I learned this business from the inside, at every level.

I didn't read about how dealerships work. I ran them. Over twenty-plus years I was a salesperson, a finance manager, a finance director, and a sales manager — at BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti, MINI, Fiat, and Nissan. I handled RV financing at Camping World and did contract work at Honda Corporate. Tens of thousands of completed deals.

I know what the desk is thinking, because I was the desk. I know what the finance office is going to present, because I built those menus. I know what's being said about you when you step out to take a call, because I was in those conversations for two decades.

I kept trying to fix it from the inside.

I'm not anti-dealer. Some of the best people I've known work in this industry, and a good salesperson is worth finding. But the model runs on an information gap. I spent years trying to close it from inside the building.

I would only take a general manager position if the owner agreed to fixed pricing. I built finance menus that laid every product out plainly, before that was standard, so buyers could see what they were being offered instead of being walked through it. At one company I tried to build a tablet system that educated buyers before they sat down with a finance person — so they'd walk in already knowing what everything was.

The market wasn't ready. The information advantage was worth too much to give up. So I decided to give it to buyers directly instead.

I tried being a broker. What I saw is part of why this exists.

As a broker, I thought I could help buyers across any make or model. The math is what broke it. The fee built into these deals is about $500 per transaction — which only works if you are doing serious volume. Below that volume, the only way a broker makes a living is to double-dip: take the $500 the dealer already built into the deal, then bump the customer's payment on top of it for a bigger cut. Dealers send monthly specials to every broker they work with, and the language is explicit — $500 is built in as a broker fee, and if you want a bigger fee, raise the payment to your customer. I have a screenshot from an Audi dealer that says exactly that. I was not willing to make my money that way.

Why the psychology degree matters here.

Buying a car is not a math problem. It's a pressure problem. The reason the four square works, the reason the monthly payment is the question they want you to answer, the reason it's so hard to walk away once you're three hours in — all of that is behavior, not numbers.

I have a psychology degree. It was the most useful thing I brought to the desk. Knowing why people decide what they decide under pressure is the difference between recognizing a tactic and being able to resist it. That runs through everything I teach.

Buyers deserve better information than they get. That's the whole reason this exists.

I'm not going to tell you the dealer is the villain, or that there's one weird trick that beats the system. I'm going to show you exactly how the process works, in the order it happens, so you walk in knowing as much as the person across the desk. That's the entire promise.