Playing Car Dealership At 4 Years Old with Alain Nana-Sinkam

Paul J Daly: 0:00Listen, it's not every day we get to have a guest on who happens to be the only man in this universe that is responsible for me getting a custom tailored pair of jeans.Unknown: 0:15

This is Auto Collabs. I

Michael Cirillo: 0:18

mean, so strong. Talk to me about fit. Do they fit different than a store bought pair of jeans? Like, what do you Ah, it depends

Paul J Daly: 0:24

on the store. Because sometimes I don't know if it's just me, but sometimes I can find an amazing fit off the rack. Like, but this was

Kyle Mountsier: 0:31

a it's helpful that you're like, six one average white, middle aged dude. You

Unknown: 0:36

know, I walk into a store I'm, like, got any 38 twelves? He's

Paul J Daly: 0:43

like, and even then, I'm gonna need a pair of scissors and some hemming thread

Kyle Mountsier: 0:50

that Alan probably needs custom fitted almost every time, because the guy's like, 83 feet like,

Paul J Daly: 0:56

athlete he's got extreme beat dude. He's got athlete vibes. No, he's got athlete vibes. Always walking around in the Jordans, like, Yeah, I'm like, you used to be able to dunk on some some people, haven't you? That's for

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 1:07

sure. Maybe just you get to the bottom

Michael Cirillo: 1:08

of it. Let's get to the bottom of it. Let's bring let's bring him. In hope you enjoy this episode with Alan. Nana cincum, let's go.

Paul J Daly: 1:20

Alan, so great to have you back on Auto Collabs today. Welcome. I

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 1:24

enjoy our conversation so much. So when the opportunity came up, I was very excited to rejoin you. So

Paul J Daly: 1:31

I love whenever we get to talk to somebody who has, like, legit OG roots in the industry. And you started as a lot of tendon, which is, you know, the edge. I don't know. Is there another entry level position that goes before lot attendant? Anybody? Not

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 1:48

a position that is more more exposed to the whole dealership at such an entry level than the Porter and the lot attendant that Kyle

Paul J Daly: 1:58

always says that we'll walk into dealership. He's like, you want to know what's really going on around here. Go,

Kyle Mountsier: 2:03

you go put him in a golf cart for an hour with you. Thing you know all the things

Paul J Daly: 2:11

you ever did want to know and didn't want to know about what's going on. Who's with. Who are you go for the real answers. But I think that that experience is really what informs your entire understanding of the industry when you start there, because you start there with little respect, little knowledge, little understanding, and very quickly, people rely on you to get them things

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 2:33

absolutely and you get to see the end of the transaction, probably the happiest moment in our industry. Oh, that's cool. The car goes over the curb, and you you learn so much about the process and what's valued, and busy Saturdays where, you know, they're, they're, we're going to sell 17 or 20 cars, and we don't want to be the log jam or the, you know, the bottleneck and the whole process.

Paul J Daly: 3:01

What's the first this could go wrong? We asked a question on a podcast a few podcasts ago, and we were like, we wish we didn't ask that question, but, but what was the first thing that you found out as a lot of tenant where you were like, oh, that's how it really works. Or I might have gotten myself in trouble with that one. Maybe I don't want you to answer that. Michael's like, Michael, if you're not watching, he's like, Yeah, pull up.

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 3:30

Well, I will tell you that I started at Jerry's Ford in Annandale, Virginia, and Jerry's Ford was one of the first dealerships in the country to get a you go franchise,

Paul J Daly: 3:43

and one of the first to get rid of it, probably

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 3:46

one of the first to get rid of it. And those cars were not ready for for the public when they first drive, absolutely so, I think, exposed to a brand new car, or a, quote, brand new car that went over the curb with some some deficiencies, I learned about what a wheel was, how that figures into the process.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:16

Now you're you were telling us beforehand that your your roots actually go maybe a bit deeper than just the lot attendant thing. And I think you have, Nathan told us that you have a little photo, a little you got a little show and tell for those that are watching this video. Is that right? First Look at that?

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 4:34

Oh, my God. So couple things to observe

Paul J Daly: 4:37

here obviously explain what we're seeing, Kyle, because the people who are just listening? What are we looking

Kyle Mountsier: 4:41

at? No, Alan is about to do a way better job at that. He was, he was like, a couple things to observe. Hit us with it. Okay, give us the explanation of what we got going on. I'm

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 4:50

four years old in my bedroom. This is a picture of me sitting on the floor, and the people who aren't who aren't watching won't. Realize that that full head of hair was not gorgeous. Was great. Oh, fantastic. I had the pick and everything. Man got the

Paul J Daly: 5:10

quintessential ringer tee on, white shirt with the green ring around the neck and the sleeves, some jeans bare feet sitting on a hardwood floor. So

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 5:19

all my matchbox and Hot Wheels cars are all laid out in a row, and they're organized by different types. And my mother tells me that she came in and she asked me what I was doing, and I looked up at her, and I said, this is my dealership.

Paul J Daly: 5:35

Oh, I thought it was practicing to be a lot attendant, but

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 5:38

this was my dealership, and I had all them. I had them organized by brand. Paul. They were all set up, thank goodness, and ready to roll. So it runs deep with me. Guys. Where did that

Paul J Daly: 5:47

come from? Wow. Like, what made you at that age? Do you even remember it for like, why did you want to have a dealership? I

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 5:55

was just always fascinated with cars and my my folks would get me matchbox and Hot Wheels, and I would organize them by brand and by I'd organize them by color, and I'd polish them up, and it just and on the way to the airport, my dad used to travel a lot when we were little. On the way to the airport, we would drive through the auto row in Herndon, Virginia. So I would always see all the cars parked out so nicely. And I was trying to, I was trying to replicate that in my in my bedroom.

Paul J Daly: 6:22

I don't, I don't know how to say,

Michael Cirillo: 6:24

well, so I gotta jump in on this, because I'm so fascinated right now. Alan, I've had a stick for a while when it comes to marketing and dealership marketing, where I'm like, can we stop telling people the thing they already know that we do like my my stick was at the time my six year old knows what a car dealership does. And if I ask them, what a car dealership Dad, don't ask stupid questions. You are now the proof point to this stick for

Paul J Daly: 6:54

years, which, as a four year old, you can lower the age to four down. You

Michael Cirillo: 6:57

knew that the the they had to be lined up, they had to be merchandised. They needed to be detailed. You knew what needed to be done. And now you do you think in some way, like, do you look back on that photo and go, Man, I did I ever call my calling forward?

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 7:15

It's like the video of Tiger Woods on The Tonight Show coming out and hitting the golf ball. And it's like, man, he really started early.

Michael Cirillo: 7:22

You don't think of people in this industry like us being huge advocates for this industry and that this is a great place to work. People can see the Tiger Woods photo that you're talking about, and they're like, Oh, dang, that's awesome. But you might be the first person I've heard call forward like that was my moment that I'm going to be in this industry as a kid,

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 7:42

I even knew to take my age units and put them up on the No

Unknown: 7:46

way.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:50

Here's what's interesting to this, to me about this, and this is it's kind of to go along with. Michael zeal, is, do we not give the consumer public the credit that they're kind of due for what, like working with a dealership or buying something. Like, a lot of times, you know, in the industry, we're like, oh, they wouldn't know how to do that. Oh, they don't know about this. Like, is there more credit due to the car buyer, the car servicer, and the research they've done, the understanding of how we do business, what we do, things like that. I

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 8:29

think there's a real paradox going on. I think that consumers know what they like. They know what they want. Buying a car remains a very emotional purchase. I mean, we give our cars names. This is not always super spreadsheet rational decisions that we make when it comes to transportation. The piece that they're lacking is the detail that sits underneath that process. So to Michael's point, less about the nuts and bolts of what a dealership does that consumers tend to understand and more about how dealers make this really complicated process so much easier and so and can remove the friction. Dealers are the only ones who can reliably remove the friction. And I say that as somebody who lives in the vendor space now, right and trying to walk in and say, we can help you with this. We can help you with that. Dealers know how to remove the friction, and it's the biggest opportunity in our industry that sits in front of us right now.

Unknown: 9:30

Interesting.

Michael Cirillo: 9:33

This needs to go on a shirt reliably remove the friction. Have you ever heard of it in those terms? Has anybody? I've never, I've

Kyle Mountsier: 9:43

never heard that reliable Alan was the he you trademark that just,

Unknown: 9:47

that's the key word for me, is reliably like we we have this negative stigma, this cloud that looms over the industry at large, not realizing that through that storm or that tumult, the dealer is. Is the only one who can reliably remove the friction,

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 10:05

unquestionably, because it requires, and this is why I'm such a big fan of what you all are doing more broadly, because you elevate how I'm going to get a little misty right now, but you elevate how important what we do is to consumers, right? Transportation unlocks opportunity. People can take jobs that they couldn't take otherwise, move to places that they they couldn't otherwise. And there's this whole industry setting aside what it does for us as workers in it right, to be able to have a living and make money and do and do all of those things. It really is an industry that can kind of call its own shot in terms of what's going to happen next and where it's going to go next. I think that's, that's what excites me so much about it. You know,

Kyle Mountsier: 10:52

if you, if you've never, Alan, did you? You sold cars for a time? Course, yep, you would know this. You and me can reminisce on this, Paul and poor Paul and Michael can't reminisce on this, but we're what, but they'll know what I'm talking about, because they maybe con felt it as a consumer, but you just called out this thing that I don't think we key into enough in an industry, which is the existentialism of car buying, right? That car the unlock of transportation access. Now for some p like, for a very small few, maybe, you know, two to 3% of car buyers, it's just another check box. They bought 30 in the last 20 years. They just kind of buy cars on a whim. Doesn't really matter, but for probably 98% of car buyers, there's some sort of existentialism built into that first car growing family, new place, just moved, got a new job, right? The connection to life's moments and car buying and what we get to do as an industry is come alongside of them and usher them kind of like it's a it's if you take the industry as a whole as this is like we get to usher people into life stages,

Paul J Daly: 12:13

real reality without

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 12:17

it. Is the reason why I get so discouraged when we make ourselves small, when we make our industry small, and all we think about is profitability and who won the deal and and these elements of the transaction, when the reality is we're doing something way more valuable to our our our society. And I, and I know sometimes that can sound a little hokey, but I think we all are at varying stages in our life where we want to see meaning in what we do, and that is absolutely the meaning in what we do.

Kyle Mountsier: 12:52

How do you connect that to, like your your daily work, the thing that you're doing right now, right you're you run the OEM Partnerships Program with with true car. How do you because I think some people would have trouble connecting that, right? Maybe there's a sales people out there that can really viscerally do that, because they're connecting with people who are buying a car every single day. But it's like this developer working on the CER the WYSIWYG thing for the for the service scheduler, right? Like, so how in your role do you connect the meaning of the broader industry to, yeah, I have to, you know, get an OEM signature today, you know, or whatever that may be. I'm

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 13:34

all about the ecosystem and the opportunity to make this ecosystem better. The role that I play directly is with manufacturers who are trying to help consumers discover and ultimately put in their driveway the brand of choice. But when you zoom out a click and you look at our industry, everybody's a pro, with the exception of one entity, the consumer, everybody else at that table is a pro at what they do. They do it all day, every day, multiple times. Every single day, a consumer buys a car. How often? Once, every 567, years, sometimes longer than that. Yeah, I try to think of the things that you do once every seven years. You stink at all of them. You're you because you just don't get the practice

Paul J Daly: 14:22

dieting. Me terrible at dieting.

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 14:26

So to me, the opportunity is to help that person level up, and when they level up, as an industry, we all benefit. And Kyle, I'll lean on you. You have sold a car to somebody who came in the door that said, I know what I want. I know what I want to pay. There's my trade. I need this much for it. I know where I want to finance. If you can do this, you have my business as a salesperson in deal. I want that all day, every day. I take 25 of those people a day, and I would be in heaven. What do you get? Instead? You get, man. I don't know pickup truck or sedan. Do you have a co signer? Yeah, I don't know what color I don't know are. It is a completely different experience. So from my, you know, little part of the world I'm I'm trying to level up that consumer, because I know we'll all benefit when it happens.

Paul J Daly: 15:20

You know, one of the things that has quickly become one of the biggest challenges, or I think one of the consumers, have this already, like you just mentioned, they only do this every so many years, so they already come in with feeling like an insecurity about the process. One of the biggest areas of that is not what color car I want. It's often like, can I get this financed? You know what I mean? And that's an area that I think there's been a growing level of attention and sensitivity to that, like we're always talking about, like, you know, affordability being a challenge, but we see more and more companies and more and more dealers, I think leading the conversation with, you know, talk tracks and tech tools and employee training, that is more, I don't know, empathetic to it is that what you're seeing out there, I know, I know it's like a passion of yours, financing, specifically,

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 16:20

It's it's the next step for us as an industry. We've, we have solved price transparency, and I think all dealers and everybody in the ecosystem recognizes that, yeah, but there's a difference between price and cost, and the way that most consumers pay for cars has nothing to do with that five digit price. That is not how they how they think about it, and ultimately, yeah, the problem is the four of us all get the same price. We don't experience the same cost. Paul might lease. Kyle wants to put no money down. Michael wants to do 84 month financing, and I want to do 48 that's where the next year

Kyle Mountsier: 17:01

a baller Alan, that's that's

Paul J Daly: 17:02

why that's the next

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 17:07

that's the next step for us, that's the next level for us, is to create the same level of ease and discovery like you're talking about Paul around the cost of the car, and not just the price of the car.

Paul J Daly: 17:19

Gosh, I've never heard it like, delineated that way, how much the car is, yeah? Because

Kyle Mountsier: 17:24

you can't, you can't go online, you can't go online to a Reddit thread and be like, how much you pay a month, right?

Paul J Daly: 17:31

Right? Because it'll be the same car and it'll be wildly different payments. And I think the default position is like, Well, you got ripped off if you're paying more than someone else, yeah, maybe not. Maybe you got a better deal, honestly. Wow, how are we doing that? Tell us. How are we doing that? I know. I'm like, I'm like, You must be wrestling with this

Kyle Mountsier: 17:50

now. You're like, you're, you're putting things in front of my face. Or I'm like, give me a week. I'll be right back. Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 17:55

right now, for real, because you think about how cost, like, how price transparency was this like, seemingly over, unsurmountable object, insurmountable object back in the day, and now it's just like a norm, right? And technology did that for us, right? It brought it, brought transparency to both sides. But it's just such a it's a normal thing now, but the cost conversation is not a normal thing. Yet, we see a lot of mentioning of it. We see a lot of attempts to make it better.

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 18:27

Do you guys remember that old Auto Trader commercial that was based on the matrix where the guy came into the White Room, just like Neo and he said, I need a car. And the cars came in, yes.

Paul J Daly: 18:38

And they came like, yeah, with like, a lot of velocity, yeah? And

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 18:41

he starts yelling out, a red one, a convertible, and they're changing, as you say, going up and down, yeah? The modern equivalent of that. What's next is that same person coming into that same room and they're saying, I'm 680 I have two grand, and I need to be $400 a month, go. And I think

Paul J Daly: 18:59

someone needs to make that commercial tomorrow. Yeah.

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 19:03

And then you pick the one. And now it's just cars that fit whatever you just said, and you pick the one that works best for you.

Unknown: 19:10

Wow,

Kyle Mountsier: 19:10

yeah, right, especially right now when when affordability is is such a part of the matrix, we're seeing average car payments on new car loans right in the mid to high, seven hundreds, and a lot of people are asking the questions, starting with budget first. And we don't really have as an industry, we don't default to payment based searching right. We default to year make model feature based searching right. And I think there's, there's different, you know, different providers moving to move that way, but I bet if we made it easier for consumers to inquire that way, it would be way more utilized. And

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 19:51

there's reasons for that. We've got to figure out, how do you incorporate protection into that? Right? Again, Kyle, the worst thing you wanted to do is quote a payment. And out on the floor, your finance manager would come out, and absolutely you'd want to have a discussion, because you've got to be able to to to educate the consumer about how to protect the asset and all the other things that you want to do so but we can, but we can solve for it. It's just a matter of identifying the blocks and helping the consumer well

Kyle Mountsier: 20:18

and on a super nerdy level, right? Real time payment. APIs that are fast and easy to use are not, you know, not in like, there's not a plethora of them out there that you can just like, go hit an API really quickly. Have tax, title, license fees, the whole nine yards built in a in a penny perfect payment and real time change it based on that person's thing, on every single piece of the inventory. That's actually a really hard thing to do from a very technical level. So that's right, yeah. I mean,

Paul J Daly: 20:52

I It's rare that we have, like, I'm just going over this, I can't believe I didn't see this before, honestly, like the way you put it, and even like the Okay, that's

Unknown: 21:02

because you're kind of like Kyle said, would this because I'm a what? That's because you're a lay down.

Paul J Daly: 21:08

I'm a total lay down. Lay down. That's messed up. Michael,

Unknown: 21:16

most car I'm a lay down. Most sales people are lay downs, right? Our people are the worst

Paul J Daly: 21:20

we're terrible at it, or the best, or they happen to think I'm the best.

Kyle Mountsier: 21:26

Oh man, Alan, I think You've stumped us, you've encouraged us, you've given us something to think about and and the fact that you called your shot at age four is just really cool story. So thanks again for hanging out with us, and thanks for joining us here on Auto Collabs today.

Unknown: 21:41

Pleasure, Hey, Paul, can I do this little, quick little quiz for you? Okay, okay, we'll let you do the quiz. Go,

Kyle Mountsier: 21:48

okay,

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 21:49

you guys know, I'm huge into sports uniform. He's one of the things I told you guys. And by the way,

Paul J Daly: 21:54

turning a crazy hat. You have to, you have to watch the show to see it. There you

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 21:59

go. You got to tune in. So the big thing that I'm into the niche for sports uniforms is what I call uniform cameos, which is basically a super famous guy who played and played at the end of their career, or the beginning of the career for another team. So think like Jordan with the wizards, Akeem Olajuwon finished his career at the Raptors farm with Yeah, yeah. Got it. So as an Eagles fan Paul, you need to recognize this rams Jersey as one of the most interesting uniform cameos that you should possibly know about. You're a huge football fan. I know

Paul J Daly: 22:37

God this is going way back.

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 22:40

The one hint I'll give you is that this guy made this cameo at the start of his career and not the end of his career. Did he have the same number, different number?

Paul J Daly: 22:54

Ron Jaworski,

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 22:57

yeah, no, no, yeah. Oh no,

Unknown: 23:03

quit on it now. And with

Paul J Daly: 23:05

that, I will never be back in one of these podcasts again. You'll never see me. Alan,

Kyle Mountsier: 23:13

you're you're a true hero. Paul crushed it. Hey. Thanks for listening. If you're listening along some auto clouds.

Paul J Daly: 23:26

Okay, I think it's only appropriate that after that win, I'm putting this Eagles jersey on

Kyle Mountsier: 23:33

for all of the audio people. It looks like an Eagles jersey. It is

Paul J Daly: 23:37

an Eagles Jersey because I can't believe I nailed the trivia. I thought I was gonna be outed. That blew my

Kyle Mountsier: 23:43

mind. I about fell out of my chair. That was so impressive. Every one while I get it. The other piece that's so shocking to me is, and granted, there's still an element of, like, I kind of loosely found my way in the industry, but so many people in our industry is, like, never even thought of this whole car thing. I just tripped and fell into it. Now it's like, no, as a kid, I was lining cars up. I knew what I wanted to do. I knew where I was focused.

Michael Cirillo: 24:09

There's so much story. I mean, we could have a whole other podcast, just a discussion between the three of us about the implication of what he said. Because for the longest time, I'm like, There's a marketing conversation there, which is car dealers, marketing companies or agencies spend majority of the budget telling the public what the public already knows that they do. We sell cars. And he's the proof point to that thesis right there, that as a kid, as a toddler, he's like, I'm gonna play car dealership. Yep, I'm gonna sell cars brand

Kyle Mountsier: 24:39

build all the way down. Like kids want to be soccer players, football players and firefighters, they should want to be car dealers too.

Paul J Daly: 24:46

I just had an idea of it. We need to develop a board game.

Unknown: 24:52

Oh,

Alain Nana-Sinkham: 24:54

and

Paul J Daly: 24:55

you can Nathan, our producers back there, like I've already built it. I'm. I'm not a fan of board games, but I'd be a fan of this board game, and you can have, like, the hazard ones, right? Like you get the you get going

Kyle Mountsier: 25:06

to be so, you know, this is going to be so easy, we're going to GPT out of our GPT board game, because we already know. And then all of a sudden, we're getting a 3d printer. We're going to print that thing, it'll be the one, and we'll put it on Kickstarter, and then just wait for our Kickstarter. Ladies and gentlemen. Well,

Paul J Daly: 25:21

I think, I think, I think, well, in that, in that, since this came up on this podcast, we were inspired by Alan. I think he needs a special role in it. Like, I don't know if he's like, going to be like the monopoly man of the director

Michael Cirillo: 25:31

of OEM relationships

Paul J Daly: 25:35

in collaboration with true car. We're not trying to hire anybody from anybody just say, wow. Well look, I think we've done enough damage here today on behalf of Kyle Mountsier, Michael Cirillo and myself, thank you, as always, for joining us on Auto Collabs. Sign

Unknown: 25:50

up for our free and fun to read daily email for a free shot of relevant news and automotive retail media and pop culture. You can get it now@asotu.com that's asotu.com. If you love this podcast, please leave us a review and share it with a friend. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time. Welcome to Annika lab recording.

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