point, and I think liketwo-thirds of the stores were
under investigation for fraud atthe time.

SPEAKER_01 (15:55):
Why'd that guy just hand him an envelope of cash?
Don't ask questions.

SPEAKER_00 (15:57):
Oh, I had no, I had a honestly right a couple days
before I quit, it was uh Iliterally watched a guy walk
into the general manager'soffice with briefcase, shut the
door for half an hour, leave,and that was like a regular
thing.
It's like, yeah, they'redefinitely laundering money.
So got out of that pretty quick.
So was that like, did your dadknow?

SPEAKER_01 (16:15):
He's like, Well, are you gonna work at another
dealership?
You can come work at ourdealership.

SPEAKER_00 (16:17):
No, I wasn't ready to move back to Salt Lake, yep.

SPEAKER_01 (16:19):
Fair.

SPEAKER_00 (16:20):
So that was a big part of it.
So and then my dad had anopportunity to pick up another
store back in about 2003.
Okay.
And so at that point, he askedme if I'd come back and help him
with it.
And so I at that point I movedback and the store didn't end up
working, like getting the newstore.
So we didn't end up getting it,but I was back at that point.
So I started work startedworking for the family.

(16:40):
And that that was October of2003.
So I'm 22 years now, yeah.
So the nice thing, one thing mydad did was smart is that I mean
I started at the bottom.
I he wasn't, even though I hadthe degree from USC, business
degree, graduate with honors,it's you're starting as a
salesman.
Yeah.
So I was a salesman, workedmyself up, special finance,
became a finance manager,finance manager, used car

(17:01):
manager, used car manager to newcar manager.
And then, and while I was doingthat, I got my MBA at the U.
So I got my master's at the U inbusiness.
And then in 2009, we got verylucky to be able to purchase the
Southtown Subaru store.

SPEAKER_02 (17:16):
Got it.

SPEAKER_00 (17:17):
Larry Miller's first store Larry Miller ever sold,
actually.
And they sold it to us, and webought their Sure store in 2009.
And my dad said, if we're gonnado this, then you're gonna run
it.
I said, Okay.
So at 29 years old, I took overgeneral manager of the Subaru
store in Southtown and haven'tlooked back.
Dang.
So I've run both stores sinceI've been I ran took over

(17:37):
Midtown as well in 2011 and havebeen running both stores ever
till last December when Ifinally hired a general manager
to take over both stores andallow me to focus on more big
picture stuff.

SPEAKER_01 (17:49):
Crazy.

SPEAKER_00 (17:49):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (17:50):
I love the stories of like family business, for
example, because I've seen it goboth ways.
I've seen ones where it's like,all right, well, you're gonna
take it over some days.
We're just gonna make you the VPof some title and you're just
gonna come and very common inthe car business.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I could name a lot ofnames.
Matt, I'm not gonna name a lotof names.
Actually, fuck it, let's namesome kidney.

SPEAKER_00 (18:09):
I don't like it, show.
Let's do it.
Well, this is as you could say,if you think small lake city,
try small lake car dealershipcity.
That's a small, it's a smallworld in the car building.
Everybody knows everybody.

SPEAKER_01 (18:20):
Well, it's like that's been a fun thing about
the podcast and just like my owngeneral like ADHD rabbit holes,
is like I'll go down a rabbithole, be like, oh, this is a lot
small.
Like the beer brewing umcommunity and breweries, so
small.
Pretty much all of them.
I mean, like Kevin Templin usedto work at Red Rock, who worked
with Isaac Winter, who then wentover to High West, and you just

(18:41):
kind of find all these littlethings, or even going into the
art community and talking to uhMicah Christensen, who is like
the middle of the wheel of thespoke of that, because he's like
the biggest dealer ofeverything, but then also wrote
the anthology of all the artistsin Utah.
And so everybody knows him, heknows everybody.

SPEAKER_00 (18:57):
Then you have the nonprofit world, non-profit
world, pretty much everybodyjust moves around in different
nonprofits between the 50s,maybe not profit.

SPEAKER_01 (19:03):
And then everybody just kind of passes money to
each other.
Everybody knows everybody.
Yeah.
Which is fun.
Like I like it.
It's fun to see how small thecity is, but still like there's
so much going on.
And also to the point of likethe I mean Southern California
car dealerships, like everythinghere in so many of like the
different, I mean, call themindustries, verticals, how what
have you, like everything's alot more collaborative.
Everyone is a lot more umunderstanding than a lot of

(19:27):
other places.
And so it's been fun to see howthat's played out.
I'd assume at least has somesort of it's a nice thing in the
car.

SPEAKER_00 (19:33):
I mean, generally, I mean, we don't really southern
Utah and Northern Utah areconsidered kind of different
places in the Utah car world.
So it's pretty much northernUtah car stores and the St.
George stores, right?
And so generally, and mostmanufacturers have five or six
stores in northern Utah, kind ofspread throughout the valley.
So everybody knows everybody.
We talk a lot.
Like I'm working really hardtrying to get us to work

(19:55):
together better.
Yeah.
Rather than like like the Toyotaguys and the Honda guys, they do
a really good job of workingtogether, right?
Yeah, like your Utah Toyotadealers or Utah Honda dealers.
We we've never really had thatin the Subaru world.

SPEAKER_02 (20:04):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (20:05):
So we're trying to get better at doing that and
kind of competing against theToyotas and the Hondas of the
world, not each other.

SPEAKER_01 (20:11):
Yeah.
No, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 (20:12):
Like we want someone, if someone comes to buy
an Outback, we should be talkingabout why they should buy an
Outback over a Jeep Jeep versuswhy they should buy it from us
instead of the other Subaru guy.

SPEAKER_01 (20:21):
Yeah.
Let's talk about that for aminute because I think there's
something that I really like.
Cause let's go back to a collegepaper I wrote when I was doing a
whole SWOT analysis on Tesla.
Yeah.
And so uh part of, I mean, I'llget into the specific point, not
take walk bullet by bullet ofthe SWOT analysis, but like one
of them was I mean, cardistribution, where there's so
many laws uh mostly at a statelevel of saying cars have to be

(20:43):
sold at a dealership level,can't be sold directly from a
manufacturer.
And I mean, Tesla tried to turnthat on the head, worked good in
some places, worked better atother places.
I mean, especially when, again,like you can go down to another
deal dealership, he's like, youoffer me a hundred less than
you.
I like, why would I?
But one thing I reallyappreciate about Mark Miller is
it's standard pricing.
Like you we're gonna give youthe best deal that we can, not

(21:04):
based on who can negotiate thebest or who can go talk to
someone else the best.
Hundred for fact.
And I mean talk me through thatdecision of moving it to that
way, because I imagine there's alot of financial ramifications,
both positive and negative.

SPEAKER_00 (21:14):
For sure.
So we did that in 2014.
So we're almost 11, 12 yearsinto this thing now.
And the logic behind it, and I'dI'd wanted to do it for years,
and finally I had a good uhdealer friend of mine from
Washington, a guy named DaveJacter, kind of came back to
look at some software orsomething like that, and met him
there and ended up talking to myoffice about one price car

(21:35):
selling, about this idea of whyyou do it.
And the basic logic behind it isin most car dealerships you go
to, the people that treat youthe worst get the best car deal.
Yes.
That's horrible.
Like that's a horrible businessmodel.
Like you're encouraging peopleto beat you up and fight and go

(21:57):
back and forth and create athing because that's how they're
gonna get the best price.
And that makes zero sense to me.
And the guys, the new guys comein, you're talking about
business model for Tesla, theRivians, the Carvanas, they
figure that out.
That's what they figured out.
That they know that people don'twant to negotiate.
Like there's pretty good studiesout there that says about it's
only about 15 to 20 percent ofthe US population actually wants

(22:20):
to negotiate for a car.

SPEAKER_01 (22:21):
And I would love to study that population.
Because whenever someone's like,I love negotiating, like I don't
know, I know I usually have Ihave like my

SPEAKER_00 (22:28):
Employee orientation.
It's one of the questions I askevery time I know employee
orientation.
We really knew employees andsay, raise your hands if you
like to negotiate.
And without veil, it's alwaysone out of five.
It's like one out of five, twoout of six.
That's always in that range.
And it's because we don't teachour kids to negotiate.
And so what happens is they gointo a car dealership and they
have there we force them to.
Yeah.
They're not negotiating with cardealers because they want to.

(22:50):
They're negotiating because theyknow if they don't, they're not
going to get a good deal.
Yeah.
And there's a financialincentive attached to it.
So what we're doing is we'resaying we're going to give the
best price right up front onevery car.
Are you going to get and theidea of it is are you going to
get the absolute best priceevery time if you wanted to
spend three hours fighting anddoing like?
No, probably not.
That doesn't matter becauseyou're going to have a great
experience.
And we can sell a car in a halfhour.

(23:11):
Good luck doing that anywhereelse.
Yeah.
No one else is selling a car ina half hour to an hour.

SPEAKER_01 (23:15):
Three weeks, five weeks.

SPEAKER_00 (23:16):
Yeah, three hours, four hours.
Even if you know what you want,it's four hours.
Because I mean, the the bestpart about it is when you the
first time someone really getsto experience what one price and
what we call promise price iswhat we call it at our stores.
And it's they sit down, they gofind their car.
It's pretty standard.
Like we show them the car, wetell them exactly how we're
doing business, right?
And they walk in the door, sothere's no surprises.
They come down, they kind of sitdown to negotiate, right?

(23:39):
Like it's the car deal, cardealership thing.
And they sit down and thesalesperson puts the information
on the computer of the car theywant, shows them their payment,
shows them and says, which oneyou like.
And the customer, the first timethe customer sees that, they're
just baffled by it.

SPEAKER_01 (23:51):
It's like when you pull into the parking lot to get
the cars.
That's part of the experience.

SPEAKER_00 (23:55):
They're sitting there like, wait a minute,
you're not you're not gonna goto your manager and go back and
forth to the desk and bring thething.
Why would I?
The price is there.
That's the price you're paying.
So I can all I have to do is putthe car and show you what the
payments are, and you get topick what the payments you want.
And it just baffles people'sminds.
And it's good, a lot of them getconfused.
And then now generally a lot ofpeople still try and ask.
It shows they're testing us,they're testing to see if we're

(24:17):
really not gonna negotiate, andwe don't.
And the idea of it is that if wewere to do that, it would mean
that we're lying to them, right?
If we tell someone we're notgonna negotiate, then they come
in and we negotiate, thenwhere's our integrity in that?
We're we're lying to thecustomer.
And so the idea is we're gonnatreat the old grandma that's
what any other store would callher a lay down or all these
horrible car terms that are outthere.

(24:39):
We're gonna treat the exact sameas someone who wants to come in
and beat us up.
And do we lose customers for it?
Sure.
But the idea is, I mean, basicbusiness basis marketing is if
your target markets everybody,your target markets nobody.

SPEAKER_02 (24:51):
Yes.

SPEAKER_00 (24:51):
Right?
And that's what most cardisciples are.
If you ask most car dishipshipwho are your target market,
they'll say, everybody.
Everybody could buy a car fromme.

SPEAKER_01 (24:57):
When's the best time to buy car?
No.

SPEAKER_00 (24:58):
No, no, first of all, no, everyone can't.
And one thing we found when weinitially did it was it pushed a
lot of our complaining customersaway.
So, like the customers that madeour service managers and our
service departments' lives verydifficult, the difficult
customers, we had a lot less ofthem after we did this.
I imagine repeating back too.
Yeah, and we all the repeatcustomers are the easiest thing

(25:20):
in the world.
Generally, especially a leasecustomer that comes back now,
just walks back in and says,give me another one.

SPEAKER_01 (25:24):
Yeah.
Tell me the price.

SPEAKER_00 (25:25):
That just says, I'm gonna do another outpack, I'll
I'll test drive when I get in,just have it all written up,
I'll show up at four o'clock.
You know, 45 minutes, they'reback out the door and see you in
three years.
Right.
And so then the idea of us istrying to figure out how we take
what we've done with one priceand now take it to the next
level and how we can meet peoplewhere they are, how some of
these carvanas and carmaxes aredoing, how we can make it the

(25:47):
most convenient process for whatthe customer wants, not how we
want to do business.
Yeah.
Because most car dealershipslook at and say, I'm gonna make
the customer come to me and doit how I want to do it.
We're trying to look at and say,how can I make it what the
customer wants?
If the customer wants to do itall online, like they're buying
a Tesla, we should have thatprocess.
We should have that available tothem.
It's not gonna be a lot of ourcustomers, but what if it's 10%?

(26:07):
Okay, we'll do it all online,deliver it to their house, and
everything's great.
If your customer doesn't want tocome to our service department,
we're working right now on a newpilot that's gonna launch in
January for mobile service.
We're gonna go start doingSubaru service to people's
driveways.
Heck yeah.
Pit crew shows out.
We've we bought two Foresters,we shipped them down to
California to get upfitted forit, and they're ready to go.
I love that.

(26:27):
And so we're gonna start doingthat for especially for Park
City.

SPEAKER_01 (26:30):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (26:30):
Because Park City, it's tough for people in Park
City to make it all the way downthe canyon.
Oh, hell yeah.
So if we have a car up therethat just runs loops in Park
City all day long, it'll knockout a lot of people's work.

SPEAKER_01 (26:38):
Well, that's like half of my friend Warner
Trabert's business model withFleetly, is like, I don't want
to deal with this.
And they're like, Yeah, we'llcome do it for you.
You leave your car on the tarmacfor your private jet, it'll take
care of everything.

SPEAKER_00 (26:47):
100% because like that's what people want.
And they're willing to pay apremium for it.
I'm I would absolutely pay apremium for that.
If I didn't have to go doservice in my car, I'd come to
my driveway.
Yeah, knock it out.
Save me two hours of my life.

SPEAKER_01 (26:59):
Because that's what I love.
Like, I always use this quote,like in compared to a lot of
things of like buying, I mean,tech software or kind of
whatever it could be, I mean,any sort of sales process can
apply it to.
But if I always say, if I get tothe end of a sales process and I
use a car, for example, and thatsalesman is like really happy
and friendly, like I got takenadvantage of.
Like I want us to equally hateeach other by the end of it, and

(27:21):
then it worked out.
But again, if we can skip thatwhole thing, it's like, yeah,
come here, test drive this, youlike this, here's the payment.

SPEAKER_00 (27:26):
Let's get away from that.
What the idea is we we want ourwe want our salespeople, we're
called, we don't call themsalespeople, we call them
product specialists.
And we want our productspecialists to be a true
advocate for the customer.
So, I mean, another greatexample of part of our one price
thing, we don't pay our sales,our product specialists on
commission.

SPEAKER_02 (27:42):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (27:42):
So they don't make money based on how much money we
made on the car.
They make money whether theysell the car or not.

SPEAKER_02 (27:48):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (27:48):
And they make money the same amount of money if they
sell you a$50,000 car as theysell you a$20,000 car.
So the idea of that is that Iwant them to pick the car that
the customer actually wants, notwhat makes them the most money.
Most car deals you go to, Iguarantee you there are four or
five cars on every lot in thiscity that have a thousand dollar
spiff on them.
The sales guy sells that yellowCamaro over there, they get a

(28:12):
thousand dollars.
So a customer comes in lookingfor a mini-ban and they go, you
thought about that yellow Camaroover there?
It's like, we know you'relooking for a fan.
It's awesome.
And that's not genuine.
It's not doing true needsassessments of our customers and
getting the perfect car for whatthey need, not what we need to
sell them.

SPEAKER_01 (28:27):
Exactly.
And like relationships ingeneral, whether it be with
yourself, your family, and lovedone, business, I mean, they all
kind of have that same pillars,but I've never seen a
relationship go well that startsoff with lying.
Totally.
Like even when I was single,like there's a multiple dates I
went on where someone shows upand like, oh, those are some old
pictures.
How do you expect me to be like,you know what, this is okay?

(28:48):
Like I'm okay with you lyingabout me.
Like, I know like, and it can goso many different ways, whether
you start a job and it'sdifferent than what they
promised you in the interviewprocess.
Or if someone's hiding somethingfrom like credit cards in
America, like there's likenothing to start to.

SPEAKER_00 (29:00):
And in the car dealership world, it's
encouraged.

SPEAKER_01 (29:02):
Yeah.

unknown (29:02):
Right?

SPEAKER_00 (29:03):
You're encouraging you're encouraging, you're
encouraging the customer to comeand say, Oh, well, I got an
offer for$1,500 less down thestreet.
Are you gonna match it?
Like what they don't a lot oftimes they don't never gone down
the street.
They don't, they're just sayingto see what happens, right?
And we encourage that to happen.
That that that's been the issuewith the car business, and it's
why it's opened the door,especially on the used car side,
for the Carvanas and theCarMax's and these other groups

(29:25):
to come in and take that pieceof the market.

SPEAKER_01 (29:27):
Totally.

SPEAKER_00 (29:27):
Because they've I'll give them credit, they've done a
good job, making it a greatexperience.

SPEAKER_01 (29:31):
Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 (29:32):
Well, we're gonna beat them and we're gonna we're
gonna do a better job of it.
We're just gonna figure out, wejust gotta do a little bit
better.

SPEAKER_01 (29:36):
And it's a long-term play, too.
It's not like it's gonnaeverything's gonna work out the
first month.
I mean, sure, when the firstchanged, there were salespeople
like product specialists saying,uh, uh, they're they're not
buying, I'm not doing this, theywant to negotiate, they're
getting better prices.
Like, hold the course, it'sgonna work out.
And then after a while, peopleare like, oh, I like this
better.
I do want to come back.
I do want to know.

SPEAKER_00 (29:54):
What it ends up working is we end up dealing
with less people and selling thesame amount of cars.
That's that's generally whatends up happening in the one
price world.
And in a normal in a normal cardealership, it's about 25% of
the customers that walk in thedoor walk out with a car.
Yeah, but in our world, it's 40to 45.

SPEAKER_01 (30:13):
That's insane.
Well, it but if it makes senseif you think about it.

SPEAKER_00 (30:15):
It's like I'm a big ops guy.
Yeah.
And so I rent all aboutefficiently.
But the the logic behind it isthat you've taken their options
to from three to two.
In a regular car dealership, youI show you a payment.
What can you say?
Yes, no, or if you do this.
Those are the three options.
In our world, you can say yes orno.

SPEAKER_02 (30:32):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (30:33):
Right?
So it just makes the process somuch easier that it just goes
fast.

SPEAKER_01 (30:38):
Yeah, might as well.
Yeah.
And so like one thing I becauselike people always reach out to
me to be on the podcast, andit's like a lot of from a lot of
industries that there's a lot ofthem.
I mean, like whether it's beattorneys, whether it be I mean,
accountants, fitness people,whatever it might be.
And my response back to them isalways, why you?
Because I mean, if it's just ageneral, let's use attorney for
the sake of the argument, like,ah, you know, just I want some

(30:59):
publicity I want to do.
It's like, okay, like, no, thankyou.
But if you're like the numberone attorney that knows what's
going on in Salt Lake, like,yeah, I'd love to have that
conversation.
But then also, and which is likepart of the whole podcast, is
there's so many people doinggreat things to make this a
better place.
And one thing I love about MarkMiller's Subaru compared to a
lot of the other dealerships ishow much that you decide to give
back to the community.

(31:19):
And so, I mean, we talked, Imean, about I mean Suba Blue
with the brew the beer withproper, and now we I mean of
coffee beans, but I mean, talkto me about how that has
evolved.
Um, I mean, under yourstewardship and I mean some of
those key I mean, so along theway.

SPEAKER_00 (31:32):
Yeah, so I think the community part of our that goes
way, that goes back well beyondme, back to my grandpa and to my
dad.
I mean, my dad had being part ofthe community and supporting
nonprofits.
I mean, he's a big part ofUnited Way since United Way has
been around in Utah.
I mean, my mom was on the boardof United Way for 20 years.
But like the idea is supportingnonprofits, supporting the
community is taught to me at avery young age about that's part

(31:55):
of your responsibility.
If you're gonna have a businessin the community, your job is to
support that community.
And you have to figure out howto do that.
And so I've the nice thing isSubaru is the perfect brand for
that.
And so that's been reallyhelpful for us and made it a lot
easier.
We were doing a lot of the stuffand the share the love and the
giveaways and the we actually sothe share the love event which
we're doing now, we'll talkabout in a bit.

(32:15):
We actually did an event beforethat.
Before they launched Share theLove about a year or two, we did
an event very similar to Sharethe Love.
And it was the Do a Good FeelGood event, is what we called
it.
And it was an event every Aprilwhere we would the first year we
did it was a disaster.
But the first year we did it wasthe idea was the I think I want
to say it was either$75 or$100.

(32:35):
I think it was$75 for every carwe sold.
It was we only had our midtown,this would have been like 2006
or 2007.
We only had our Midtown store,and we donated$75 for every new
car we sold in the month ofApril.
I think it was new and used thatwe sold in the month of April.
And our rule with the first yearwe did it was you could pick any
501c3.
Oh, geez.

(32:56):
Horrible idea.
We got some crazy nonprofits.
Like, um, nonprofits we don'tdidn't necessarily want to put
our name on.
Like, we're gonna create a shellcompany and we're gonna donate
somebody and donate.
We learned that first year thatthat's not a bad idea.
Like the I think the 80 or 90cars we sold that month, I think
we had like 35 differentnonprofits or 40 different.

(33:16):
It was crazy.
So then we decided in futureyears we're gonna limit it to
four or five nonprofits.
And we kept doing that event,and that's when Subaru, a couple
years later, I didn't think theycopied from us, but the they
started and where Share the Lovestarted, which is what we're
doing, what just kicked off lastweek is Share Love started in
2008 when the world was in themiddle of the financial crisis.

(33:37):
So I think what the Lehmanbrothers went down in October of
2008, I think.
Yes, October 2008.
So that point the world isfalling, everything dying, like
layoffs, everyone's quitting.
The car business was giving awaycars, it was zero percent
financing, three thousanddollars off every car,
incentives through the roof.
It was all these deals.
And Little Subaru comes along.

(33:59):
This is a Subaru at that timewas selling about 180,000 cars a
year in the United States.
Little Subaru comes along andsays, We're gonna do a charity
event and we're gonna donate$250to nonprofits for every car we
sell.
At that point, I think theypicked four national nonprofits
that they could pick from.
It's like, that's what we'regonna do.
Have the best month in theirhistory.
Why history of the company intwo in December of 2008?

(34:21):
Subaru had the best month intheir history.
Think about that.
That's crazy.
Yeah, that's absolutely insane.
And and ever since that moment,that was really the turning
point moment when Subaru didthat and really started leaning
on the idea of love and thatthat idea and its marketing and
went from 180,000 to they'llsell 680,000 cars in the US this
year.

(34:41):
Okay.
And that's in the last, what, 16years?
Yeah, 17 years.
And in the share love event hasgrown from the small beginnings
it had there to, I want to saythey'll break 300 million
dollars donated through thisprogram.
Wow, this year.
So pretty cool.
And they've been able to expand.
The cool thing is they just notresting on the laurels, they
still have their nationalnonprofits, but what they did

(35:02):
about three or four years ago isthey decided we're gonna let
locals local nonprofits.
So we're gonna let eachindividual retailer pick two,
one or two.
I think it depends on your sizeof your store.
We're big enough that we get topick two.
So we're gonna pick two localnonprofits that we get to
support and we get to go deepwith them.
And the idea is that we canguide our customers to pick the
local ones instead of thenational ones and try and

(35:23):
support local, which is so muchmore important to us.
And a lot of we try and switchit up every year and bring
different nonprofits in andcreate projects with them and
have them on our showroom floorsto teach our customers about
what they do and have them inour TV advert times to try and
get them not only help that getthem money by us donating, we're
trying to get them more PR,right?
Yeah, get them more known,right, or more ability to be

(35:46):
known in the community.
So Girls on the Run and Usara,those are our two nonprofits
this year.
We're super excited about bothof them.
They're both partners we'veworked with for a little bit,
and we're really excited to seehow much money we can raise for
them in the next probably 30more days.

SPEAKER_01 (36:00):
Yeah.
I mean, because it's going onright now, um, starting November
20th, goes till January 2nd ofthe new year.
And I mean, that's one thing Ilove is like you think about
again, you can go buy a car,Subaru donate$250, huge
organizations nationwide, butthe amount that's gonna come
specifically to our community islimited.
However, when it's like, hey,listen, we are gonna add more on

(36:23):
top of this if you choose one ofour local ones and that impact
gets magnified.

SPEAKER_00 (36:27):
That's the big part.
So we so we match it.
So if it goes, the donation goesto the local nonprofits, we do
another$250 from us personallyfrom the dealership.
And it's plus another$5 forevery oil change that gets done
in our dealership today at thattime.

SPEAKER_01 (36:39):
I love that part too, because it's like, I mean,
I'm always because like goingback to the 2008 example, um,
very different consumerbehavior.
Whereas now, 2025, people are somuch more cause-driven in their
purchase thing behavior.
I mean, you see that everywherefrom boycotts of Targitans, go
shopping local to again,something as simple as you buy a
car, we'll donate.

(36:59):
And so it's like, I there's I'msure there's people who are
like, oh yeah, I would love tobe able to go buy a car and
donate to a cause, but I boughta car.
Like I mean, in the middle of mylease that I got from last year,
but I do need an oil change.
So there's something that I cando.

SPEAKER_00 (37:11):
Put your oil change up by 30 days or something like
that, and come in and get givethe donation that way for sure.

SPEAKER_02 (37:16):
Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 (37:16):
I mean, I uh our hope, our goal for this year is
we're trying to get to 200,000.
We want to donate 200,000 tothese two nonprofits.
Love that.

SPEAKER_01 (37:22):
Because I love girls on the run.
I am pretty active in therunning community.
And like I and like my mom,we're the family that runs on uh
5K's on holidays.
Okay.
And my sister's a big runner,and she has uh my niece, and
like I was I heard her fromGirls on the Run, and I was
like, I kind of want her to doit.
She's like, Ah, she's a littleyoung, one time soon.
Nice.
But I mean, anything that canget people together, people
outside, people moving.

SPEAKER_00 (37:43):
My daughter, my daughter was involved in Girls
on the Run through her schoolwhen she was in middle school.
Amazing.
Yeah.
So we were we've been involvedon every level of that program.
And it it's just fun to see whenwe get to the end of these
events what they can actuallyuse that money for and just to
see the impact that that moneytruly has on the community.
It's like our partner last yearwas Salt Lake County Animal
Services, and they built a wholenew part of their facility with

(38:05):
the money that they got from uslast year.

SPEAKER_01 (38:06):
So it's one thing to just be like, oh, like cool, you
guys donated.
It goes to this, it goes to ourparent company who then
distributes it this way.
But then to be like, here is bigcheck.
I better be a big check.
Because if I ever if I were toraise a lot of money, I'm gonna
get a big check to give tosomeone.

SPEAKER_00 (38:20):
Oh yeah, we always do the big check.
Big check's so much for that.
Big check has to happen.
And we actually got in troublewith Subaru last year because
too much of our money went tothe local nonprofits, which
which I told my guys, keep itup.

SPEAKER_02 (38:30):
I will pick that up.
That's a great job.

SPEAKER_00 (38:32):
Keep doing it.
Yeah, as long as you as long aswe're letting the customer pick
and they're making educatedpistol locals and we're not
picking for them, I'm perfectlyfine with it.
We want to get as much money toour local ones as possible,
without question.

SPEAKER_01 (38:42):
I know, exactly.
And then even if you need tocome, I mean, I know next week
good old Ethan Cisneros andThirst Drinks are coming by uh
to come, I mean, come grab adrink and I mean support it that
way too.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (38:54):
Yeah, we're excited about the partnership with
Thirst this year.
So the the years past, we wedidn't do the Super Blue Beer
this year.
We didn't do the partnershipwith partners probably this
year, but the idea is to trydifferent partnerships, right?
That's another cool part.
Not only in the nonprofit worldwith our partnerships we do with
nonprofits, the idea of tryingto partner with different
companies and with ProperBrewer.
We've done a ton of stuff withProper Brewery over the last few
years.
And with Thirst and just theselocal companies, Slud Magazine,

(39:17):
like all these.
We must have a great marketingteam that knows exactly what to
tell.
Fabulous marketing team.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (39:22):
Um because that's one thing I like on the topic of
beer versoda.
Like I was in Austin, I had afriend that used to live in
Austin, now he's moved toNashville, but I would go there
every Masters weekend.
So I'd go hang out with him forthe week.
We'd watch the Masters be agreat time.
And on the last day of theMasters on the Sunday, he's
like, hey, we're gonna go to thesocial club, they have a um
simulator.
Okay.
A couple of my friends were justgonna go hang out, drink beers,

(39:43):
and watch the masters and singsome clubs.
I'm like, don't tempt me with agood time.
Sounds perfect.
And so we go down there, andthis guy's like, Oh, cool, like
where are you from?
Like, oh, Salt Lake.
He's like, Oh, I was just downthere for one of my distributors
to meet up with them.
We went to a jazz game.
He's like, it was the wildestexperience.
Because we go in there, it'shalftime.
He's like, I could use a beer,goes up, walks over beer, orders
it really quickly, and then heturns around and he's like, and

(40:03):
then I see this turnstile justgoing back and forth and back
and forth, and I look over whatit was, and it was soda.

SPEAKER_00 (40:09):
I was like, Welcome to YouTube.
Soda's big, soda's big.
My kids are addicted to all theswig.
And I think I've had swig andI've I've had swig maybe 10
times in my life, probably.
Thirst.
I'm not a soda guy.
I it's a treat to me.

SPEAKER_01 (40:22):
It's not like because I'm not a bit of a soda
guy.
Like if I'm having a soda, fullstrength.
Like I'm not gonna go get a dietsomething, but it's again very
much a treat.
Like my girlfriend's mom was intown last week, and she's like,
Well, can we go eat one of thosesodas?
I'm like, Yeah, let's go, let'sgo stop by 33rd South, go by
Thirst, and go grab a soda.

SPEAKER_00 (40:39):
I have my thought, I had a Thursday.
My thirsty today was delicious.
There you go.
It was really good there.
We we started the first drink wedid was actually uh with
Mountain West cider.
And we had a cider that we puttogether.
I do love Mountain West.
And it was Suba Blue Cider.
That was the first one we everdid.
Suba low.
It wasn't cider, then it went tobeer.
Now it's the soda.
We'll see what we'll see whatends up next year.

SPEAKER_01 (40:59):
Next thing you know, you can have cooligan water and
have suba blue water.
And yeah, I I know what guy.

SPEAKER_00 (41:04):
Go to the whiskey, but we're on ship.
Yeah, yeah.
There's some whiskey guys.
We can figure out the whiskeysetup next.
There's a there's a couple moreof them now.
That's one of the harder ones wedo is trying to pick the two for
sure love every year.

SPEAKER_01 (41:14):
Yeah.
Walk me through thatdecision-making process.
Because there's, I mean, again,as you've learned when it was
open, there's a million.

SPEAKER_00 (41:19):
We started so Subaru started their Subaru loves stuff
about because what's the naturalpartners?
Ten years ago, probably tenyears.
So the idea of this they startedthis idea is like Subaru loves
pets, Subaru loves to care,Subaru loves to help.
There's like there's thesedifferent pillars, they call
them.
Subaru loves the earth.
That's their pillars that theyset across.
And the idea is that they doevents under each pillar certain
months of the year.

(41:40):
And then we decided to add acouple of our own pillars a few
years ago.
So we added Mark Miller, Subaruloves veterans and Mark Miller,
Subaru loves diversity.
And so the way we do it is now,so now we have our seven pillars
that we focus on.
And what happens is every yearwe take grant applications from
nonprofits towards those sevenpillars to try and pick one
partner in each pillar.
And the idea of it is ratherthan support 30 or 40 different

(42:02):
nonprofits all year, we pickthese seven.
And those seven we go deep with.
We're at every one of theirevents, they're at every one of
our events.
They set up tents on ourshowroom floor, they set up
tents at our events, weintroduce them to each other.
We've had a lot of partnershipsthat we've created, nonprofits
working together through it.
And then the idea is thatsometimes we're gonna keep them
for the next year, sometimes wewon't.
We have probably two or threepartners that we've are kind of

(42:25):
long term partners that are kindof stay on the board for.
Long time because DiscoveryGateway is a big one.
Yeah.
Oh, I mean Kathleen Buttonless.
Yep.
Kathleen's amazing.
Yeah, I'm on the board forDiscovery Gateway.
Yes, you are.
So and uh we have our exhibit,we have our Subaru Mercurio
Super exhibit downtown there.
They just built they built allof our kids' rooms.
So we have four DiscoveryGateway kids' rooms, two at each
store.
I know that are actually actualmuseum quality exhibits that are

(42:48):
our kids' playrooms, rather thanjust throw a bunch of toys in a
room and call it a playroom.
We actually have a mm, weactually have a museum.
Yeah, we actually have a museum.
So we have museum qualitypieces.
And then uh Volunteers ofAmerica's been another one of
our partners we've had for along, long time.
And though we help supply themwith vehicles, they've got they
purchase cars from us.
They probably have 60 MarkMiller Subers that they use to

(43:11):
provide services around thevalley and bring you homeless
youth to jobs and try and getpeople to where they need to be
to help get people back in theworld.
So amazing.
They're just it's just fun.
Uh it's just it's fun being ableto see all these organizations
that we help and not just beable to, okay, we're just gonna
throw you a check for a thousandbucks.
We're actually gonna get thereand we're gonna include you in
our social media, include you inour advertising, include you in

(43:33):
our process of what we do.
Volunteers from our store govolunteer at their locations and
be a part of them versus justhere's a give them money.

SPEAKER_01 (43:40):
Because that's like one of my biggest pet peeves as
I like kind of like look at alot of I mean, and it's not as
even just like nonprofits, butlike anything that needs money
to succeed that can't succeed ina what's called a capitalistic
environment.
And so many times, like, yeah,here's a check.
And it's like sometimes you needit's like not money doesn't
solve everything.
Sometimes you need the brains,the network, and like there's so

(44:02):
much more to it.
And like one thing that I'vebeen reflecting a lot recently
is like giving back as a topic.
Because I mean, up until yearsago, I was like, well, giving
back means once I have millionsof dollars, I go give those
millions of dollars to someoneand they put a building on a
college campus, and then I getimmortalized.
But then what I've realized islike, oh no, no, no.
There's so many different waysto do it.
So, like just in my own life, Itry to give back where I can.

(44:24):
Like, if someone reaches out,like, hey, I need help with
this, or I need someone to talkto through this, or I need some
sort of advice, like, yeah,let's go grab coffee, let's go
grab it.

SPEAKER_00 (44:31):
Thousands and thousands of ways you can give
back.

SPEAKER_01 (44:33):
Exactly.
And so I love that you've havethis business and platform that
you have where it's easy to bethe guy in Southern California
that twirls his monopolymustache and takes the briefcase
instead of being like, Well, howdo we support the community?
How do we give back?
Totally.
And not only like you, becauseyou could easily just have say,
oh yeah, Subaru gives back at anationwide level, like that
scratches that itch, we don'tneed anything else, would be

(44:54):
like, no, no, no, no.
Like I want to maximize theimpact here.
Totally.
And so, I mean, thank you forfor everything you do for all of
us in our community when it'seasier to not.

SPEAKER_00 (45:03):
And that's and that's really, I mean, one of my
goals, especially now that I'vekind of moved on from I know
day-to-day management, I'm notdoing day-to-day management of
the store.
I've got Chris Hudson there tokind of do that kind of stuff
and manage the storage so I canfocus on more big picture looks.
And I mean, really, one of mybig goals from a national
standpoint is to try and showother car dealers that this is
the way to do it.
Yeah.
And this is the future of thecar business.

(45:24):
And if we want to be successfuland we want car dealerships to
hang around for the next hundredyears, we've got to get a lot
better at beating customer needsand meeting the needs of the
communities around us.

SPEAKER_02 (45:33):
Adapter die.

SPEAKER_00 (45:34):
Car dealerships, I mean, in general, car
dealerships that generally do apretty good job of being around
the community.
Like you got to give dealershipscredit on that side of it.
That I mean, that there's alwaysthe are like the the first guys
to ever sponsor a little leagueteam or the first guys to
sponsor sports teams aregenerally the car dealers in
town.

SPEAKER_01 (45:48):
Yeah.
I mean, I guess that you put itthat way.

SPEAKER_00 (45:49):
Whenever if you ever go to any sporting, every any
high school you ever go to, youwill never not see the local car
dealership on the fence.
Local 5K, back of the shirt,dealership.
Yep.
Anything it's always there.
And we've always been reallygood at that.
Weird money reach out to thedealerships.
We've just taken a lot deeper.
And we try and focus our stuffso we can really make impact
with it versus just going toeverybody.

SPEAKER_01 (46:10):
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I love that.
Focus, focus on what matters.
Don't I mean you could be asbroad as possible, but then that
leads to like 30 to 4501 C'sthat want money.
100%.
And then next thing you know, toactually make an impact that
matters, where you can againlike build a wing uh that that
changes everything.
Absolutely.
Question actually, as it comesto mind, is I think you're one
of the few people that wouldknow this.

(46:31):
What percent of Salt Lake drivesa Subaru or owns a Subaru, or
like percent of sales, likewhatever metric you could use?

SPEAKER_00 (46:37):
So Subaru is an interesting brand when you look
at market share because wecan't.
I mean, you can look at thebasic, the full market share in
Utah is probably seven or eightpercent.
Okay.
Is Subaru, but we don't look atit that way because we don't
compete in a ton of segments.
Right.
Like we don't have a minivan, wedon't have a truck, we don't
have we should have a truck, butwe're work- I'm working on that.
Sneak in.

(46:57):
We should have a truck, we justdon't have a truck.
You mean the Baja?
Right.
We need like a Nissan Frontiersized truck, like a mid-sized
Tacoma.
Like Subaru, like a SubaruTacoma sign would be an awesome
car, but we're working on that.
But because we don't compete inthat in the stuff we compete in,
especially in the Salt Lakemarket that we represent, so our
Midtown market, we're actuallythe number two brand right now.

(47:18):
It's Toyota than Subaru, whichis the stuff we compete again.
I mean, there's certain there'scertain there's certain segments
that we sell.
I mean, I think the segment thatCrossTrek competes in, I think
we sell 65% of the cars.
That's wild.
Cross tracks in the small SUBcategory.
I usually sell pretty much allof them, right?
It's just we just don't haveenough models to.

(47:39):
I mean, if we had enough models,I think we could be bigger than
Toyota in this.
Right.
I mean, Subaru knows it.
It's just it's the it's theofficial car of Utah.
Yeah.
You go to Park City, it's allSubaru's.

SPEAKER_01 (47:47):
Yeah.
It was wild when I moved tobecause I went on my mission in
Washington and then moved toSeattle after graduating.
And even driving around there, Iwas like, more Subaru's.

SPEAKER_00 (47:56):
Like they're usually As you get farther from Salt
Lake, the less Subaru's you see.
Yeah.
So Salt Lake Park City is thebread and butter for Subaru.
And then as it spreads out, itgets a little bit thinner.

SPEAKER_01 (48:04):
And as far as like, let's call it like Utah or even
like northern Utah specifically,like how does that or you can
call it sales here.
I mean, however you want todefine it compared to the rest
of the country.
Are we like the top dogs thatare mostly?

SPEAKER_00 (48:15):
We're probably one of the top five markets, top six
markets.
Seattle's huge, Portland's huge.
No, yes, per capita.
New England area, New Englandareas, yeah.
Monstrously big, like Vermont.
They still have ton of sewers inthose areas.
But they've actually startedreally hitting the they call it
the Sun Belt.
So it's pretty much the entirebottom border, the bottom border

(48:35):
of the country.
Yeah, so you're talking likeArizona, Southern California,
Louisiana, Miss Appe, Florida,like the bottom of the country.
They really started hitting thatthe past 10 years and actually
do pretty well.
And that's where the a lot ofthe expansion Subaru's had going
from the 180 to the 680 has beenin those markets.

SPEAKER_01 (48:52):
Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 (48:52):
And we've done we've done well too, but the we were
already doing well.
Even before that, there a lot ofpeople run Subarus back then.
Used to be a little niche brand.
Now the national goal for Subaruis a 5% market share.

SPEAKER_01 (49:03):
Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 (49:03):
They want a 5% market share, but they never
have to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 (49:05):
Which is pretty ambitious considering, like,
again, there's so many differentuh model types that they just
aren't ever going to come out.

SPEAKER_00 (49:11):
When you talk about when they were at 180,000 cars,
they were at a 1% market share.
So one 1% market is 170,000cars.
Yeah.
There's they'll sell 16 millioncars in the US this year.
A lot of cars.
And that's down.
But here's the crazy partthey'll sell 16 million that we
scrap 18 million.

(49:33):
So that's a really interestingthing when you talk about car
world, right?
Yeah.
Is that when you go to downmarkets, the scrap rate never
goes down.
So the scrap rate is how manycars leave the market every
year.
Whether they get shipped toMexico, shipped out of the
country, totaled, crash, die,shredded, whatever.
You've for the last two, threeyears, you've had more cars
leaving the market than you havecoming into the cars.

(49:54):
So if you what happens in thecarbons is if you have a couple
bad years because of theeconomy, what happens,
especially in our Subaru world,is uncertainty kills us.
So tariffs and all this stuffjust kill a Subaru market
because when people areuncertain about the economy and
certain things, they hold off onbuying cars, which is completely
natural.
We completely understand that.
But what happens is eventuallythey have to buy a car.

(50:15):
Like eventually you have tothose cars get taken out of the
market.
There aren't enough used cars inthe market.
People have to buy new ones.
So if you get a couple of yearswhere you're only selling 15, 16
million cars, those next twoyears after that are gonna blow
up.
Which is what happened in 2021and 2022.
And then you see the cycle.
It just becomes this crazyup-down cycle.

SPEAKER_01 (50:34):
That's see the data nerd in me just like wants to
scratch and double click all ofthat.

SPEAKER_00 (50:39):
Oh, we love the data.
So we work a lot in AI and chatGPT.
There's cars, cardealership-specific chat GPTs
that analyze inventory data andall that.
Like I geek out on that stufftoo.
Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 (50:50):
I could yeah, I could probably have a whole
podcast with you based on that.
Um, Jeff, this has been great.
I like I always say this, butevery conversation I have, like
I go in thinking like, yeah,it's probably gonna go like
this, or I'm probably gonna bethis, but this has been
fantastic.
Like so many great uh, I mean,insights that I never knew
about, also just like greathuman.
No, thank you.
Um but want to end with the twoquestions I always ask everybody

(51:13):
at the end of each episode.
Number one, uh, if you couldhave someone on the Small Link
City podcast and hear more aboutthem and their story, who would
you want to hear from?

unknown (51:21):
Wow.

SPEAKER_00 (51:22):
If I had someone I'm a sports guy, so have you got
have you got many of the sportsguys, local sports people in?

SPEAKER_01 (51:29):
Um here and there.
Like a lot of like action sportsand like skiers, yes.
Jazz folk are harder to tapinto.

SPEAKER_00 (51:37):
I really a really interesting one for you.
He was my old neighbor, WillHardy.
Yeah, he's a really cool guy.
He's got a really cool story,came out of the D3 basketball
world, worked his way under GregPopovich, like coming up through
that coaching tree and learninghis history stuff.
That would be a really coolstory.

SPEAKER_01 (51:53):
No, I'd love to hear that story.

SPEAKER_00 (51:55):
Yeah, Will Hardy would be a good one.

SPEAKER_01 (51:56):
I could do that.
I mean, have him for actuallyjust here.
There was one time, because it'slike always weird sometimes,
like sitting at Edison House,because sometimes I'll be
sitting there, like having abeer, food, whatever, watching
sports, and I'll turn over andbe like, was that it was, but
I'm not the person who's like,oh my gosh, who's this person?
But he walked in once and I waslike, uh, Will Hardy.

SPEAKER_00 (52:14):
Yeah, really a good guy.
That would be the one I wouldsay you should get on.

SPEAKER_01 (52:17):
Okay.
Deal.
Will Hardy.
And then secondly, if peoplewant to find more information
about Mark Mueller Subaru, getmore information about the show
the love event, uh, what's thebest place to find more
information?

SPEAKER_00 (52:28):
So our website is always the best place.
Just www.markburgshubaru.com, oryou know, any of our social
media channels as well.
Too for sure.

SPEAKER_01 (52:36):
Awesome.
Jeff, thank you so much.
If anybody needs a car, go makean impact.
Right now's the right time.

SPEAKER_00 (52:41):
This is the best time.
Till January 2nd and get adonate 500 bucks to every every
car sold.
So we're gonna try and sell alot of them.
I want to want to spend a lot ofthat money.

SPEAKER_01 (52:48):
Yes.
Help Jeff spend his money.

SPEAKER_00 (52:51):
Yeah, exactly.
Perfect.
No, thanks, Jeff.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.