The Internet and 1998 with Jasen Rice

SPEAKERS

Jasen Rice, Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly, Michael Cirillo

Kyle Mountsier  00:00

It's a good thing we're recording because

00:09

this is Auto Collabs.

Kyle Mountsier  00:11

We are about to hang out with a friend now Jasen Rice, and he's a friend. Yeah, we'll call him a friend Jasen Rice is. He's like, for me, he's a little bit of a sleeper like, he's he's kind of a burly guy. When you meet him, he's like eight foot 11. And so it's a little bit intimidating. Take get him taken and Cirillo

Paul Daly  00:33

comes up to his knees.

Michael Cirillo  00:35

I put on his socks for them.

Paul Daly  00:38

without bending No, without bending over on my tippy toes.

Kyle Mountsier  00:42

No, but when you start talking to him, and anytime he's in a clubhouse room, right, or I saw him at Driving Sales, or he's got a podcast that I think every used car operator should be listening to on a weekly basis. Anytime I talk to him or listen to him, he's thinking about that. It's that it's that ability to draw insights and understanding out of data. That is what is unique about his capacity. And I'm excited to kind of hear how he weaves that into some of what his his origin story and what we'll probably get into in the podcast.

Paul Daly  01:18

Gotta respect the people that can bring it down to the basics. And you know, help you focus on the fundamentals of the game that have not changed. I always love when people approach things with that mentality. I feel like every time he drops into a conversation drops into a room. He's like, let's talk about some basics that everyone's doing wrong. Let's do those right first. And then let's worry about you know, the sizzle in the spin move at the end of the layup.

Michael Cirillo  01:42

He goes one step further to right. You know, like coming up in automotive, it was a lot of fear mongering, like that was just kind of the style, not from him. He's a tactician, he comes in. He says, Hey, here's the things you're screwing up. Here's some things you should be doing differently. But now let's talk about how to do those things. Like let's let's actually get into the weeds and talk about doing those things. So he's not out there. I always love this about him. He's using his ability to understand the market in a way that that is then practical for people. And that's something that's we could still benefit more from in the auto industry.

Paul Daly  02:19

Legit. Well, I hope you enjoy this interview with Jason rice

Kyle Mountsier  02:32

All right, hanging out with my friend Jasen Rice of LotPop, which many people may or may not know about yet in the industry, I think, you know, some people around the ecosystem of ASOTU as well as Clubhouse know, Jasen, for just his insights and intelligence and all of that. So, Jasen, I'm excited to be hanging out with you. Thanks for coming on with us.

Jasen Rice  02:55

Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Kyle Mountsier  02:57

Yeah. You know, I actually first kind of found out about you through I think, the Clubhouse ecosystem, and I kind of had met Danny, who you're good friends with. And then David Long knew you and I was like, Man, this guy. And then the first time that I really met you and saw you in person was actually at att Driving Sales last year. And I will never forget, like the dialed in nature of the way that you're looking at data. So I'd like to kind of hear, you know, how how your trajectory led you to, you know, looking at used car inventory in the way that you do, like, where, where did you come from an auto that kind of brought you into this, I need to I need to help dealers and industry partners, reimagine the way they look at used car inventory data.

Jasen Rice  03:50

Well, and with that used car inventory data, we're realizing you know, it's inventory management's lead management and give you that perspective. In 1997, I started selling cars, and by 98, I was selling cars off the internet exclusively. So I didn't take any UPS back in the 90s, early 2000s. And over those years,

Paul Daly  04:08

so you're saying you started selling cars in 97? And by 98, you only sold online?

Jasen Rice  04:13

Yes. I got there's a there's a thing right up there from here. Let me do this real quick. Watch this. How did you even look at this? This was from 1999 Microsoft Car Point certification card,

Paul Daly  04:30

what is Car Point?

Jasen Rice  04:31

It was MSN they MSN, they had MSN auto see Reynolds and Reynolds was

Paul Daly  04:36

How old were you in 1999.

Kyle Mountsier  04:38

I was a spring chicken. I was I was in middle school at that point. So that right here is

04:44

Cover of Digital Dealer so I was on a board of directors to get Digital Dealer Conference off the ground. I've wrote articles in dealer magazine for years and stuff back in the 90s and 2000s. Ran internet department and stuff and so you know over those eight plus years on the retail in it So cars off the internet ran internet departments. I was at GSM independent lot for a little bit. So I did some math.

Paul Daly  05:05

Let me just told you I know you're excited. Yeah. But I was still stuck on Car Point. How in the world do you sell a car online in 1998?

Jasen Rice  05:13

Well, you know what, back then even like Ford direct had a CRM, we would fax invoices circled the invoice amount, add, you know, a few 100 bucks to that until the customer were, I mean, I sold a car in the 90s. Think of this. I sold the car to a lady in Alaska in from St. Louis off the internet. Wow. Okay. And I just

Paul Daly  05:33

had a camp out there for a second seat. So I don't hear that.

Jasen Rice  05:39

crap and everything. I'm like, because you got

Kyle Mountsier  05:41

dealers still today that are like, Yeah, we we just, you know, don't email customers that if they come in, they come in. I mean, that's still happening. I know, in the US, it is like, there are people that don't even have dedicated people following up with internet leads in 2022. And you're like, Yo, 99 It's all I was doing.

Jasen Rice  06:03

That's no. And so, you know, it's funny, I've shared a lot of my articles from that, you know, early 2000s, like 22 2005. And so they're still relevant today. It's kind of like, man, we've been talking years, and you're worried about Carvana. But yeah, it's been a while. So you know, that experience got me, you know, I was gonna go out and consult myself and internet because back then Sean Bradley, Corey Mosley, David Keynes, those are all guys going out there and creating their own internet consulting business. And this guy named John Honey Otis. Bless his soul. He was our web control was our CRM and he knew my passion of going out and doing that. And he said, Hold on a second. Before you do that, I got a gentleman I want you to introduce you to he started his own, he started a company. And he's looking to hire somebody and that guy in 05 was Dale Oollack. So Dale had a product called Empower Auto wasn't even VAuto yet and it was score you out and how you own the cars to wholesale. And he knew internet and use cars go hand in hand. And he hired me in December of 05, it was Empower Auto. And then within I don't know about a year that it transitioned over to VV=Auto. And we got the chance that me and Dale sit down at NADA this year on your guys's show, and just kind of discuss some of that old old time background of where VAuto originally started. So I was there for nine plus years. So now our company has been around, it'd be nine years, September and a month, it'll be nine years. So we're kind of been in a sleeper pattern for a while. But you know, the last couple years to build a software and really integrating lead management and inventory management hand to hand but again, I mean, think about that back. And like you said in the night, I've seen the empathy, the start of the internet and the revolution of what Internet did to the industry. And I was a very heavily part of that, again, getting Digital Dealer off the ground writing articles, speaking at conferences back then, and then to be involved with what Dale did with the used  car portion of the industry. You know, that's just been a blessing of an experience. Dang.

Kyle Mountsier  08:02

Everyone's like Record scratch.

Michael Cirillo  08:05

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I

Paul Daly  08:07

was a part of that. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was part of that. I just, I just knew we were really smart. I didn't know any of the background. And that, you know, do

Jasen Rice  08:15

all those. Yeah, I wouldn't. I would just say making mistakes and learning things that you know, and just picking up from other people and holding on to you know, what mattered and learning over the years through everybody. I mean, it was great to have those mentor and those experiences.

Paul Daly  08:29

How did you get into the car business? 

Jasen Rice  08:32

A girl. I was waiting tables, and one of the girls there said, hey, my boyfriend's starting to sell cars. And like really? Do you have a degree for that? She's like, No, just answered an ad. So I found an ad that said, hey, 50 to 80 grand selling cars. And what were you doing?

Paul Daly  08:44

What were you doing at the time? We need to get the

Jasen Rice  08:47

tape failed out of college twice on academic probation and trying to wait and tables trying to figure out what I want to do.

Paul Daly  08:54

Yeah, they were like this guy. He can't put two things together and here we are revolutionising biggest retail industry in the country. Yeah, so

Kyle Mountsier  09:05

get into I gotta get into because this is I think what's so what's so keyed in about what you're doing. In perceiving the way that inventory and lead management are so closely intertwined is really, really intriguing. I was actually just having a conversation over chat with a marketer, and they were trying to figure out how to clearly communicate to their operators, that hey, look, leads are up, but total conversations year over year are down. And that may be why you have a disparity in you know, like 74%, like sales efficiency in comparison to last year. And what you're saying is that you're you're hoping to solve for how do we how do we match inventory and marketing management with lead management instead of them being too desperate conversations, right?

Jasen Rice  10:00

Yeah, so you know, on the showroom floor teams, the team's been management team sales team and stuff, F&I, they all work together, you know, to win deals, talking to customers meeting and greeting. But when it comes to the virtual lot, you got two different silos, you got a BDC, internet sales department working out of the CRM, talking to customers, inventory manager over here in a silo working through his inventory management tool, and they really don't work together. And matter of fact that, you know, one of the things that threw me a curveball as, as I was getting dealers better with used car inventory management, selling more cars, I would have thought that something like their used car, internet closing percentage would have been better, but it actually went down. And so those are the kinds of metrics, things like closing percentage that I tracked for 20 plus years lead to appointment ratio, those metrics don't make sense anymore, until you can incorporate the inventory metrics into it. And and again, the processes that CRM puts customers through every customer, every deal is different, but yet we shove them through the same funnel of a follow up. It doesn't make sense, either. I'll dig into that more. But yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, here what happened was and what might be happening with that marketing person, so think about let's just take 100 internet leads. And if you did a decent job at marketing, you might get one or two leads on a car on per car. So you might have 20% of your active leads on a sold car. So you get two leads, you sell a car, there's one left, right. So if you have 100 leads 20 of them, you can't sell the car, they want it anymore, that leads 80 leads, now you close 10% of those 80. That's eight deals. Your CRM says you have 100 leads, you sold eight deals eight percent closing. Now let's take it a different step. Let's get more effective with photos pricing descriptions on my inventory, instead of one or two leads, I'm getting three or four leads. Now all of a sudden 100 leads, I got 40 That can't buy the car, they want it anymore, that only leaves me 60 To sell the car wanted to today, by close the same 10% I'm only close in six deals now. Six out of 100 to 6% Closing percentage now, it looks like my my team did a worse job or the lead manager the marketing team did worse jokes, my closing percentage went down when in reality it was just the way and what we're finding now 60 I did a data set of 10. Dealers and other data set attend dealers and good operators, both one was 62%. Other was 66%. Over 60% of these dealers active leads or unsold cars 60 If I had 100 leads, there's only 40 People left, I can actually sell the car that they wanted to today.

Paul Daly  12:30

That's staggering. That's

Kyle Mountsier  12:33

staggering, which, which creates like this massive gap issue between closing ratios because everything that you expected, especially right now and inventory crunch, both on the new and pre owned side, but also as marketers get better at merchandising, you know, putting products in the right place, brand, build all of those type of things. And so it is it's interesting, like you get more leads, but if they're all on the same cars, then your your sales efficiency actually drops because you're not turning the those gap people that have Yeah, and you're

Paul Daly  13:05

just pissing off customers.

Jasen Rice  13:07

And so what we do, well, two things. Yeah, cars, you're getting more activities because the demand more people reaching out because cars are moving faster, too. So I need less leads to sell the same amount of cars. So we had a dealer who's blown the ball off the cover, but his leads per card dropped off. And I'm like, Man, that's weird why his leads per card drop off? Well, he went from, you know, 25 day average sale rate to 18 day average sale rate. So cars are moving faster. He didn't need as many leads to sell a car. It's kind of like VDPs, you know, or SRP, it's like, when you your inventory is more efficient, you need less time to do it, right. There's so you'll have a 60 day old car driving all these VDPs driving all these leads anymore, right? And age card 88%. So that right there just closing percentage to me is not a fair metric to gauge a lead provider market or team until you engage in the inventory understand the dynamics that impact to

Kyle Mountsier  14:00

and just I want to say that because we like to be clear, because we got a lot of different people when we say VDP moving the vehicle detail page. So how many people have viewed that that actual vehicles page SRP meaning the search results page? So all like that car in the myriad of other search results, whether it be a third party inventory provider, like an auto trader cars.com Or on a dealerships website. And, you know, the the all of these variants have an impact on both lead volume and also closing ratio because yeah, I mean, it'll never fail. It's some some dealership gets the oh eight Toyota four runner that is in perfect condition, with 140,000 miles on it. And everybody from Colorado to New Hampshire to Florida is interested in it, even though it's in St. Louis, right? And all of a sudden you got 500 leads on this car in three and a half days. And everyone's like Why was the closing ratio 2.8% on that leads, you know, on auto trader, the oh a foreigner that everybody in the country was looking for to export to Africa, right. So

Jasen Rice  15:08

here's another another way that we're getting dealers to not need as many leads is kind of recycling. They're currently. So what would I do if a customer walked in the door and they came in on a car that sold, I would typically slow them down, see if they're open to other similar vehicles in the same price point and I switch them all happens all the time. But because CRMs do not talk inventory. And inventory tools typically don't talk leads, you know, the connection between switch cars isn't happening in CRM. So that's one of the things we focused on was, you know, I've got a dealer, your job as a used car manager, figure out? Is it a pricing? Is that a car car customer problem? Okay, if I've got customers, you know, it's not a, it's not a car problem, right? If I got leads, then my price, everything else should be okay. Now, is it? Is it? Are we following up with them? So, one, once I have a car, do I have customers to sell it to if I've got leads, and there's leads in there 3 5 8 days that haven't been followed up with that used car manager usually blames the BDC people and don't take responsibility for it. But that's no different than a customer walking around on the showroom floor for 10 minutes, they take responsibility for that they should take responsibility for this. But that's the thing if you got five leads, but the other avenue is, I've got dealerships, you know, I'm looking at a couple cars right now, six active leads and two switches, switches, again, these are active leads that we're looking at a compact car, and that are within, you know, 2500 bucks higher low of that similar car. So now you go from five leads to 1015 leads because you have not the five that you got plus the other five or 10, that you might be able to switch to this. So if I can recycle the leads, I already have already spent money on know the customer name, contact information or the segment and price point, then why can't I switch those leads those customers or those cars too. And that's another big disconnect, again, with CRMs not involving inventory.

Kyle Mountsier  17:01

All right. So here's here's because this is called Auto Collabs. The the actual name of the podcast and we're really emphasizing this collaboration. And and so obviously between LotPop and dealers, there's there's this collaboration happening to gain efficiencies, right and make sure that we're, we're checking all these things. But it sounds like there's a, you know, well, obviously, from a data perspective, you're pulling in data from multiple sources. And so you've had to exercise like a level of collaboration on the industry partner side to be even even be able to make some of these insights happen. Right, but what's the next level of collaboration maybe that you're working on, or that you're seeing in the industry that can like sort of tie these tie these dots or knots together to be able to, like, vertically and horizontally integrate, you know, inventory management, merchandising, marketing, with, you know, systems and processes so that this is more seamless, both for the customer and the dealer? What's that, that you're kind of like setting a hey, we've got to get this done so that dealers can further execute on like, what's up in Jasen's brain, you know,

Jasen Rice  18:13

we call we call it lot walk because they do a physical lot walk. So let's do the digital. And that consists of cars and customers, we come to work every day to sell cars and talk to customers. But yet we're running into different silos in the virtual lot. So to your point, yes, we're pulling from inventory management tools, I don't care which one and your CRM, I don't care which one and collaborating. The biggest, the biggest aha moment that I go, because again, like 20, plus five years of internet, Process Management, is the CRM functionalities, I think there needs to be a big industry shift. Here's why. Again, we take every customer and every deal on every car and put it down the same funnel. Now if and what I mean by that is a typical CRM follow up process would be okay, it's a fresh lead. So for the first seven days, let's call them every day, right? Two or three times a day. And then once it's two week old lead maybe every other day, and by three or four weeks old, it's once a week and maybe once a month, there's some CRMs that want you to put through automated system after 14 or 30 days and just let automated system follow up these leads. Well, here's the problem. Two things. One, Cars.com did a study and 60 plus percent of people are taking two months or longer to buy. We've always known at least 40 to 50 days plus before people are actually pulling the trigger. It's one thing if they're shopping, it's another thing to buy. So here's the problem. I always ask a used car manager let's say you have an aging policy of 60 days and you got a 55 day old car that you're below market. You don't know if you want a wholesaler or not, but you have five leads on that car. So let me ask you, Paul, you haven't. If you had five leads on each car, how often would you want to call those leads? Five leads on an aged car on an age car and you got five leads on it? How often would you want to call them every

Paul Daly  19:54

hour every? I'd be all over it.

Jasen Rice  19:56

But what if your lead those leads are 40 and 50 days is all your CRM saying Hold on, it's an old lead, don't follow up, but once a month, right? See what see the problem and the disconnect. They're not apples to apples, it's not apples to apples. So the positioning in the follow up of a lead shouldn't be based on the age of the lead, but maybe the position of the car that they're interested in if the car sold. Well, that should be a switch process, tell the customers sold, give them other opportunities? Or if I gotta let

Paul Daly  20:23

me ask you this, how's it been? How did we? How did we get to that spot? Because that just seems like that'd be a best practice. Like, not just for today. I know, right? Like, how did we get there? Like, why? Why is this conversation coming up? Now? Is there something about the time we're in? That makes it a more relevant conversation?

Jasen Rice  20:42

Well, yeah, because again, I think one, if the economy slows down, you might be getting less leads. So you got to maximize every lead you got, I don't care, the age of the lead is the position. If you if I got a 60 day lead, but they're on a car that's still in stock, that means they're on a 60 day old car. So I increase the frequency of contact ratio with that, but my CRM, so I think as if leads are going down due to the recession, and or your short staff, you need to maximize every lead you have and maybe recycle the previous leads, if I got a 14 day lead, and they they wanted an escape and that escape sold, were they really looking for a 17 escape, are they just trying to find 18 grand SUV. And so now I got to recycle what I got because I have less coming in, where I got less of a staff. So I you know, I cut back expenses and stuff. And so I just, and really no one's kind of put the two together. And as we've grown over the nine years putting that stuff together and putting it into the software. I'm like, holy cow, I've been doing this for how many years now?

Kyle Mountsier  21:41

Because yeah, you're right, because like all of the CRMs. Every trigger point is on time, right? Or previous communication. So it's like time or previous communication. We don't have other trigger points built into the system, right? Like age of car or vehicle that they were interested in sold like that's I've looked at a bunch of CRMs. There's not another CRM, there's not a CRM out there that has a trigger point for vehicle of interest sold. Now do this

Jasen Rice  22:13

right? The weirdest part, this one blew my mind. The part is like it doesn't. I'm doing this for 25 years. But I How has this not happened? Let's say so our job as inventory manager, we're helping find holes in your inventory example would be to your current sale, right? You got way too many trucks you got 20 in stock only sold five, your trucks aren't moving, right? So as a used car manager we want to focus on trucks will do I go in there and drop prices? Well, here's an analogy I give. Let's say you have on your physical lot. And I point out to the slot over here on a physical lot. If you have holes in the front line, you call the porter out and say, Hey, guys, let's start moving trucks around. Right? You start physically moving trucks around or vehicles around and you see a customer out a corner your eye? What do you do keep moving trucks around? Or do you stop and help the customer? You stop and help the customer? Okay, so I'm telling you based on your current carry to sell, right, you're not selling enough trucks? Do you go attack the trucks? Or one? Do you want to go look at the leads? Right? Let's go look at the customers first before I start dropping prices. Now tell me a CRM that you could go into that you can isolate large pickup trucks and just look at large pickup truck leads. You really can't you have to. So let's isolate large pickup trucks and I've got to deal your head 111 large pickup truck leads well, of those 111 40 still had the car in stock the other 61 were on trucks that sold. So I got to work the 41 first because that could actually still sell them some today. And then of the 61. Do I have something I can switch them to? I know you want it that RAM? But would you be interested in SF 150. Now let's start working nose. So the way my CRM should work is by the positioning and issues on my lot, not based on the age of lead. But there's that huge disconnect. And I'm like, well, because again, CRMs are built out to get

Kyle Mountsier  23:55

this I'm intrigued now I'm Drive Centric and VinSolutions. And

Jasen Rice  24:00

I had those conversations a little bit. But you know, what's the response? Well,

Paul Daly  24:06

because my response is like, yeah, that makes it but I don't. It's a great idea, Kyle, your suggestion like hey, car sold, what should we do next? It seems like a really great and rational idea. What's not

Jasen Rice  24:16

fashion CRMs are doing what they're designed to help communicate with customers. So they're sure for sure. But what's the best way to text people in gifs or GIFs, whatever you want to call them and videos.

Kyle Mountsier  24:27

I could care less about that. This is called Auto Collabs podcast and you're bringing, like, Yo, we need to have this conversation.

Jasen Rice  24:35

So there has to be two shifts. One to use car manager needs to be your internet director, they need to understand every lead that can be just as responsible. I pull it up all the time. I said guys, what would you do if a customer was on your showroom for 10 minutes? No one said hi. You would throw a chair through the window. But here's five leads that no one's called for 14 days, 10 days and eight days. What do you do about that? So one, the inventory manager now needs to be your internet director. And then you got to get the internet people to understand And again, the positioning in the issues of the lot, hey, we're not selling enough out of our 31 to 45 bucket go attack those leads, well, how do you do that in your CRM, you really can't. And that's again, we're, we're kind of just I'm just kind of exposing this because again, it's just one having a platform, but to just sometimes it's a Oh over the head conversation sometimes to

Kyle Mountsier  25:21

call like, five people

Paul Daly  25:22

when we get off this. Like, we're about to release a podcast low some stuff up.

Kyle Mountsier  25:27

Because I, as I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking, okay, because in my seat when I was at the dealership, right, I was in the marketing and business development, that type of type of arena, right. But I also had a lot to do with the training and the processes. And I had I had managed the BDC. before. So I did a lot of that manual work, right, where it was like, oh, shoot, I just watched my GM look at the inventory, because we have an inventory call. And we saw that our 31 to 41 day bucket, just got just got blasted with a bunch of cars that we bought, you know, from enterprise, and they rolled from 29 to 31, over the weekend, and we've got to do something about it. And I would go into the CRM and be like, Oh, my goodness. So I would run down to the BDC be like, hey, look, here's the list, make sure that happens. Right. But that I mean, that was a super lagging indicator on what was happening, because we should have been attacking that a day. 29 not a day 31 When it rolled the bucket, right? Yeah. And and if the BDC had worked out on Friday, instead of Monday, all of a sudden, like, we may have had Saturday traffic on some aging cars, and we wouldn't have rolled that into that bucket. And then on Tuesday, we would have the pricing, meaning we wouldn't have adjusted the prices for the next weekend. Because we would have sold the car, right? Yeah. That's the other the other attack that we're doing so in so here's the thing, like, we're gonna make sure that conversation I'm just I'm promising to you that at some level, we're gonna get some CRM to at least engage the conversation. I don't know how many you've talked to yet. I'm just like making a promise to you. Because I'm turnt up.

Paul Daly  26:57

You get excited, Jasen, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to end the podcast because cars exciting. I

Jasen Rice  27:03

know. We're gonna keep talking and it's gonna be an hour podcast. But you see, what do you got two things one help even expedite that faster is, a lot of times when you get a fresh car, we price it up 104 105% We wait for photos to get done. So of course, we're not getting much activity on this car. But I'm showing dealers, you got a three day old car that you're 105% Fair enough, but gets and you have no leads, but you got 10 switches, you got 10 Other people right now that you could call it is interested in the segment in this price range, they don't need to know your 105% that Escape sold, will they take this Jeep Liberty, and even though it's 105%, it's still within their segment in their price point. So I said it's like, it's like your best salesman that see the nice trade, and they came in yesterday, and he's on the phone with five people and he hasn't sold before it goes to the service department. Right? That's what you need to be doing with this too. There's opportunities here without having a race to the bottom and wait till the pictures are done to get some eyeballs on this car. But the other thing is, you know, I was sitting or there should be at least five different processes with your CRM, one an age car process, every time a car ages, any leads on that start going down this process. It's a different communication, right? It's a sense of urgency, I'd rather cheap sell to you than to the auction and another dealer bah, bah, blah, and I'm calling an email and I don't care all that lead is I'm calling and email. And then there may be a high priced, high priced process, right, maybe it is that Escape item 104%. But if I get a lead on it, somebody is willing to overpay for an Escape. They must like equipment color feature options, right? So let's offer to take it to the work let's offer to take it to their job. Let's offer it you know, do a video on it or that lifted truck. That's another process that lifted Jeep we're focusing on different things, right? So if you just think the switch lead, that's a different process. And it should be based on positioning of the inventory, not the age of the frequently. It's irrelevant.

Paul Daly  28:49

Man, look, you're not kidding, we could easily talk about this for an hour, we're going to have the opportunity to talk about it for an hour or two hours, two days at ASOTU CON for sure. Without a doubt the mentality and the experience that you bring to the conversation, right, it's like this is just waiting for a bullhorn to hit it. And then like to really move to some substantive change, because like you said, like now that you have more of a platform, right, we're going to do everything we can cause all fired up. He's got speed down. And I could see it. But that is that is just quintessentially what we're trying to do through this podcast or these conversations and really through these relationships, because if you're just listening, you don't understand that these relationships that we're featuring on this podcast are actually go far beneath what the podcast actually is. The podcast is just you seeing it for a second. But there's a lot this undertone, this undercurrent in the automotive industry that is actually flowing. And we're just about to start seeing people moving in a direction because the undercurrent which is a good thing, right. undercurrents are usually a bad thing but this undercurrent is a really good thing. Jason, I just want to thank you on behalf of Kyle, Michael who couldn't be here today for just spending a little time with us. And boy, boy, do we know this conversation is not over. Thank you for the platform All right, I feel like that interview could have gone for an hour easily, easily. And he kind of said that at the beginning, he's like, You better stop me because I'll go for an hour and he will write, but it's a good hour. It's not like the guy that talks your ear off. You're like, and let me tell you about my third surgery. You know, she really is gonna be that guy.

Michael Cirillo  30:35

But I thought that interview could have at least gone for 20 minutes less than it did you know, well, first

Kyle Mountsier  30:45

of all, he started with the the story about him selling cars on the internet in 1998, one year after he started selling cars, and 98 98. He's selling cars on literally not not just like one or two out of his however many who's selling he was like, no, 100% only did it online. Yeah. He said, What do you say he's like, I got it. I got a job at a dealership at 97. And by 98. I only sold cars online, which I said this in there. But what still blows my mind is like if this cat is in 98 when floppy disks are still a thing. Oh my gosh, I know. Right?

Paul Daly  31:25

Where are they really? 98? Oh, yeah,

Kyle Mountsier  31:27

absolutely. Absolutely. Like late 90s. We saw some floppy disks and some green screens going on. But that's still a thing.

Paul Daly  31:35

Not the kind of green screens that half of our audience thinks we're talking about. He means a computer monitor that only has two colors green and white.

Kyle Mountsier  31:48

And this guy is selling 100% of his cars online. And we've got dealers and industry partners still today. I mean, like, digital toss it

Michael Cirillo  32:02

It's a fad I tried. It doesn't work. I like how all of our personas immediately go to some disgruntled Brooklyn.

Paul Daly  32:11

Guy in your hands. Let me tell you

Kyle Mountsier  32:14

guys, but he's really from Yeah, whatever the guy is.

Michael Cirillo  32:19

Web3. I'm talking about Web, nothing. Web. Nothing that's gonna come back. You know, it's interesting. That's like, Have you guys heard of Ralph Paglia? Do you remember Ralph? Yeah, yeah, he was in this Wild West era like him and Jasen that like, that's what this reminds me of. And you think about where we are today? It would have never happened without individuals kind of blazing the trail like Jason or individuals like, like Ralph, who Ralph and yeah, like, they just thought how can I think outside the box? Like, why does the internet exist? If not to sell more vehicles? I will love that train of thought. And I mean, you're right. The conversation could have gone for at least 10 more minutes, just picking his brain about what that looks like and the struggles, the struggles and like the lessons learned about getting that kick started and moving.

Kyle Mountsier  33:11

Yeah, absolutely. I think we lost Paul.

Michael Cirillo  33:14

All right. Well, that was our conversation with Jasen rice here on the last podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. On behalf of Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly, who's nowhere to be found. And myself, Michael Cirillo, thanks so much for joining us.

33:29

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