John McNeill

They go back and say that was like worse than going to the dentist because they had so many steps, so much paper to fill out, going back and forth on pricing, et cetera.

So we literally deleted every step in that process we could.

We eliminated haggling.

We had one price for everybody, including us in the company.

Like we didn't get a discount on the cars.

We pay what you pay.

We eliminated loan docs, lease docs, because we got down to a single paragraph.

We automated the whole licensing process.

So when you showed up and got your car, there was actually a license plate on it.

We just innovated all the way through that process and basically lined up every step in the process.

They're paying you for a car.

So let's eliminate everything that is not building the car because that's the only thing we get paid for.

And the rest of it is all administrative overhead and junk that the customer doesn't see, doesn't care about, isn't going to pay for.

And when you do that, when you map your process and you circle the stuff the customer actually pays you for, turns out it's very few things in their mind they're paying you for.

And that's the mentality that we use as we go to eliminate and delete everything that's not in the customer's economic equation.

Because we had learned too many times when you automate first, it is almost impossible to get the process right.

And we'd literally just been through this.

We had tried to create an alien dreadnought, the machine that creates the machine, and we had built a factory digitally and designed all the machines digitally.

And when that factory was built, that line was built, it didn't work.

And we realized that we had violated this principle