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Powersports Business • August 2026 • 23

WHAT SURPRISED ME Finding the same problems in another industry was humbling. But it isn’ t the interesting part. The interesting part is that they’ re willing to solve them differently than we do.

That fabrication world gates scope creep with change orders. It prices hard against a deadline. It runs postmortems as a matter of habit, not as some consultant’ s exercise. Any dealer reading this could use all three of those ideas on Tuesday morning. We’ ve been regurgitating the same answers to ourselves for thirty years. Out there, the problems rhymed, but the solutions were brand new to me.

That’ s the whole prize. Not new problems. New answers to the old ones.

THE CHALLENGE So here it is operator to operator. Name one operating idea you’ ve brought into your store in the last year from outside powersports. Not a DMS feature or a vendor pitch. A real idea learned from someone who has never set foot on a showroom floor.

If you can’ t name one, that isn’ t a small thing. Our problems aren’ t special. Our problem isn’ t a unique problem somebody else hasn’ t already solved. Go find them.

I’ ll be taking a little breather from this industry as I continue to Iearn how to fix it.

WHY WE CAN’ T SEE IT Here’ s the picture I can’ t shake. Go back a few hundred years to the royal houses of Europe. The tiny sliver at the top only married inside its own tiny sliver. Same handful of families, generation after generation, guarding the bloodline. And you know how it ended. A gene pool so shallow it bred a weakness they couldn’ t breed their way out of.

That’ s us. Powersports is a few percent of the population, and the people who run our stores almost all come from inside that same few percent. We learned it from the person before us, who learned it from the person before them. Then we all go stand at the same tables and tell each other the same things.

When every store runs the same playbook, the playbook stops being an edge. It’ s the same shallow pool we’ ve all been splashing around in. The only way out is deeper water. New blood, new ideas, from somewhere outside the pool.

When I call or email ZiiDMS, I get a quick response:‘ Okay, we’ re on it.’ The response time is a huge improvement over what we experienced in the past. I no longer spend two or three hours on hold, only to get disconnected and have to start all over again.

JR Patton, CEO- Motorsports of New Mexico

Motorsports of New Mexico

Las Cruces, New Mexico