See all The Dealer Playbook transcripts on Youtube

All right, gang, so you know well at this point in time that I don't ever have questions prepared for my guests. I like to keep a conversational in tone. And I mean, And today that thesis will pay off because I could say to our guest, that's a lovely sweater you have on. And he'd be like, well, the interesting thing about sweaters is that in ancient Egypt when they were weaving, you know, and I love that about our guest today. I'm sitting down with none other than Ben Hadley.

He is the CEO and founder at Auto Genius has had quite the history in automotive working for some very influential companies in our space. Ben, thanks so much for joining me on the Dealer Playbook Podcast.

I'm pumped to be here.

So I got to know you through the Asoto Boys, the bearded band of brothers. And so, you know, I'd followed you from afar on LinkedIn, read some of your posts, really enjoyed your narrative on, you know, just different things, not even necessarily automotive. Like I see you've got some narrative about Twitter and everything going on. And I love your perspective. Like the fact that you can easily hop onto a platform and just say, hey, a car dealer owns 1 of the top 10 most influential social media platforms now.

Like nobody thinks about it from that angle, You know, and so I always appreciate that. Have you always thought deeply or differently about things like, is that something that happened or developed more as an adult or have you always noticed that about yourself as you've grown up?

I quite honestly just started noticing it because of a comment you made on the intro on the SO2 Collabs podcast that turned into a thing that I'll do called Cloud Thoughts. So much so that now I'm stopping myself. I was downstairs making some coffee and it dawned on me. This is a classic. It dawned on me, is it faster to heat something up or to cool it down?

Initially, you're like, well, that's just a bad question because depends on what things you're using to heat it up and to cool it down. So I noticed that my coffee always sort of like the pot that I use to make it, it, it seems to cool down really fast anyways. So at first I was like, that's just a bad question. And then it led me to think about like, what are the qualities of a good question? And, you know, like, I think that's probably 1 of the things I contemplate the most right now, which is like, are you asking good questions?

Because it's so easy. My mind will typically like connect dots that, and you were joking about it. You were like, Ben's probably out there somewhere, like looking at his seatbelt, wondering why clouds formed. And that's like not that far out, you know, from the truth. But at the same time, it's almost too easy for my brain to like draw up some sort of pattern that might not even exist.

Right.

And so then I have to like go back and say, whoa, are you even asking, is that even a good question? By the way, the answer is, it is faster, technically by a very small margin, to heat things up.

Though it does beg to, to suggest though, that others have had the same question because I would imagine questions like that led to the thermal cups that all of it like the Stanley cups that are a big fad right now and the you know insulated cups like people were like well how do we just slow it down even further?

Right.

So it led to it led to innovation. So and I think that's that's the thing that I think is really interesting, though. I think it makes for great comedy and I don't want to invite people into the dark parts of my brain because Oh no. Some weird stuff happens there. But it is true and I think there is a place for that and it's needed, especially in this industry.

Somebody to advocate for, are we asking the right question after having followed a wormhole that brought them to that place? Because I think, and I'd love your thought on this, I mean I feel like we've just taken so much at face value in our industry for so long that now we're trying to kind of pick up the pieces. What's your take?

Yeah, well in this industry in particular, which is near and dear to my heart, I mean, I have my relatives own dealerships. This is all I've ever really done is be an auto. But I get a perspective from both the dealership side and then on the vendor side. And on the vendor side, I think you are more surrounded by the outside software companies that sort of, and the VCs and the investors, and all of those guys are going to influence a certain perspective on how things should change on those dots. But then there's the reality of the dealership itself, which in a lot of ways, maybe there's that dot, but they can't exit to the dot.

And what I mean by that is that like, okay, I'm gonna pick on DMSs, for example. Could you really operate a dealership without 1?

I mean, yeah, right? You could, it would be difficult.

It would be really hard, right? Yeah. And then, you know, up until recently, there's really only been 2 main players. Even the amount of places you could exit to if you've adopted 1 of those players, super tough. It's like, I can go from this guy to that guy, basically.

As you're thinking through innovation, it's like exit to me, the ability to say, no, I'm leaving that going over here to make this dot connect is where innovation really happens. And when you rob people of the ability to do that, you rob people the ability, you can show them that dot, but they're not allowed to draw the line to

it. Right.

Yeah. So, in my head, it's always been about giving the dealership more exits and more opportunity or more optionality. And I think in today's world, you know, the dealers are, there's a good hand, handful of dealers that are like gonna push the envelope regardless, but the vast majority of dealers, I think, have wanted to connect some other dot, try something new. But like, whether it's the OEM mandates, whether it's shift digital, whether it's the limited options just in general, time and time again, you're going to be told no. I think it's hard to have the wherewithal to withstand constantly getting, we can't connect that dot, we can't connect that dot.

That's really tough to be doing that for 30 years and be told, no, you're just not allowed to do that Over and over and over again. Yeah.

I mean, that is like, so, so for us, like in my company, we have our tech development side of things. And I feel like that has kind of also summed up my career because there's this weird thing that happens when you work with developers, software developers in particular, where they, there's so many of them that want and need work, but then their entire existence, once they have the work is to find ways to not do the work. Like it's this weird, like, oh, that would take, that would take so long and that would be really like, you're always battling this, like, oh, but then there's this thing that you need to think during this. Like, it's like, do you want to do it or not? You know, is it a good idea?

And so I find like in my career, it's, it's been a fun challenge where you're like, okay, you're constantly to your point. I feel like I've constantly had to find the next most creative way to weave in and out of that. And early on, it annoyed me so much. I'd be like, just do the thing.

Just please.

Now, I'm like, I've actually found pleasure in being like, okay, how do I push my mind to its limit to find that creative alternative? And I think, you know, there are people like Patrick Abad and, and, you know, like several salespeople obviously that have found ways that work for them to weave in and out of you know I don't know the regulatory limitations and things of that nature. And so I'm curious how you see that Is it like we said about the DMS, it would be difficult to run without a DMS, not impossible, but difficult. But inside of this ecosystem that we've built for ourselves, essentially, are you seeing creative paths that can lead people to getting ahead despite perhaps some of those limitations.

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong. I think I think it is a lot harder to create art when someone just says, here's a blank sheet of paper. Because you get, you're like, whoa, do you want, do you want me to paint? Do you want me to use these colors? Like, it's like so overwhelming.

All you have is a blank piece of paper. But if I said, hey, create art using colored pencils, and these 3 colors becomes tremendously easier, because you have boundary, right. And I think creativity only happens within boundary. And so, you know, in some ways, like I was just saying, it's like there's a ton of boundaries in automotive. But that is also why I think there's creative minds like Patrick Abad that exist, that are like thriving because they don't look at that as necessarily as a downside.

They're like, oh, that's awesome. You've given me these 3 colors. That's where I'm going to perform. So no, I mean, that's actually 1 of the things I love about this industry is finding the needle or threading the needle, you know? And that's 1 of the most fun things you can possibly do, I think, is like, is, is finding a solution to something that seems totally unsolvable.

Yeah. I love that. Switching gears a little bit. Your LinkedIn profile headline states that you are a digital retail nerd.

Yeah.

What is a digital retail nerd? And how did you arrive at such level of nerdiness?

I've been there since the very beginning, I think. There's a small independent dealership in Utah that the first day Carvana ever launched, they stopped by the booth. When I was over at dealer.com, they stopped by our booth and they were like, Hey, like, what's going on? And I was, I'm supposed to be pitching dealer.com stuff. And I was like, screw all that.

Check this out. There's these guys called Carvana, and they're making this whole buy from home thing. You should look at that. And it was so cool, because years later, they said, this is like 4 or 5 years later after that moment, they found me at an NADA floor and they were like, hey, we actually, we made it ourselves. We made a sort of Utah Carvana competitor.

And if I remember the name, I'll send it to you for the show notes. But, you know, so like, 1 of the things I've always noticed is that it's not until sort of a third party comes along that a dealer decides to innovate. And it's unfortunate, but this is sort of the pattern. It's like in

1998,

Edmonds, KBB, AutoTrader, they all existed. And so did dealer.com, but hardly anybody wanted a dealer.com website. In 2004, I think it was dealer track purchased this new vendor that had come on and said online credit apps is like going to be a thing, right? In 2000, I think it was like 678, somewhere in there. You have these business plans that come out and it's one's for a company called TrueCar, the other one's for a company called CarGurus.

They literally just go to investors and they say, we're going to copy exactly what KBB and AutoTrader and cars.com did, but we think the consumer wants price transparency. So we're just going to reveal a little bit more, Oh, that's a great price. You know, that's all we're going to do really is change that. Right. And, you know,

2012,

maybe 11-ish, Carvana comes out. Simultaneously, Cox Auto, or maybe it was still DealerTrack at the time, they came out with what was like payment driver, finance driver, and some other vehicle driver or something like that. It was really this attempt at digital retailing. Every single time you had those moments, most of the dealerships were like, nah, F that noise. I actually remember when I first started pitching dealership websites in like

2009,

there was a good portion of dealers that would say, well, I don't want a website per se. I just want a web page. I just put my address on the page. No, like don't put cars because if you put cars, then they're not going to come in and see them. You're like, no, no, no, People want cars and pictures and stuff on the website.

So what's like the through line there? Well, there's part of it, which is like, what the hell is digital retailing? It's been this evolution from, from sort of 1998 of just showing the car to the eventual conclusion of like, oh no, like people do, some people do really want to just purchase this thing. Right. Then there's the other flip of it, which is, so I, you know, you asked the question, like, how do you become a digital retailing nerd?

I don't, I can't point to 1 particular event. Because, you know, really, this has been the inevitability of, of, of all of this. It's like, you know, at 1 point in

2003,

we had this thing in a CRM that said internet lead. Today, we still have this thing called the internet lead. Why do we still have this thing called internet lead? They're all internet leads, you know? Right.

And it's this sort of like woe-be-gone term that's like, that's still included in today's present. And I think digital retailing is going to be 1 of those woe-be-gone terms that still exist in today's present. We just needed a way to encompass it, and to product it, and brand it, and bundle it, and package it, and make it anew, even though it's really something that started in 1998. You know?

Yeah. There's this piece, you know, you said something that, triggered the thought in me, which is when websites first came out, the, the, the worry was, oh no, then nobody's going to come to our lot. Your reassurance on the back end of that is like, no, people want to see this first, and then that's actually going to compel or encourage them to come to the lot. Now we're seeing this narrative of like, technology is just going to kill all of the human jobs. As someone where you understand technology and you consult and advise on tech startups.

How do you marry this? Are we going full circle? Are you seeing that as a similar sentiment as to when websites came out and people thought no? Is there room for human? I guess what I'm trying, my ulterior motive is to get the perspective of someone who understands technology to perhaps give some assurances to the living, breathing humans that no, technology is not going to completely destroy you.

I think I can give you both sides. The first side, which is where my preferences are, would be like going back to that timeline of events from 1998 to today. All that's really happening is internal for the dealer's eyes only data is just, you know, like an onion is just getting more and more stripped away and more and more transparent to the customer. That's all right. It's like started with photos of vehicle, then it became price of car, then it became price comparative to others, so on and so forth.

Today, the people that are really kicking ass out there, they've already done all that. They've been super transparent, you know, to that degree. And now it's becoming, let's be transparent with our values, right? What do we stand for? And that really creates a brand.

Transparent in the salespeople themselves. So like, what's our culture? And so technology really can't replace any of those things, right? Like, there is a certain craving that people have. I was writing about this a little while ago.

Actually, I wrote a little bit about it today, which is like, digital retailing had its best possible years in the start of COVID. I mean, if you asked, hey, digital retailing company or Amazon or Shopify, ideally, like what would you love to happen so your product is forced to grow? And they would say, how about the government gives everybody some money to experiment with.

I saw this. Yeah.

Shuts down all of the other local businesses. Right. So that you have to go online to order things. And what was the third? Free money, shut down everybody else.

I don't know. Check my LinkedIn for the third. Either way, right? We had the perfect circumstance for that growth. Amazon just laid off 11, 000 people.

Shopify laid off an insane amount of people a few months ago. What you captured is like, this is the best that digital retailing could ever really do. This is the best that growth numbers, e-commerce could ever do, because you gave the perfect environmental conditions.

Right.

Unfortunately, people made the mistake of using that to forecast out and higher and whatever, as if that was going to last forever. But I think the other piece of this is that habits are very real. The consumers want and need to do what they did before is something that we're all kind of trying to fight and change. But the other lesson, I think, is that there's always going to be a reversion to the mean. So what you see is that you, like even in my own life where I work from home, I love the serendipity of going to a coffee shop and running into someone.

Oh my God, we haven't seen each other, right? Or going to a target and like, oh, hey, you know, right. And the internet really robs you of all of that. And so, you know, in some ways, I think there's, there's pent up sort of demand to be in a showroom to talk to a human to, you know, to like, shake a hand, right? Look at a person in the eyes.

And I think that's actually going to be something we appreciate more and more because we were finally robbed of it. So we forgot how important it was. And so I think in the long term, you know, technology, preference would be technology doesn't replace humans, it just supplements them and makes them, you know, smarter, faster, better at connecting, deeper connecting. Right. Now, okay.

Let me give you the like alternative argument though.

Sure.

Right? The first places we created transparency wasn't in brand and wasn't in culture and wasn't in what we're finally doing today. The first things we did was in price and in vehicle, both of which basically commoditize what we do. And there's like the age old adage, it's like, you know, if you talk about price and that's all your value is, don't be surprised if the consumer comes in and negotiates, right? Because you just basically told them that's what, that's all you got.

Right.

And that's all we did for like a really long period of time. Great price, fair price, whatever. And so when you commoditize your product, you're also creating a second order effect of commoditizing the customer. And that is like the perfect sort of storm of creating, hey, if customers are basically just steel and cars are just basically the same, like reconfigured steel, these are just commodities, then yeah, it's going to become easier and easier for technology to to understand commodity, you know, to like to trade those. And yeah, and then you're basically creating the foundation for technology to replace human.

And so in my point of view, we just need to double down on human, right? And double down on technology that's designed for the end user and not the consumer. So the other through line that you would see through all this tech enablement and innovation over the last, I'd say 10 years, decade, is that almost all of those products, they were designed for the consumer that's buying the car. They weren't really designed for the BDC person, the marketing person, the general manager. Those guys were this alternative, by the way, here's a dashboard, you can log in and look at the report.

Right. We weren't the primary person. I imagine a future that we need to pivot to, which is like Iron Man Jarvis suit, where Jarvis really makes Iron Man better, but he's not good on his own. You still need Tony Stark sitting in the helmet, you know, pushing the buttons, saying the commands, doing the things.

Yeah. I love that analogy. I was listening to or watching rather a snippet with, I mean this tech youtuber mark Marques Brownlee Yeah, okay, so Yeah, we'll link to him in the show notes if you're not familiar, but I mean like this guy's built a massive presence basically doing tech reviews. He was talking about something similar to this. So, and it had to do with Facebook, or sorry, Meta's entire double, triple, quadruple down on Metaverse and where they're headed there and basically pivoting the entire ship to go to this alternate reality type thing.

And he describes kind of what you're saying here, where he's like, on the 1 hand, there's some really cool things that he's seen. For example, the ability to put the goggles on and see your work environment in front of you, but then all of a sudden be able to have 2 extra computer monitors that you can interact with. And as if you had 3 computer monitors on your desk, but you don't actually. So things that can augment and to your point, supplement, I can see a benefit in. It's like, oh, sweet.

I don't have to actually have my whole desk taken up by more devices, more hardware. I can actually supplement that by just throwing on the goggles. But then also to your point, there's this very real, but once those goggles are on, I isolate myself from the rest of my surroundings. Like.

Yeah, no, I mean, golly. Okay. So yeah, I think most. Okay, dude, we're going to get ready for

a cloud bot here.

So I think, I think most, enormous tech companies, guys that go way past the billion. They take advantage of contradiction. So I think contradiction is actually the best thing in the world. It's the most human thing. And it will be probably really important in the future to determine if AI can even really exist.

Is it how AI's wrangle with contradiction? A couple of things I would point out. 1 is Mr. Beast, Marquise Brownlee, AI can't replace them because you get to know them so well, so intimately, right? And that's just another onion layer.

You know, dealers should do the same. Salespeople at dealerships should do the same. They should have a brand. And I think micro branding at the dealership level, or I think what people are calling tier 4 branding, which I really like, is going to be super important. Okay.

But now back to the tech thing. So if you can capitalize on both sides of a contradiction, you're going to, you're just going to win. Okay. So in the eighties, think about the mall. All right.

Just your regular retail mall. And the contradiction being that, that people really want to be unique, right? But they also want to belong. And those 2 don't really fit great with each other. Right.

It's like, oh, I'm unique. Nobody else listens to this music. Oh crap. Everybody does. So I should listen to some other music or more poignantly.

I'm a teenager and I want to be unique. So. You know what? I'm going to be a goth. I'm going to go to hot topic with all the other goths.

Right. Or no, I'm going to be a skater and we'll go pack sun with all the other skaters. Right. Right. So it's like this moment of uniqueness.

And then as soon as you walk into the room or the store and you see everybody else just like you, right? It's actually something I think dealers should start thinking more about is, you know, like Tesla, for example. There's a certain like snootiness or something. There's a certain thing about Tesla buyers, not snootiness, sorry. I have a Tesla, so I can say this.

But there is a certain thing about Tesla buyers that like you could stick them all into a room and they probably would find common ground. Where it's harder to do with most of your other brands that try to go very wide. Okay, that's 1. For Meta, Meta somehow figured out how to disconnect all of us and also connect all of us, right? So it's like, hey, you can connect with anybody in the world now.

The only caveat is you have to disconnect with everything that's near you. So if you ever find yourself on a couch next to your wife or spouse, and 1 of you has a phone in front of your face, and you're checking through Instagram or Facebook or whatever, you're disconnecting locally so that you can connect with someone random outside. And so, I mean, the actual metaverse is like taking that thought process to the extreme. It's like, hey, forget literally everything around you. I always think that's really creepy that in probably the 1920s, you had movie screens maybe 35 feet away from you.

And then in the 1950s, you get this TV screen, it's 10 feet away from you. And then the 1990s, you get a computer screen. It's now 2 feet away from you. And then you get this phone and it's like 1 foot away from you. So there's this natural progression of screen just getting closer to face that I also think is a trend line.

But, you know, I think that's actually, I think Zuckerberg is like way, way over his skis a little bit on this 1. I don't think, I think, again, back to the Amazon Shopify reversion to the mean thing. I don't think we're at a time where people are like, you know what I really need is less human interaction. I think there's still this giant craving for like, I enjoyed flying on a plane recently just because I was like, hey, this person I can talk to. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. You enjoy, I mean, it could use a few, it could use fewer odors. Yeah. But aside from that, and fewer people taking their shoes off.

Right. It's like you can't, you can't smell my coffee breath right now.

Yeah, that's right. But you know, like in the same token, I thought that was really interesting while you know in canada we were locked down like locked down yeah and you know kids were all doing the online school and Zoom classes. I thought it was really interesting that just a few months earlier, you have to your point, teens with screens like this non-stop, Instagram, this and that, And with just a few months of overload to their perception, they were like, I never want to look at a computer ever again. I was so sick of looking. I just I want to be out with my friends.

I want to see people. I somehow really want to go to the family reunion all of a sudden. Like there was so like this innate human desire to have human to human interaction, which I think is really interesting, especially how we're moving, but also validates what you've been saying as a thread through this conversation, Ben, which is the need for dealers to double down on human, the brand, the micro brand or tier 4 brand, like you're talking about, I think is so valuable and going to continue to be valuable as we move into 2023 and beyond. 1 last question, obviously, to turn back to you. How can those listening or watching get in touch with you, follow you, learn more about you?

I think mostly hit me on LinkedIn. It's probably the fastest way. I'm usually on there. If there's dealers listening that are super progressive and want to join the Auto Genius community, www.autogenius.io is where you can apply. And it's basically, I think we're at about a thousand rooftops now.

Wow. Just super private, on purpose, like an insane knowledge base where some of the best marketers in the industry can basically go to either ask questions or answer questions. And really the thought was, can we design automotive, can we architect it better if collectively the end user has a larger voice? And so that's our big goal is, 1 of the things that we really want right now is more open APIs, as an example. And we're already working with some companies to basically say, hey, look, like, this is a demand for this group of people.

So If you