There are people I’ve followed online for so long that I feel like I know them.
Which is kind of weird when you think about it.
Brian Benstock is one.
Brian Kramer is another.
Mike Cavanaugh too.
All car guys.
All people I’ve followed for years.
And although we’ve crossed paths on Linkedin, none of them are guys I’ve spent any personal time with. Not so much as a phone call.
Yet I know things about them.
A lot of things actually.
Take Brian Benstock.
Everybody in the car business knows the WHAT.
He runs Paragon Honda and Paragon Acura in New York.
He’s been extraordinarily successful.
That part isn't exactly hidden.
But after following Brian for years, that's not really what I think about when I think about him.
I know how seriously he takes fitness.
I know he reads constantly.
I know his wife and daughter matter enormously to him.
I know relationships matter to him.
I've watched him talk about friends.
People who helped him.
People he helped.
I've heard him refer back many times to the man who gave him his chance.
I know some of the things he believes about leadership.
Customers.
Technology.
The car business.
I know some of the reasons he believes them.
And I have never sat down and had dinner with the guy.
That's strange.
Except it really isn't anymore.
There's a name for it.
Parasocial relationship.
A one-sided relationship where one person develops a sense of familiarity with someone they don't actually know personally.
We all have them.
Maybe yours is a podcaster.
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athlete.
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author.
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musician.
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businessperson.
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somebody you follow on LinkedIn.
Spend enough time listening to someone and something starts happening.
You learn how they think.
What makes them laugh.
What pisses them off.
You hear the story about their father.
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the shitty first job.
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the business that failed.
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the person who gave them a chance.
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the mistake they still talk about.
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the thing they believed ten years ago that they don't anymore.
Eventually you can almost predict what they're going to say.
You don't actually know them.
That's an important distinction.
But you don't know nothing either.
You've been accumulating observations.
And somewhere along the way, those observations became a model of the person in your head.
I think that's fascinating.
Because when I think about Brian Benstock, Brian Kramer or Mike Cavanaugh, I realize something.
The WHAT is probably the least interesting thing I know about them.
I watched Brian Kramer when he was operating dealerships.
I watched him openly share what he was trying.
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methods.
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experiments.
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technology.
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things that worked.
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things that didn't.
Then I watched his career move.
Different roles.
Different opportunities.
Today he's an executive at Cars Commerce.
Mike's path was different.
I've watched wins.
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losses.
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job changes.
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periods of uncertainty.
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new opportunities.
Today he has an enormous operating role at Lithia.
I'm sure both are extremely good at what they do.
But neither one made the rest of us guess how they got there.
They left a trail.
And lately I've been thinking a lot about what was actually in that trail.
It wasn't just the WHAT.
Their titles already told me that.
It was the stuff around it.
WHO.
Who were they before this?
Who influenced them?
Who gave them a chance?
Who did they learn from?
Who mattered?
WHEN.
When did something change?
When did the opportunity appear?
When did something go wrong?
When did they change their mind?
WHY.
Why did they make that decision?
Why did they believe something?
Why did they leave?
Why did they stay?
Why did they try the weird thing everyone else thought was stupid?
HOW.
How did they learn?
How did they react when something failed?
How did they develop judgment?
How did they become so fucking good at the WHAT?
That's the part I've become fascinated with.
The formation of the WHAT.
Because the WHAT is becoming incredibly easy to present.
We can make beautiful websites.
Perfect LinkedIn profiles.
Great photographs.
Polished video.
Articles.
Podcasts.
Schema.
Structured data.
Machine-readable pages.
AI can help us write it.
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design it.
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organize it.
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publish it.
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optimize it.
And all of those things can be useful.
But what happens when everybody gets good at them?
What happens when everybody's website is beautiful?
When everybody has schema?
When everybody publishes?
When everybody knows how to make themselves understandable to machines?
When everybody does everything right?
The WHAT starts looking pretty fucking good everywhere.
And maybe the advantage moves somewhere else.
To the things that are harder to manufacture.
The experiences.
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decisions.
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relationships.
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mistakes.
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scars.
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receipts.
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strange little methods.
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people who shaped you.
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things you survived.
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things you learned that never made it onto the résumé.
The things that explain how the WHAT became true.
That's also why I've started looking differently at the work we're doing with The Polaris Method™.
Originally, I thought a lot about identity.
Who are you?
That's still in there.
But I'm beginning to think there may be a much more useful question.
How did you become so good at what you do?
Now we're digging somewhere interesting.
Tell me about the first job.
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the person who gave you the chance.
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the customer you fucked up with.
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the bankruptcy.
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the mentor.
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the weird opportunity.
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the decision that worked.
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the one that almost buried you.
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the thing your father said when you were 17 that you still think about today.
Not because every one of those things belongs on a website.
Most probably don't.
Because somewhere inside all of that is the source.
The WHO.
The WHEN.
The WHY.
The HOW.
Behind the WHAT.
And I think that becomes even more interesting when machines enter the picture.
A human might spend ten years following somebody online before forming a reasonably nuanced impression of them.
An intelligent system can already retrieve, compare, cross-reference and synthesize an enormous amount of publicly available information very quickly.
So maybe the future question isn't only:
“Who is Bob Manor?”
Maybe it's:
“What makes Bob Manor credible on this particular subject?”
Those are very different questions.
One can be answered with a bio.
The other requires something to investigate.
History.
Work.
Context.
Relationships.
Writing.
Experiences.
Third-party observations.
EVIDENCE?
And we have no idea what the next question will be.
Or who will ask it.
That's why I keep coming back to the source.
Not because I think everybody should become some kind of fucking influencer.
Brian Benstock didn't get into my head because he perfectly optimized a personal brand.
He let me observe enough of the person behind the title that I formed my own conclusions.
Same with Brian Kramer.
Same with Mike Cavanaugh.
And, come to think of it, there's something slightly recursive happening right now.
I just created another publicly available observation about all three of them.
None of them asked me to write this.
Nobody paid me.
I'm simply a guy who's spent more than 30 years in the same industry, watched all three of them for a long time and thought something about the way they've operated was worth documenting.
Some future person…or machine…might find this too.
More context.
Another observation.
One more piece of EVIDENCE?
That's how this shit compounds.
And I suspect there are people reading this who feel like they know me too.
Maybe we've never spoken.
But you've read these for years.
You've watched me build things.
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change my mind.
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get things right.
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get things spectacularly wrong.
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chase ideas.
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abandon some.
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double down on others.
You know things about me that aren't in my bio.
That's not because I told you what conclusion to reach.
I gave you enough of the WHO, WHEN, WHY and HOW to start forming your own.
And maybe that's where the advantage goes when everybody finally learns to do everything else right.
Not toward an even more polished WHAT.
Toward the story of how the WHAT became true.
Bob
About Bob Manor
Bob Manor is the founder of South Ontario Auto Remarketing , Can-Am Dealer Services , and co-founder of Auto Auction Review . He’s also the creator of Influence.vin , a branding and communication studio built for the car business. With over 30 years in the automotive world, Bob specializes in wholesale, dealer services, and identity-driven brand strategy. He’s a regular contributor to well-known automotive publications and uses his platforms to help industry pros re-align with who they are, not just what they do.
Disclaimer:
These are my own observations and interpretations, based on lived experience inside this industry.
This is not financial, legal, or professional advice ... it is pattern recognition, shared for awareness and strategic consideration only
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