Podcasts about used car prices

How can building an audience in advance help your stories reach the people who make movies? And how can you prove there's demand for your book or screenplay before you've written it? Brooks Elms shares his advice after more than 20 years as a WGA screenwriter. In the intro, what doesn't work for book marketing and what does [Amy Chan SubStack; Unsingle; Rephonic]; Goodreads giveaway for Bones of the Deep; FutureVision XPrize. This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Brooks Elms is a WGA screenwriter with over 45 scripts, over a dozen sales, and he has directed two indie features. He is the creator of the Answer the Call system and has trained over 1,000 writers. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How to see the opportunity in AI when others only see the threat How to test a story with samples, and what a 16-second movie can do Building the trailer before you write the screenplay Letting your audience finance the film once they have validated the idea Why Hollywood still wants existing IP, and what makes them pay attention Feeling safe enough to write the truth, and finding a concrete path forward You can find Brooks on LinkedIn or email him at brooks@brookselms.com. Transcript of the interview with Brooks Elms Jo: Brooks Elms is a WGA screenwriter with over 45 scripts, over a dozen sales, and he has directed two indie features. He is the creator of the Answer the Call system and has trained over 1,000 writers. So welcome to the show, Brooks. Brooks: Thank you. It's awesome to be here. Jo: Fantastic. So first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into screenwriting. Brooks: I started filmmaking first. A buddy came up to me in high school and said, “Hey, we're making a karate movie, do you want to help us?” I was like, “Oh my God, yes, that sounds amazing.” So next thing I know, I had this karate outfit on, and we were just making this completely ridiculous and totally fun movie, and it was amazing. It was so fun. Then it went to a whole other level when we shared it with a friend, this guy Jay Sharon, and he watched the movie and he laughed so hard he literally fell out of his chair. I was like, “Oh my God,” the fun I had making it could actually transfer to somebody else. I was hooked. So from there I went to NYU film school, and then made a few independent feature films which were good but not great in terms of how they were received. They were great for me in terms of enjoyment, but I knew I needed to iterate faster at that point. So then I was like, “Well, it's expensive and it takes a long time to make a movie,” at least back then. So I pivoted to screenwriting, and pumped out two, three scripts a year, got signed at UTA, got writing assignments, and basically launched a screenwriting career. Then I still tried to get some stuff going, but it's hard when movies are so expensive. It's not hard, it's just that it takes a lot of precision in the marketing, and a lot of conversations to find the right matches to finance something, and you're either interested in doing that or you're not. I just was like, “Well, I'll just mostly write screenplays.” Then I started teaching at UCLA Extension and then coaching after that, along with writing. Then all the way up to the future. What's great about moving forward is that with AI, shot-making is becoming very close to cinematic quality. You can actually match cinematic quality in moments in some genres, but probably by next year. Right now you could actually do a really good horror movie all AI for 10, 20,000 bucks, depending on how much you're doing yourself or getting other people to do. So the economics are going to absolutely explode. So I'm sitting on dozens of scripts that didn't get through the Hollywood packaging bottleneck because they're too expensive, and I now have this giant slate that's ready to go, and I'm just absolutely thrilled. It's been a lifelong dream for me. Jo: Oh, so much to come back on there. Where to start? I do want to talk about what you just said there, sitting on dozens of scripts and now seeing the opportunity. I actually wrote down in my journal about a year ago, I see what's coming with AI, and I think that the best thing I can do is create as much original IP as possible, so that I can make the most of the opportunity ahead. So let's just get into the AI, because a lot of people feel it's a super bad thing. Talk about the opportunities and the attitude that you've got [around AI], and that you've seen others have around this, for what is ahead in a positive way. Brooks: It's fascinating to see how people respond to AI. I wonder, when the printing press rolled around, if there was some sort of backlash. Books must be handwritten. They can't be mass-produced. Here's one of my theories. At a deep psychological level, it's so profoundly powerful that I think the default setting is, “Oh, crap.” When I was a kid, some things were hard, and that power imbalance, when something big, new and powerful comes along: I'm going to get screwed, and so this is somehow a bad thing. I think that's the base psychological thing going on with most of the noise. Obviously there are some legit problems, in terms of copyright infringement from learning models, or from some of the environmental situation. So I'm not saying it's all rainbows and butterflies, but I think 90% of the noise around it comes from a fear of change. Here's the other one—a fear of, “Oh, yikes, I'm going to get taken advantage of somehow by either robots, or the corporations are going to use the robots against me,” or something like that. I have real empathy for me when I feel that way a little bit, but I don't feel it much, and for other people that do feel it. The other thing is, you know what it is? I think they fear their own empowerment even more. I had a therapist who was really good. He said, people aren't so much afraid of failing as they are afraid of succeeding. Because if we fail, we're stuck in act one and we don't go anywhere. The fear is answering the call and going to act two, when everything effing changes in the new world. So I think people are afraid of how goddamn powerful they're going to be when they can have a team of AI agents helping them do everything they want in business or life or whatever. I think it's the same thing with the internet. People are like, “Oh, I don't like social media, blah, blah, blah.” And I get it. There's a lot of noise and a lot of crap. Yet we have access to billions of people, and the algorithms in social media right now I think are level three out of 10. They're just going to get better and better. Even as it is now, if I do a post about something and it gets ignored, that's on me. The algorithms are trying to match me to my people. So if I'm not unique enough and authentic enough and aware enough of how virality works, that's on me, and it's a learnable skill that I can embrace and then change and then get better at. So I think people then resist that change. They resist the empowerment of learning the art of virality, or learning the art of some sort of social media stuff or whatever. The last thing I'll say about this rant is, I don't want to act like I'm the guru on the hill that has all the answers. I refuse calls all the time. I'm scared about all sorts of things. I'm certainly not perfect. I feel frustrated when I'm trying to put my big ideas into action and I can't get this technology thing to work or that one, and I throw tantrums. I'm trying to come at it from a real human perspective, but by and large, I've got stars in my eyes. I'm like, “This is amazing. This is going to be so powerful.” For so many people, you just have to be ready to embrace it and just go along for the ride, because there's going to be some big-ass changes. There already are, and that's going to accelerate. Jo: You mentioned there learning the art of whatever it is. One of the things is, I've spent 20 years, and so have you, learning our craft and our art, and now it can be done very easily. I'm generating video, as you mentioned, which is a craft I haven't spent 20 years on, but now I can generate. So things have definitely changed in that way. Just coming to the screenwriting side. Probably about a decade ago now, I did my first screenwriting course. I've written screenplays. Then I looked at the game you have to play and, like you said, the conversations you have to have, the events you have to go and network at, all the things that you have to do to put a screenplay in front of the right person at the right time. I was like, “I cannot do that. It's just not going to happen. I can't do that along with everything else.” So I put it aside, but now I feel maybe it's time to bring it back because things are changing. So can you maybe talk about, if someone has a screenplay now that they've written, or some IP like a book that they have now— What would you recommend people do in terms of wanting to get that [IP] in front of somebody, or doing something with it themselves? Brooks: It's such a good question. By the way, not even a screenplay—you could do the same things with a novel. Let me try to be succinct here, which is a good challenge for me. A simple way to look at it is, you're giving samples. Let's say it's a lemonade stand, and you give out a little shot of your… maybe you have cayenne pepper lemonade, some sort of fun lemonade. If you give out a sample and people are into it, they're going to come back and they're going to tell friends. If you give a sample of the lemonade and they're not into it, then you go back to the kitchen and you mix up a different flavour. So that's some basic business, but the internet allows us to do that at scale. So what I like to encourage people to do when I coach them is come up with the minimum viable material. It can be a 10-second clip. There's a writer in my community who made a really beautiful 16-second movie. It's one shot. I love it so much. It's two wine glasses. There's a lipstick smudge on one of the wine glasses. They're half full, and it's just that shot. It's sitting there, and all of a sudden you hear this thundering, thumping down these stairs, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Then you see out of the corner of the frame one person runs by, and then the other person behind her runs by and goes, “Wait.” That's it. That's the whole movie. It's 16 seconds. He did that with his phone. So there's so much going on. There's a couple of basic elements, but he just did it with his phone, and you can evoke enormous emotional impact on people through social media, whether it's just words. You guys have a big advantage as novelists because you're so good with words. Whether it's a little bit longer, like sudden fiction, that's a couple of pages or whatever. Even just copywriters are really in a good position for the future because they're super potent with two words or three words or 10 words. Then novelists are probably really advantageous because it doesn't cost anything to just put some words out on the internet. The point is, if you put something out, it's a signal, and you're talking about billions of people who could find that signal. If you do it and then you look at the response, and then you try again, you look at the response, we can do this iteration infinitely for free. So you can do it already. You've been able to do it for 10, 15, 20 years, just with words. But now you're going to basically be able to do that with movies or clips or trailers. So the thing that I'm leading in my community of writers is having people build trailers in advance, or clips. When a book or a movie is done, how the heck do we get people to see it? One way is a trailer or some sort of behind-the-scenes material. You can just do that stuff now before even writing the screenplay. I saw that you were doing this project, a trailer for this competition. And then you mentioned, “Oh, I've got to write the screenplay.” Not really. You have to develop the story enough to know what you're referring to, and then it's about studying the craft of either trailer construction, or whatever the clips are, or viral clips. They all have a structure, and then you just test it. If you enjoy that testing process, which I find absolutely thrilling, it feels like the filmmaking version of a stand-up comedian. If I did stand-up, I say a joke, they laugh or they don't laugh. It's really beautiful feedback from the universe. Nerve-wracking, right? But we can do that now as storytellers. We put a story out there in any format, and the audience responds. Just like you have to read any room, you have to learn how to read the engagement on social media. What do likes mean? What do shares mean? What do comments mean? How do you deal with trolls? All that is just part of the new art. Once you get good at it, holy smokes, that's the key to the kingdom. You can build audiences in advance, and for movies you could even have them finance your movie in advance, if you've built an email list of 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 people because you kept putting out all these viral clips around your story, novel, or screenplay. Then you go, “Okay, now 30,000 people are on my email list and I tell them about me and my perspective and my world. We're going to make this darn thing with AI for 20,000 bucks. You guys have got to pony up some money. Put in a dollar, five, 10, or you get the VIP $500 experience.” It's like crowdfunding, but much more sophisticated, because most crowdfunding was like begging friends and family to donate to your crazy dream. What I'm talking about is going to the audience directly, developing enough of the story, then going to the audience second, and then only when they validate the idea, to the extent that you're happy with. You could do a crazy idea that's going to have a small audience, and you don't have to have a blockbuster audience. You get to pick the audience size that you want, and then put the samples out there and see if you have a relevant audience size for this next project. Once the audience tells you, “Yes, we want this,” then you go make it. So you're ultimately reducing risk to almost zero. It takes time and you have to learn how to do this stuff, but it's thrilling to me because we just have the capacity to test the material and listen to the audience upfront. The last thing I'll say, and I've rambled a lot, I'm sorry. When I made a movie in 1994, a feature film right out of NYU, it took me three years to find out what the audience thought about that movie. I had to make the damn thing, and then I ran out of money, and that took me years to edit it, and I finally got it, blah, blah, blah. And again, I loved it. I loved every facet of it, and it was fine, but it was super inefficient. Today, I could take those same elements, create an AI trailer this weekend, put it in front of hundreds of thousands of people, and they could tell me right away, “This sucks,” or, “This is interesting,” or, “Holy smokes, this is amazing. I want this.” If it's not, “Holy smokes, this is amazing, I want it,” I can go ahead and re-edit the whole damn trailer, and just keep reiterating at almost no cost. Then once the demand is there, I can take that demand and that audience and go to Hollywood, and that's when they're going to want to work with me. Then it doesn't take a million conversations and finding the needle in the haystack, because Hollywood sees the numbers and they go, “Oh, you're the people we do want to do business with. You've proven demand. We want to do business with you.” Jo: Yes, it's so interesting. I can hear people listening and they're like, “Easier said than done, getting an email list of 40,000 people.” And in fact— It's exactly the same as building up a career as an independent author. This is as a filmmaker, as a visual person, and the industry is visual, so doing a visual trailer is the obvious thing. And as you say, the tools I use just to do this one, I use Midjourney, and I've used Seedance as the main video model. It does take a while, but it is pretty fast now, if you have a visual image of what you want in your head, which obviously you're a visual person as well. But is it… Brooks: Hold on. I want to push back on that a little bit, because I think it's really important. So yes, that's true, but underneath that, my friend, it's a relationship. It's the relationship, and the media is secondary. You have been prolific in connecting with your audience, and that's why I think a lot of people like you, because you share and they get to know you in that sort of cadence. I saw you in another podcast, you mentioned Seth Godin, who just said, “Hey, I want to be the type of person that has this relationship with my audience. I'm going to share some of my thoughts every day.” He happened to do it with words, with his background in marketing, but you could do the same thing with still images. You could do the same thing with a five-second movie clip once a week. It's the relationship you want with your fans. I'm not saying you snap your fingers and you have 50,000 people on your email list. What I'm saying is, what else are you doing? If we're artists and our impulse is to create and share, and if you do it in this way, if I can create and share and inspire trust in this relationship with a stranger because they like my genre thing and they like the way they felt when they experienced my media, words, images, movies, it doesn't matter. They just like the feeling, and they go, “Ooh, I want more of that feeling. How do I get more of that? Oh, this person has this email list or community.” If I can do it with one, then I can scale it out. So getting the first one, or the first 5 or 10 samples, that is a whole process. But then once you do that, scaling up is more of a mechanical thing. It's not even that hard, especially when you can do paid ads. So you can scale up very quickly if you have the sauce. If you don't have the sauce, it doesn't matter who you're related to, you've got to get the sauce right. Jo: Yes, and again, it's so parallel to the indie author community. I've just got to ask you, in the olden days, an author might write a screenplay, or a screenwriter write a screenplay, and then they would send it. They'd find an agent. They'd pitch an agent, and I guess then they'd hope that someone would turn that into a movie. So is that just dead now? Is it realistically that you need to get yourself out there, build the audience in the same way that it often is for authors? Brooks: So, no. I've got two screenplay deals going right now. So here's how it's going to work. Think about Broadway, or the theatre district in Britain. It's like West End or East End or whatever… Jo: The West End. Brooks: Sorry for my American ignorance. West End, okay. So every town on the planet has a stage, but there's only one Broadway, there's only one West End, right? And every town has its own festival, but there are a few significant tastemakers. There's Cannes, there's Sundance, there's Toronto. Hollywood is always going to be a tastemaker in our lifetime, for sure. What they don't have anymore, what they enjoyed for the first 100 years of the industry, is that they had a stranglehold on basically the equipment, the financing, and the audience, and that's all going away. Do you want to hear a fun story about the birth of cinema? Do you know why Hollywood started in Hollywood? Jo: No. Brooks: So Thomas Edison invented the camera, or the type of model camera that they were using in, I don't know, 1910 or something around there. They didn't want to pay his patent. They didn't want to pay the patent to make these movies, so they went all the way across the country, a bunch of outlaws, and they set up shop in California because he couldn't enforce his patent that they were basically stealing. And reason number two, LA enjoys amazing weather almost all year round. The weather here is either nice or really nice. You have mountains, you have beach, you have desert, you have all these different locales. So when it was really important to be on location, LA was the perfect place. Anyway, that is all going away. For many decades, more people could make movies. In the early '90s, Robert Rodriguez made a movie for 9,000 bucks. There was a book in the '80s that I bought that I loved, it was Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices. This guy, Rick Schmidt, I think his name was. There were the independent filmmakers really in the '60s and the '70s. So the cost has been going down and down and down, and now it's less than ever. Once social media came along, now you have access to the audience, so why do you even need Hollywood? That being said, there are tons of people. There are 400,000 people already working in the movie and the TV industry here. And they're voracious. We have a voracious demand. Humans need stories. We need big stories, long stories. We need stories, and Hollywood is so good at giving them stories. And so they have a need for these things, and they're still spending a lot of money on those budgets. So yes, there's still a demand for turning books and optioning them and turning them into movies. Books are great. Any sort of existing IP is great because there are marketing efficiencies there. People already know that stuff, know the vibe of it, and so it's easier to market than something that's totally creative and new. When you're spending that much money, you want those marketing efficiencies. They're really important. So the point being, the power is shifting away from Hollywood. Hollywood will still be a tastemaker, but you and me can reach anybody on the planet now. Almost. Billions of people. If it's making a movie, right now you could make a movie that most people wouldn't realise is an AI movie. If it was a horror film, I know a handful of people that could make a feature-length horror film right now with AI and 99% of the audience couldn't tell, if it was professionally written. Jo: I think the point here though is, I'm an author, the people listening are authors, and we don't want to make movies. We want to license our IP to people who want to make movies. Brooks: Yes. Great. Okay, good. So then you could, if you wanted, build an audience. Hollywood loves when something's already proven, so that's that IP thing, right? So if you just have a great book, then it's all about the sales. You guys have Dragons' Den, we have Shark Tank here. And what's amazing about that show is these are people or entrepreneurs pitching an idea, and there's an amazing rhythm that happens. They say, “We've got this great idea. It's this sort of company.” And the sharks, or the dragons, will listen. And there's a huge turning point when they reveal sales. They're either really excited about the idea and then they go, “Well, how are the sales?” And the person goes, “Well, we don't have any sales yet.” And they go, “Uh,” and they're not interested. Or they might even be like, “Eh, it doesn't seem like a good idea.” And they're like, “Well, how are the sales?” And they're like, “Oh, well, we've sold through the roof.” And then all of a sudden they perk up. So it's all about the sales. So step one is writing something that you want. Step two is making sure other people in your target audience are also loving it as much as you do. Step three is proving in some way at scale that there's real demand for it. So you could do that with trailers, you could do that with clips, you can do that as an indie publisher. There's all sorts of things that you can do. Humans are much more persuaded by concrete data than they are by just vibes. So if you can bring Hollywood concrete data of any type, like viral videos, like audience, like obviously bestsellers. Awards mean something, but not quite as much as sales. Then you're going to get Hollywood's attention because that reduces risk for them. So even now, when Hollywood's definitely shrinking and contracting, there's still very significant money being spent because it's a huge demand. If you ever walk around a studio lot, those things are opulent places. It's stunning. Like, how are they paying for all this stuff? These lots are enormous. It's because humanity is voracious for stories, and movies are one premium type of storytelling. The demand for stories is steady if not going up. It's just that we have a wider variety of types of stories that we can do, whether we're an indie author. So anyway, did I answer the question? You get me too excited with these questions, Jo. It's a problem. Jo: Yes. I think there's a lot of opportunity and a lot of ways in, but the parallels with being an indie author I think are quite clear. One of the things I found interesting about your profile and what you do is that you help clients who are already accomplished but not quite breaking through, and that sounds like a lot of mid-list indie authors, probably a lot of mid-list screenwriters, mid-list filmmakers. This is a hard place to be because, on the one hand, we are grateful for what we have achieved and what we can do, and yet wanting more, wanting that big Hollywood deal or the Netflix deal, or wanting the massive bestseller or whatever. So if someone wants to get to that next level, what are some of the ways that they can perhaps try and get there? Brooks: It's a great question. Coaching is a really wonderful way to learn anything of this sort of complexity and challenge, especially if it's a hyper-competitive business. We need two things, I think, to write a great novel or screenplay or both. A, we need to feel profoundly safe in our space. If we can't really feel deeply authentic about the things that are embarrassing, or that we feel shame about, or just our shadows, or anything that we don't feel completely comfortable saying and sharing in public usually. We need to be able to touch those things, and be articulate about those things, and that's one part of it. Then we need a concrete path forward. Maybe you're thinking about some tragedy that you had in childhood, and how you dealt with it and how difficult that was. So you need to be able to be real precise in those observations about what it felt like, and how you tried to compensate for it, and that didn't work and it made it worse. Whatever your observations are about your life journey, you need to be really specific and really deeply felt. A good coaching relationship allows you to be in that space, to be really honest with yourself and authentic. g Aood coach will push you back and say, “You know what? That sounds interesting, but maybe not quite as true to you deeply.” So that's one piece of it. Then there's a concrete path forward. You need to have the emotional access to that truth, and then you need to know what to do with that truth in a step-by-step way. Because most people, the ones that you're talking about, they're accomplished in something else. What happens is when we first start writing, and maybe this happens with novelists, but for sure it happens to screenwriters, you just start typing words. But you haven't really thought through the theme, the concept, the structure, the character, all the deeper questions that really matter. The milestones, like a North Star: winning a major award, or getting a publisher. That's the direction that we're heading towards, and then you set it and forget it, but you want to keep checking it every week, every month or whatever. But you want it very specific. “I would like to sell a book, or sell a book to Hollywood, or write a screenplay, or get a producer attached to a screenplay.” Whatever the milestone is, make it really specific, really concrete, and then reverse engineer. This is what I do on the concrete path. I reverse engineer every step to get there, starting with a really tiny one we can do today, and I make sure they feel really safe, and then we just walk through. Then what happens is, if you do that, if you feel safe, if you're showing up authentically and you have a process that's repeatable, not just willy-nilly, it's got to be something that's proven to work. It wasn't an accident I wrote 45 scripts. I've got a whole system. But by the way, the first five scripts took me forever. The last movie that I made took me three years to write that script. I can write a better script with those same elements in three months now, because I know I have a concrete path. So if you want to do something new, whether it's playing the piano or getting six-pack abs or writing a screenplay, work with somebody who's got a system that's already proven, and make sure you relate to them, and then just follow the system. Then when the doubts come up, and they will, that's where the feeling safe is really important. Because, oh, I want the six-pack abs, but I don't feel like going to the gym. I want the extra donut. If I'm working with a really good trainer, they go, “Dude, do you want the six-pack abs or not?” And then you go back and forth, and I go, “Okay, now I can make peace with myself and say I can take one tiny bite of the donut and then still do my workout,” and then I'm moving towards that North Star. Does that make sense? Jo: Yes. I think, like many independents, I resist anything that is systematised. I'm a discovery writer, and I follow the muse, and all of that kind of thing. I think I would say something in a similar vein, which is sustainable creativity for the long term, because your 45 scripts are also years of work, and my books are years of work, and we get better at what we do. So my system, I do have a system really, because— My system is that I do the work, and I write my stories, and I get them out there, and I do the marketing. So even if it's not as systematised as such, it's still a process that I have repeated over and over again. Brooks: That's fascinating to me. Would you consider yourself a pantser? You're like, “I've got an idea,” and you just start writing? Jo: I don't use the word pantser. I guess I call it discovery writing, which is… Brooks: That's a better term. Jo: Yes. What I'm writing for this prize, for example, I know the characters, I know now what's happening. When I had the idea, it was very much a vision and a theme, and the competition has a theme: a positive future with AI and technology. But the things that came around that, I then started playing with ideas around the treatment. I haven't written the screenplay yet. I don't do a plot, or I don't follow Save the Cat or any of that kind of thing. When I write a novel, I just explore and I never write in order. Then at some point I stop and then I have to think about the structure and putting it all together, so the edits are quite big. But my fun is in that discovery, really. Brooks: Oh, that's awesome. Okay, so let me ask, that's really fascinating. And by the way, that doesn't, to me, negate the system that I use. The one that I use is ultimately… the thing is, these questions, the audience is wanting your unique answers to. You don't necessarily need to do it in a certain order. I think that's actually really cool that you write out of order and you have a few elements in mind. All that stuff sounds awesome. The only thing that then makes me curious is, how's your pace? Are you actually completing novels at a pace that feels good, or do you feel like you go too fast, too slow? Jo: I do one or two a year at the moment. Well, two a year, really. But I would say I'm not as successful as I'd like to be, so I'm not saying that my system is the best. I'm saying I want to be better. It's just that my fun is this sort of creative chaos, which I then try and control later. One of the things I really like about screenplays and treatments and doing this kind of thing for film is that it is much more structured, I think, than a 70,000-word novel. You can go in all kinds of directions, whereas with screenwriting you do have to be more disciplined really. Brooks: Yes, so this is going to be fun probably, to hear my view for your audience, and the differences as I see them. For starters, you're talking about what, 10, 20, 30 hours reading a novel sometimes, or maybe less, whereas a movie's a 90-minute experience, right? So that's different. Or if it's a TV series, you might see an hour and then an hour. So that's a very different experience. What happens is when it's condensed like that, you're loading up layers. So every scene is stacked with exposition beneath the drama, and done in a certain way. So specifically, movies are only what you can see and only what you hear. Whereas novels, if you can think it, you can write it, it can be in there. So you don't need to have a plot, but if you want to sell your book to Hollywood, it helps. So I was very resistant about structure. I went to NYU film school, where we really just made short films. It was funny, I had friends that were in the dramatic writing department, and I was like, “You guys are wasting your money. You're just learning to write scripts. We learn to write the scripts and make the movies.” What I hadn't realised is it's a different skill set to hold somebody's attention across an hour-long play, or a 90-minute movie, than it is to make a movie that holds their attention for two minutes or five minutes. I found out years later when I made a feature that was like a lot of shorts patched together, and people were not… They liked it, but they didn't love it. I was like, “Well, what's going on?” And so then I learned to really love Save the Cat in particular. It completely changed me. What happened was, I got a big old slice of humble pie. I had made my second feature, and I put everything I had into it, and it had loose structural beginning, middle, end, blah, blah, blah. But I was still, “Eh, Hollywood BS. What do they know? It's all fake.” So I was very anti-Hollywood structure. Then I was like, now I've got two independent films out there, people saw them, liked them, whatever, but it wasn't getting me consistent work. It wasn't really advancing my career in the way that I wanted. And I was like, “Well, maybe there is something to the Save the Cat.” So I went to the Save the Cat workshop with Blake when he was still alive, and he was delightful, a really awesome guy. He's got this kind of cutesy style, for people that don't know. For context, Blake Snyder was a working Hollywood screenwriter, and he had this system called Save the Cat, which actually has some really interesting ideas. He's got this very light, breezy sort of style. A lot of people don't like him and some people really love him, and everything in between. But I took his weekend seminar, and it completely changed me, because at that point, like I said, I took three years to write a script. Then once he had a process and he had a way of thinking about craft that was just much more screenwriter-friendly, I was like, “Oh my God.” It was so much easier, because I was just focused on the right thing at the right time. So it just sped everything up. After that, I was banging out two to three scripts a year, and better and better quality. So for me, because I went from winging it and wrote five scripts in 13 years, and then wrote two to three scripts every year, I became a huge proponent of system and process. Then my own system really came from that, but it's modular. I have a nine-step system, but you don't necessarily have to go in that order, other than the last three steps, but I won't get into the details. Sometimes you kind of jump from two to three and then back to two and then back and forth. So I love that you get the feel for those elements, and then you just felt your way through. But writing screenplay pages doesn't make sense until you really understand concept, you get a deep sense of beginning, middle, end, character arcs, and these other threads. There are just way better tools for those jobs than screenplay format, because it's a really weird format. It's got these weird slug lines at the top that are all in caps, because a screenplay is a blueprint for somebody else to make the movie. It's not an end-user document like a novel. I don't let my clients even go to that format because it just gets them focused on the wrong things. What they really need to know is, what is your perspective about this theme? What happened in your life that you're fascinated with, that you'd even want to write about this? And tell me what your real life lessons are. So we go into… again, I go back to relationship. What's your relationship to the universe? And what's your relationship to your best friends, or where you got your heart broken, or whatever you want to write about. And then we get that clarity, and then I show you how to express it in terms of developing a screenplay. It's really long-form storytelling, and then the structure just makes it build on itself. But with the structure, because you're talking about so much money and people involved to make it, at least traditionally, what ended up happening was narrative structure that was not so much rigid. Because here's the thing, you can look at 50, 100 years of European cinema and you can look at Hollywood cinema, and Hollywood laps them. When I taught at UCLA Extension, I had lots of foreign students. Let's say there'd be two or three students… if there were 12 people in the class, two or three people would be from America, and everybody else would be from other countries. I would go around, I'd be like, “What movies and TV shows have you been watching?” Almost in every single country, they watch half from their own country, half from Hollywood. So Hollywood storytelling works, that's just the data, and they're dominant. The reason it works is what Aristotle was saying thousands of years ago.. There's a way of thinking about beginning, middle, end that just deeply speaks to the psyche, and you can ignore it if you want. I think Godard said, “You need beginning, middle, and end, but not necessarily in that order,” right? Which is great. Just the way we experience life, there's a beginning, a middle, an end to this podcast interview. There's a beginning, middle, end to the day, a beginning, middle, end to me eating lunch. So if you don't lean into the beginning, middle, end psychological aspect of your story, you're going to bore your reader. But to your point, you don't necessarily have to sort that out in the beginning. It's more efficient probably if you do, but you don't have to. Go into it wherever the muse tells you to go, and then at some point, like you do, then you go, “Okay, now I go back and I edit.” If you're saying there's another level, you have another gear in you, then yes, I'd be curious to slowly go through how you're making those decisions. Because what's happening probably is there are ways you're holding back a little bit. There's maybe something you're afraid of being vulnerable about. That's usually where me or other writers are holding themselves back, and we can take a look at that. There are different ways I show writers to do it. Then you can go, “Oh, I was doing it here, and now I can do it there.” And it could be with process, or just a certain creative choice. With story, it's clear and compelling. Those are the simple things. So, is this clear enough? Is it compelling enough? And there are almost always ways to up-level on any facet, whether it's one sentence, or a sentence that describes the whole concept of the book, or a chapter. Each one of those can be looked at with that lens and we can just say, “Hey, this is 70%, 80%,” whatever, and then we say, “Well, how do we get a little bit more?” And then when you do that enough, it piles up. Then especially if you bring in an audience and people are flipping out for your work, they'll tell you. Jo: Yes, I love a challenge, so thank you for everything you've shared today. So where can people find you and everything you do online? Brooks: Well, one way you can find me—if anything I said seemed helpful for you, if you have questions about Hollywood or you have a screenplay in your heart—you can just email me, brooks@brookselms.com. You could look me up on LinkedIn. I'm at Brooks Elms. I also have a Skool community called Screenwriter Marketing, but it's really for any sort of storyteller, and it talks about my favourite way to engage an audience and get through it. So anybody can jump into that if you like my vibe. If you really think anything I've said, or the way I said it, seems like it could be helpful for you, just reach out. Let me know what you're up to, and maybe there's a way I can help you. Jo: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Brooks. That was great. Brooks: You're welcome. It was a total pleasure. It was lots of fun, and I really appreciate you.The post How To Prove The Demand For Your Stories And Get The Attention Of Hollywood With Brooks Elms first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Today on CarEdge Live, Ray and Zach discuss the latest on the used car market. Tune in to learn more! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today on CarEdge Live, Ray and Zach discuss the latest used car market data. Tune in to learn more! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Some serious stuff lands better with humor, so help yuck up some doom and gloom with the Garage Hour gearheads.  We've got the potential peril of cars made in China (everything from unactuated robot cars and vampire technology to dangerously chintzy products and blatant trademark infringement) and the real-life lessons you and we can learn from the rinse-and-repeat episodes of Tiger Woods' DUIs (let the celeb make the mistake for you).  From there, there's some thought development on a schism developing in the used car market (new and old - divergent, but why?), and a reminder that some tech is easy to fix because it's easy to fix (geeks can do stuff!). Also in there:  loads of Led Zeppelin (Physical Graffiti, of course), and some adventures in foam with beer from the sale shelf (why not enjoy some beer tourism?).

Some serious stuff lands better with humor, so help yuck up some doom and gloom with the Garage Hour gearheads.  We've got the potential peril of cars made in China (everything from unactuated robot cars and vampire technology to dangerously chintzy products and blatant trademark infringement) and the real-life lessons you and we can learn from the rinse-and-repeat episodes of Tiger Woods' DUIs (let the celeb make the mistake for you).  From there, there's some thought development on a schism developing in the used car market (new and old - divergent, but why?), and a reminder that some tech is easy to fix because it's easy to fix (geeks can do stuff!). Also in there:  loads of Led Zeppelin (Physical Graffiti, of course), and some adventures in foam with beer from the sale shelf (why not enjoy some beer tourism?).

The I Love CVille Show headlines: Donald Trump Threatens Armageddon On Iran At 8PM Used Car Prices At Highest Point Since 2023 1¢ Real Estate Tax Rate Increase Looming For CVille City Authorizes $3.85M Forgivable Loan For 501 Cherry Approval Ratings For Gov Spanberger Tanking Quickly Closed Spot W/ More Upside: Milkman Or South Street? Armed Gunman Threat Evacuates Regal In Stonefield Subscribe To JerryRatcliffe.com For $8 Per Month Read Viewer & Listener Comments Live On-Air The I Love CVille Show airs live Monday – Friday from 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The I Love CVille Show on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible, Rumble and iLoveCVille.com.

CNBC Business News Update with Jessica Ettinger - market numbers & news featuring CNBC expert analysis and sound from top business names. Updated throughout the business day. Visit https://www.cnbc.com/ for more. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A fast-talking, no-nonsense dive into the real world of buying and selling cars, this episode features Randy Adams sharing hard-earned lessons from over 15 years on the air. Blending practical car business insights with faith-based guidance, Randy explains how dealerships operate, how buyers can avoid costly mistakes, and why discipline, honesty, and spiritual awareness matter when making financial decisions. From trade-in traps to repossessions and market trends, this episode is packed with candid advice to help you protect your money, stay grounded, and make smarter choices.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on CarEdge Live, Ray and Zach discuss the latest used car market update. Tune in to learn more! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The League. Find someone in yours. Apply today. https://www.theleague.com/ Upwork: Post your job free at http://upwork.com and connect with top talent to grow your business. Harry's: Our listeners get the Harry's Plus Trial Set for only $10 at https://www.Harrys.com/ICED #Harryspod Shopify: Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at https://shopify.com/ich Follow and Subscribe to @DougDeMuro Email: GrahamNeedsHelp12@gmail.com with any potential business ideas you'd like us to be involved in / partner with you! Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Apply for The Index Membership: https://entertheindex.com/ Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: tmatsradio@gmail.com For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:15 - Worst car YouTuber with finances 00:03:29 - Frivolous car purchases 00:04:28 - Carrera GT cost per mile 00:07:10 - Car collection value growth 00:07:41 - Record auction prices 00:11:15 - Wild recent auctions 00:13:44 - Is vintage car interest fading? 00:14:38 - Future “holy grail” car 00:15:59 - Low-depreciation cars 00:19:02 - Sponsor - The League 00:20:02 - Advice for conservative buyers 00:21:24 - How hypercar leasing works 00:25:35 - Thoughts on 96-month car loans 00:26:25 - How much car you can afford 00:29:00 - China EV & battery progress 00:30:12 - Are Chinese EVs good? 00:31:43 - Importing Chinese EVs 00:32:50 - EV range issues 00:34:02 - EV pricing after silver boom 00:35:31 - Car market misconceptions 00:35:47 - Cars likely to rise in value 00:36:42 - Sponsor - Upwork 00:37:47 - Cars that got too expensive 00:46:30 - Cars you can drive for free 00:49:11 - Cars to avoid 00:50:59 - Best cars under $30K 00:53:36 - Biggest head-turners by price 00:56:47 - Reactions to the Countach 01:01:26 - Why Graham doesn't drive his Ford GT 01:02:24 - Thoughts on the new Ford GT 01:04:23 - Sponsor - Harry's Shaving 01:05:47 - Sponsor - Shopify 01:07:09 - Smiles-per-gallon cars 01:07:56 - Improving car brands 01:11:32 - Cars people want most right now 01:12:26 - Consistently disappointing brands 01:15:36 - Best budget brands 01:16:36 - Thoughts on Genesis 01:17:34 - Best new car tech 01:18:29 - Car feature subscriptions 01:23:11 - Must-have car features 01:24:41 - Cars & Bids update 01:26:17 - Income breakdown 01:29:27 - Current business involvement 01:32:07 - Still enjoying content creation? 01:37:57 - Daily routine 01:38:15 - Where he's investing 01:39:14 - Collection maintenance costs 01:41:15 - Improving Cars & Bids 01:43:50 - Advice for Cars & Bids bidders 01:46:22 - Surprising Cars & Bids sales 01:48:48 - Montana LLC tax drama 01:57:03 - Most irresponsible car YouTuber 02:09:47 - Rapid-fire questions 02:14:27 - Tier lists *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on CarEdge Live, Ray and Zach discuss the latest data on used car prices. Tune in to learn more. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Your 60-second money minute. Today's topic: Why Used Car Prices Are Soaring Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From Wall Street to Main Street, the latest on the markets and what it means for your money. Updated regularly on weekdays, featuring CNBC expert analysis and sound from top business newsmakers. Anchored by CNBC's Jessica Ettinger. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Youtuber Wesley Kagan joins me to talk about he does Monterey Car Week on a budget. You can experience the world renowned classic and exotic car show, without spending exotic car money! I also talk about why used car prices are skyrocketing and what to do about it. If you like cars and want to get up to speed, this is the show for you. Tune in for that and more of your listener submitted car sounds!Get your GPS tracker now and protect your car! Use Promo code AUTOADHD15 for 15% off everything, in addition to another 35% off an annual subscription: spytec.com@WesleyKagan https://www.youtube.com/@WesleyKagan

Mark is joined by Senator Eric Schmidt to start the final hour of the show, breaking down his plans to help St. Louis reduce crime & boost it's economic future, the reaction around kids not having their phones during school hours any longer, Alex Rosenberger breaks down the realities of used car prices and the audio cut of the day.

Jill and Tom open the show discussing the poor first-half financial returns of EV startups Lucid and Rivian, and the surprising impact recent emissions deregulation will have on their bottom lines. The hosts also touch on the slow sales start of Lucid's new Gravity EV crossover. Still in the first segment, Jill reviews the subcompact Acura ADX crossover. Jill likes the vehicle, but questions if it's refined and powerful enough to be an Acura. Listen in for her complete review. In the second segment Jill and Tom welcome Green Sense Show host Robert Colangelo to the program. Robert talked about his show—surprise news—and how shrinking cities may impact the auto industry and transportation in general. In the last segment Jill is subjected to Tom's “Korean or Japanese?” quiz. To close the show, Tom shared some highlights from an iSeeCars list of fastest-depreciating vehicles. 

An automotive industry expert in the state says used car prices are up, but tariffs aren't necessarily behind the rising costs. Then, state lawmakers hold their first meeting examining healthcare insurance and policy changes. Plus, how do you know what charities are good stewards of your donations? Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson shares tips. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

- Car Dealers to Congress: Keep the EV Incentives! - U.S. Used Car Prices Up 40% - Xiaomi YU7 Gets Stunning Sales Orders - Xiaomi YU7 vs. Tesla Model Y - Xiaomi's Founder Now Richest Man in China - Chinese OEMs Put Tesla Model Y in Their Crosshairs - Uber In Talks to Buy Pony.AI U.S. Ops - BYD To Buy Austrian Steel - Car Ship Sinking Cost Over $560 Million - Autoline Poll: U.S. EV Incentives

- Car Dealers to Congress: Keep the EV Incentives! - U.S. Used Car Prices Up 40% - Xiaomi YU7 Gets Stunning Sales Orders - Xiaomi YU7 vs. Tesla Model Y - Xiaomi's Founder Now Richest Man in China - Chinese OEMs Put Tesla Model Y in Their Crosshairs - Uber In Talks to Buy Pony.AI U.S. Ops - BYD To Buy Austrian Steel - Car Ship Sinking Cost Over $560 Million - Autoline Poll: U.S. EV Incentives

Today's show features: Todd Caputo, President at Todd Caputo Consulting Jen Morand, President of Chicago Automobile Trade Association Doug Horner (@benzsandbowties), General Sales Manager at Mercedes-Benz of North Olmsted This episode is brought to you by: Nomad Content Studio – The team behind the dealers you actually see online. Nomad works in your dealership to build a brand new pipeline of sales driven by social media content. They're the same team behind names like George Saliba, Benzs & Bowties, and EV Auto—dealers who've built national brands and sold more cars in the process. If you want your dealership to be next, head to trynomad.co and book a call. Interested in advertising with Car Dealership Guy? Drop us a line here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cdgpartner.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Interested in being considered as a guest on the podcast? Add your name here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3Suismu⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check out Car Dealership Guy's stuff: CDG News ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://news.dealershipguy.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CDG Jobs ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://jobs.dealershipguy.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CDG Recruiting ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.cdgrecruiting.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ My Socials: X ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/GuyDealership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/cardealershipguy/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@guydealership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/cardealershipguy/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Threads ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.threads.net/@cardealershipguy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077402857683⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Everything else ➤⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ dealershipguy.com

Today on CarEdge Live, Ray and Zach discuss the latest data from Edmunds on used car prices and take live call-ins. Tune in to learn more!

- U.S. Senate Blocks California EV Mandate - GAO Rules Freezing EV Charging Funds Illegal  - Akio Toyoda Wins Back Support from Investors - U.S. OEMs Want Same Tariff Deal as UK - Chinese EU Car Sales Soar 79% In April - GM EV Market Share in U.S. Hits 14% - Xiaomi Officially Unveils YU7 SUV - Ford Accuses California Lawyers of Fraud - Used Car Prices Top $30,000 Once Again - Rivian Creates Stylish Camo Wraps

- U.S. Senate Blocks California EV Mandate - GAO Rules Freezing EV Charging Funds Illegal  - Akio Toyoda Wins Back Support from Investors - U.S. OEMs Want Same Tariff Deal as UK - Chinese EU Car Sales Soar 79% In April - GM EV Market Share in U.S. Hits 14% - Xiaomi Officially Unveils YU7 SUV - Ford Accuses California Lawyers of Fraud - Used Car Prices Top $30,000 Once Again - Rivian Creates Stylish Camo Wraps

David Doyle from Macquarie Group joins Morning Movers to discuss this week's top macro headlines including CPI and PPI inflation data. He points to a difference in used cars prices showing a drop in April CPI data versus the Manheim Index actually indicating higher prices, and David believes this could eventually signal a price increase in May's CPI data. His group doesn't believe there will be any rate cuts in 2025, adding that inflationary pressures will be persistent through this year. He believes a "pass-through" effect from tariffs will be fully revealed in the summer months.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – / schwabnetwork Follow us on Facebook – / schwabnetwork Follow us on LinkedIn - / schwab-network About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

Today on CarEdge Live, Ray and Zach are joined by Laura Wehunt from Black Book to discuss the current state of the used car market. Tune in to learn more!

In today's episode, Charlotte is joined by industry expert Garth as they sit down to discuss the ins and outs of used vehicle pricing. From understanding the key market factors that influence car prices to learning how prices are determined, they cover everything you need to know to navigate the used car market. Plus, Garth shares expert negotiation tactics to help you get the most for your trade-in and secure a better price on your next used car purchase. Whether you're a first-time buyer or a seasoned car shopper, this episode is packed with valuable tips for driving away with a great deal! Don't forget to subscribe and stay tuned for more insider tips and expert advice on the automotive market! Tariff Episode: https://youtu.be/qfFZAuZxEPM?si=zFGIUgLF6WLsDngT Check Out Our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@BrantfordKia/videos  Looking to buy a vehicle in Ontario? Connect with Gabi here: httpswww.brantfordkia.com/youtube.... Support the dealers who support this channel! www.brantfordkia.ca www.brantfordhyundai.ca FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM! @GABIS_GARAGE @CHARS.CARS.KHC @BRANTFORDKIA @BRANTFORDHYUNDAI

Today on CarEdge Live, Ray and Zach discuss the latest tariff news and what impact it will have on used car prices.

The Rebel Capitalist helps YOU learn more about Macro, Investing, Entrepreneurship AND Personal Freedom.✅ Come to Rebel Capitalist Live here https://rebelcapitalistlive.com/   ✅ Check out my private, online investment community (Rebel Capitalist Pro) with Chris MacIntosh, Lyn Alden and many more for $1!! click here https://georgegammon.com/pro   ✅Rebel capitalist merchandise https://www.rebelcapitaliststore.com

Hour 3: The Tara Show - “SNL Has Forgotten How To Do Political Humor!” “Ukraine Is A Little Peaved With Trump Over Peace Talks” “Ryan Talks Oil With Energy Expert And Company Owner Rey ‘RT' Trevino” “Used Car Prices Are Out Of Control”

February 17, 2025 ~ Used car prices are not expected to come down anytime soon. Mike McInerney, President and Owner of McInerney Chrysler Dodge Jeep and Ram, joins Kevin to share why.

Bumper to Bumper Radio, the car guys on KTAR, 92.3 FM in Phoenix, AZ, broadcast every Saturday from 11:00 am ...

Welcome to The Weekly—your go-to roundup of the top five auto industry headlines. This week's top stories:  1. New vehicle sales forecasted to surge in 2025 after successful Q4 2. Used car price drops slowing down, hovering around $30K 3. Wholesale used car prices hold steady so far this month 4. Mobile vehicle service is key to winning back customers 5. Honda in talks with Nissan over possible merger Have a tip for our editorial team? Send us your scoop at insights@cardealershipguy.org. This episode is brought to you by: Upstart — Join Upstart's Keishawn Batts at NADA for a look at how AI-powered financing could help your dealership approve more car buyers to move more metal. He'll share how AI makes the financing process faster, simpler and ultimately creates more opportunities to sell more vehicles while increasing profitability. Don't miss out—learn more at https://carguymedia.com/upstart Prefer to read? Take a look at the companion newsletter for this episode here: https://news.dealershipguy.com Have a tip for our editorial team? Send us your scoop at insights@cardealershipguy.org. Check out Car Dealership Guy's stuff: CDG News ➤ https://news.dealershipguy.com/ CDG Jobs ➤ https://jobs.dealershipguy.com/ CDG Recruiting ➤ https://www.cdgrecruiting.com/ My Socials: X ➤ https://www.twitter.com/GuyDealership Instagram ➤ https://www.instagram.com/cardealershipguy/ TikTok ➤ https://www.tiktok.com/@guydealership LinkedIn ➤ https://www.linkedin.com/company/cardealershipguy/ Threads ➤ https://www.threads.net/@cardealershipguy Facebook ➤ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077402857683 Everything else ➤ dealershipguy.com This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.

The Truth About Used Car Prices, Extended Warranties, and Summer Car Prep Welcome to your favorite auto show, Let's Talk Wheels! In this episode, Mike Herzing and Jeremy Birenbaum dive into the world of used car prices and why they're spiking. Learn about the factors driving up the costs of 10-year-old vehicles and what you need to know before making a purchase. We also tackle the topic of extended warranties. Are those commercials really too good to be true? Find out from Mike and Jeremy as they share real-life experiences and insights on what to watch out for. Get your car ready for summer with tips on preventing overheating, especially for older models. Jeremy shares a personal story about a friend's 58 Impala and what steps you can take to keep your classic car running smoothly in the heat. Our series on tools continues with a focus on the best pry bars and where to find them. Whether you're a seasoned mechanic or a DIY enthusiast, this segment is packed with useful information. Finally, we explore the current state of the RV market with expert Brian Johnson from Demontron RV. Is it still overpriced, or have things settled down? Brian has the answers you need. Don't miss the car review segment featuring the 2024 Honda Passport, a versatile and reliable SUV that's perfect for family trips. Tune in to Let's Talk Wheels for all this and more!

Used car prices fall again in July, down nearly 20% from pandemic highs    Please Subscribe + Rate & Review KMJ's Afternoon Drive with Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson wherever you listen!  ---     KMJ's Afternoon Drive with Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson is available on the KMJNOW app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever else you listen.  ---   Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson – KMJ's Afternoon Drive  Weekdays 2-6 PM Pacific on News/Talk 580 & 105.9 KMJ  DriveKMJ.com | Podcast | Facebook | X | Instagram  ---   Everything KMJ: kmjnow.com | Streaming | Podcasts | Facebook | X | Instagram    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on the Daily News You Can Use, Ray and Zach are joined by Brandon from Car Questions Answered. The trio discuss the latest data on the used car market. Tune in to learn more.

Real car guys are like real estate investors - savvy, not impulsive. Actual running costs for EV vs petrol in the Pacific Northwest using residential electricity. Japan is only 2% EV. Pragmatism? Honda Prologue a true Honda?

I am so excited to announce that today is the first-ever episode of my new monthly show: The Car Dealership Guy Market Update—Brought to you by Edmunds. A panel-style, monthly discussion with automotive industry experts and dealers about where our car market is today—and where it may be headed. Think of this as a forum for auto insiders to share everything from macroeconomic trends to ground-level dealership insights, all with a simple goal: To make you smarter and more informed about the car market and economy, in under an hour. Let's get into it! Today, im speaking with Jessica Caldwell, Head of Insights at Edmunds, and Kevin Frye, eCommerce Director of Jeff Wyler Automotive Group. This episode is brought to you by: Edmunds - Premier by Edmunds connects dealers with in-market shoppers when, where, and how they want to connect. New dealers — Get 50% off for 90 days when you sign up at edmunds.com/CDG Car Dealership Guy Industry Job Board - Connecting world-class talent with top-notch companies in Automotive. Find your next role—or start hiring today—at CDGJobs.com. Interested in advertising with Car Dealership Guy? Drop us a line here Interested in being considered as a guest on the podcast? Add your name here Topics: (00:00:00) - Intro (00:02:11) - Introducing Kevin and Jessica (00:03:33) - The state of the market (00:05:07) - Price trends (00:09:22) - Auto financing (00:11:09) - Leasing (00:18:31) - Acquiring inventory (00:20:43) - The affordability issue in new cars (00:27:55) - Shopper behavior (00:29:20) - Sales volumes (00:33:49) - Brand performances (00:39:40) - Evs (00:41:07) - Dealer growth strategies (00:42:26) - Outlook for the next 90 days Check out Edmunds and get 50% off your first 90 days here! Check out the website for more (https://dealershipguy.com) and follow me on X @GuyDealership! (https://x.com/guydealership) This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.

Matt and Alistair welcome Jessica Caldwell, head of data insights at Edmunds, to discuss new and used car prices, negative equity, high interest rates and what you should consider when buying a vehicle. Presented by DrinkBravago.com

Today on the Daily News You Can Use, Ray and Zach discuss what is going on in the wholesale and retail used car market. Prices on the wholesale side are cratering, while retail are falling more slowly. Tune in to learn more.

Today on the Daily News You Can Use, Ray and Zach are joined by Dan LaGrange from Key Auto Group. The trio discuss recent trends in the used car market, and why car dealers are struggling to sell. Tune in to learn more!

Today on the Daily News You Can Use, Ray and Zach discuss the latest data on the used car market. Used car wholesale and retail prices have crashed significantly. Tune in to learn more!

Today on the Daily News You Can Use, Ray is joined by Justise and the duo discuss the latest data from Black Book on used car prices. Tune in to learn more.

One decision that will save you big money over time is to buy a used car instead of new. And there is good news along that front. Clark updates what's happening with prices on both new and used cars. Also, airline boarding can be a big headache - inefficient and time consuming. Clark has the solution.  Used Car Prices: Segment 1 Ask Clark: Segment 2 Fixing Airline Boarding: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: Clark.com - Report: 10 Used Cars With the Biggest Price Drops 10 Best SUVs You Can Buy Right Now Can I Trust the FDIC's Recommendations on Getting Insured for More Than $250,000 at a Single Bank? 14 Places To Listen to Free Music Online Airline boarding: how to end the game of thrones fight for baggage space Health Insurance Guide California could make it easier to scrub your personal data from the web. Businesses are pushing back Clark.com resources Episode transcripts Community.Clark.com Clark.com daily money newsletter Consumer Action Center Free Helpline: 636-492-5275 Learn more about your ad choices: megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the Daily News You Can Use, Ray and Zach discuss the latest data from Cox Automotive and Black Book. Both data providers show significant declines in used car prices.

Today on the Daily News You Can Use, Ray and Justise discuss the latest data from Black Book which shows used car prices increasing (again). Tune in to learn more!

Krystal and Saagar discuss DeSantis campaign tanking, new GOP fundraising numbers, Tucker Carlson rips Mike Pence on Ukraine live at a Turning Point event, Biden struggles on 2024 fundraising, SAG joins WGA in historic Hollywood strike as Ron Pearlman attacks Bob Iger's comments on the strikers, Twitter begins payments for creators who post on the platform, Saagar looks into California doubling down on "Woke Math", Krystal looks into the Hollywood Strike and how executives have been using AI to replace workers on all levels, and we're joined by Car YouTube Expert Doug DeMuro to talk about Used Car Prices and the future of EV vehicles in America. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/ Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Krystal and Saagar discuss DeSantis campaign tanking, new GOP fundraising numbers, Tucker Carlson rips Mike Pence on Ukraine live at a Turning Point event, Biden struggles on 2024 fundraising, SAG joins WGA in historic Hollywood strike as Ron Pearlman attacks Bob Iger's comments on the strikers, Twitter begins payments for creators who post on the platform, Saagar looks into California doubling down on "Woke Math", Krystal looks into the Hollywood Strike and how executives have been using AI to replace workers on all levels, and we're joined by Car YouTube Expert Doug DeMuro to talk about Used Car Prices and the future of EV vehicles in America.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Krystal and Saagar discuss the details of the Debt Talks collapsing as default looks likely, Biden caves on sending F16 Fighter Jets to aid Ukraine, the Media lies about Ukraine's defeat in Bakhmut, DeSantis trashes Trump in Secret Donor Call, is 2016 repeating itself as Tim Scott and Chris Christie are set to announce presidential runs, Epstein blackmailed Bill Gates over an affair with a bridge player, the Pelosi family helping hide Feinstein's brain inflammations to aid their own political goals in California, Saagar looks into Used Car prices bankrupting the Middle Class, and Krystal looks into how Fox News got tricked by a migrant homeless hoax. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/ To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and Spotify Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623   Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl   Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Krystal and Saagar discuss the details of the Debt Talks collapsing as default looks likely, Biden caves on sending F16 Fighter Jets to aid Ukraine, the Media lies about Ukraine's defeat in Bakhmut, DeSantis trashes Trump in Secret Donor Call, is 2016 repeating itself as Tim Scott and Chris Christie are set to announce presidential runs, Epstein blackmailed Bill Gates over an affair with a bridge player, the Pelosi family helping hide Feinstein's brain inflammations to aid their own political goals in California, Saagar looks into Used Car prices bankrupting the Middle Class, and Krystal looks into how Fox News got tricked by a migrant homeless hoax.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's been about a year and a half since I had Lucky Lopez on the podcast, so we decided it was time we do it again! We've done a number of videos together and have another one coming! A year and a half ago, Lucky was telling me that inventory was low and that I needed to get my Porsche. Lucky says that the exotic car market is now crashing, and we discuss how this happened. Lucky says that 93% of the loans from 2020, 2021, and the beginning of 2022 had such loose lending requirements that almost anyone could get a loan. Stay to the end to hear all about Lucky's thoughts on the market and how you can make money in this economy! HE MADE $190,000 IN ONE DAY! How To Flip Cars | Ep. 020 - https://youtu.be/I-6dpgPtzEoI SNUCK INTO THE CAR AUCTION - How To Flip Cars - https://youtu.be/txxuzkYb77gConnect with Lucky! Instagram - @luckylopezYouTube -  @LuckyLopez777  For only .99 CENTS preorder my new book “The Wealthy Way: Don't Go Broke Trying To Get Rich” and get FREE access to my new course “Business Builder Academy” where I go over all the fundamentals of building a 7-figure business. https://WealthyWay.com/Book______________________________________________________Here's how my businesses can help you:Want to be coached by me on real estate investing? Apply at https://futureflipper.comAre you an entrepreneur who wants to build their personal brand on social media? Go to https://contentempire.ioYou can invest in my real estate deals! Go to https://pinedacapital.comNeed tax and accounting help? Contact my CPA Firm! https://TrueBooksCPA.com/Are you a woman in entrepreneurship? Join our women's mastermind! https://wealthywoman.io/Join my coaching program for real estate agents! https://wealthyagent.io/For a free consultation with my team go to https://RyanPineda.com______________________________________________________My other social media channels:Subscribe to my main channel "Ryan Pineda" https://www.youtube.com/c/ryanpinedaSubscribe to my real estate only channel "Future Flipper" https://www.youtube.com/c/futureflipper1Follow me on Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/ryanpinedahttps://www.tiktok.com/@ryanpinedahttps://www.twitter.com/ryanpineda______________________________________________________Lucy Lopez and I discuss what's going on in the car market and how it got this bad. Lucky shares his predictions for the car market in 2023. I asked Lucky how he's flipping and wholesaling is going as a dealer. Lucky and I discuss if people should be worried, but we think that there are deals in an economy. Carvana, Carvana stock, Real estate investing, real estate market, car market, used car market, luxury car market, car prices crashing, will car prices go down, will car prices go up