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"You're Sitting on Gold!" Why Most Dealerships Are Sitting on Hidden Fortunes & What Top Operators Know | Vic Keller, Founder and CEO at Experience Ventures
"You're Sitting on Gold!" Why Most Dealerships Are Sitting on Hidden Fortunes & What Top Operators Know | Vic Keller, Founder and CEO at Experience Ventures
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About this episode
Dealerships can look “successful” while quietly sitting on hidden enterprise value—especially when teams chase top gross and unit numbers in ways that turn culture toxic. Vic Keller and guest Vic Keller’s guests dig into why fixed operations, trust-building F&I, and service advisor communication create durable, predictable revenue. They also map how professional operators grow through systems, training, and measurable metrics, and how AI can compress timelines—if dealers invest in people and act fast.
Today I'm joined by Vic Keller, Founder and CEO at Experience Ventures.
In this conversation, he makes the case that most dealers are sitting on hidden enterprise value they haven't tapped, that the vendor landscape is moving too slowly for dealers who want to win now, and that the single biggest lever in any dealership is still the people, not the platform.
Topics:
01:30 Fixed Ops Is Unbeatable.
02:45 The $2,600 F&I Number.
04:10 The Cold Call That Changed Everything.
07:40 Job Descriptions Don't Work.
11:00 Unicorns Destroy Dealerships.
12:20 Hidden Enterprise Value.
15:00 AI Won't Replace People.
17:30 Osmosis Is Killing You.
21:30 Don't Wait On Vendors.
This episode is brought to you by:
1. Guidepoint Systems - Guidepoint Systems has spent decades purpose-building telematics for franchise dealerships — and in a flat-sales environment, their platform is becoming a dealer's most important retention tool. Visit @ here for more info.
2. TARGIT - TARGIT is an end-to-end business intelligence platform that gives car dealers worldwide complete visibility and control over all their operational data. Learn more about TARGIT @ here.
3. CDG Circles – A digital peer group for top auto dealers. Private dealer chats. Vendor reviews. Real insights — confidential, compliant, no travel required. Join dealers representing 3,000+ rooftops @ here.
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Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Term
grosses
"they know where they want their grosses to be. [1859.4s] They know where they want their penetration to be."
Dealers use “grosses” to mean the money they make from selling cars (and sometimes add-ons). It’s a main number they watch to see if deals are profitable.
In car dealership accounting, “grosses” usually refers to the profit dollars earned from selling vehicles and related products/services. Dealers track it because it’s a key measure of how much money each deal generates before overhead.
Term
penetration
"They know where they want their penetration to be. [1861.6s] They know what they want their CPRO to be."
“Penetration” here means how many customers say yes to a particular add-on or finance product. If more people buy the add-ons, the dealership makes more money per sale.
In dealership operations, “penetration” typically means the share of customers who take a specific offer—most often finance and insurance (F&I) products or add-ons. Higher penetration generally means more revenue per deal.
Term
CPRO
"They know where they want their penetration to be. [1861.6s] They know what they want their CPRO to be. [1864.2s] They know, I mean, you can go through every department,"
CPRO is a way dealers measure marketing efficiency. It’s basically how much it costs to generate a good chance of selling a car to a real buyer.
CPRO is a dealership performance metric that stands for “cost per retail opportunity” (often used in digital/lead-gen contexts). It helps dealers measure how efficiently they turn marketing spend into qualified retail leads.
Concept
AI agent
"there's a way to build that information [1869.5s] and that education into an AI agent, [1872.3s] even using all your historical information"
An “AI agent” is smarter software that can do tasks toward a goal, not just chat. Here, it’s being discussed as using past dealership data to help people move toward the next step in buying a car.
An “AI agent” is software that can take actions or make recommendations toward a goal, not just answer questions. In a dealership context, it’s described as using historical data to guide customers or staff toward desired outcomes (like higher lead conversion or better F&I take rates).
Topic
vendor landscape
"or will one replace the other? [1904.9s] Like how do you feel about the vendor landscape?"
They’re talking about the “vendor landscape,” meaning the companies that sell dealership software and services. The question is whether AI will replace some of them or just add new tools alongside them.
This segment is about how dealership technology vendors may change as AI becomes more capable. It frames the question of whether AI tools will replace vendors or expand the ecosystem.
Term grosses
1 mention · 30:57Term penetration
1 mention · 30:59Term CPRO
1 mention · 31:01Concept AI agent
1 mention · 31:09Topic vendor landscape
1 mention · 31:44
Fixed Ops Is Unbeatable.
The $2,600 F&I Number.
The Cold Call That Changed Everything.
Job Descriptions Don't Work.
Unicorns Destroy Dealerships.
Hidden Enterprise Value.
AI Won't Replace People.
Osmosis Is Killing You.
Don't Wait On Vendors.
Select text to request an explanation
The downside is a lot of times it becomes
an individual sport instead of a team sport.
And, you know, you really put a lot of emphasis
and focus on unicorns and unicorns aren't real.
There's no such thing as a unicorn,
but in the car business, right,
there's a lot of times that you're like, man, we can't,
we're not gonna mess with this guy
because he's putting up the best gross,
he's got the best numbers, he's selling the most units,
but it becomes toxic to the rest of the, you know,
the rest of the dealership at times.
Welcome to the car dealership guy podcast.
Today's episode is brought to you by GuidePoint Systems,
Target, and CDG Circles.
And now let's get into the show.
The Show
Vic Keller on the CDG podcast, Vic, welcome.
Thank you, Yossi, great to be here, man.
Vic, you founded several companies
that were acquired by Berkshire Hathaway,
massive companies.
If I dropped you into the auto industry today,
no resources, no connections, where's the opportunity?
Today, there are countless opportunities
in retail automotive.
I believe the biggest is fixed operations.
And I think fixed has got unbelievable potential
that nobody can compete with,
no matter how other organizations are selling cars,
even the direct to consumer market, whatever it may be,
there is nothing that is as powerful
as the relationship and the trust
that you can build with a customer in fixed operations.
Still, absolutely.
And when you think about building a durable,
healthy business, you think about predictability
and you think about durability.
And the frequency in which someone buys a vehicle,
you can't completely predict,
but service intervals and everything
that happens in fixed operations,
that's where you build trust,
that's where you can retain your customer.
And it's predictable reoccurring revenue
that you can model in your business
if you run it the right ways.
There's just a great opportunity to level up the staff
and to train and develop people
and to put systems and processes in place
and to drive efficiency and optimization in your bays.
I think there's a lot of opportunity
around the parts side of the business
or you can drive some efficiencies and optimization
and you can use technology to do so.
But that's where I would go
because it's the backbone of the business.
You have your hands in many, many businesses.
You've been immensely successful.
I think anyone who knows you will know that,
anyone who doesn't can run a quick Google search right now
or read in the show notes.
When we were having coffee before this,
you were dropping some numbers that were very specific,
which to me, it shows, okay, Vic is on top of his game.
He's following the industry very closely.
Are you planning something?
Like what is your current connection
to auto retail today?
Well, first of all, I think it's an amazing business
and just fascinating.
I think the next 10 years in retail automotive
is gonna be an unprecedented time, right?
There's a lot of speculation around
what's going on in the industry,
but I love the business.
I've been a student of the business since I got into it
when I was 25 years old.
We gotta talk about that.
Yeah, so 25 years ago, I got into business
and all I could do to learn the business
was to study the business, right?
The big macro trends that are happening in the business,
rather it be where the gross is per retail unit,
where F and I dollar per copy is,
which I think industry right, it's somewhere around $2,600,
and you look at where the payments have gone
and the cost of a car,
a vehicle for a customer is more than ever before today,
but I think in order to serve a franchise dealer well
and to be a player in the industry,
you can't just be a vendor that sells a product.
You have to be completely integrated into their ecosystem
and you have to understand their entire business model.
I've always tried to stay close to the data
and I learned that early on.
I mean, the guys that I partnered with
and worked with early in this business,
they were like relentless about the data, right?
Who were those guys?
Yeah, Cecil and Larry Vantile.
They gave me an opportunity in the auto industry
that was just second to none
and I learned from what I believe
are the best in the industry.
So how did that come to be?
How did you find yourself within Vantile?
Oh, that's a fun story.
So I was 25 years old, I was in Dallas, Texas.
I started my career out as a banker at JP Morgan,
which I did for a couple of years
and I realized that banking wasn't the place for me.
I was on the wrong side of the desk.
Not very creative.
No, not creative.
I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
I wanted to build companies and so
I started selling products and services
to franchise car dealerships
and I say I started to sell them.
I was knocking on a lot of doors
and I was having a hard time converting general managers
into doing business with me
and I finally one day just said,
who owns all these car dealerships?
And I was in Dallas, Texas
and I think there was 25 or 30 stores at that time
that Cecil Vantile and Larry Vantile owned
and I found my way through an internet search
to Mr. Vantile's assistant, just calling the main number
and I asked, what would it take
to get a meeting with Cecil Vantile?
And she said, well, he can see you tomorrow.
And I said, great, I'm gonna be in Kansas City.
I was a long way from Kansas City
but at any rate, I made my way there
and had an amazing meeting with him
and it was probably, I would say that that meeting
and the relationship that I had with Cecil
and ultimately with Larry Vantile
was transformative for my entire life and for my career.
I went there just selling something
and I left with a business partner
and really left with two business partners
and Cecil taught me the three most important things
that I've ever learned in business in my life
and Larry Vantile was really graceful and kind
to bring a guy outside of the auto industry in
and he supported me as an entrepreneur.
Every time I wanted to start a business,
I would sit down and say, hey, I wanna do this
and he said, all right, go try it, let's do it.
So what were the three things that Cecil taught you?
The most important thing you'll ever know in this business
are people, people and people.
And so it was people three times
and he said there's nothing more important.
I think it was not just the customers,
it was also the people inside of the dealership
and he lived his life in a way that it was all
about the people and Larry is exactly the same.
I mean, just like hyper people focused.
Every conversation you had with those guys,
every conversation I had is they wanted to know
what was going on with your family,
what's going on with your life.
It was much more than just, you know,
what was going on in the car business
and that taught me a lot that over the past 25 years
I've founded a lot of companies
and people are always like, man, what's the secret?
What's the secret?
And I'm like, just love people,
care about people and take care of people.
So how do you find yourself at the helm of that company?
Because from my understanding,
when you linked up with Vantile,
you were running your own companies
that were serving Vantile.
When I started my first business, as I mentioned,
I had the privilege to partner with Larry and Cecil Vantile,
which was exceptional.
And then later, several years down the road,
I was asked to join their dealership group,
which was very interesting because, you know,
I was a vendor to the industry.
I was serving dealers all over the place
and the conversation was a strategic conversation
of kind of what the next five years of the business
was gonna look like
and what they hoped to accomplish during that timeframe.
One of the funnest things that I got to do
was build out the professional development
and training part of the business,
which was a very strategic way for us to drive
a lot of efficiencies, optimization,
and just culture throughout the dealerships
with training, you know, great people.
But the Vantiles, they attracted the best people
in the industry.
They were very generous with compensation,
but they also built a partnership model
that was second to none.
They didn't see partners as transactions.
They saw partners as truly a business partner.
And so the opportunity to work inside of that group
and professionalize and grow and develop that business,
which was really what my job was,
you know, was largely working in concert
with extraordinary partners.
Tell us more about the actual building process
in preparation for an acquisition.
I think many, many dealers, we spoke about this too,
but many dealers run their businesses
and you know, call it bubble gum and duct tape, right?
It's not suitable for scale, for let alone an acquisition
or, you know, any growth beyond that.
Everyone has different goals,
but you, I think what I find interesting about you
is you've scaled many companies.
And then to find yourself within a major auto retailer,
how do you structure that for more scale,
for potential acquisition?
The retail automotive business has a lot of different ways
that you can approach it and how a legacy plan,
you know, really, which is what the Vantiles had
was a legacy plan in place
and how the business would convey and what they would do.
But you know, I know, I have great friends right now
that acquire car dealerships, amazing car dealerships,
but they acquire them for the opportunity to be able to,
you know, be a franchisee and to sell vehicles
and to distribute vehicles and to run service
and all the different business units.
And they're not really buying the business,
they're buying the opportunity.
And I would say that that is very different
than what I saw ultimately
in what became Berkshire Hathaway Automotive.
And that's that, you know, the Vantiles built a business
that was highly predictable.
The sales business wasn't run day-to-day
or month-to-month.
I mean, it was an annual thing.
Of course, there was, you know, measure,
I think we were measuring data by the minute,
but they had systems and processes in place before,
you know, I mean, before anybody else,
I think in the industry really did.
So the opportunity, when you have system,
measurable systems and processes in place,
and you're building a business with durability
and predictability, the beauty of that is,
is not that you have standard operating procedures.
That's the price of admission.
The beauty is that you can iterate and you can refine
and you can always make it better.
So I mean, it was just a very calculated process.
So when we thought about how we were gonna develop
a training program, so we would, you know,
when I left there was 11,
we had 11,000 associates across the organization.
And if you think about how are you gonna get
the 11,000 people to fall in line and comply, right?
And so is what the Vantiles did that was very unique
as they invested deeply in the people's education.
And, you know, instead of giving somebody a directive
or a memorandum, we would certify them
and we would reward them and they would get incentives
and get compensated very well for results.
Well, no one wants to hear what the rules are, right?
The rules don't motivate people.
Is what motivates people is outcome that's aligned
with compensation and their goals, right?
And so that was a big deal.
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And I want to add one of the things.
No one wants a job description, right?
Job descriptions are very one side.
Yeah, tell me more.
Yeah, so if you think about a job description,
I give you a job description,
that's what I want from you, right?
And I think one of the misnomers
and one of the things that's changing
in the automotive industry specifically,
and I'll come back to job descriptions,
is a lot of people in the car business will say,
well, hey, your pay plan is your job description.
And that really isn't how life works.
It sounds good.
The pay plan is really important.
But this world's definitely changing
and the pay plan doesn't fix everything, right?
People need nurturing, they need development,
they need to understand what their journey is.
And so I feel like certainly in the businesses
I operate today and what I saw us do in retail automotive,
it was more about a journey description.
It was, Yossi, what do you want to accomplish
over the next 10 years?
Love that.
And so when you think about building
a tactical outcome oriented plan
with an associate that's going to work with you,
it needs to be about the journey.
It doesn't need to be about the job descriptions.
Another reason I love the retail automotive industry
is there's an amazing career track.
I mean, you can literally go from a porter
to a general manager, a partner, maybe a dealer principal.
I mean, you have an amazing path and an amazing journey.
And one of the things that I've seen
the most successful dealer groups in the world do
is create an authentic journey description
that shows someone the progression
of where they could go in their career.
I'm in many other industries, many other businesses
that I love.
None of them have the framework, the blueprint
and the financial opportunity that's completely defined
like you have in retail automotive.
Why does that still exist in automotive in your opinion?
Well, first of all, it's a very rich industry.
It's an industry that is easy to understand
what the outcomes are, right?
So while a lot of dealers treat it
as a transactional industry,
and I don't think it's a transactional business,
I don't think it should be a transactional business.
I think there's much longer runway
than what the next transaction is going to be.
The reality is you can measure every transaction.
You can measure profitability.
Dealerships have the best financial statements on earth
when it comes to measuring every single thing
that's happening in the business,
if it's done right and it's done well.
And that's the price of admission right now
is you have to understand every single discipline
in the business.
But when you know that,
it's easy to be able to reward someone, pay them
and give them credit for what they accomplished.
You don't always have that in every other business, right?
In the dealer space, you're able to measure that.
Now I'll tell you what the downside is.
The downside is a lot of times it becomes
an individual sport instead of a team sport.
And you really put a lot of emphasis and focus
on unicorns and unicorns aren't real.
There's no such thing as a unicorn,
but in the car business, right?
There's a lot of times that you're like,
man, we can't, we're not gonna mess with this guy
because he's putting up the best gross,
he's got the best numbers, he's selling the most units,
but it becomes toxic to the rest of the dealership at times.
So you over reward and you over recognize
individual performance.
So that's a negative that comes with it.
But the positive is if you're a standout performer,
I don't know many places that you can go
and make the kind of money you can make
and have the kind of career progression you can have
in a retail automotive.
So let's build on that more.
Like I think a lot of the conversation I have
on this platform are with dealers that want to grow.
Like we naturally attract to the platform dealers
who are more progressive minded,
meaning they want to scale,
they want to innovate, do better.
If you were in those shoes today,
like where would you be focused on growth?
You mentioned earlier fixed ops,
which has been continued to strengthen this economy
and with car prices still being at multi decade highs
and are close to it, right?
It's people are repairing their cars.
It's very much a K-shaped economy,
but where would you as an operator,
like where would you put your focus for growth?
Is it more acquisition?
Is it operational excellence all at the above?
I'm just curious how you think about this
as someone who's obviously scaled many companies.
I would contest that most franchise car dealers today
have much more enterprise value hidden in their business
than they realize.
Explain.
So there is a tremendous amount of profitability
that can be all the way from margin expansion
to expense reduction to the way you operate overall.
There's just a lot of different areas obviously
in a dealership where you can squeeze profitability,
but there's also ways that you can optimize
and drive innovation in that business as well.
And I think that most operators in the business
adding on another point and getting more dealerships
is a great strategy for growth
and it is an awesome strategy for growth
and it's something fun that you can do in this business
as you have a chance to, especially right now, right?
I mean, there's gonna be a ton of private transactions
where people are gonna be able to buy car stores
over the next several years and it's really fascinating,
but I think the enterprise value that's hidden
inside dealerships today, all the way from again,
looking at variable operations, fixed operations
in every department that's within
this multifaceted business, there's a lot more there.
But in order to get there,
you have to implement and integrate professionalism.
And there's a lot of things that you have to do
to professionalize the business.
I believe right now is the best time ever
for a car dealer for two reasons.
One is people are gonna become more important
than ever before.
As AI rises and continues to grow and evolve
and you see what's happening with AI every day,
I mean, I can't study AI enough.
I think it's an extraordinary tool,
but as AI continues to grow,
I believe that people in the customer retail business,
i.e. franchise car dealerships,
people are gonna become really, really important.
So the reality of it is if you can leverage AI
not just to drive efficiency and optimization
in your business, which I think the retail car business
is still trying to figure it out,
if you can use AI to develop people,
and I'll give you an example.
You know, if I was running a retail car store today,
I would absolutely have a second brain,
I would have an agent, I would have an application
that every single person in the store had access to
to be able to get real time knowledge and information
every single day about what's going on in the industry,
what's going on at the dealership,
what the culture stands for within the dealership,
where the opportunities are, how would that actually help?
Oh, hugely.
The challenge is that you have a lot of time
in between training, development, coaching,
and reviewing data with personnel in the store.
And the reality is if you're able to leverage AI
and position it the right way,
you can give them right now information
that's gonna help them.
And you can tailor it specifically to the individual, right?
So, I mean, I've personally built some agents
that are awesome, we've actually built some agents
in car stores that have helped car dealers.
Are you invested in car dealers now?
I'm invested in businesses
that serve franchise car dealerships.
Yeah, I own some businesses that serve the industry.
So, and I believe there's gonna be an amazing opportunity.
I think the vendor landscape for franchise car dealerships
is gonna change greatly in the next,
yeah, five to 10 years, but I wanna get back
to your question.
So, the challenge with Retail Automotive
is that there's just a delay in getting people
to create the outcomes that the store needs to.
And it's largely month by month, right?
We're reviewing what happened last month.
We're looking at quartile reports.
We're trying to figure out what we need to change.
We figure out who's performing,
who's not able to perform.
The greatest tool and the greatest resource
that you could ever have to be able to help someone grow,
develop and have knowledge and have current information
is really enabled by AI right now.
And so, having right now information.
Imagine if you're in a car store
and you're able to get into an agent right now.
It's not just about your DMS.
It's not just about the 10 other tech stack tools
that you're using.
It's not trying to figure out, you know,
how you're counting ups, what you're doing,
where your grosses are,
but make it specifically tailored to that individual.
So, the car business has always been,
by the way, if you go to work at a car store today,
some huge percentage of the time,
people learn how to be a retail individual operator
within a car dealership by Osmosis.
And Osmosis is really. 100%.
It's really important, right?
Osmosis is important.
You've got to learn by situational awareness,
practical applications, seeing people do things,
but Osmosis is not going to build enterprise value.
And it's not going to get you a predictable,
repeatable, consistent plan that needs to happen.
And it slows you down.
It does slow you down, right?
AI compresses time.
And so, if you think, where's the best place
to compress time?
The best place on earth to compress time is knowledge.
Because if you can give someone knowledge and information,
and you can combine it with that amazing level
of inspiration that you can't get anywhere else,
like you can get in a franchise car dealership, right?
I mean, car dealership is loaded with inspiration.
You got a problem if you don't have inspiration.
But now, if you can take the compression
of knowledge and information, leveraging AI,
and you can really train and enable someone
to be really sophisticated and smart at what they're doing,
you've created a customer experience that's dynamic,
and everything's going to change.
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I didn't want to interrupt you.
You were talking about, I was asking you,
look, where's the opportunity?
You said margin expansion, as I said,
and you mentioned different departments, sure.
And then you said, but you got to professionalize.
And I wanted to ask you,
what do you really mean by that, right?
Because, again, there's definitely
the disproportionate amount of dealers
listening to this are growing or in growth mode
to something like they want to grow and be bigger
and offer a better experience to the customer
and make more money and blah, blah, blah.
When you say professionalize,
what's the right way to do this?
How would you do that today
if I dropped you to the dealership?
It's about creating a business that's got predictability
and it's got durability,
because it's really what you're trying,
anytime you build a business,
you're trying to create enterprise value.
You don't want a business that is dependent upon the owner,
the operator, in the case of a car store.
If the character of that business is the general manager,
and if everything happens because of the ecosystem
of the general manager,
you're not building a durable business.
You're building a business that's highly dependent
on an individual.
I think the greatest operators
in the retail car business today
aren't the ones that are always trying to audit, inspect,
and hold accountable the individuals,
but they're always inspecting, auditing, and working on
the systems and the processes
that are gonna drive the success of the business
that are ultimately gonna hold the people accountable
for the productivity.
So if you have a manager that's always focused
on the individual, they need to spend more time than that
on the systems and processes that are gonna really drive
the professionalization of the business.
So for me, it's about what is your pipeline
for talent look like?
How are you onboarding your employees?
What are the conversations look like that are happening
between your personnel and your customers?
What does that look like?
The absolute number one department to build trust
in the front end of a franchise car dealership
is your F&I department.
And I think that when you hire F&I managers
and you have people operating F&I,
it needs to, you need to be hiring people
that can't just run the highest dollars per transaction,
but you need to hire people that can create
the highest level of trust.
Because that trust is gonna be conveyed as professionalism
and that trust is gonna make its way out into the community
and that trust is gonna, you're gonna get referrals.
But more times than not, the weakest link of trust
in a dealership is an F&I.
When you're thinking about who's gonna be an F&I,
who's gonna deal with that customer,
what does that look like?
It needs to be someone that can create trust,
that can be authentic, endearing,
that can be compassionate,
that can be understanding of people's situations.
I mean, if you look at where right now,
30% of the transactions,
people are upside down in their cars, right?
I mean, it's a big deal or more.
And it's a pretty big number.
And that rubber hits the road in F&I.
And so that needs to be a place
that you can really build trust.
Another area to build trust in the business
is with your service advisor, right?
I mean, your service advisor is the megaphone
of the dealership, right?
They get more transaction, more communication.
So I would just say that when you think about professionalism,
the first place I would start is communication.
That communication is number one.
Whether it's written, whether it's text,
whether it's verbal, you know,
people need to be treated with a high level
of respect and professionalism.
I've never in my life had someone say to me,
you're being too professional.
You're being, and you know how much it costs
to be professional?
It's free.
It doesn't cost anything.
I have two comments on that as well.
So one thing is, I've had a lot of conversations,
say the last 36 months,
with dealers who have been implementing,
recording in F&I office.
So this has really been, you know,
a hot trend because they've seen results,
but recording in F&I office and you're able to,
you know, almost like we had it on the podcast
we discussed and we called it like game tape, right?
Like an NFL quarterback is going to watch
the game tape after the game, right?
To see what they did, how they can do better.
And of course today with AI,
you can tell you right away what you need to do better.
Second comment I wanted to make was,
so hearing you say a lot of this stuff,
like I kind of, I like repel a lot of it.
I am a very creative person.
I love systems.
I don't want to build systems, right?
I love when there are systems,
because there's predictability,
but I don't want to build a system.
I want to just be creative and, you know, do whatever.
And one of the, you know, arbitrages
or whatever you want to call it,
one of the things I found in today's economy
that works really well and I've recommended this
to a couple of dealers is bringing someone on board,
like someone like young out of college
that just knows AI very, very well
and just showing them what you'd like hate
or what is not predictable or not systematized.
And hey, can you use AI to systematize this?
And literally the habit I've had now
is like when we record all of our meetings,
you know, like in company meetings.
So we'll take the transcript, throw it up
into one of the AI tools and say,
based on all this, like pitch me a system
that could solve this.
And this is not like an expensive endeavor.
And for people like me who hate building systems
but love the outcome of systems,
it's actually been a game changer
because to me it's like second nature
to actually do that act and that activity.
I am actually not good at building systems.
I'm highly creative.
It's two of us.
Yeah, I'm highly creative and I'm always thinking about,
I'm good at thinking about what the systems need to look like
but I'm not the guy to architect systems.
So here's my big comment on this.
Dealers do not need to wait for the vendors in the industry
to create the AI solutions
that they're gonna use in their business.
They're gonna be late.
And so back to what you said about,
hey, if you're a dealer, you need to hire someone
that's young and smart and can be an AI ninja
and can come into your business
and can help you professionalize and implement
what you need to do in your business.
By the way, if you wanna leapfrog the competition,
if you wanna win right now, you need that person today.
You need that person today.
If you are waiting on all these big bureaucratic organizations
or the next technology company
that wants to sell you features and benefits
so they could keep you on the reoccurring take,
if that is what you're after,
and by the way, there's amazing vendors in this space,
but you don't have time to wait for them.
If you wanna leverage the tools and resources
that are available right now,
which I believe again, the number one place to leverage AI
instead of inside of a car store
is with knowledge, information, training,
real-time information that's gonna be able
to allow someone to play the game better.
You can get real-time information
that can improve your chances of winning.
Your batting average improves by the minute,
by the day.
You don't have to have the weekly meeting.
You don't have to have the monthly ass kicking.
You don't have to have any of that.
You can learn and get this information right now.
So if I'm a car dealer right now, I'm telling you,
like I'm listening to what's going on in the industry.
I'm listening to what the vendors are doing,
but I am absolutely bringing somebody in my store right now
that can help me optimize my business using AI.
And I think there's a lot of people that are scared of it
because it's the unknown and they don't know what to do.
They don't know where to start.
They don't have time to sit around and study AI
and know what's going on.
Well, let me tell you,
there's a lot of people out there
that do have that time and they're able
to walk into your business.
We're doing it right now.
I've got several companies right now
where I've hired those people and I've said,
come show me how we can be more efficient and more optimized.
But at the end of the day, people are like, well, why?
Is it just gonna make everything more technologically oriented?
Is it gonna make it more professionalized?
Hell no.
It's gonna make it more profitable.
I want it more to be more profitable, right?
I'm not thinking about how I can get rid of people
because of AI.
I'm thinking about how can I have the smartest.
Make them superpowers.
Yeah, make them superpowers.
And by the way, if you make people,
and that's one of the things that I love about the car business,
is if you help people find success and make good money
and enjoy life along the way,
they're gonna stick with you forever.
And so you're not investing in an AI.
You're investing in people.
You're investing in the people
that are gonna create better outcomes for your business.
And it's fun.
I think it's gonna make this business fun.
So you said that you were referencing the vendors.
I wanna see what you mean there.
One quick comment on your point about recording
and learning from having that in real time.
Another dealer who's a follower of our platform
left us a note that they have moved to a structure
where they record every single meeting
because for them, even in-person meetings,
because then they have that as transcripts and knowledge,
the data corpus that they feed into AI,
and it gets smarter on, again,
it gives them real-time feedback.
So another cool little trick there.
Card dealers have more data and more information
than most businesses.
Between all the vendors that they do business with,
with the DMS, with recorded phone calls,
they have so much information.
And you can take all this information
and you can plug it into a second brain
and you can create an AI agent from that.
And you also can drop into that same platform,
not necessarily what's been going on from the data,
but what you want to happen, right?
So it's not just what has historically happened,
but what behavior do you want to happen?
What outcome do you want to happen?
You talk to any general manager in a car store today,
they know what they want to happen.
They know where they want their grosses to be.
They know where they want their penetration to be.
They know what they want their CPRO to be.
They know, I mean, you can go through every department,
they know, and there's a way to build that information
and that education into an AI agent,
even using all your historical information
and to create something that's going to help people
get to where you want to go.
So again, I'm sorry to keep talking about AI,
but it is so powerful for ways dealers can use it right now.
I just don't think they see it.
Do you think we're going into a zero sum world
with vendors and, you know, dealership technology
or is this positive some meaning?
Will I have the intern in house or the AI expert in house
and I'll still have my vendors, if not more vendors,
or will one replace the other?
Like how do you feel about the vendor landscape?
By the way, dealers are many vendors power many dealers.
Like you need the vendor landscape.
The average dealer spends over 30,000 rooftops,
spends over 30,000 a month on vendors.
Like it's a big part of running a dealership.
So how do you feel about the whole vendor dealer
landscape relationship?
Well, the success that I've had personally
and professionally throughout my career
has been because I've been a vendor
to the retail automotive space.
I don't think, I mean, it is an amazing...
You were a vendor then a retailer.
Yeah, but it's an amazing ecosystem to serve.
Like car dealers are the best customers on earth.
Why?
Right, because they'll pay.
They'll pay and they have the money to pay
and they'll keep paying.
And so, you know, I think right now vendors
that serve the franchise automotive market,
you know, I say that dealers don't need to wait
on the vendors, but the vendors are gonna be,
they're inevitably gonna be the catalyst
for change, involvement and improvement
that happens in a lot of different areas of a dealership.
So here's what I learned being a vendor at, you know,
early on is you don't wanna be a vendor to a dealer.
You wanna be a partner.
And a vendor is walking in with features and benefits
and I wanna talk you in to what I have.
It's gonna be awesome.
It's gonna make your business better.
But is what a dealer really needs is a partner
and an integrator that understands the pain points
in the business and how they can help them overcome
the pain points in the business, right?
And so, a dealer doesn't need somebody
that has the next shiniest thing
that they're gonna walk in.
How does it get on my showroom floor?
Go stand in my shop.
Go stand in my service drive.
Go talk to my, you know, warranty department.
Go talk to, I mean, go understand
what's going on in my business, right?
And so that's where I built 10 different offerings
that I sold to franchise car dealerships
and all those companies are still in existence today
and still selling to franchise car dealerships.
And it wasn't because we were a vendor that walked in
that had a singular solution.
We walked in with understanding,
and that was one of the wonderful things I had
by having a partner that was a, you know,
one of the most successful retail automotive operators
on earth was that I was able to vertically integrate
into the business.
I was able to understand where the pain points were.
Every time I launched a new company as a vendor
in this space is because I saw a pain point.
It was never because I had something cool.
A lot of people are like, well, man, wouldn't it be cool
if a car dealer had this?
Well, no, it wouldn't be cool
if it doesn't integrate operationally
into all the systems and processes
that they have to manage their business.
So I think vendors today, more than ever before,
they need to understand every single operating area
of the dealership and how what you're doing
impacts every area.
And at the end of the day, how does it affect the P&L?
Like what does it look like on the financial statement?
Like where does it fall?
And so if you can have that mindset
and you're truly helping a dealer overcome pain points,
you're gonna have a customer for life
that quite candidly they'll pay you all the money in the world.
This episode is brought to you by CDG circles.
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Where do you think all the value is gonna be captured
over the next 35 years, 10 years even?
Like where are you investing?
The best investment that anyone's gonna be able to make
in the retail automotive space
is gonna be in making it the professional career opportunity
of choice for people.
And so I'm gonna invest in people.
And quite candidly, the only thing
that's ever gonna differentiate anyone or any business
in the retail automotive space is gonna be people.
So the investment needs to be in people.
So would you say that a proxy for that
would be like the publics, the consolidators?
Like do you think they'll be increasingly
at an advantage in the world to come?
If dealerships overall, and we'll say public,
did a better job conveying the career opportunity
that exists within retail automotive
and they did a better job onboarding and training
and equipping people to be successful in the space
that retail operators in the automotive space
would have a top pick of a lot of talent
that is going to be looking for jobs in America specifically.
And I think AI is gonna displace a lot of other...
It's hard to do it.
Yeah, a lot of other professions.
And I believe that if the publics who employ
hundreds of thousands of people, if the privates as well,
if they can figure out a way to bring efficiency
and optimization within the business
to make it a very desirable place for smart people to work,
they are, here's what's cool.
They have the revenue.
They have the engine.
They have the, you know, I'm in these other businesses
that we don't have the ability to pay people
a hundred, 200,000, 300,000, $400,000 a year.
The economics just don't support it.
They don't support it.
So guess what you get?
You don't get those high capacity, high achieving people.
So at the end of the day, I think that the franchise car dealer
needs to figure out how to make it known
that if you are top tier talent,
this is the place you wanna come work.
And I think that's more than just a pay plan
and it's not a job description.
It's helped me understand the journey.
I tell people all the time,
you drive by a target or a Walmart.
You know, say you have a target, Walmart,
and you have a Toyota dealership all next to each other.
Think about what the general manager of the Walmart
and of the Target are making in comparison
to the general manager of a successful franchise car
dealership.
And you-
I'll tell you a story after that,
but it's funny you say that.
And you say, what's the-
It doesn't make sense.
Well, then you say, what's the difference?
What's the difference?
You know, what's the difference?
The only difference is gonna mean the only difference
is gonna be in the person, in the individual, right?
That's there.
So it's a-
It's a very good point because when I first discovered
that a restaurant general manager made like $75,000,
I was blown away because I compared it to automotive.
Not-
You didn't wanna go run a restaurant.
Yeah, and like great, you know,
you can make 50 a year, 100 a year, whatever it is,
it's all power to you, you're being productive.
But when you discover the variance
between an automotive GM, I was like completely skewed.
I mean, it warped my entire mindset.
I was like, what is going on?
Why work anywhere else?
Dude, I was blown away.
So this was obviously years ago.
But yeah, so that's why when you say that,
I kinda chuckle.
I was like, yeah, it's a big difference.
But it's an opportunity.
If you have the ability to pay people for performance,
it's a flywheel that once you get it turning the right way,
it just gets bigger and
because the only difference of the business is the people.
And so if you can attract high capacity,
highly talented individuals,
and you can highly compensate them
into comparison to the rest of the marketplace,
then you shouldn't, by the way,
dealership's biggest problem today
is the same thing that it's been for decades
and it's turnover.
And it's turnover.
And you'd say, okay, well, then where does it break down?
Why do we have the turnover?
Well, are we hiring the wrong people?
Probably so.
Why are we hiring the wrong people?
The reason we're hiring the wrong people
is because we aren't doing a good enough job
illustrating what the true opportunity is
because if we were able to illustrate
what the real opportunity is on a franchise car dealership,
we go to the smartest and the brightest
and the best people lined up at the door
begging for a job.
So Vic, as we wrap up, I like to ask this question,
but what didn't I ask you that I should have?
You know, the only thing that I would say
that we've definitely emphasized but haven't hit on enough
is I think that the dealership ecosystem in America
is one of the most exceptional
entrepreneurial businesses on earth.
And I think that if you really think
about what the next five, 10, 15 years look like,
a lot of people would say, man, it's scary
what's gonna happen.
I think that the thing that everyone's missing
is how important the speed of play is.
And I think speed of play is most critical.
And so I think right now we take for granted
that we're in a business, we're in an industry
that, you know, it's month to month
and it continues to happen and we celebrate wins,
we celebrate losses, but the reality is
those that are gonna win the biggest going forward.
And what I'm thinking about is
time has been compressed with AI.
And so if you ask me what is most important right now,
I would say speed of play.
And I think that's most important.
And, you know, I love a quote that,
and I won't get this right, but Warren Buffett
has a great quote that, you know, I'll go as fast as smooth.
And in other words, I don't wanna get wobbly and fall over.
And I think that, you know,
what is most important right now in business
if you want to win and you wanna leapfrog your competition
is speed of play.
And you doesn't mean you need to get wobbly,
it doesn't mean you need to be messy,
it doesn't mean you need to be reckless, right?
But speed of play is number one.
Amazingly said.
Vic Keller, on the CDG podcast.
Vic, thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks, Yossi.
All right, hope you enjoyed that episode.
Please give the podcast a rating,
consider subscribing to the show
and check the show notes for links to what we talked about.
Thanks for tuning in, I'll see you guys next time.
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