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Hey, what's up? Welcome to this episode of the dealer playbook
podcast. This is the episode where we are going to stop talking
about AI, like it's this thing that's going to just kill
everything that we know. This is the episode where we are going
to talk about practical applications for automotive
industry professionals. When it comes to AI, we're going to look
at some videos, the latest viral video from Claude, Anthropics
Claude. And we're also going to talk about some of the things
that AI experts out in the world are talking about as far as the
implications of this on our society. Most importantly, I
want to give you some clear examples about what you can
utilize AI for in your dealership to help you move forward.
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
triple w dot flex dealer.com to show even further support for
you. My beloved DPB gang right now, if you go to my website,
flex dealer.com, you can get a full free PDF of my number one
bestselling 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
surgeon 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 flex dealer.com, it would
mean the world to me, because that is how we continue to
produce this show for you.
I want to start here, though. I think it's really important as
I've thought about AI and everything that's going on and
all of the conversations that are happening. I seem to observe
that there is the hype people. And there are the zealots.
There are the people that are like, Oh, my gosh, you won't be
able to live without this. And it's the best thing. And here are
the three things that are going to help you change everything
about the way that you live life. And if you don't do these
things, then you're not going to be living life like the way you
should. And then there's the zealots who are like, this is
going to replace you, your millions of jobs are going to
be gone. And they just talk through the lens of like pretty
much no hope. I think there's a middle ground as there is with
anything. And for me, it starts in my own lived experience. I
remember back in the early 90s, my family business, we published
phone books. If you've ever opened a phone book, okay, go with
me here for a minute. So we publish phone books. And I
remember somewhere around 1991, I want to say, my dad called us
into his home office. And he had us gather around his desk and
he was sitting in his chair, and he loaded up the internet
connecting to the satellites. That's the sound it used to
make. And he loaded up the Encyclopedia Britannica website.
That was like one of, I don't know, 10 websites at the time.
And I remember sitting there enamored. I was like, what is
happening right now? My dad's like, we've connected to the
worldwide web, right? And once the Encyclopedia Britannica
website was done loading like pixel by pixel, right on the
slow 28 kilobyte per second internet. I remember my dad
turning around in his chair and looking at me and my siblings
and looking me square in the eyes and exclaiming, this is
going to kill the Encyclopedia salesperson. Because at the
time, for all of you young ins, Encyclopedia salespeople would
go door to door once or twice a year to sell the latest volume
A through Z edition or A through Zed for my Canadian friends.
I should say Zed, I was in Canada at the time, they would go
door to door once or twice a year selling the updated volume
of the Encyclopedia Britannica and my dad exclaiming this is
going to kill the Encyclopedia salesperson or profession was
kind of prophetic. He saw the potential of the internet in
that moment to kill the jobs. And he wasn't being a zealot in
the moment. But I think he was making a realization in real
time in front of us, that this wasn't just going to change the
way that commerce happened. The internet was fundamentally going
to change so many things. The most important of which was his
job as a publisher of a phone book. I think what my dad was
really saying if I look back as a 40 something year old man is
that my dad wasn't really saying the Encyclopedia industry is
going to die, you know, door to door sales. What he was really
saying is this is going to put phone books into oblivion. We
become obsolete. And you know what, it was like five years
later that my dad got us out of the phone book business.
And I would like to think that during that time he probably
wrestled with much of what I'm seeing us wrestle with these
days. There are people that are like, Oh my gosh, they're living
in fear. They're like AI is going to replace me. You hear the
people online talking about well, gosh, like AI, you know, what
was the most coveted job out there? Well, it was like
software engineer. And that was like the first thing that AI was
able to do was to code. And oh my gosh, if that's the most
coveted job, and that's like the most smart job and AI was able
to do that thing first. What does that mean for me? And I think
there are generally a lot of people perhaps in our industry
as I listen to the conversations that are really
concerned about the implications of artificial
intelligence, they know they kind of have to lean into it, but
they are living with an uncertainty that clouds the way
that they lean in. And so I want to talk about that a little
bit. That's why I share this story about the phone book,
because my dad went through every position you could
possibly take as you try and grapple and wrestle with and
reconcile what's going to happen next for him. It was the
internet for you. It might be AI. He went through a defensive
posture. No, no, no, this is a community phone book and people
are going to want to look up zip codes in candidates, postal
codes, they're going to need the full address, they're going to
want to advertise and support a local business. Then you kind of
go through the acceptance of like, oh, dang, no, like I see
the writing on the wall, the internet's going to make things
more efficient. I'm not going to have to flip through pages
anymore. I'm not going to have the publishing cost anymore,
which was through the roof, right? It is going to
fundamentally change and you kind of start accepting it. But
in that period of acceptance, you're still grappling with,
but what do I do next? You know, and I watched him go through
all of those thought processes, I watched him wrestle with all
of that. What I didn't realize, as we evolved out of phone
books, we eventually sold that company, we got out of phone
books, and we we that was our entrance into the automotive
industry, we started publishing a car magazine, we were the
only competition auto trader at the time in Canada, the auto
trader magazine, different company than the auto trader in
America, by the way, but similar concept, very similar
concept. As we transitioned into automotive magazines and
realizing that there was no competition to auto trader and
that that was still hustling and bustling along, we had a very
lucrative position, taking what we knew from publishing paper
into a different industry that had a very specific need in a
very specific opening. And the reason I share that with you
is because it was lucrative, it was profitable, it was
amazing. And when I took the helm of that business, based with
the very real proposition, when the dealers start saying, hey,
I don't know if I need to do print anymore, I got this this
website thing. And I'm like, a website thing, we don't, we
don't do that. If you go back far enough, you might find
articles that represent me going through all of the motions.
I took a defensive posture in the beginning when I didn't
understand. No, why? No, people make room for the mediums that
they like or enjoy alongside the new and emerging thing. People
are going to still subscribe to magazines and utilize the
internet and go to websites and shop that way. And I remember
just spending so much energy defending my position. And I
understand all these years later why I did. I mean, it was the
real proposition that this is going to put me out of work,
and it's going to cause some discomfort. And I don't know
what's around the corner. Well, as I went through those motions
and as I showed up every day, that provided us the clarity
that hey, maybe we could do this digital thing too. Maybe
there's a bridge. Maybe we can take the concept of what we are
doing in print and in marketing and advertising, and we can
translate that to the web. And that ultimately led us to
developing our own inventory platform so that we could build
a portal website and control all of it. And that portal website
for years was ranked in the top three, you know, portal websites
in Canada. And that was our foray into digital and learning
and being uncomfortable and stressed and all of the things
that you feel. There were moments where I was a zealot and
I was like, oh my gosh, the internet is going to wipe out
everybody. And I think I'm sharing all of that with you
and kind of this stream of consciousness because I think a
lot of people today with AI are wrestling on both sides of the
coin. There are those that are taking a defensive posture
and they're not like, no, but humans are going to be needed
to do this, the thing that I do. We're always going to need
humans, right? The defensive posture I'm seeing every day
in conversations in our industry. And then there's those
that are like, without AI, you are going to die. And we're
having trouble finding that middle ground. And so I think
it's important that we move on from just talking about AI and
being a hype or a zealot and we move on to like, well, what are
some practical applications that might help me move from my
defensive posture to towards the middle ground? And what could
help me possibly as the zealot who thinks like the world's
going to fall apart because of it and move us to the middle
ground? Truth be told, because of my lived experience going
through all of those motions before, I think that has helped
me navigate the whole AI conversation a little bit better
prepared. I saw it right away and I became very bullish on it
and I was like, I got to lean into this and and yeah, it's
going to dramatically impact what I do. I have a marketing
agency for crying out loud. I have a software company for
crying out loud. And you're telling me that it's going to
fundamentally change marketing and it's going to
fundamentally change software development. And these are the
things that I hang my hat on. Yet this time around, I'm not
feeling that defensive posture. I'm feeling excited. I am
enamored with all of the possibilities. And so I think
the purpose of this episode is that I want to dig in to this
conversation a little bit and see if we can't bring both sides
closer to the middle. And the best way that I know how to do
that is to a, bring it up as a topic so that we can have a
meaningful discussion about it and to call out both sides here
and that we need to come to the middle so that we can move on
to productivity. And then also to just talk about some clear
use cases that if you're maybe defensive, you can start
utilizing it in a way to see how it speeds you up or maybe
helps you become more productive. And if you are a
doom and gloomer that you can also, you know, just
understand it in a little bit better way so that you can
apply it to the context of your circumstances. Before we do
that, though, I want to, I want to watch the most viral
Claude advertisement. I saw it this morning as I was
doing some preparation for this. I want to share this with
you. I want to watch Claude's latest advertisement for Claude.
I think it's really well done, but I want to give you my
commentary on it after I watch it. If you are listening only,
this is where I would encourage you to come over to Spotify
or to YouTube and maybe watch this clip, follow us on our
socials at the dealer playbook or at dealer underscore
playbook on Instagram, where we'll slice this out so you
can get my commentary, but you need to watch this for full
effect. So let me, let me bring it up on the screen and
let's watch this ad. Let me hit play on this.
Okay, a couple of things here right out of the gates that I
think are really important to talk about. Number one, here
we have a guy that is going to enjoy his life, right? He's
out the door in a rush says goodbye to the wife and the
kids. He's into the into the SUV and goes and does boxing and
you know, kind of they depict him doing this leisure
activity on his way to training. He is telling Claude all of
the things that he needs to accomplish this obviously
highlighting some of the capabilities of where AI agents
are at today, especially like Claude computer, which can,
you know, access your computer can perform actions, which I
think is by the way really cool and we'll maybe dig into that
in a minute. And then he comes home and he has a little quick,
you know, exchange his wife is holding the baby and and the
son's kind of going down and he sits at his computer and what
I suspect is to review the work. Well, let's kind of break
apart the message because there's very real indoctrination
happening here. And I don't mean in a negative way, like a
very powerful principle in marketing is indoctrination.
Bringing your target audience up to speed of capabilities so
that they know what to expect. That's what I mean by
indoctrination. And there's definitely indoctrination
happening in this ad. This idea of a busy business owner who
because of the AI can go and do the activity with his life
that he would rather do. Now this coincides with some of the
indoctrination we get from the hype and hype zealots out
there, the moggo dots of the world who basically talks
about AI moving us in a direction in which AI is going
to do everything. It's going to replace gazillions of jobs and
it's going to put us into a new economic state in which we get
to live in a state of euphoria, you know, because really we
weren't designed to do the work that we do today, right? I
don't love that narrative because it paints this picture
for people who are unprepared or maybe haven't thought through
it to be like, oh my gosh, then what is my purpose on this
planet? I get what he's saying but all of this is indoctrination
and we're kind of seeing it in this ad. This idea of oh my
gosh, all of the work that I've done before AI can do for me
so that I can go and enjoy my life. The thing that drives me
a little bit mental with this ad, aside from it kind of
perpetuating that message of a euphoria state in which I can
go and like do whatever else I want, like I'm not against that.
I, one of the reasons I became an entrepreneur in the first
place was this idea of building systems and processes in a
team that could operate the business and I could have more
time with my family as I'm proven to be quite like that is
that this guy then doesn't even share any time with his
family. We just watch this dude go and do whatever he wants
with the day. Can't even like barely say good morning to
his wife and children before he's out the day because he just
got to get to the gym and practice man get beat up in the
ring and then comes home and he's like rough day and then
leaves them and goes and sits down in front of the computer
and goes and looks at the things that he's doing. I get it.
Okay. I get the point of what they're trying to convey but I
just find it kind of funny especially for those of you
that know me and know the like foundation of this show
that somehow the euphoria state this guy lives in kind of
doesn't include his family at all. It includes him the agents
doing his work for him and so he can go and do whatever he
wants. Again, I get it. can sense the heat even as
I say this from those that are going to disagree with this
position but I'm like bro doesn't even share any time with
his family. What? There's something else that we should
highlight though as I watch this. Recently we we did an
episode with my one of my best friends who's also a business
partner of mine at Flex and Lift Kit. We're doing some
amazing technological things with inventory and things of
that nature and when I interviewed him he was like
look as a software developer who's developed hundreds and
hundreds of things. AI is now helping me do those things.
What he really urges, what Dan really urges in the episode is
but I still need to skill up. I need to still be on top of
things. There is still a place for the human in this
entire mix because without it we basically have
minions doing actions and no human to cross reference
against and if I am going to be the human to cross
reference against then I need to constantly skill up. I
can't just give up. I can't just give it to Claude Code or
to cursor or to lovable. I still need to know what I'm doing
and what I'm talking about and that is the subtle thing I
pull from this Claude video as well. Listen to the language
that this guy is saying. He is clearly directing the AI to
do very specific things based on his knowledge of what
needs to happen in order for something to be viable in
order for the output to be viable and that brings me to
this point which I really hope comes across with the
right intention which is AI is going to speed us up but
what is it going to speed up? What is it going to scale?
My encouragement is AI scales the human. AI speeds up human
connection. AI can take away for sure work that the human
didn't have to do or shouldn't have had to do to begin
with. In this case we see the demonstration of finding
files on the folder and analyzing them and putting
together a scope of what needs to happen and when and an
analysis and all of these sorts of things. You really think
about it like that. That wasn't human work to begin with.
It shouldn't have been and with AI as I try and pull both
parties to the center it's a real viable possibility that I
can have agents do all of that routine monotonous work and
provide me a brief so that with my human nature my empathy and
my you know my emotions and my feeling of nuance and and
human to human connection I can spend I'm going to use that
word where I can spend less time doing that thereby freeing
up my energy and my talents and my capabilities and my
emotion to do more meaningful work at a human level and
we're starting to see that in the auto industry. We're
starting to see and by the way we've talked about customer
experience till we're blue in the face in this industry
right and we keep talking about it and we keep trying to you
know reconcile how do we actually do it. Well what I would
suggest is AI actually gives us the most probable case to do
it why because if it frees up my time energy and talents by
doing the things I shouldn't have had to do to begin with I
can then reallocate all of that energy attention and focus
towards getting great at what I need to be great at which is
going to matter more than anything in any other time
period on the face of this earth which is meaningful positive
human connection connecting with another human being building
a relationship of trust utilizing my energy my capacity my
talents my feelings to pour value into another human being
and in so doing unlocking the law of reciprocity giving them
something to actually reciprocate upon okay and I think this
is really critical that might be by the way the thing that
excites me most about AI is it is opening up the very real
possibility to remove from me the things I shouldn't have
ever had to do to begin with so when I may say or you might
catch me online saying yeah AI is definitely going to replace
jobs what I'm really saying is not the job as a whole but
aspects of the job that you didn't need to do to begin with
we interviewed on auto collabs which is one of our other shows
that more than cars John Osborne who is a VP at Carter Myers
and as an operator as a director he gave us some really
practical insight about how he's using AI and what he's done
is he utilizes Claude and he has it connected to his email he
hasn't connected to his calendar and just in those two
connections what he does is has it skim his emails every day
find attachments and emails from the OEMs that are giving
scorecards and different types of reports and analysis and
those sorts of things and has the agent summarize all of that
into a morning brief for him so that when he sits down he can
take 10 minutes at the beginning of his day get all of the
operational insights that he needs to get and an understanding
of where the OEM is going and where his stores are going so
that he can go and share and invest the rest of his day
pouring into his people he moves himself from an operator role
to an architect role the architect being the person who can
move through the floor freely and pour into the people the vision
and the values and the quality and the standard that must be
that that is the expectation so that the people who are
operating can go and operate at the highest level possible
knowing that every move they make maps to the vision but see
without that how much time it would definitely take more than
10 minutes how much time would he have to spend pouring through
all of that information better yet without it chances are
and I'm not going to put words in John's mouth because he is a
very proficient and skilled operator but let's just say in
general using John as the name now just of the persona how
likely do you think it is that every day they would actually
go through all of those emails meticulously all of the reports
meticulously and be able to cross-reference all of the
data points analyze them make assumptions and then go and do
let's just say highly skilled people if I'm talking about
myself maybe not super highly skilled but it would that's
like a half a day of work a half a day here we have a real
practical example of how AI can be utilized in a daily scenario
to free up time and allow the operator to move to architect
and utilize their time energy talents capacity
in a way that really benefits this concept of scaling the human
speeding up human connection I love that
alas most people my prediction is will utilize AI like glorified
Google and alas all these decades later most people don't
barely even scratch the surface on how to utilize Google search
let alone AI there are so many ways to utilize Google search in a
much more advanced way we didn't even get there which is what's
leading me to this idea that most people will only utilize AI at
a very base level where to eat dinner you know what kind of
car should I buy you know about me draw a picture of me that
describes who I am hey all of that's fun giving
context freely to the models so they know everything about you
great you know but that's I think how most people are going to be
utilizing AI even as we get into the future it just so happens
though that I think automotive is one of the most forward
thinking most innovative industries in the world we kind of shy away
from like publicizing that at large but I really do think the auto
industry is one of the the most innovative forward thinking and
so here we are calling out the basic usage of AI calling out the
hypes and the zealots talking about practical ways that we might
utilize it to make our lives better and to make the lives of
those who we serve better if I'm a car sales professional
and I've got access to the CRM a simple thing that I might do is
download my CRM sold data put that report into my
clod or GPT whatever whatever it is Gemini it doesn't matter
at this point it really doesn't matter for more advanced users it might but
I would grab that report from the last 90 days
maybe 180 days I would drop it into clod and I would start
asking my agent about the information that it can see what are the
commonalities what are the most popular vehicles what are the
common challenges that these people have and how did we overcome them
by utilizing AI in that way you're moving to a practical usage of the
model that I believe most people will never actually get to at a
sodukan recently a timer recording just a couple you know a few weeks ago
Kyle our our COO over at more than cars at our auto industry AI summit stood on
stage and showed the congregation the group of people
how to open their laptops and start using AI in a way to actually build
something and the feedback by and large was
we didn't even know we could say these types of things to AI
and that leads me back to this exercise grab your CRM data throw it into your model
ask it to find the common themes the common vehicles the common objections the common
demographic style information that you can pull and then start with a simple question
as a car sales professional in
Balzac British Columbia in Moose, Joss, Saskatchewan in Doglick, Nebraska
who sells this type of vehicle what can I do to improve every interaction I have
with a customer so that they have the best test drive experience so that I'm saying the
right thing so that I'm giving off the right energy and before you give me that analysis
ask me questions to learn more about me this realistically could be a two-hour exercise
but herein lies the differentiator in AI it's not about people using AI in a mediocre fashion
it's about those that are thinking about an elevated way to utilize it to improve
themselves and as is the case in anything in life those who take the action are going to be
the ones who separate from the pack you cannot stand out and fit in at the same time and so
if you truly want to be somebody that stands out with AI start with the simple exercise
and then move on to the action I recently interviewed a Palomine who's also a client
partner and just a partner and and I would consider a good friend Charlie Spradlin he's
the GM at Art Main Chevrolet and Honda and he dropped this little nugget about how he uses AI
and it was to help him in the transition from operator to architect going from the person who's
you know basically doing every role in the dealership to a general manager role a visionary role
give people direction role and what it helped him identify was a way in which he could take
off the the champion cape and move on to be that visionary and it was by simply having his model
ask him questions to get to know him and what he wants to achieve and it instantly identified the
thing that he needed to do in order to be okay being the architect it's something that we all
struggle with especially as we progress in our careers kind of our nervous systems get
attached to whatever work we were doing and it makes it difficult for us to feel satisfied
now doing the new type of work and so that was a simple practical way that he uses AI
to summarize all of this so that I'm not just like beating a horse not even a dead horse just
beating a horse is the three practical ways that we utilize AI you can use utilize it to scan your
emails and your calendar to find openings to find time to understand and brief you on your you know
meetings your emails the oem scorecards attachments all of those sorts of things so that you can spend
10 minutes in the morning I call it your morning cup of coffee or in my case your morning glass of
frigid cold water exercise where it's giving you a brief so that you're more set up for the day so
that you can go and invest more time into your team and have meaningful interactions with them
you can utilize it as a car sales professional to understand the through line of the people who are
most commonly buying cars from you the most common objections and how they were overcome
so that you can then move on to providing that coveted customer experience that we all keep
talking about and so few do something about and you can utilize it like Charlie who as he's progressing
in his career is finding ways to be able to delegate more effectively take off the champion cape
and move into that new role with a clear understanding of what he needs to be doing with it those are
just three very simple and very practical things you could start doing today before you even get
into all of the potential overwhelm and overthinking that could come with AI in all of it I would like
to summarize everything we've talked about it in this way you don't have to be defensive
this is a once in every 30 year gift that we've been giving in which the playing field is completely
level and all of us at the same time don't know what we don't know and we are just all starting
to explore which provides you the greatest opportunity to dig in and to start with these
little practical ways as you start with simple little practical maneuvers inside of AI you will
get clarity about or curiosity about the next thing that you can do and you will build your
knowledge base and your experience with AI line upon line precept upon precept as they say so
that you become one of those power users but the most important then thing is to utilize it in a way
that helps you take more calculated more measured more responsible and more impactful action listen
I hope you found value in this episode if you did please if you have not yet subscribed that would
mean the world to me and if you're on Apple or Spotify leave me a comment or a review that means
world to me it helps us get the show out to more people that we can have a positive impact on their
career in the retail auto industry and until next time keep that playbook open and dominate
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