Car Dealership Guy — the internet's viral car dealer and market commentator — engages in authentic and insightful conversations with auto industry leaders, innovators and investors. Watch and listen to new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday, and check us out on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube for all the best moments from the show.
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Who I did. I fell in love with the CEO here. He was a prior military guy like myself, was not an operator. He was a finance guy by trade, but had tremendous respect for people in the stores and what they did. And I thought that it would be a great journey for me to learn from him. So, anyhow, so I came here as the operations guy and when he retired, I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to take on the seat of the CEO. And, you know, at the time, it the board here is fantastic. They're very supportive, but some of my goals at the time when I asked them about it was I wanted to grow the company And I wanted a lot more of our employees in the dealership to be able to participate in stock awards. So we rewrote our stock plan because it was written in a manner that I really couldn't give it out to the frontline people in the stores. We rewrote the stock plan. I visited our large shareholders. They were kind enough to have a vote and approve it. So, you know, we went from giving a 120 people a year or so stock in the company to about 1800 people a year. Stock in the company. And it's technicians, sales advisors, service advisors, collision folks, accounting folks, support staff people. It's a lot of fun. Giving frontline people equity in the company that they work for. Take me through that frame of mind. Right? Initially, you said you were more of private auto group guy. Obviously, it's stock is more limited. Typically, it's illiquid. Right? Here you are a public company liquid stock. I mean, clearly, you're to see all of a publicly traded auto group today. So I think we know what you likely favor, but Take us through your frame of mind as having gone from the transition of a being a private guy to a public guy and sort of the positives and negatives to both Sure. You know, it's funny. I I think there's positives and negatives to both, and I think it's really about an individual making a choice that's best for them. I loved working on the private side. I loved working for the families, the dynamics, the passion, the
Something new. It's fresh. We're solving a real problem. So that is that is really encouraging. Sorry. I digressed a little bit. No. And and I will tell you, I think in general, something that's this isn't exclusive to automotive, but I think naturally many times, what gets a lot of the attention is the shiny objects, and and and even more so on the consumer side. Right? And so I think thinking like, oh, b to b behind the scenes, service, submitting warrant I mean, it's, like, it's very dry. But at the end of the day, that's why like, that's where there's a ton of opportunity that isn't so visible to the market. And and put work out aside for a second. I think this is what I just think about our industry in general. Right? I think about where is their inefficiency, generally speaking. Where are their opportunities? I think that service you know, I've just see I've been seeing a lot of things pop up. Right? Like, I personally invested in, like, an AI software for phone calls for the service center. Right? Something that, like, automatically scheduled. So the point I'm trying to make is, like, it's it's crazy that even today, you can call up a service center, and no one picks up your phone. It's just crazy to think about that. Right? So Right. Anyhoo, tell us, how do we get to this point? Where did all this get started, Jim? Sure. Well, you know, I started working with dealers and service departments right out of school. You know, this is probably 35 years ago now and just fell in love with the industry and with dealership people. You know, I back in the napkin at one point figured I'd visited over 2,000 dealerships over those 35 years. So seen a lot of things and started started creating companies using technology to solve specific problems. Or I was an entrepreneur early into a company. You know, I did something way back when that was called NewGen, which is now Epsilon. You know, founded a company called AutoPoint. Was one
Dotcom. They are hiring the most informed candidates in the marketplace. So don't hesitate. You can add your open roles today by visiting cdgjobs.com or clicking the link in the show notes below. That's cdgjobs.com. And so I'm a dealer listening to this, considering making an investment. What was the thought process that went into making this investment into such a great, you know, new facility? I think from 2 angles. 1, I'm curious to know from economic angle. How did you you know, what factors went in, payback period. I mean, whatever you can share. 2, from just a a practical, like, customer experience angle. Right? Believing that the future is of auto retail still involves the showroom. However that evolves, that is still the destination. So can you kinda dig into both of those points? Sure. So from a economic perspective, we reside in St. John's County. Florida is one of the faster growing states in the country, especially during COVID. There was a it was pretty decent sized movement from the tri state area, much like Texas got a lot of California residents. Florida got a lot of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut residents. And our county is one of the faster growing counties in the state of Florida, and a lot of that growth was happening in the northern part of the county versus we were kind of in the central part. And we were also probably about 5 miles off directly off of the freeway. So if you drive I 95 in Florida, there's a lot of auto malls. And Saint Augustine really didn't have one. The exit to the north of us had a couple of dealers, including one of the largest Ford dealers in the country. And so we saw their success, and we said there's definitely reason for us to be by the freeway, especially when one of the larger Toyota dealerships in north Northern Florida is going to be there. In hindsight, if we were the only dealership moving, I don't know if we would have done that because Hyundai is a great brand. I don't know if they're a destination brand just yet. Toyota
So none of this. And I say, well, I bought a new car from Tesla, and I bought a used car from Carvana, and there was no f and I manager. Is it the f and I manager that role is critical because of the dealership model, or is it no. No. No. No. No. You know, Tesla and Carvana, they do it differently? Completely If you wanna do it completely digitally in the Tesla or Carvana model, great. If you wanna do it completely digitally with some human involvement, I e, like, a virtual F and I, some virtual support in some copilot scenario, or if you wanna do it completely online in store or completely in store. I believe that when in in the consuming environment we're in today, we need to provide our consumers the most options so they have the right to pick what they want. I am not critical of Tesla or Carvana for doing it their way because I gotta tell you, they've done a nice job. What they've been able to do is they've been able to take a lot of the human elements and replicate them in a process without human involvement. We've been able to do similar, with our dealers. But if you look at a lot of the data that's out there today so CarMax is a is a, partner of ours. And I remember one of the and I I should be very specific here. I think it was their Q3 earnings, I think, last year, where, you know, we're talking about their online engagement. I think I think it's 8 to 10% of their customers completely buy online. They have all the capability, and 8 to 10% buy online. I think when you look at the up and coming consumer generation, Cox and some of the other sites I think CDK has done, those that generation is actually preferring more in person interaction than what we saw in the millennial generation from a data perspective. And so I go back to looking at the data and just I believe the more options you give to consumers, the better you'll be. And I think when
This podcast. Alan Haig on to CDG Podcast. Alan, welcome back. Thank you, Yossi. It's good to be with you again. It's good to have you back on. You know, I was gonna start by asking you about the industry, but I think the conversation we had before I even started press the record is even better. I mean, to have a good good old conversation with you about marriage, weddings, relationships, so not the direction I thought we would take to start this pod, but I I love to hear it. Well, I think that one aspect of our industry that's unique is that many of these businesses, the vast majority of them are owned by families. And families have moms and dads and sisters and brothers and sons and daughters and cousins. And that makes our lives richer trying to give people advice on buying and selling and also ties us a little closer to our clients because we're a business in which we have some family members working out too. 2 of my sons joined about a year ago. My wife has been our CFO for since we formed the company. But, regularly, when we're talking with people that are thinking about selling, it's often family matters that are the decision makers. And even for folks that are buying, you know, often, it's a family decision about whether to invest or not. So it's a it's a big part of our daily lives even though we deal with a lot of numbers and legal documents, etcetera. At the end of the day, it's almost always a family decision about exiting or growing. So it makes our lives a little richer and sometimes more complicated. Yeah. I bet. I I know a thing or 2 about a a family dealership business. So been there, and and it it experienced the the ups and the downs. So That's right. You have. Definitely keeps it interesting. I love to hear it. Alan, for those that have not or for our new listeners on the podcast who have not
