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Car Guy Coffee Podcast Live from NAMAD 2025: Vegas. Special Guest Pam Patton

Car Guy Coffee Podcast Live from NAMAD 2025: Vegas. Special Guest Pam Patton

Car Guy Coffee Dec 23, 2025 14 min
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About this episode

Pam Patton joins the Car Guy Coffee Podcast live from NAMAD 2025 in Las Vegas, sharing insights on the event's record attendance and the importance of community in the automotive industry. The hosts discuss their experiences at various conferences, the value of building relationships, and the need for inclusivity in the automotive space. Pam highlights her journey with ACV and the evolving landscape of digital wholesale marketplaces, emphasizing the significance of data and partnerships in driving success. The episode captures the excitement of networking and collaboration among automotive professionals.

Topics: community building networking events digital marketplaces data utilization inclusivity in automotive partnerships record attendance experiential learning
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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
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Let's brew! Here we go Car Guys and Car Gals. We are excited about having another lady on the mic.
Guys, gals, help us to make welcome to the CarGuy Coffee Podcast. The one, the only, Pam Patton.
What's up Pam? I'm excited. Hello. How's everybody doing? Oh I do amazing and one thing I love about
you is you've always just been open to just conversation with us like since day one you've
always been nothing but smiles and ears and always willing to give us advice on things that
you don't necessarily have to. You're always like hey check this out try this do things and
that is to us so important Lou and I we're new to this thing even though we're five years into all
this stuff in these conferences we're still new and we're still trying to get our ways through
and a lot of people think oh these guys been around for a while not really we're just loud so we
sound like we've been around for a while. I'm not very quiet myself so that's why we always get home.
But I've always appreciated you always making sure that you even spend some time with us spend
time with us at dinner taking us out to dinner last night one of the best experiences I've ever
had at a dinners place if not the best experience I've ever had at a dinner restaurant it was amazing
night yeah and I got a friend named Greg Ash that would be like I beg to differ he loves taking us
out but Greg I'm gonna tell you you have to go out to dinner with Pam and you'll know what I'm
talking about so all different deal it's an experience it was an experience but it's about
the company and what the experience overall yeah speaking of experiences our first experience
together was being interviewed when we had the chance to interview you at the women of automotive
automotive conference it was down in Orlando it was in Orlando we're having a great time back in
2021 still very traveling when mass on still on the people coming together still at that stage but
we were able to do so fast forward to now we're at an event like this and how many of these actual
events have you been to for name it this is my first just like you do so we are all first timers
but here's what's interesting for all the conferences just in 2025 that I've been at
this has been amazing not only and again there's a lot of conferences having record attendance
but I think by far they have nailed it so normally it's in that six seven hundred
four over twelve hundred plus yes there's people that signed up not only just first time we've hit
records but there's people coming over to the registration desk and actually signing up the
today they're showing up and still signing up so that's not normal but they're doing some really
great no they had over 200 people sign up here not online not pre they had 200 plus sign up at
this event so that's massive I can't wait to hear the final tallies on it but it is the greatest the
biggest the baddest show ever to happen for name ad and it's just the beginning I can't wait to see
what next year brings but people like us showing up matters we have to support everybody right and
being able to support everyone means everyone and name ad make sure that we are part of a huge
community that is massive that actually our leaders in their industries doing big things
and I'm gonna tell you something they're hungry they're here learning they're here getting educated
they're having a good time yes but they're coming together and they're talking they're sharing they're
giving it's a beautiful thing to see I've had so many people reach out to Lou and I already and
just want to just team up with us be partnered with us because they see something and they believe
in that family aspect is pretty pretty awesome yeah it's a it's been a great warm welcome for us
we're so thankful to jump in but it's like we jumped in and we're already family right we were already
inside of the group and that's special to us because we know one we know we're allowed right we
know not everybody's a coffee drinker right but we know that everybody has their own flavor that
they flow with but what is important is that at the end of the day we all do come together to try to
advance our business try to advance our communities try to advance our employees those that work with
us and this is a great environment to do it but automotive is making a big shift and I feel like
being here seeing this and we've seen a lot I feel like we're seeing literally the tip of the
sphere of that that forward advancement I do I think one of my favorite parts was the first
night I did go to the Toyota and Lexus reception it was nice it was different than the main reception
and we had some dealers that were recognized in one awards one of them is Joey Wong from
Great Lakes Automotive he has tours in Ohio and Syracuse and he's he's just an amazing guy and he
used to be a dentist that's the funniest part of all this story is unbelievable it is a great story
yeah so hearing him on stage just where he started at the beginning whether it was us in 2021 or today
like there's so much opportunity and so much work for us to all do and so we're just we're driving that
change and it's going to be at name ad this year it'll be at whatever confidence we're at next
and we're just going to keep going and we'll be back next year thank you everyone we'll be back
next year I agree the coming back to just see awesome people like you yes hang out with all these
other people that at one moment they were strangers as we were coming in here don't really know who
we are and we don't really know who many of them are but they all received us very well and that's
not just us they're doing that for everybody we had a couple of conversations yesterday where some
people are saying we didn't know if we'd be welcome to an event like this just because they may not
fall into the minority section sure but they're very welcoming and it's not about just being a
minority it's recognizing what the minorities contribute to commerce and being able to serve
them and it is astonishing to know what the actual numbers are hearing the data on how
communities are building isn't it it's incredible isn't it you and I both heard that when we were
at loop hand yesterday at the luncheon and the hero was at two percent of minorities actually
are owners of dealerships right now so there is so much work to do or literally just get started
so it is the numbers were definitely it's true and it is huge crazy numbers to know that but
those in those numbers those dealers tend to be the best in market to be doing bigger numbers
than others helping their communities more being more involved in their communities and they're
leading the way because again there is great conferences like name ad that where they can come
learn get resources and see what other great dealers like a Damien Mills I love Juan he that
that guy resonated with me when he was at the opening panel and he was up there talking he's
such a gentleman smiling the whole time but he talked about his father being a doctor he talked
about him becoming a dentist but yet automotive is where he went with all that education he realized
that I can really help some people his father delivered he said over 7000 babies in the time
that he was there wow that's an amazing thing to be part of the community the whole town
eventually it's like all of you one doctor one of my favorite things he said during that panel was
they asked him a question like how do you get more involved in community and he said it comes from
my father my father said hey we need to go buy furniture so he goes when I thought of that I
thought we were going to go to the big city to go get furniture and my father said no we're going
to do it here in the community because this is I they come to me to have their babies I'm going to
go buy from them so he says that's how you do business you stay with your community you make
sure that they're taking care of first before you look for outside sources and that's and he's
leading the way in that and that's why he is so successful and it is awesome to see somebody
do something like that but also they'll love at his father love at his community and then show
people a really simple way to be able to get people involved with you because if you're involved
with them they're involved with you thank you speaking of being involved yes tell us a little
bit tell our audience a little bit about a cv for those that may be you don't know you've been
under the rock i'm just saying okay and may not know about it but what but considering what a cv
does because you guys are not one dimensional so give a little bit true of an understanding on
all the dimensions of a cv so beginning was definitely we were a digital wholesale marketplace
i started in 2016 i didn't even work for the company and i was with demigian doing retail
photography but back then it was trying to decide are we going to hire inspectors are we going to
have the dealers do it so it was just the journey of trying to figure out what was going to be working
best for us but that was the beginning and so we really had so much growth over the last
several years and that's putting it mildly but it's looking right now at the journey of
inventory management we're changing the landscape of appraisals there's things that are going to
come out next year and it's going to be game changing for putting numbers on vehicles where
we are literally within a hundred dollars between ai and all the technology that we have built and
then also looking at the inspectors and what they've inspected for the last nine years we've got
all that in the library so that data data is king right now and so lots of cars is also king so when
you put those two combined it's game changing and so we're the journey right now is just really
trying to get all this out the door i love what's going on it's very cool no it's i think about this
in especially in recent days is i'm learning more about data right and understanding how
companies like yours and so many other software companies out there that are helping people right
hey look let me show you the data that's coming in the process is everything that's gone on it's
all right there in black and white now so through time you have so much that you're able to share
and use to be able to help other companies yourself dealers even buyers be able to have more confidence
in what they're doing and i think that's amazing but that also gives you guys foresight and being
like oh my gosh we have so many things that we can do for our industry right and i can't wait to see
with the next five and i'm sure there's stuff that you probably can't talk about yet but isn't
there something that you can't talk about that's a little exclusive there's a couple of things that
are coming out amazon's here we're doing some great things partnering with them yeah remember this
isn't live so it's and it's okay because they've already spilled the beans but we are spilling and
helping in that space use some beans if you need to spill them coffee beans but we are definitely
helping out i love that powering up the traded process and i think that's great that they look
just beginning as well because they're on their own journey of how that's going to evolve for
these vehicles some of the things for a cd specific just look at the appraisal process will be
different for dealers and really our goal is just we want to partner and help that's it
simplify we're not we're not looking to get we don't need to be number one in getting the amount
of dealers and it's sales sales sales it's the partnership that we're building we don't want
a customer for 30 days we want to be part of that process we want our team to be almost like
employees of the store so it's taking things and it's like the experience from dinner last night
we want that same experience in the show and for dealers to have with their consumers i believe that
that's the difference i believe that because they say how you do one thing is how you do everything
and if it's anything like we did dinner last night i promise you they do it excellent level they
give you an excellent experience an excellent experience matters because people don't really
worry about how much it costs at that point they see how much it brings them how much it actually
i wouldn't i don't want to use a word profit but it's the value that it gives you as by using
something like that it's it's so massive experience matters and if you're not giving people good
experiences then they're missing they're not going to be with you much longer it's going to be just a
30 day cycle and then they're done i think the word there is enriching that's the word we are very
there you go i like that you guys are very much enriching the culture of a store not you don't
have to eclipse it but you do enrich it and inside of us being able to connect to everybody
it's crucial that you have a great gateway for vehicle acquisition and that you do have good
partners that you can trust that do want to take care of you and are adaptable that's one key piece
of a solution area is being able to be adaptable no matter what this industry is constantly changing
there's been so many changes since our first interview that have happened out to now so and
it's a whole different world now i mean look at we're in august of 2025 brian cremer and i were
just joking about this because he spoke a couple months ago and i told him you can't use the t word
any t word comes out you only drinks tonight and so tariffs was such a hot topic and now are we
really it's not so much nope because it's not a thing that needs to be worried about today
so anyhow but yeah just some jokes i can't say the word trending because that's basically what
that word the only word the only time i heard the word tariff this whole time and that's funny
that you said that the only time i heard that besides when you just said it was somebody walked
up to me and asked us about our coffee bean i'm not trying to do a seamless plug here but they go
are is the tariffs affecting the cost on this and i was like that's so weird i was like how do you
know i have to buy bigger books now yeah i think that's the case right but that means that it isn't
you got to get past it there's things that you have control over and that's not one of them which
you do have control over is how do we get around that and actually how do we get ahead of that
and if you can get ahead of it then you're good and having team members and i'm not talking about
vendor partners team members on your squad like acv i promise you they'll be able to help you get
ahead of that no doubt absolutely i wish that pimp we appreciate you taking a few minutes just to
spend some time with us we thanks for thank you for dinner last night but overall thank you for
always brewing solutions for the industry being always so kind to us looking out for us and at
the same time just making us laugh and just being family which is what we definitely are making more
of here is we're making more and more family members become more familiar with us and we
appreciate the opportunity to spend that time with you spend that time with everybody here at
namad you have anything you'd like to say out there to the other pam who's actually running this
event listen it's a good name so we're not going to talk about it yesterday and there's a couple
other panel there's a panel out here from general motors oh wow and she does not like to be called
pam she wants to be pamela okay fair enough makes it easy to split it okay try and understand it's
okay but yeah so it's an easy name for those that you may but wait who's in charge around here and
do you have the right name yes but no namad has done a great job and there's more vendors and partners
here displaying what they have to offer the dealers and when I say here more than I've seen at any other
place this year so when you look this is rows and rows of different companies that are just trying to
get started um and so we just love that we're here to help sponsor and I think they did a great job
this year and we'll continue doing awesome I love it awesome great stuff we got one thing left to do
and that's to drop some f bombs let's go ahead and forgive focus fly and I think it's lunch time it is
it is lunch time on three one two three forgive focus fly keep rolling keep rolling car guys and
car gals you've been brewing solutions upon the car guy coffee podcast here at namad the 45th membership
meeting again a lovely fabulous Las Vegas with the one the only pam pattern
thanks everybody everybody knows

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