"From CPG to 17 Rooftops" — The Real Playbook Behind Running Marketing at Scale | Gary LaDue, Marketing Dir., Modern Auto
The Dealer Playbook
"From CPG to 17 Rooftops" — The Real Playbook Behind Running Marketing at Scale | Gary LaDue, Marketing Dir., Modern Auto
The Dealer Playbook · Jul 21, 2026
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Term
tech stack
A “tech stack” is just the set of software apps a business uses to do its work. Here, it’s the tools used to manage marketing messages.
Term
consent management tool
It’s software that records whether a customer agreed to receive marketing messages. If someone says “yes” or “no,” the tool helps make sure the business follows that choice.
Term
opt out
“Opt out” means the customer asked to stop getting marketing messages. The key is making sure all the different message senders stop too.
Term
opt-in
“Opt in” means the customer agreed to receive marketing messages. The point is that all the different systems should know that agreement.
Concept
centralizing all of it
It means putting all the customer permission info in one place. Then every marketing tool can check the same answer before sending messages.
LIVE
We might have just single-handedly solved a huge problem
for so many people in this industry.
They're like, ding.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think we're all kind of,
everybody's trying to eat the elephant all the time.
Well, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit
that we can just pick off and get after
and it's gonna have a pretty good return for us.
So as you guys are looking, 17 rooftops,
as you're looking at the next six months,
what are the things you're paying attention to?
What are the things you're curious about operationally
and for the growth of the business?
Well, so there's a little bit of a long answer to that.
One of the things that I enjoy most
about producing the Dealer Playbook is hearing from you.
The messages that I get of people
who are getting so much value out of the podcast,
applying it to their day-to-day workflows
and finding a thriving career right here
in the retail auto industry.
It means the world to me.
And you know, one of the ways that we make doing this possible
is through my agency Flex Dealer.
And of course, in the spirit of providing value,
I think this is a perfect time to head over
to www.flexdealer.com to show even further support for you,
my beloved DPB gang.
Right now, if you go to my website, flexdealer.com,
you can get a full, free PDF
of my number one best-selling book, Don't Wait Dominate.
And the reason I think it's so special
is that a lot of the topics that are discussed in this book
are even more relevant today than ever
with this surge in popularized AI.
And people wondering, well, what can I do next?
How can I have a competitive advantage?
Well, that's all here in this book.
And so I'd love to be able to offer you a free copy of this.
If you go to flexdealer.com, it would mean the world to me
because that is how we continue to produce this show for you.
Okay, we were chatting behind the scenes
and did not know when I asked you to come on the show.
I did not know we were going to connect over paper.
But here we are, two men with a past in paper.
Old school.
Finding our way back to paper in so many ways.
You said you, you tell me what you did at Meade.
I was a product and a brand manager.
So I was there for eight years
and managed various product categories
and or brands in that time.
So I would, people are like, wait, what's Meade?
No, look down at the paper on your desk right now.
Yeah.
Look at the notebook.
You just bought your kids from Walmart for school.
Right.
So they, you know, Meade used to have
literally his own paper production business.
They used to own paper mills.
And they spun all that business off at some point in time.
And I went to work for what started as a company called
At a Glance.
At a Glance used to make calendars and planning products
at this enormous production facility in upstate New York.
They were bought by Meade.
And then that partnership then went and bought another company
called Dayrunner.
And when they hired me, it was to manage this new business
they acquired called Dayrunner.
Over time, a couple of other acquisitions changing of hands.
Now that whole business and that entire portfolio is part of
Echo Brands, which is a publicly traded kind of office
supplies company based up in Chicago.
You know, they own like swing line staplers.
Oh.
Which, you know, got all resurgence after
office space movie with the red stapler.
So, you know, and they own like filing supplies
and like all, you know, all the meat brands and stuff.
So yeah, it was, it was cool.
It was fun.
It was fun job.
I'm almost jumping over where we probably in a timeline
sense should start.
But I want to jump to this because you were recently at a
company called SoDoCon with us.
You're on a panel.
We did a panel together.
We, it was very AI focused.
I should ask you how you go from paper to the car business
and how you got to where you are now.
We'll get to that in a second.
Yeah.
But I want to go straight line from paper to AI.
And the fact that even in an AI enhanced world,
you found a migration back to like, but I still use paper
with all of the things you're seeing in technology and that
you're overseeing and that you're thinking about.
You're kind of a proof point to my thesis that we as human
beings make room, we keep room for the thing that we know
works for us while also kind of adopting new and emerging
things.
What does that actually look like for you?
Why is paper still, you know, notes and all those sorts of
things in an AI world still so important to you?
Yeah, I think it's interesting how you put it where it's like
you're making room, you know, to explore and do new things,
but like holding onto the things you know that work.
And, you know, I think I mentioned at me, like we, we did
studies and uncovered studies that show your, your brain
just retains things better after you write them down.
And, you know, I'm no longer in the days of like using a planner
to like plan out every day and everything.
Like for me, like if it's not in my digital calendar,
if it's not in my outlook, then like it just, it doesn't happen.
I'm glad you qualified that though, because I was going to be
like, what did you move to a palm pilot, like a palm tree?
Oh, first was a blackberry.
Remember those?
And I was, and I was bent when they stopped making product
because I loved their keyboard.
I mean, that's what the founders, guy
hung his hat on.
He's like, no, people want to type on a keyboard.
Yeah, I loved it.
But, you know, things change.
You get over it and I use an iPhone like the rest of the world.
But yeah, you know, it's not like I ever gave up using paper.
Just my habits on how I, you know, manage my time and track
what I had to get done just metamorphosized a little bit.
You know, it became a lot more about having a notebook to
write things down, to remember things, to take notes, you know,
and then within that, you know, maybe this sounds a little
bit nerdy, but I have like a system, right?
So if something's really important, I will highlight it
and make sure that that gets done first because things can
match you all day.
So they're not always in order, you know, a priority.
And I'm not going to keep rewriting things in order of
priority.
So my system is to highlight or circle or highlight and circle,
you know, that being the most important.
You know, it's actually funny as you're saying this though.
It's like, that's actually for anybody that still does this,
I'd be curious if you still do this, leave a comment, you
know, send us a message.
What you're talking about is actually more efficient than
the idea of then being like, wait, hold on, let me make sure
that gets into the project manager and flagged properly
and whatever, like it's actually more convenient.
And I'm curious your take like, and this kind of spills into
operation, right, dealership, any business.
Do you think like we're in this era of we killed the thing
that was more efficient because there was a promise that we
could make it more efficient and in so doing just created a
new inefficiency that we had to create a solution for?
Yeah, I mean, maybe there's probably like, you know, it's
funny with questions like that, like you can probably find an
example if you go hunt for it.
Yeah, right.
I create my own vacuum.
Yeah, I think that's the case with a lot of things like, you
know, ask for it and you'll see it, you know, right, you know,
have you ever go into the doctor and like, I don't remember
who told me this, it might have been my
general practitioner, but it was like, you know, if you feel
fine, like, but you go to the doctor and you start poking
and prodding and asking questions and running tests, chances
are you're going to find something something.
Yeah, right.
Like, so, um, you know, in our world, so I've only been an
automotive for nine and a half years, I say only I just
everybody I know has been in it, you know, for like their
whole career, right?
You know, nine years in automotive is like, yeah, but it's
like 80 years in real people years, you know.
Yeah.
So I'm in my fifties.
I've had a really long career before I got here and, you
know, it's, it's a lot to learn about how a dealership
actually operates with and without paper and systems and
technology and, you know, so is it easier if things are
digital as opposed to writing them down?
Maybe it just depends.
You know, I liked your example of, well, it's just more
efficient if you write it down instead of having to go to a
project management tool.
Like we, we have a lot of projects here in our department
and we have kicked around the idea of using some kind of
project management software many, many times.
But I think our skepticism with it is that it will make us
less agile, right?
Like we want to be able to operate really quickly, right?
We, we don't have, you know, we're not the biggest group.
We have 17 stores, but, you know, that's a lot of
personalities and a lot of requests throughout pretty
much every month.
So there's, there's always things to have to change and pivot
while also working on the big rocks, the big stuff we're trying
to roll up the hill, right?
So yeah, like, you know, you got to find what works best for
you, you know, that's, that's really the key.
You got to find what works best for you.
Right.
I want to, I want to use that to kind of segue into, you guys
seem pretty balanced like this awareness of what is going
to be most efficient for you.
This is why, by the way, anybody that hears me talk on stage,
I do it all the time at a SoduCon.
I'm constantly reminding the audience that they need to hear
but apply to the context of their circumstances because like
every operation, like you just said, the nuance of all the
personalities and modes of operation and who likes what and
doesn't and this and that.
It's like finding genuinely what works for you is going to be
more efficient than trying to adopt something that had a big
promise.
So, but then when it comes to, oh my gosh, now we have AI,
what's a real practical way from your vantage point, like
looking across 17 rooftops and the work that you do, that
you're thinking about AI because everybody still kind of, I
shouldn't say everybody, but a lot of people are still kind of
pie in the sky.
Ooh, the possibilities.
What's a practical day in the life of Gary using AI?
Well, so there's a little bit of a long answer to that.
Like when chat GPT was launched, you know, and then anthropic
was launched, like, so we, we bought subscriptions.
We didn't do it immediately, but eventually we did.
And, you know, it wasn't like I was sitting in this chair giving
direction to my team on how to use it.
It wasn't like somebody was over me saying, Hey, give this
direction to your team to do that.
Like nobody was doing that.
It was just like, Hey, we've got this thing now.
What do you want to do with it?
Right.
And so I think slowly, but surely over time, the team just
explored.
I was like, Oh, let me go see if I can do this.
Let me go see if I can do that.
So some very practical things we've done so far, and these
aren't huge things.
Like, you know, we're not, we're not onboarding an enterprise
level AI solution for anything now, although we are exploring
that possibility and what it might look like down the road.
But practical things right now, we use it to summarize data,
like in spreadsheets, a member of my team has created an
inventory tracking tool that monitors exactly what's going
on on each site real time.
So she can just pick it up and look at it.
And if we want to give direction to the agency or give
direction to ourselves internally about what to focus on,
we make sure we're not spending those resources on models that
we don't have in stock.
So it's a simple thing, but saved us a lot of time went a
long way.
We have brought on a service that helps us edit video for
social content.
And it's not generative AI, right?
They've built out this workflow that acts like an editor,
right?
Because like, you probably know, you can film a ton of stuff
really easily, but the bottleneck comes in the editing and
defining it before you can put it on a platform you're going to
use, right?
So we decided middle to late last year, we were going to put a
bigger emphasis on social media as a strategy.
So we hired a new person, she came in wrote a plan and we were
like, oh, gosh, how do we like humanly make it possible to go
get content from 17 stores and, you know, multiple locations
and, and then have a process to get that into one repository where
it then needs to be edited.
And it's like, what do we need to do that?
Well, we need, we need people to go shoot.
We need people at the store engaged.
And then we need time to be able to edit.
So we met an agency through an agency, funny enough, and they
have been working on this tool to do the editing.
And it's going great.
So our social media lead are two part timers go out to the
stores, they shoot video, we've got a calendar of what we're going
to do each month, we got a schedule of when they're going to hit
the stores, they hit the stores, stores are prepared, we shoot
a bunch of stuff, it gets loaded into a central repository, a
folder, the agency taps into that raw footage, our social media
person taps into that footage, they both edit and they, and they
both post the differences.
The editing that they do at the agencies is AI based.
So we loaded our brand guide, and they load all the B roll and
then tell it what they want.
And it produces a video.
And then the video does require a little bit of human touch, right?
Like, it's not going to be perfect coming out of, right?
You know, like AI is not the end all be all just yet.
You know, we're not, we're not sky net just yet.
Well, and there's a couple of things I think are interesting,
worth pointing out.
And I think it's human nature at scale, which is we tend to favor
the get the thing shipped mentality.
But you just walked me through a very intentional build process.
You started with we brought the person in.
Most people do that and they're like, okay, then the thing should
happen.
You're like, no, now, now we've brought the person in.
How are we going to do this at scale?
So you have all of these questions that you've worked through
realistically.
How much time did it has it taken from bring that person into now?
Roughly six months.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, because we started slow, right?
It was like, hey, let's test this out.
Give us a store that has a, you know, a sales person who's
willing to be the lead.
And, you know, our, our social media lead, Sarah will go to the
store and work with that person to film stuff and then she'll edit
and post.
And it was like, okay, that's only going to work as well as the
employees who are engaged and understand how to shoot video
properly.
So we said, let's expand it.
So we went to a couple more stores and some stores were way more
engaged than others, right?
And like, that's just going to be the case.
They've got day jobs, right?
They're selling cars.
So like, unless you're paying them to shoot video, oof.
Well, okay, then it's going to be really inconsistent.
So our goal was to make it as consistent and easy as possible to
scale.
So we had a couple of part timers available who kind of worked
with us in the past, one in marketing, one out at the store
level.
They're both super young, very, very versed on social media.
So Sarah gets them gimbals and mics and lighting, like whatever it
is we need.
And the last three weeks, she's been at the stores with both of
these two getting them up to speed.
But in another week or so, they'll just be hitting the stores on
a cycle, filming a bunch of stuff, driven by what Sarah puts in
the calendar, the stores will be ready for it because now they're
trained.
And it just becomes this machine of creating content.
What feeds your group's ability to stick with the thing you start
because we, we tend to suffer from, you know, pivotitis, right?
Where it's like, oh man, have your lift than I thought switch.
Like what, what drives you to make sure that you see something
through to completion and then completion just kind of is a door
opener to the next set of things that you got to do because that's
really what I'm hearing.
Like the work, the work continues.
What drives that for you?
Yeah, I mean, it's just the job, you know, but to me, it's, you know,
failure is not an option.
We're, we're here to make things happen.
Let's just make it happen.
You know, and I think like people can get very discouraged if
something doesn't work the first way they try it, you know,
you remember being like, you know, a kid playing video games and
you'd start a new game and you get frustrated because you weren't
as good as the friend who was playing next to you that's been playing
for three months.
That's me.
I never got better than that.
Yeah.
I mean, so the guys like whooping your butt and you're just like frustrated
because it's like, ah, you know, and it's like, well, you know,
he's been doing this for three months.
Like, you know what he's doing, right?
So, you know, not everything you try the first time is going to work
really, really well.
So it's constantly trying to figure out ways to optimize things.
You know, it just takes time, but like we very much have like a test
for success mindset here.
It was our strategy.
Like when I first started, we were testing everything.
Websites, jet fuels, trading tools, agencies.
Like we were, you know, we went through the whole basket of things
that we touch and tested all of it.
And I just think since then, it's become more about testing to
optimize as opposed to testing to change, right?
Oh, well, that didn't work that well.
So we're going to go get another something or other.
Yeah.
Right.
Instead of doing that, it's like, well, how can we make that work?
Yeah.
I mean, it sounds like you're, you're working to solve shiny object
syndrome at its core.
Yeah.
It's still hard.
Yeah.
Right.
Well, because I mean, you know, we've, we've conditioned ourselves to
want to believe the promise of whoever's making the big promise,
you know?
Yeah.
And then to your point, like we fail the first time we try something.
It's like, to me, it's, it's why you take vendor a and dealer a and
it doesn't work out.
And all of a sudden they moved to vendor B and vendor B doesn't
work out, but vendor a was working out for dealer B the whole time.
And it's like, it was the same product or the same thing.
What really is the difference is the implementation of it, the
iteration of it, like the optimization of it.
I love what you're talking about the optimization piece really resonates
with me.
Something that I think needs to be emphasized for those paying
attention in this episode is, I mean, outside of maybe I'm wrong here,
but like outside of very specific circumstances, you can find a way
through the iterative process to make anything kind of do what you
need it to do these days.
Like not all the solutions aren't all that unique anymore.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that there are probably instances where, you know,
one piece of tech from one provider might work better than the other.
Right.
Like for sure, there's probably some very factual instances where this
works because of these reasons.
Okay, that's who we're going to use.
But there is a lot of parody.
So, you know, when you get into a situation where you're picking a
provider, you know, make sure it's somebody you're happy to work with.
Right.
Because you don't want to be like the guy who's dreading picking up the
phone to ask for help from these people because you don't like working with
them.
Right.
So, find somebody you like working with and then just make it work.
I mean, it's very easy to sit in this seat like in a marketing director
seat or marketing manager seat or, you know, any one of the kind of roles
and say, well, this isn't working.
Blame the vendor and then go find somebody else.
That's a really easy, you know.
So, does it mean that that's not, that that is, that does happen?
Yes, it does happen.
But, you know, if you've got pretty reliable stuff, then just figure out
how to make it work.
Yeah.
And it kind of introduces the human element because it was actually, I
think the first thing that you said in this, in this sequence, which is,
you know, find somebody that you can work with that you're not going to
dread talking to on the phone.
That is the piece that I think even in an AI world, in the, in the
world where the promise is that you kind of don't have to do as much.
I kind of feel like human connection and finding trustworthy people is
going to be the biggest differentiator.
Yeah.
I mean, it for me is a differentiator right now.
Sorry if the lighting just changed behind it.
I got this timer in my office and the lights just, if I'm not like
waving my hands in the air doing jumping jacks, the light comes off.
Efficiency.
Chip, chair calisthenics.
So, yeah, I mean, you know, I got that piece of advice from a friend
that we have in common, Ben Hadley.
You know, he was one of the first people I met in the industry and he's
just wise beyond his years, you know, as you probably can appreciate as
much as me.
But I was talking to him about our test strategy one day and how we're
going through all these iterations.
And he said, look, at the end of the day, like, there's a lot of stuff out
there that's going to solve your problems.
He said, pick the provider who you're going to be happy working with.
And I was like, that makes a lot of sense.
You know, we might have just single-handedly solved a huge problem
for so many people in this industry.
They're like, ding.
That would have been a perfect time for your office lights to turn back on.
Like, ding.
Ben Hadley is wise beyond his years.
Just be a good human.
You know, like, this is this is how I raised my children.
I was like, just be a good human.
You know, it's funny about that, though.
This is intriguing to me.
You know, I wrote my book, Don't Wait Dominate 14 years ago.
So much of it is still true.
Like if I just wrote one chapter about AI, everything else in the book is true.
And the premise of it is like, despite all of the technology and resources
and all these sorts of things, be valuable to somebody.
Provide them genuine value, which ties back to the thesis of be a good human.
I remember a review.
I wish I didn't, but it's come to me in this moment.
I'm recalling it.
This one guy negative review on the book and he's like, oh, be a good person.
Thanks.
And it's like, what does that even mean?
And that was the genuine heart of this individual's review was like,
he didn't give me any context about how to be a better human.
So to you, I'm curious when you're looking for a new provider,
when you're looking at a new partnership, bringing a person on your team,
whatever it might be, what does be a good person mean to you?
Well, that's like, there's a lot of characteristics there, right?
But there's some really important ones for me that bubble to the top.
Number one is just be respectful, right?
There's no reason not to be unless somebody really gives you a reason not to be.
I really look for people who are good listeners and being a good listener is hard.
That's hard.
It's a hard skill set.
It's hard when you're talking to someone and they say something that sparks
your desire to reply instantly, right?
And then maybe they don't get their whole point out.
But I think you learn this in personal relationships too,
that sometimes people just need an ear, right?
And learning how to be a good ear for people is a really, really important quality,
particularly when they're going through something.
And so for me, if a vendor contacts me warm because I know them or cold because I don't know them,
doesn't know anything about our business, how we operate, what we're doing,
what we run in-house, what we don't run in-house.
And they don't ask any questions to give them the opportunity to listen and learn
and they just go right into pitch mode, instant turn off for me.
Like, I'm out, thanks, not shopping.
And then when I say thanks, I'm not shopping and like, but,
and I like that just makes me shut it down even harder.
I'm like, I'm sorry, but I'm out.
So to me, like being a really good listener is so, so vital.
I thought I was a really good listener early on in my career.
So all the way back to my need days, let's bring that up again.
They put me in this, this leadership training program that was a 12 month program.
And once a quarter, you would get together with a group of people that were from all the different divisions of the company.
We'd merge, we had a guy who was facilitating training, you would train for 23 days,
and then they would send you home and you, you would, you do work for the rest of the quarter until the next meeting.
And the first meeting we go into the first lesson they taught us was listening skills.
And, you know, so who in here thinks they're a good listener?
Of course, everybody raised their hand, right?
Like, I'm a great listener, you know.
And so he put us through this exercise and then they asked a series of questions.
And most everybody did pretty poorly in it.
And they said, okay, now who thinks they're a good listener and not one and went up.
So it's a skill you have to refine.
If you don't pay attention to it, then it's like a muscle that won't grow.
Yeah.
I love it because I mean, that famous saying, I don't even know who started it, but I should have been listening.
You have two ears and one mouth, use them proportionately.
Yeah.
And I don't know who said that either, but I've heard it.
Yeah.
It makes me think of listening and, hey, salespeople guaranteed the deals you're losing and you don't know why it's because you weren't listening, actively listening.
You weren't.
And to me, what I'm picking up from you is listening as a skill is not hearing.
It's paying attention.
It's being curious.
It's knowing when to speak and not.
It's engaging in a dialogue that extracts more from the other individual by simply being that listening ear.
And of course, you brought up relationships.
I mean, how many times I've gone into problem solve mode for my wife and she's like, I just wanted you to listen, you know,
We need you to solve this.
I just, I just need the vent for a minute.
Okay.
Yes.
Yeah.
You learn that over time.
Right.
I mean,
You think of the possibilities that open up from truly paying attention to what somebody saying and and seeking to to understand the core of where they're going.
For me, that becomes the foundation with which my problem solving skills can activate and I can say, Hey, Gary, help me understand this.
It seems like you said XYZ is that tracking tell me more about that.
And also the hardest thing in sales, I think for anybody, whether you're selling a car, a house, a relationship is knowing also whether or not you can in the context of what you're aiming to do can actually be of help to that person.
Like that requires the ability to even walk away from your own pitch and be like, you know what, we might not be a fit here on this thing.
And if you spend enough, enough time listening, then you will learn a lot about a person's personality and their style of communication, right?
Right.
You've probably done a Myers Briggs or a disc assessment.
And, you know, when you understand those different categories and how they think and act and communicate, you pick up on it pretty quick over time, you know, like, I know, okay, I know where you fit on the disc.
So I'll, I'll manage this differently because of that.
Right.
What I love about this is anytime I get to sit with somebody who's in a dealership operation or a group operation.
These kind of conversations for me, I love how revealing they are because not once were we like, let's talk about how to negotiate a car deal.
Let's talk about, you know, we're talking about the genuine human elements, character traits, whatever you want to call them that contribute to longevity.
And we're in a season with technology.
I call it a gift, you know, it's that once every 30 year gift of a level playing field where none of us know don't know what we don't know.
That's where we are right now in seasons like this tend to bring a lot of uncertainty and lots of emotions.
And one of the reasons I love doing the dealer playbook and having conversations like this is you can go back 14 years through financial crisis through a pandemic through unknowns through elections turmoil.
The housing crisis, the housing crisis, it doesn't matter.
You can go through all of that.
And the common thread through 700 and however many 30 plus episodes is this every single one of the subject matter leaders I bring on the show.
Bring it back to this human thread that ties to longevity.
If you're so worried about uncertainty, longevity is the answer.
If you're so worried about tomorrow and what you can do, start paying attention to the things and I love this piece, by the way, the things that other people think are not shiny enough.
I'm like, boy, every time I hear that Gary, I'm like, please keep thinking it's on shiny.
You are all but guaranteeing my success.
Thank you.
So as you guys are looking 17 rooftops, as you're looking at the next six months, this used to be a five year question, by the way, but things are moving too fast for that now.
As you look at the next six months, what are the things you're paying attention to?
What are the things you're curious about operationally and for the growth of the business in the context of AI or just in general?
I think in general because we could go the AI direction and I'm sure there's things you're paying attention to there, but just in general, if AI happens to be one of those things, great.
If not, also great because I think it's important that we kind of think about the whole picture.
What is Gary, what is in your notebook right now that you're like, these are the next three things that I'm really curious about?
For us, there's a couple small pieces of our tech stack that we haven't really completed yet.
Simple things.
I'll start very tactical.
We're onboarding a consent management tool.
Why is that important?
Well, because we don't need to get in any legal trouble.
We've got 15 different vendors that send out communication on our behalf and none of them talk to one another.
If somebody opts out or opts in to communication, well, all those other vendors don't know that.
We're centralizing all of it so that if a customer opts in, everybody else knows it and now we can go talk to that customer.
The same with opt out.
That's a really important piece of the price stack and I think about that in the context of the current sensitivity around pricing with the FTC.
The last thing you need is to find some person who's really angry that you emailed them or called them when you shouldn't.
Right.
It's like there's no reason to have smoke.
Poke the bear.
Yeah.
We're doing everything we can to be FTC compliant too.
I'm not worried there, but we're just trying to be smart.
We're in the middle of writing a social media policy.
That's for employees and the guidelines around them posting on their own personal pages.
They shouldn't be out there spouting offers and talking price in any kind of detail because if they say something that's not FTC compliant,
well, they're an agent of your organization.
Now suddenly you're liable.
We didn't have a social media policy on the books.
Now we're going to have a policy.
Everybody will sign off on it.
It'll be part of onboarding.
We'll have a guideline.
We're out there promoting it.
We hired a social person.
We're expanding that strategy.
We've got to make sure people understand their guardrails.
Those are just two very tactical things that are in the context of like for us operationally, it's about how do we get the most out of the tech stack that we've decided to build our ship with?
And how do we keep optimizing that?
And AI is most certainly a consideration and a piece of that.
I think along the way, my team will just continue to get more and more efficient because we're finding shortcuts through using AI.
And I think that's going to snowball in a really big way.
Do you think there's a potential for AI fatigue if every company implements their own AI into the thing that they're doing?
Maybe.
Yeah, maybe.
I think it's going to be one of those things where it becomes pretty common that the experience you have digitally on a company's website becomes far more embedded with AI.
No different than, you know, when everybody added a chat tool to their website, right?
I mean, because it wasn't all that long ago where chat didn't even exist, right?
It really wasn't that long.
I mean, when was that like 12 years ago?
I don't know.
It wasn't a long ago.
Not too long ago.
You know, if you're around long enough, like myself, you see a lot of technology come and go and you see how things get adopted and how things start slow and then suddenly like everybody's doing it.
You know, it's like, okay, we're creeping, creeping.
And then it's like, oh, it's just it's ubiquitous now.
Do you think it, I mean, how are you guys thinking about as you're exploring AI?
How are you thinking about even just the compliance factor there and making sure there's guardrails for responsible use or anything like that?
Is that something that you think we should be thinking about right now?
Is it too early?
Do we not know what we don't know?
I mean, like that's something I'm curious about.
Like responsible AI or or I'm sure that the AI is in line with the things that we have to pay attention.
Yes.
And not and making sure the team is trained so on how to use it effectively, like some sort of standard of use so that I know that when somebody summarizes this, the spreadsheet for me that it wasn't in some weird hallucinated.
You know, like, I don't know what that looks like.
And I mean, this kind of brings me full circle to the beginning where I'm like, did we just create a new problem for ourselves that we need to solve?
Well, I mean, you think about the complexity that now has to be applied to something like that, right?
Right.
You, you don't want it hallucinating about anything.
You don't want it hallucinating about your brand, your offers and your pricing, your inventory availability, the services that you provide.
Like where you're located and who you can service.
Like, I mean, yeah, it can get sticky quick, very quickly.
I've never had so much fun figuring out in real time the things I don't know that yet.
Gary is where I'm arriving right now.
I mean, this is this to me, I love conversations like this.
It's very enlightening.
I'm so glad that you were willing to share some of your time to get a real inside look into somebody that's sitting in your seat.
Thinking about an operation.
I love that.
Not to make it sound overly simple because it's not the complexity of your day to day work.
And to be like, yeah, you know, look, everyone's given the highlight reel.
Here's two real practical things that we're working on because they're needed, right, especially for the next phase of our growth.
And what I take from it as we wind down is it often offline, it often just looks like work.
Yeah.
Nothing fancy, nothing amazing.
We're not wearing capes here.
We're not superheroes.
You're like, we've identified a path for our dealer group.
We are pursuing that path.
We are six months into it.
And now we are going to complete everything that needs to happen structurally and organizationally to do it.
And I wish just more people were grounded like that to admit that that's what you got to do.
Yeah.
It's not the fancy little bupity-bip.
It's not what we got to have that.
What's the saying?
What's the best way to eat an elephant?
One bite at a time.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think we're all kind of everybody's trying to eat the elephant all the time.
But like, you just, yeah, you got to break it into pieces and priorities.
And for me, some of that process is like, you know, put it into a chart with an X and a Y axis.
And it says, how easy is it to achieve this thing we're trying to achieve?
And what's the size of the opportunity?
And when you cross-section that, you know, you can make some pretty easy decisions.
Well, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit that we can just pick off and get after.
And it's going to have a pretty good return for us.
And we've got this other thing that's like super grandiose.
And it's probably going to get a huge return, but oh, that's a multi-year project, you know?
You've now got me thinking about the show notes for this episode.
We need to vibe code in the Gary Ladoo decision-making matrix for people.
You know, it's not even me.
I stole it from old jobs in corporate America, right?
That's how all the big companies make decisions, right?
So humble.
I've not even taken credit for it.
They're like, hey, we've got 10 product lines and this one makes 80% margin,
but it's the smallest product line.
And then you've got the big cash cow that keeps eroding profit every year.
Okay, what one are you going to put your resources against?
Yeah.
Right?
Like, you're going to try and grow the one with the giant profit margin.
Man, I'm so glad we could connect.
Thank you for doing this.
100%.
How can those listening and watching connect with you?
I mean, I'm on LinkedIn, so that's the easiest way to get in touch with me.
You can just search my name.
L-A-D-U-E is the last name spelling.
I don't think there's another Gary Ladoo on LinkedIn.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Hey, I was jokingly...
I was the only one before the internet.
I jokingly say there's only like five Garries in the entire United States anyway.
Not a common name?
No, it's not.
When we were at a SoduCon, I think I met two other Garries and I was like, look at this,
three out of the five Garries in one room.
That is hilarious.
Short for Gerald though?
No, no.
You just be aligned.
Your parents be aligned your rate to Gary.
G-A-R-Y, that's it.
Wow, good for you.
I mean, hey, I'm serious.
I was the only Michael Sorrell before LinkedIn.
One selfish question as we end.
This isn't selfish at all.
What am I saying?
I'm just genuinely curious.
You went straight to LinkedIn and it ties into a post that I've done on both Facebook
and LinkedIn over the last couple of days, asking between Facebook and LinkedIn, where
are the most car dealers actually investing their time?
You said LinkedIn.
Where do you, but what do you think on mass?
I mean, for me, it's LinkedIn, but I, on mass, I have no idea.
I mean, what's funny is like in the last few months, I've gotten more and more requests
to connect with people on Facebook because I met them in automotive.
Yeah.
And in the past, I've kind of kept those worlds very separated like Facebook is personal,
like just friends.
LinkedIn is like work associates, connections, you know, but like that whole world is just
starting to, to mesh.
Mesh together.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Well, there you go.
Gary.
Thank you so much for joining me on the dealer playbook podcast.
Thanks so much.
Hey, thanks for listening to the dealer playbook podcast.
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About this episode
Marketing at scale gets real when you’re managing “17 stores” and trying to stay efficient without losing agility. The conversation moves from why paper still persists—even in an “AI enhanced world”—to how a dealership group standardizes video and social workflows: store teams capture content, an agency uses “AI based” editing with brand guides and B-roll, and everything is scheduled through a calendar. Along the way, they stress iterative optimization, vendor trust, consent management, and guardrails so AI doesn’t hallucinate dealership-specific details.
Original notes
Gary Ladue spent eight years in corporate CPG, managing paper and planning brands at Mead, before making the jump into automotive retail nine and a half years ago. Today he runs marketing and technology across a 17-store dealer group, and this conversation is about what actually transfers when you come into this industry from somewhere else.
Gary and Michael talk through what it takes to run marketing at scale across that many rooftops: the notebook-and-highlighter system Gary still prioritizes his day with, how his team built a six-month content pipeline using part-time shooters paired with an AI editing partner, and the simple effort-versus-payoff filter every new initiative has to clear before it gets resources. Gary's also candid about where AI still gives him pause, not the possibilities, but making sure it never gets pricing, inventory, or availability wrong in front of a customer.
You can connect with Gary on LinkedIn, he's easy to find by name.
Michael's takeaway: the best person to run your operation at scale isn't always the person who's been in cars the longest. Sometimes it's the person who learned discipline and systems somewhere else first, and had the sense to bring it with them.
Timestamps
(00:00) Intro
(00:31) Show Support and Free Book
(01:58) From Paper Brands to Career
(07:19) Digital Tools vs Efficiency
(10:49) Practical AI Across 17 Stores
(12:47) Scaling Social Video with AI
(20:18) Optimize Vendors and People
(23:47) Value Still Wins
(24:24) Defining Good Human
(24:54) Respect And Listening
(30:41) Longevity Through Uncertainty
(33:29) Consent And FTC Compliance
(36:14) AI Adoption And Fatigue
(37:28) Responsible AI Guardrails
(42:08) Connect With Gary
(44:05) Final Thanks And Outro
The Dealer Playbook
Michael Cirillo
0:00
44:30