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Car Guy Coffee Podcast Live from NAMAD 2025: Vegas. Special Guest Brian Kramer

Car Guy Coffee Podcast Live from NAMAD 2025: Vegas. Special Guest Brian Kramer

Car Guy Coffee Dec 09, 2025 24 min
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About this episode

Brian Kramer joins the Car Guy Coffee Podcast live from NAMAD 2025 in Vegas, sharing insights on the importance of community and innovation in the automotive industry. The discussion highlights the unique atmosphere of NAMAD, where attendees engage deeply with topics like AI implementation and dealership success strategies. Kramer emphasizes the need for open communication and mentorship, showcasing success stories from the conference. The episode is a blend of personal anecdotes and industry trends, making it a rich resource for those looking to elevate their automotive game.

Topics: community engagement innovation in automotive AI implementation mentorship dealership success strategies networking NAMAD conference highlights personal growth user-generated content disruption in the industry
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Hello and welcome to the CarGuy Coffee Podcast. This brew has been brought to you by Certified
Solutionaries and if you want to consume more brews or want more information about how to
build your brand on our podcast and want to see how you can sponsor the brew, go to CarGuyCoffee.com.
Let's brew! What's going on CarGuy's and CarGuy's? We are at NameMad and we're hanging out with this
guy. If you don't know who he is, we're about to tell you. He's the one, the only, Brian Kramer.
Welcome to the show for a little bit. I appreciate you for being here, showing up. I love that you've
been all over the place and you go all over the place, man. You're one of those guys that you
never know where Brian's going to be. It's almost like we're at Waldo. I definitely see you at
every place I am. You guys are all, you're flying, focusing, flying. But that's what we do and we love
sharing great news and that's what you're doing. You're out sharing great news. You have been an
expert here field for a long time and people recognize that and you're always out there just
upping your game. You don't just settle for what you know. You keep growing and keep learning.
And coming to an event like this helps you be able to understand audience is a little bit different.
This is a unique event, NameMad. You said that you love being here. This is a great
conference that you've been to. So some people, what do you think about this conference? It's so great.
So I think that every year is like really open-minded. They've got like an elastic mindset
and even on all the presentations, there's a lot of Q&A at the end where a lot of these things,
you'll go to it and there's not like a lot of interaction. But the questions that everybody's
asking are like about execution and like really trying to figure out how to do the things that
everybody's talking about, which is, those are the kind of people I want to surround myself with.
This is open-minded people that want to innovate and they want to get better.
And that's something that you definitely leave the way in inside of innovation. I remember showing
up to one conference. We were just getting out of the Uber and you're outside appraising a car,
right? I'm using the tool to appraise a car. It was amazing. It was hilarious. And it was
that was the podcast inside of a podcast. You were capturing that. All of that was together.
Yes. But seriously, you do so much for the industry. You connect so many people all over the place
and an environment like this where there is something, the best word I can find is special.
There is something special about the environment that's inside of this community. But
there's a big mix of different challenges that this entire community is starting to
go through and go with together. What do you see as far as the rest of the industry being able to
take from a community like this when they come and they get submerged? What I noticed yesterday is
there's a lot of dealers here and even a lot of vendor partners that are asking questions about
how do I use AI to accelerate my brand, get my website more relevant? How can I already hear
as competitive and a great one? And they want to leap on everybody else and they're like,
what can I actually do? We're like the implementation of one, two, three steps from my website
for acquiring used cars, for making sure that I make a better decision with inventory management,
wholesale and everything like that. But the questions they're asking, the surface level
questions you guys get at all time, where they're just asking the questions to check a box instead
of really trying to solve a problem. I feel guilty of doing stuff like that in the past too,
because you want to feel like you're gaining something and you actually don't really know
what to ask a lot of times, right? So being able to get outside that surface level and actually
get a little bit deeper is what they're doing in these panels. And you're seeing that, I love that,
these people here, these dealers, even vendors are asking questions because they want to learn
more to help their clients. So I think that's phenomenal. He's going to do a mic fix real quick,
but while he's doing this mic fix, I got to just say that when you're at an event like this,
I encourage all you all to be here and be part of it. Don't sit back and just watch.
Though you can gain a lot from that, ask the questions. If we all have them, go out there.
There's no such thing as a dumb question. The only dumb question is one that's not asked.
So make sure you go ask those questions and be involved in these panels. And listen,
really take notes and then go back and implement most importantly, because you can learn a lot of
stuff. But if you don't actually apply it, then it was just a conversation not education.
You got people here that are actually doing it right now, right? They're executing it.
I was bringing it up yesterday about Peter Bullware, arguably the best service driving
that position program in the country. If I'm here, I'm a dealer. I'm picking his brain.
How are you acquiring 100 used cars a month off the service side? Frank Brothers, same way,
but Oklahoma, these guys are doing things that nobody else is doing anywhere in the country.
They're here and they're open book, like we were talking about earlier, and they're willing to share
it. Those are the people that I know you guys the same way, but I want to seek those people out.
And they're all in the typical, I got to go to each different dealership around the country to
find these unique stories and these amazing things happening. And there's just a huge
concentration of all of them right here. Some very successful dealers in here. We know people
like Amy Mills, who owns 40 plus stores, I mean, four stores, every type of brand you can imagine.
He has the data. That's the thing is data and there's actually true processes that are working
here. And there's great vendors here that are here sharing the great news. This community is big.
And they're statistically showing that minority dealers tend to be some of the most successful
dealers inside their classes. And that's pretty big. So you can get some really great tips here,
whether you're a minority or not, you should be here. I'm going to tell you,
this is the National Association of Minority Automotive Dealers, but this is for everyone,
everyone. And I can get here. Yeah, it's a very inclusive. It is. 100% with Spikes. Very cool.
And I feel that when I'm here. I love that. And that's, it's special.
Like I said earlier, it's special, right? And being special in that regard, there's a lot of
door opening that we're seeing that we see here. Again, we go to, we see you at so many of these
events. But here I see literally them opening doors for other people jumping in and saying,
hey, I was where it is that you are. I've never been to a conference where the main focus is
usually leaned into helping to create new dealers, getting them involved into the actual culture
and building them up. They have the next gen program where they're helping people get set up
that aren't necessarily by blood, car guys and car gals, but they're coming into the business,
they're finding themselves in it. And within a couple of years, somebody has a dealership.
What is it like being able to see people like open their eyes to all the opportunities that
actually show up here? Because you have major OEMs on the ground, you have long time.
Like this, like this in Soryota have 56 people in this room next door.
Yeah, they've got 60 people on the stage. It's like a dealer factory, you know, forward the same
way on the other side. And they're here looking for new dealers. That's exactly because they know
that, again, the statistics show minority dealers tend to be best in class. And that's a big deal.
There's something special about that. We can talk about why they are the best in class,
but what I do know is they have resources like NAMAT helping them be able to keep
constantly with education and be inspired. And like I said, be open books. They can go to a guy
like Damian Mills and say, Hey, I got a pre-owned store. I know you've got all these stores. How
do you do it? And he will give you the path. He'll even introduce you to Toyota people who
introduce you to more people. I saw that happening yesterday. It's happening everywhere in here.
There's a success story of somebody who showed up here two years ago with no dealerships,
came in here wanting to own dealerships. Today, this visit this year, he signed up for his first one.
So come on, how awesome is that? I think that's American dream. That is the American dream and
opportunities that they're trying to do here is phenomenal. And it gets people inspired. And it's
not just one person doing this. There's a multiple of people who are becoming this. There's their
Dealer Academy that they have right now that's running aligned with the NADA and all these other
ones. It's doing big things. There's some people like Erica inside that class that I absolutely
love. I think it's amazing. Her career path has been the rocket ship. But I don't think everybody
realizes the adversity. I remember being on calls with her three or four years ago. And all the
adversity and the fire she had to walk over to get to be where she's at now. I mean, it's so rewarding
for me to see that journey she went on. I know what you mean by that. It's a beautiful thing for
her and her family. She had to move up far north to find a place that was just wide open for her.
But when they actually saw the value brought her in, she poured into it. And then she poured right
back. That's right. And that's the craziest thing. Yeah. I should say the craziest. That's one of
the most beautiful things that she's done. She's always been one to pour into others, but no one's
really been able to pour into her the way that they were. And now she sees even more value in
herself. And I think the world, we all seen it for years. I think we saw her speak at one of
these Osano things one time. I'm in the first one. Oh my God. She was sitting there just dropping
all this stuff. I remember going, who is this? Everybody said that. It was like the music stopped
that moment. And you can see it across. Whatever that little sidebar area,
somewhere in Vegas or something. And everybody was like, yeah, you could just see the passion.
It was just pouring out of her. The thing is, anytime that she does have the opportunity to
have a microphone, nobody needs to follow up. Nobody needs to follow up on that. It's just
end the show. And she did. She dropped bars yesterday, literally dropped a big poem about
Wocan. And speaking of Wocan, Wocan was out here representing its biggest numbers ever,
along with this event. Right. They built a whole auditorium.
Their own event. But I love seeing them attached to these different events that are happening.
But history has been made by NAMED itself. This is the biggest attendees,
biggest attendee list that we've ever had. And newest memberships.
They have been signing out. They have been the biggest growth of new members this year. It's
been phenomenal year for them. And it's only just begun for them. That's a beautiful thing.
You being with cars.com. I love that. You've been in site dealerships. So you know what it's like
to be in retail and making things happen. What? I can ask, what made you choose cars.com to be your new home?
I came, I think, as part of the Accentrade package. We may acquire an Accentrade. I came
as part of that. And, but it's been the night rolls evolved more in January. So it's not just
acquisition. We own dealer inspired websites, 7000 websites. So we've got all that data.
The media solutions, dealer inspired media. We've got our cars.com marketplace, obviously.
I'll tell you one thing that's been torn hot. Everybody's been talking about is dealer
Raider. And I used to not be as excited about dealer Raider as Google was number one Facebook.
But now with the advent of AI Reddit and dealer Raider are the fuel of user generated content
called EGC. So now all of a sudden, it's 23 years of data that's just been compiled that we were
sitting on and it was part of cars.com. But now it's powering chat GPT, perplexity, Google Gemini.
So you could basically say it's powering the future, right?
It is. Where people are starting to search more, they're not Googling it anymore. They're chat
GPT in it, right? And when they do that, they're getting the data from places like that, which
means if you are best, I didn't know. So here's a pretty good. My mind go, wow, dealer Raider needs
wait till this. So here's the next part that's going to just. So it's now basically a truth here.
So when you look at the algorithm for AI based search, there's EAT, expertise, experience,
authoritativeness, trustworthiness. And so that's a new gold standard in terms of search algorithms.
SEO is a bet for all intents and purposes. This just happened. 6090 days, right? So now it's
and you can look that up. What do they do to measure trustworthiness, authoritativeness?
It's measuring in the 60,000 data points and point of an eye. Does your website say the same
thing that your review said? And if people say about you on Reddit, and even Wikipedia,
but if those things are out of sync, something as minor as we've got a 60 minute oil change,
and then it says repeatedly, I think I was there for two and a half hours, or they see
on Google places, when somebody was visited there, you less trustworthy and we trust you on
everything else now. And it's just the algorithm. If you don't do that, now you're going to show up
in zero click searches of the AI assisted searches. So you're essentially invisible. You can't say
we give you five grand over KBB, or we give you $500 over CarMax. That's confusing. So now they're
saying, are they experts or what is this? Swipe left. Who's the next deal that we can put in this
search? Yeah, two complicated. We're not doing this. But what's so refreshing about this group
is that they're disruptive. There's so many people that are like clinging to the past,
like tying themselves like to the path of the ship. I don't want to change. Whereas this group
is the opposite of that and show me what to do. Yeah, they want to disrupt things. There's like
a disruptive, innovative spirit here. That's contagious. It is. I feel that. And that's a
great way of putting it. They want to be disruptors. And that's a huge part about being
successful in this industry is that constantly evolving, constantly being innovative and being
a disruptor, showing people, hey, there is different ways to do this. Matter of fact,
you're going to get attention from that. Your community gets attention from that. Your consumer
gets attention from that. And they start to go, what's happening over here? No different than
anything else happening in this world. When there's a disruption going on, we're like, what's this?
We're tuning in. And right now is the ultimate playing grab disruption. When it comes to AI,
and a bunch of people yesterday were asking me, they said, if this is being reinvented,
and as you go back in time to an SEO for still not, you could build all those pages and gain
relevance. That's happening right now with GEO. So this is, they said, so all everybody in here
is in a position where they could be the number one online search in their market.
And there's, the rules are wide open for the first time in 20 years.
That's pretty exciting. That gets me super excited. It makes me completely think differently
about how we go about our dealers. It really is. It's phenomenal news because there is,
there's so many resources out there. And I know dealers out there that do nothing but
deal a rater. So to me, it's like, gosh, I can't wait to see what that translates with them.
They're going to be right there. That's amazing. Who's the best salesperson to buy a car from
this market? I just bought a car for my daughter. She's your main Toyota, my old model outer.
But I bought it with an AI agent, right? And it did all the mystery shops, did all the stuff.
Well, I'm able to do other stuff. And then when I did, and it said who I was going to buy from
them anyway, Dimitri Haynes, the solution I buy from him for the last five years, six years,
he's just been top sales person, but he's taken a picture with every single customer.
Oh, why are you doing that? And why are you posting all that stuff? But you know,
what's with all the videos? Why do you have to, all that user generated content now is like candy.
Do you say who should I buy a car from in South West Florida? It's him and then everybody else.
And it's not even close. So now he's so busy, he luckily, like I said, Hey, can you help me out?
He goes, and it was just appointment after appointment after appointment, like an assembly line
because he's no longer like he's got somebody else on the follow up now,
but he's no longer prospecting or doing that stuff. He has more business than he can handle
because he put in the work back in the day to admit that that's not reaping the fruit.
Quite all the seeds now he's reaping the fruits of his life. I love, I love how you articulated
that because there is the element of seed time harvest. What is very much I think the issue
that we do as car guys is sometimes we eat the seed, we eat the seeds that we're supposed to be
planning rather than actually put them in the ground, let them become something in the future.
We live in 30 day cycles in the car business and it makes it hard to project in the future.
And it also makes it hard for dealers that aren't prepping themselves to actually judge what a
successful day looks like outside of just putting numbers on the board. And you know it from all
angles folks, this isn't just another vendor that's out here buzzing around and making solutions
really be at the tip of the spear, but really right there on a platter for anybody that wants
to use it, but he's an operator, he knows what it's like. How long did you spend as a general
manager? 20 years. He knows what he's talking about and Fred was at the spot of you going to cars.com
but what made you jump into now serving the industry on a broader basis because it was
something for us too. Remember guys, gals, you know the deal. You become a general manager,
you become a manager, you become a great salesperson, you write your own ticket,
we're living good lives, everything's good, but then there's more. What made you reach out for more?
There's a lot of people that poured into me and at some point I know you guys are in the same boat,
you feel the obligation to pay it forward, right? And you do something for so long and yet that
dealerships on autopilot and everything and there's an element of boredom and
you want to challenge, I probably have a fliction of trying to disrupt myself too much.
They're never being comfortable with anything. They're always trying to reinvent
and start something new, but I'll say this, that we all have an obligation once we've gone through
like that Erica story, because she's got an obligation to pay it forward for what she went
through, feel the same way. If we don't do that, then we're disrespecting our mentor and then all
the work that they put into us because that message is not being communicated forward or
we all know a bunch of dealerships all over the country, right? Good ones, bad ones, average ones
and to be able, I think that you're like a conduit, right? Of like an energy source that you're
transmitting this energy of I've seen what works, I've seen what doesn't work, I've experienced
what works, what doesn't work and when you can relay that to people in real time,
I think that there's no greater gift to be given to other people than that.
No, absolutely and that's and that is so much more rewarding than hoarding, right? It's so much
more rewarding to be able to deposit something for somebody else to take and to make great with
and that's what we have as hope as professionals inside of this industry that those that we get
to be with that we get to pour into are going to take it way further than us.
That's the spirit of every single person at this conference in particular.
Gain for it does matter and the more that we all do that the better we all be
holding on hoarding things and not sharing it's selfish but even if people most importantly
it doesn't help anyone it you'll never be able to help you, right? It doesn't so make sure that you
guys go out and share what you have but you can lead a horse of water doesn't mean they're
always going to drink it and that and what I believe is that I'm going to share all my secrets
because really there's no such thing as a secret it's just the fact that I know I'm
going to do it are you going to do it and I if you do it all you're going to do is make everything
better for everyone so do it and if there's somebody's not doing it I do I look at this
differently now if you're taking this role and that because I get really frustrated frequently
things about about what I would do but I got to also look in the mirror and say how can I
communicate that differently next time or what's a what there's something I missed or there's some
better way that I can communicate that message to simplify it boil it down resonate with that person
you got to if you're a leader in this industry in dealership or outside of the dealership you really
got to if you're getting frustrated with other people and which we're all doing on the other
basis you got to really look at and I communicate in the message clearly enough I've actually caught
myself being like I didn't I assume that they knew more than I need to make sure that we get
step by step it's elementaries we bring it's important that we do that sometimes it's simple in
this side but as simple as acronyms that we say in automotive sometimes we say stuff for our customers
even to our new self people they have no idea what it means so they just they may start to use it they
still don't even know what it means and then they're translating and now it all gets all just
populated so be very clear about what you're saying bring it down to simple if you can keep it simple
and show them ways it makes it a lot easier for them communication doesn't matter yeah the key piece
in communication or in culture is language and every culture has its language has its dialect
has its flow and you consider when trying to communicate confidently to anybody what it's
like when you don't know the language and say I know what I'm telling you is good but you're not
catching it and it's not because you don't want to hear it it's because you don't know how to hear
what I'm saying I think of our friend our friend Tony Lucas pretty Tony pretty Tony Tony you know
that name and but with Tony what I think of is how in his mind he knows three languages I believe
at least three different languages his first language is Portuguese so that's how he thinks
he naturally thinks in Portuguese and then has had to train himself to deal with all of the
frustration of not understanding necessarily all of the words that can be used to articulate
what he naturally thinks but then but he disciplines himself to learn it so that he
can be a good communicator with his people and consistently there and that's something that
we all have to break with it was a great storytellers amen story sell to yeah right
but being able to learn the language of those that you're trying to communicate to
it's available especially with all of the AI all of the technology here you can find the
language for the individual because everybody almost has their own language AI has its own
language if you don't ask the questions correctly and you don't you're not good at asking questions
you will not be good at AI you might end up with seven fingers on a hand or something
it's definitely a hallucination
as long as you're great at asking at the right questions if you ask it the right
question same as the card just like your cards it is famous leadership
and leadership is evolving in this industry which we're really grateful for
we're glad that we came in at a time where more and more people are being open to being
taught what they don't know that is one of the biggest things that are the dealers that we work
with and the people that are we're potentially going to work with is recognizing that there are a
lot of things that they don't know and this evolution inside of customer and commerce
is something we all need adjustment and we all need to learn AI is going to be a wake up call
for everybody in every industry but if you're not good at leadership and you're not willing to admit
that and be and accept that pack AI is going to reveal all the people that are hoarding the
information oh i'm the only one that could price cars like this and i'm going to guess what i mean
acutri we just released an AI based merchandising told the rights merchandising better with an
SEL and a GTO focus better than any human ever could in two seconds with all the right stuff
so now listen that's okay there's your competitive advantage off the table now oh pricing we're
working on that right now AI based automated pricing that's going to be more efficient more
accurate than anything possible so once that happens what's left attracting talent recruiting
talent hiring talent developing talent and promoting talent and if you're not good at those
five things yeah that's the best management in the industry column leaders use car leaders
new car leaders fni leaders that's a transition but in evolution that's happening right now
and if somebody doesn't acknowledge that they're already a dinosaur we believe leaders are in
charge of two things inside these stores managers leaders it's people and processes and if you get
really good at managing your people when it's all those things you mentioned in this process
is making sure all those things are happening you're going to crush you don't have to hold
anything just be really good at that a lot of leaders today don't do the things have never
done things that ourselves people are doing today to be able to generate business and do things
it's okay you can still leave them again they don't care how much oh it's about curious yeah
you have to be curious you need to learn you need to grow for sure because how are they going to
teach them how to do videos or how to take pictures with their clients and what works what
didn't work for them they can't talk about that from first-hand experience so they better be very
curious and have these the next generation reverse mentoring that i'm constantly picking
brains but all actually cars dot com all these like 20-something-year-old wonder kids that are
brilliant with software and stuff like that i didn't know software right so i had to learn from it
well why not go to the greatest source we're super smart with it i'm happy to share the craziest
thing is the people that we're mentoring when you ask them a question we become a mentor in a
lot of cases right learn a lot from them it helps us be able to do better things and be curious
learn and not and don't just say do it show them how to do it learn how to train yourself spend a
little bit of time every day getting a little bit better at what you do and then your team will see
it i guess what they'll do same thing so true so true brian we appreciate you taking some time to
prove some solutions with this i love bro he's a great talker over here and everywhere it is that
he goes but anytime that you get the chance to pick his ear talk to him a little bit make sure that
you do it but tell people how they can get oldie look me up on link tree linkedin youtube instagram
tiktok you know and all that stuff i'm either under brian fremer or fremer brian on all those
platforms dm me email me at b kramer at cars dot com whatever works yes you also won the 2024
superman lookalike contest fantastic but seriously i can see him getting cast for superman i appreciate
i appreciate each and every one of you watching us paying attention understand name mat has got a
whole lot brewing and this guy is proof of it we're so thankful for you all tuning in we're so
thankful for your time and now we got to fly everybody so let's go ahead and drop these f bombs
on three one two three we're going to keep rolling car guys and car guys you can do solutions
on the car guys walkie podcast with the one the only brian fremer there we go

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