Outsider Coming In with Jeff Gonzales

Kyle Mountsier: 0:00Here's the thingUnknown: 0:07

this is Auto Collabs.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:09

We always love being together because it starts with laughs ends with laughs. And, you know, Jeff Gonzales is one of those guys that is always up for a good laugh. You know, I remember a story that, that that I think Michael may not know actually happened. But Paul and I were both there. One of Jeff's employees, Andrew, decided after winning the Innovation Cup at DSCS. To bring that cup to our night, our event party at the end of the Digital Dealer. Night, the first night of Digital Dealer last year. And he didn't just bring it it wasn't just like, tucked under his arm celebrating it lifting it over. No, they went to byebye baby and bought a baby carrier. And he brought the cup in a baby carrier to the event so and they

Paul Daly: 1:03

they sourced that baby carrier in Las Vegas, by the way, which is maybe maybe the bigger feet but they did ask permission like hey, what it would it be okay, if we did this and like, you know what kind of events we put on, right? Like, you could do that and totally redeem yourself. Right? Like, and he did, and they crushed it perfect. Oh, man, was the

Michael Cirillo: 1:23

carrier more expensive than the cup is? Probably in Vegas? Probably.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:28

Look, those things are worth their weight in gold. Yeah, they

Paul Daly: 1:30

are. back so you don't get I don't know. Well, whatever. The fact is, we hope you enjoy this interview with Jeff Gonzales from AET.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:46

We've got my friend Jeff Gonzalez, the guy that always seems to have the most creative ways to put videos together of their office using their actually actual technology that nobody would ever expect out of a technology company. Jeff, thanks for coming on on the podcast with us, man.

Jeff Gonzales: 2:10

Hey, thanks for having me, guys. I really appreciate it, dude.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:12

So one time, and we'll get into the rest of the thing. But I have to go to this one time, you guys did this, like competition between employees that were using your technology to place ads. And I thought it was one of the most creative ways to explain what your platform could do. And even to like, there was this element was like, Oh, they actually know how to use their stuff. I was wondering, where did that come from? Like, how did the brains in in the office go? This is a thing we should do to show how our technology works.

Jeff Gonzales: 2:47

Yes, so it all started with a pie in the face. So Betsy and I, we have this competition where we always kind of like compete with each other with each other a little bit in the loser. Some some for some reason always gets a pie in the face. If it's not like a good pie. It's just like, you know, whipped cream on a plate, right. And so we're thinking about how we could do some content, but kind of show off some of our tools and how quickly they can be used by anybody that's kind of familiar with them. So we're like, hey, let's just have a like, a matchup and you know, see who can build out the most creative when it comes to like, vehicle offers or videos or whatever, utilizing the AET platform. And we put like five minutes on the clock, I think it was or seven minutes, something like that, and whoever made the most unique creative, and then it was judged by a dealer, the loser got hit the face of the pie. So Betsy got nailed in the face that time on that one, and she's the one who brought it up thinking that she was gonna crush me on it. Because she

Paul Daly: 3:46

never bring that up if you think you're gonna lose, and I'll

Jeff Gonzales: 3:49

totally totally because she, she deals with our platform in the most in the operation side. So she's most familiar with it, but she doesn't realize that like at home, I'm building stuff all the time.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:59

So I love it. So So take us back. Now let's zoom out a little bit because and we'll get back to kind of the AET platform because I think it'd be good to talk about that just because I don't think it's something that a ton of people know about an audience might not even know and but I want to zoom back just a little bit on your history in the retail automobile business because you're not just a tech guy, you actually came in through the retail side of the business. Is that right?

Unknown: 4:27

Yeah, yeah, totally. So just don't clear it up. I'm not a tech guy by any means. Like my team gets frustrated with me at times because I like you know, I'm messing up little pieces of code on the back end that I'm just trying to learn but so my background came you know, I started at Stevenson Automotive here in Denver, Colorado is a seven roof top eight brand, I think group as the Digital Marketing Manager for the entire group. And at the time, like, you know, we were really doing heavy social and it wasn't as big and In as it as it was, as it is now, right, and we got noticed by somebody at Toyota, I believe. And then I got recruited over to CK advertising, which was previously More Than Scary advertising. And if you're familiar with them, they're the guys that did like haystack back in the day. And anyways, I took over their social product and helped them kind of rebrand it and rebuild it to Ember social. And eventually, we got up to about 400 dealerships that we were managing. I built up a team within Betsy was part of that our COO here at the company at AET. And that company was eventually sold, right. So it gave us the opportunity to come to AET. So there's your there's your springboard into 80. Now, Kyle,

Kyle Mountsier: 5:42

yeah. So So did you like was was Stevenson your first marketing gig? Or were you kind of in the marketing ecosystem before that? Or did you kind of, you know, some of the marketing people, it's like, I started as a salesperson that didn't work. So I went to marketing, how did that how did that kind of come to come into play?

Unknown: 6:00

Automotive was like, actually, like, totally random that I got into it. I started doing digital marketing up in Breckenridge, Colorado, I lived out there as a, you know, I'd call it a ski bum, right. But really, I had a great job as a marketing director for a small hotel group up in the mountains. And it's where I got my first taste of social media marketing, because we used to do like last minute deals down to Denver, for like, trying to fill our hotel space. And that was my first real taste of it. And then I went to a company in Denver, where we started doing social advertising. And this was back in the day of like, Power Editor, if you're familiar with Facebook, and if you've been using Facebook ads for a long time, you'll know what I'm talking about. So it was like the clunkier first version of ads manager on the Facebook side. But it gave us our my first taste into kind of that digital social advertising area. And we ended up getting a car dealership group and it was kind of fun advertising there. And the company that we were with was kind of like, you know, it was it was going nowhere fast, right? And so I interviewed for this, this position in auto and got it and I like, I remember sitting in the car one day before I accepted the position of like, Man, do I really want to go into auto? Or do I want to stay within the agency world? You know, this, this is kind of a big game changer, potentially. And I ended up going with it. And it's I mean, it's been fantastic ever since autos and let me ask a

Paul Daly: 7:23

question about that right there. When you were saying like, I don't know, if I want to go into auto. What can do you remember what those feelings and hesitancies were?

Unknown: 7:33

Yeah, it just in my mind, it seemed like an industry that's always forward thinking on like, the products that they produce. But like, I remember talking to the to the group that I was interviewing with Stevenson, and at the time, it was like, man, these guys are so behind, like, are they going to really accept my thoughts and how like, we can do digital instead of everything traditional at the time. So I was like, am I going to just go in here, and everybody's gonna push back against me? And what

Kyle Mountsier: 8:00

year was, what year was that?

Jeff Gonzales: 8:02

Oh, man, that was probably 2015 2014, something like that. So you know, it was quite a while back, and I could be totally off on that. If I had my LinkedIn profile, I can tell you exactly.

Paul Daly: 8:16

That's where I store all the stuff. Yeah, totally. Right. So So and the reason I'm asking these questions, because you know, Kyle, and I talk a lot about needing to get outside automotive professionals to come and, you know, contribute their insights and innovative shin and experience to automotive from outside world. And, and, you know, like, there's this thought, and I think you're validating it. If I go into automotive with all of this experience, like, Is that the end of the road for like, my growth and development and innovation? Because everyone's constantly going to say, like, No, this is how you have to do it in automotive, you know?

Jeff Gonzales: 8:56

Yeah, precisely, man. I mean, I think you hit the nail right on the head. And as you're bringing all of this stuff, I'm like, kind of getting these like thoughts. Like, you know, coming back to me of like, yeah, you know, we're what was my innovation going to stop there? Am I going to be like, handcuffed to the way that the dealership life wanted to do it? You know, it was was like going to be making you know, I don't know, magazine spots or you know, images for do it. Yeah. And we have

Paul Daly: 9:22

a camera, we yell at everybody. We put it out on the cars, and then they're gonna buy

Jeff Gonzales: 9:28

Yeah, put some wacky waving inflatable arm to men and some giant, you know,

Paul Daly: 9:32

gorillas out there, the manager and put it where the sun don't shine.

Unknown: 9:36

Yeah, and it ended up turning the right way for me and they listened and, you know, it eventually got the attention of others. Right. So I was totally wrong. You know, there were some parts that I you know, I really had to push on. But I think, you know, after he you know, there's so much amount of pressure, they're just like, Okay, fine. Just go ahead and try it. And if it works, you look like you know, the good guy here. So you No. And Auto I think, you know, it's it's it's an industry that's always like a step behind from, you know, in my opinion of like the advertising stuff, but it's catching up really quickly, like

Paul Daly: 10:10

in general the rest of the retail advertising world.

Unknown: 10:13

Yeah, totally. And it's really all the compliance is behind it and dealers, you know, they're limited budgets, they have limited inventory. Now. It's it's harder now to get them to try like TikTok per se than, you know, it was back in the day of doing Facebook. I joke about this all the time.

Paul Daly: 10:28

I'm gonna push back on one thing that you said, Sure. They have limited

Jeff Gonzales: 10:33

budgets. That's true.

Paul Daly: 10:35

That is a self created limitation. Because we all know, there are not significant budget constraints right now. It's just a decision to not allocate it.

Kyle Mountsier: 10:46

I think that's what it is. And I think it's more on like, our industry struggles with, like research and development kind of dollars. We were not Yes, especially at the tier three level, there's no like, hey, we were just going to try this knowing that it could totally fail and not faulting someone for the fact that it failed, right? And not just that, but that we we just were like, Okay, let's do TikTok ads, it's probably gonna blow us up and 30 days later, we're like, nothing happened.

Paul Daly: 11:20

Yeah, right. It's 10 days later, seven days later, after the first two posts,

Kyle Mountsier: 11:24

nobody clicked on.

Paul Daly: 11:25

You're getting phone call.

Jeff Gonzales: 11:27

I didn't show me any cars. Come on, guys. You know, it's funny. You know, I was telling Ryan over at Tik Tok not too long ago. You know, I feel like I'm having some of the same conversations I did. Back when I was trying to push Facebook, right? Because dealers, like, you know, nobody's on Facebook. It's all these, you know, young kids. And it's like, Come on, buddy. That's a brand new buying demographic go after it get out there. If it fails, like, at least you try to eke out some you got some information behind it. But don't just say no, like, give it a whirl. And in I promise, you give it three, four months, something like that, and it will start to show some it will start just starting to show its face. But it's funny. Like, it's the same conversation, different platform.

Paul Daly: 12:10

So you've actually watched that transition, I think that's really relevant knowledge. Because now it's like, we see how fast how fast that you know, that young buying demographic becomes the primary buying demographic, right? It feels like just like that, you know, it just happened. And then that young platform is the one where is the most technologically sophisticated, where you can serve up the best ads, and you kind of built the brand loyalty. So I think, like this message is very, very timely for for where the industry is right now. Because, like, it just happened, right? It just happened. The last 10 years happened like that. And now Facebook is you know, for for the grandmas and grandpas.

Jeff Gonzales: 12:55

Instagram,

Kyle Mountsier: 12:56

you know, I was actually, we were we were talking about a couple weeks ago, how TikTok is now like, the second leading source for search volume behind YouTube and videos is that that's where people are going to find out information about purchasing or doing new things, or whatever it may be. So, you know, when you think about, like, when you think about a social platform, giving access to research, which is what a lot of shopping behavior is, is research. Like TikTok is actually growing faster in that perspective. Then even Facebook, or a Snapchat that is much or an Instagram that is much more delineated for an actual social platform, but TikTok is recognizing the search ability and so I guess, are you seeing that because I know your platform is kind of experimenting and working in with, you know, inventory stuff on on TikTok? But are you seeing people experimenting with this, like, transactional advertising? And as well as like, the fun side of TikTok and then leaning into also, the research orientation of TikTok? Is that, is that something that people are experimenting with both inside and outside of your platform? Knowing kind of the social media game like you do?

Jeff Gonzales: 14:13

You know, I can say on a personal level, I do just like, I fit that mold perfectly. Right. But you know, an automotive i It's hard to say just yet, right? We've really only been on TikTok's platform for about four months now and having folks utilizing it. And we're seeing a mix of use cases in it with organic and paid ads. I can't really speak on the research side other than, you know, it's me going on there and looking like I just bought a electric specialized bike. So I started following all of these, you know, all of these companies on there to get the information about them. I haven't done like, I haven't heard that a lot in the automotive space, but I can guarantee you like just like Facebook, it's coming down the road. It's just it's catching up to itself right now.

Paul Daly: 14:56

I mean, I can imagine EVs just being a massive have totally massive search search opportunity on TikTok. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 15:07

really interesting. Well, there's, there's a product thing for you guys got to figure out how to get receipts in there. So to like, I think, AET as a company obviously solves a problem, I'm guessing you maybe in your agency or dealership experience experience some of the things that you're you're not trying to solve for others. So what what's that kind of like core solve that you're looking to bring to the industry or you have brought to the industry in, in what probably came out of, you know, experience since you are so experienced in the social media advertising ecosystem?

Unknown: 15:46

Yeah, totally. So I remember the aha moment when we when we were doing this, but the core idea behind AET was to empower the dealer. And there's a lot of great tools that are available, but we never saw creative, creative tools that empowered a dealer with everything that they needed for automotive, because automotive advertising isn't easy. There's compliances, there's, you know, jelly beans, the vehicle images, right, that have to be perfect, there has to be, you know, the disclaimers, and you gotta have font packages. And you know, if you're a designer, you know how to do all that stuff in Canva, or Figma, or, you know, or Adobe products, or any of these tools that are out there. But you have to have a, you know, a certain background. So I remember the aha moment when I was at at CK advertising. And, you know, we're talking to this dealer, and they're basically telling us how to run their ads at the time, right of like, Hey, this is what we want. This is what we want the creative to look like, this is what we wanted to say. And I'm sitting there, like, why don't you just do this yourself, man, right? And then was like, Well, if we had, yeah, what do you need me for you, like you're paying us, you know, top dollar for all of this. And, you know, you're just having somebody else do it. Like, if only there was a tool available that empowered you to create and then deploy this, well, hey, boom, here we are today. So AET's platform, you know, the core side of it is on the creative part. Right. So that's, that's kind of like our staple product that we started with, that we wanted to give to dealers that had everything from, you know, brand creative, at whole embedded directly in the tool. So all of those elements that I just talked about, the vehicle images, the font packages, backgrounds, all of the different sizes for Facebook advertising, mobile based ads, banner advertising, all embedded in this creative tool that was so easy to use. And that was the key part of it is I had to make this easy to use. Because if it wasn't, then it's no different than any of those other products that were out there. But then once you had creative, it was like, Alright, now what do I do with this, right? So then we started tapping into the API's of like Facebook, and all the other channels that we can deploy ads into, and built in all those strategies that we had been using already for years, directly into the computers, because all it is is button pressing right on the back end, when you sent send a Facebook ad, setting up the optimizations, which you wanted to do, and then attaching all the different pieces to it. Well, the computers can do all of that. So we tapped into all these different areas built in the same optimizations that an agency would use. But let the computers handle it. And it allows a user with no experience and creative no experience in AD deployment to social channels to come into a tool, be able to get ads out there quickly, efficiently, typically about five to seven days faster than an ad agency just because there's no revisions, they're doing it the way they want to makes it pretty simple and seamless. I love

Paul Daly: 18:37

when products legit come out of a backstory. Right? Like all the pain can be so much so easily tracked. Yeah. And from you you like from the outside the outside agency perspective, from the outside automotive perspective, right, all of these little roadblocks from the understanding of how dealers operate from hearing the questions. And, like just such a common sense, deployment. I mean, that's right. Like, you know, when when Canva came on the scene, and if you're not familiar with Canva, CANVA. It's an honor. It's a web based tool that allows you to create social posts and video content and motion design and all these things. And they really like trying to bring it down to the lowest common denominator. Right? This okay, how can the least qualified person possible still produce something that is, is ready for the show? Right. And you layer in automotive, right, a big part of being ready for the show is like you mentioned all the compliance, you know, and that outside agencies don't understand that about automotive, right? I've seen people come in, you know, like, come in from outside and they're like, oh, yeah, this this sucks. This is easy. And then you just like, show them like, oh, by the way, it's got to keep up with all these things. Of a sudden, the attitude changes pretty quickly. Okay, Uh,

Jeff Gonzales: 20:00

and it's not just one size fits all right, every brand is a little bit different. And you know, it's the expectations for like a luxury brand over you know more of a domestic brand is is your typical Chevy's or whatever. A lot different man. It's crazy. It's crazy. And so you know, having all of that knowledge that back in knowledge and building that directly into the software was key for making this stuff work.

Kyle Mountsier: 20:26

So who's what's like, if you had kind of a dealer persona, that is like a power user a best case scenario, for something like this for a technology like this? Who would you say, you know, obviously, most people can say like, Oh, that's great for any dealer, but like, who are the personas? Who are the people that are that really that you're saying, hey, look, this is probably keyed in and dialed in for these types of dealer personas. Because I think that that's, that's important for a lot. It's like, hey, some people this might not be right for, but some people this is perfect for where's that kind of sitting for you all?

Jeff Gonzales: 21:03

Yeah, absolutely. So So you said it, in that this tool isn't for everybody, right? It's, it's built for everybody, but you have to be able to spend the time, right, and it's not a lot of time, but you, we have just about every type of user on our platform, we have large dealer groups with you know, teams utilizing it, we have mom and pop shops that have one to two rooftops across their brand, with one marketing person in house, it's using it, I find that our sweet spot is around that, you know, three to five roof top group where it's like, Hey, do we really want to go by, you know, spend a lot of money on an expensive agency? Or do we, you know, want to build a team internally? Or do we have one person in house that has the time to take over a tool that can do everything, you know, everything that we've discussed here. So when it comes down to the persona, like, really, it's across the board, but it's it, like I said, it's not for everybody, but we try to weed that out during our conversations of like, hey, is this tool for you, if not, like, you know, you're happy, we're happy to sell it to you, and you can try it out. And that's why we don't lock people into like long term contracts or anything, because it's not for everybody, they might jump in and 90 days, and they're like, you know, I love the tool. It's easy, I just don't have time for it. And we totally get it right. But across the board, I think you know, the users of our tools love it, they find it, you know, they find it powerful. And if if you understand enough about your brand, you can use this tool on a monthly basis. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 22:35

without a doubt, actually, I, I worked with someone that had never run a social media ad in their life. And we we legit deployed a large AIA strategy in less than nine minutes. The first time they had ever touched the platform. It was it's pretty wild. Like you can go from never having deployed on social to launching a an inventory campaign in nine minutes in the platform that is synchronous with the brand, you know, has brand standards down for the OEM, and targets the right audience. So I I know that it works, right. It doesn't work for everybody, but it does work. I would be remiss if I didn't ask the question, because you've got such an interesting background behind you. And I know that this is like we're just gonna whiplash everybody. If you're if you're just listening. He's got like, like skateboards on a view. If you're watching, you see my hats, right? I've got these all these hats. But Jeff has like 90 No, I'm just kidding. I can see five skateboards and a helmet there is that it sounds like that looks like that's kind of a passion of yours. And there's some creativity focused on that. Like how do you see your your like hobbies playing into the way that you do an experienced business life at this point, specifically, maybe the hobbyist of skateboarding there?

Jeff Gonzales: 24:00

Yeah, yeah, it's funny. So I'll tell you this. If it wasn't for skateboarding, I don't think I'd be here today. And I'll give you that timeline. Because it has to do with skateboarding but a little bit different. So I grew up skateboarding. I listen, I grew up listening to punk rock music, you probably see those posters, but I love music across the board. But I grew up skateboarding and after college, you know, I didn't want to go into the corporate life. So I was like, Hey, I'm gonna move to Colorado and be a ski bum and go snowboard. Because, you know, skateboarding was you know, I've done a lot of that already. And so I lived out in Colorado, or Breckenridge, Colorado for five years snowboarding, like kind of told you I found a great job out there. But it brought me here and it brought me to an area where like, it wasn't the norm, right. Not everybody goes to you know, the mountains of Colorado and spends five years of their life. You know, everybody's getting jobs and certain families and I'm just sitting out there, you know, drinking Coors Light beers, and snowboarding and having the best time in my life. I wouldn't trade that for anything. And it also allowed me to meet my wife and everything as well. But it brought me to the people that I now work with today. And brought a lot of inspiration into kind of creativity and trying to be, you know, thinking differently, right, because it's not the norm. But now like, I'm trying to pass that on to my daughter, who's only three, and I've got her skateboarding and I got her first season pass this year to go snowboarding, we started around last year on it. So I'm trying to pass that down. And hopefully she's she gets it and she's, she loves skateboarding already. She loves snowboarding. But yeah, it's, you know, the action sports have always been a passion of mine. And I've, you know, I'm getting older so it hurts a lot more when I fall. So I don't I try not to fall anymore. But you know, it's, it's, it's something that's been a big part of my life for a long time.

Paul Daly: 25:50

Oh, man. Well, look, I think that the the level of creativity and kind of that adventurous spirit really does come through in the work you're doing with the product in the energy you're bringing to the industry. So really excited to hang out a little bit in person at ASOTU CON. Just bad keep keep us in heading in that direction. I feel like and I know Kyle has to feel like that's healthy for the automotive industry. So thank you so much for spending some time with us today.

Jeff Gonzales: 26:20

Yeah, absolutely, guys, I'm really looking forward to seeing you guys on Philly. I'll be sure to wear my Cowboy stuff. While I'm out there. Just for you.

Paul Daly: 26:28

To show you check this out.

Kyle Mountsier: 26:32

Look at this, look at this. It's if you can't see it's an Eagles jersey with ASOTU Con 22 on it. So that'd be Dallas, Dallas V.

Paul Daly: 26:46

One, I'll bring you one.

Jeff Gonzales: 26:51

I'll put it in the closet behind my like my wife's from Cincinnati. So I

Paul Daly: 26:56

clean up the dog mess, right? We'll talk to you soon.

Jeff Gonzales: 27:02

All right, take care guys.

Michael Cirillo: 27:08

I'm always impressed, especially to today's standards, what it actually takes to achieve a measure of success. And that's the sense that I get from Jeff. I mean, he's had a just a long breadth of experience. And, you know, it took all of that in sequence to get him to where he is today. And I really appreciate perspective like that in today's world, where it's like, oh, no, you just do the thing. And then you're going to be valued at a billion dollars, right, and how that kind of makes other entrepreneurs and other developers and people wanting to really do something, but when, you know, I've got his LinkedIn, LinkedIn up, and you see just the series of events and how that experience is compounding over the years. It's just always impressive. And I really appreciate that perspective,

Paul Daly: 27:52

it is one of the things with this podcast, we've been able to kind of see a lot of the steps that have happened, that got the person to the seat that they're in today, which is by far one of the most enjoyable parts of doing these, because you really do need to understand the path that someone took to get where they are to get the full context of not only what they're doing, but also, you know, it's our desire to see a lot of, you know, progressive dealers partner up with these progressive industry partners, and understanding how much they they know or like, what the path was, it really does help in that kind of matchmaking process, because you kind of get a vibe and an energy and Jeff definitely has, like, if I'm talking about creating content, in automotive and thinking about it in a progressive and fun and relevant way. It's like his path actually paints to that even his lifestyle, even the ski bum part is a big a big and important part of that story.

Kyle Mountsier: 28:44

You know, one thing that I love about about Jeff is he's a practitioner, as well as like a product guy here, here. So not just a past practitioner, but I brought up the story of of him kind of doing the hey, we've got to use our actual products, see how fast we can make something happen I love and so it's it's just really cool to see, you know, a lot of times like you see a CEO or co founder or founder, really not continuing to stay in the weeds of their product and understanding how to use it and whether it actually works for someone that's in a dealership and and trying to create content or push out social posts every single day. And for him, it's like it's it's a it's a thing that is necessity, it's necessary for him to understand his product, understand the way people are using it, so that he can connect the right end user to the product to be able to serve the customer. So we really thank you. We thank you for listening to this episode of Auto Collabs I'm stumbling over my words down the way they all ate. They all got swallowed down the back of my throat but we had a ton of fun hanging out with Jeff Gonzales. So for myself Kyle Mountsier, Michael Cirillo, Paul J Daly. We will see you next time. Sign up for our free and fun to read daily email for free shot of relevant news and automotive retail media and Pa 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

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