The FAQ
Hi Friends!
I get a lot of emails. On average, between my five businesses I get somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 to 700 of them per day. I open every single one and I respond to 100% of the relevant ones. In fact, my feet don’t even hit my bedroom floor until I clear my inbox every morning. This is kind of a little motivational trick that I’ve been doing since I worked at Russo and Steele. It helps me to prioritize my day and gives me the feeling of accomplishing something before I even get out of bed. It also forces me to educate myself on the day-to-day happenings around the industry. Obviously, not every email I get is in regard to this newsletter, but I do get a lot of mail from it.
We’re now about 6 weeks away from Monterey Car Week and as such seemed to be in that little bit of a valley where everyone’s preparing and there’s not much else going on, so now seems like a good opportunity to address the 10 most common questions that I receive in my email each week.
Here we go……
(In no particular order)
1. Will there be more new newsletter titles?
No, this is as far as it goes. The Sunday-Monday/Wednesday/Friday pattern is the most I intend to do. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday (which are traditionally higher open rate days in email marketing) will be reserved for clients and advertisers. I know there’s a lot of sources out there that get away with sending multiple emails daily, but I don’t really want to be one of those. The most you’ll ever hear from me is once a day. The flow of the whole thing seems to be pretty good the way it is too. As of right now, the Sunday Newsletter is our most opened product, Cars the most clicked on and News sits nicely in the middle. We’re happy with the rotation of what we’ve got right now and it seems like it’s working for you guys too, so why change it?
2. Sometimes you skip things some weeks. Why?
There’s a couple reasons for this. First, if there’s not enough of something going on, there’s no point in forcing it and I would much rather not send you anything in those cases. The objective here has always been to move fast and give you a lot that you can absorb quickly, but it ultimately has to be worth your while. Obviously, you’ve seen my little “slow news week” things where I plug in the video game and I’m willing to do that here and there, but I’m not going to do that two or three times over the course of a single email. I’d also prefer not to focus the Cars emails exclusively online and I always want to show you different things there (example: this week’s Corvette door artwork). I’m okay doing two things from the same place as long as they’re different enough, but if I can’t work in a live component someplace, I probably won’t do it. If there’s not anything interesting on the market at the time, I’ll save it for the following week. Being as this is primarily a US focused newsletter, there needs to be US market activity as well. I will throw in the occasional European listing (if it’s something relevant enough like Goodwood or Retromobile or something along those lines) or if it’s a car that I really like listed somewhere else, but if there’s nothing happening on our shores, I’ll probably skip that week.
The other reason is that I may just be too busy. This is still a developing business and it’s likely not ever going to be my main one. Again, I’ve got four others and if there’s something significant going on with one of those and there just isn’t enough hours in the day, it just is what it is. As this moves on and hopefully continues to grow, I’ll likely get some support so that doesn’t happen, but for the time being, there’s only so many hours in the day….
Note: we will post on social media when certain titles are skipping weeks
3. How do you select your comment of the week?
The first thing I look for generally is just a well constructed, well thought out statement that’s concise and to the point. Bonus if it’s a counterpoint. If somebody has a really solid, valid argument going in the opposite direction of mine, I always want to show that first. This is actually kind of a difficult task every week. You guys send a lot of really smart stuff and there’s been times where it’s come down to a coin flip. This remains my favorite thing about doing this newsletter and it’s definitely where I personally learn the most each week.
4. How do you decide which cars to select?
Our clients expect us to know what’s going on in the marketplace pretty much all the time, so we’re keeping track of virtually everything. What we tend to look for is things that are unique with a wild card factor thrown in some place and we like to show stuff that’s different. For example, unless there’s something notable going on, we’re probably not going to show three muscle cars from the same auction. We want to demonstrate the diversity of the marketplace in the Cars email, so there may be a bike from a live auction, a late model exotic from an online platform and a pre-war British luxury vehicle from somewhere else. We tend to put priority on live auctions, as they do things like provide estimates (which give us a little more defined playing field, which we like) and we won’t run anything where we can’t track real-time results. One thing we haven’t really dialed in on the Cars email is how we’re handling the survey. We may change that or eliminate it. We would like to provide an opportunity for you guys to play along in some capacity, but what we’re doing now may not be exactly the right way to do that. Time will tell, but in the meantime, we’re certainly open to suggestion…..
5. What does Z260 mean exactly?
As this newsletter was originally designed to be something to warm your brain up and get you ready for the upcoming week quickly, Z260 is just kind of an abbreviated version of that. Zero to 60.
6. Why aren’t you on social media?
We are sort of on social media. We haven’t had a daily presence, but we’ve advertised extensively on social media for over a year and I would bet that most of you have probably seen our ads there. That will be slowly changing over the next few months however, so feel free to add us on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. We will be posting there moving forward.
As for myself, I’m very active on Instagram and LinkedIn. Feel free to follow me there if you like too!
7. Will you help me buy or sell a car?
The answer to both of these is sort of. We’re happy to be connectors of sorts through this newsletter. If you’re looking for something and somebody in our network (which is basically everyone) has it, we’re happy to put the two of you together. If you’re looking to sell something and we know somebody who’s interested in it or somebody who we think can represent your car at the highest level, will connect you there as well. Things like making suggestions for auctions, producing media, that kind of thing is all stuff that we offer through the agency and we can help you with, but our preference is generally to play middleman first and find people that offer the products or services that you need directly. It is to be noted, we are not an auction company, a licensed dealer and there are some limits on what we can do as far as brokering type activities within the State of Arizona (it’s actually a lot easier for us to do stuff out of state). Although we are extremely knowledgeable within the marketplace and can definitely paint a pretty correct picture for you there, we’re also not licensed appraisers. We’re happy to give you our opinion, but we can also refer you there if need be, so feel free to reach out with that stuff when you’re needing real deal, on the ground, in person specifics on an actual vehicle too. Again, our preference is always to provide referrals first.
8. Do surveys and comments actually affect real marketplace decision making?
If you’ve been with us for a while and you watched the lead up to Arizona Car Week this year, you know that this is a definite yes. In that situation, you were able to watch in almost real time, suggestions made in the comments become real life and decisions get made on survey results almost as quickly as they came out. Obviously, not every survey or every comment is going to work like this, but we do try to take the suggestions and the ideas that you provide and turn them into stuff for everyone to enjoy. As I stated above, reading comments remains the thing I enjoy the most about doing this and the insights that you guys provide are always great. Keep them coming!
9. What’s up with the featured non-profit/Motorwerks Gives banner?
Supporting non-profit organizations is a major passion of mine. It’s something I’ve been heavily involved in now for 7 years and it’s something I’ve gotten pretty good at as well. As the banner states, since 2018, we’ve helped over 40 nonprofits raise more than $25 million in donations. Two of my five businesses are solely dedicated to supporting nonprofits (Motorwerks Gives and ClassicCars4NonProfits) and that’s ultimately the direction I eventually want to steer towards primarily and I would someday like to make that my main business. If you have a non-profit or if you work with one in some capacity, send them our way. We can help almost any sized organization and in 99% of situations (if for whatever reason we need sports or entertainment memorabilia for something, that would pretty much be the one exception) we can do it with zero risk and no money up front from the non-profit. Help us help them!
10. Why are you doing this anyway?
There’s several reasons for this:
A. I thought it would be a fun thing to do.
I’ve always been a bit of a writer, but I didn’t like the structure involved with being a professional working elsewhere. I wrote for a local newspaper in my 20s and I still consider it to be the worst job I’ve ever had. Something freeform and fun, where I get to discuss things I’m passionate about seemed like it would be a good thing for me to invest my time in put my brand on. So far, it definitely has been. I’ve really enjoyed doing this and I’m very grateful that you guys are enjoying it too.
B. My clients were universally telling me they needed more places to advertise.
Of course, when we started this, the marketplace was a little bit different than it is right now and people were spending money a little more openly and a little more freely, but I was hearing on my agency side that people had money and although, they were happy with where they were advertising, they just needed more. This seemed like an opportunity to try to build something for them in that capacity.
C. I’m really worried about the future of independent automotive media.
As with a lot of things in this industry right now, as stuff gets sucked up by big corporate entities, Wall Street, private equity, etc it loses its objectivity. That’s been pretty openly demonstrated by a couple of pretty foundational outlets in this hobby lately and that should be really concerning to everybody. Also, although I think it’s clear that the outgoing generation has done an unbelievably brilliant job of managing media surrounding this industry and this hobby, they can’t do it forever. Unfortunately, some of these publications are eventually going to drop off and there needs to be things there to pick up the slack when that happens. Do I think that Z260 is the answer there? Probably not. Ultimately, regardless of what digital media does, I think at least for now, print publications will always be the most significant authority and always carry the most weight. Z260 will never be a print publication, but my hope is maybe it might inspire somebody else to start one at some point. All this is, in this regard, is a very small snowball at the top of a very large mountain. Hopefully we can start an avalanche someplace else that will clear the slopes for everyone to strap up and go enjoy
D. Car magazines and automotive media have been really important to me over the course of my life and have inspired me a lot.
Simply put, I wanted to emulate the publications that I grew up enjoying, have collected for years and then create a tribute to the people involved there, who have inspired me. Whenever I sort of envision my relationship with automotive media, it goes back to two photographs (neither of which probably exist anymore). The first is a picture of me and my uncle from like 1989 or something, sitting on his bedroom floor surrounded by stacks of Road and Track magazines. The second is me sitting in a tour van while out with my former band in probably like 2011 or 2012. In one hand I’ve got a copy of Classic Autotrader and the other, a copy of Keith Martin’s first book. Point is, automotive media has always been a big part of my life and now I feel like I’m in a position to where I can try to contribute at least something in return, so that’s what I’m doing.
So, there you have it! Of course, I’m always happy to have conversations this way, so anything you want to bring up, you’re more than welcome to reach out here or on social media. I always look forward to hearing from you!
That’s it for this week……
Darin Roberge