Kyle Mountsier: The Car Business Is A People Business

Kyle Mountsier is a partner at ASOTU, the first dealer-owned media outlet in the history of the car business. He is also the founder of Contagious Auto, a firm that helps dealers create and build innovative marketing teams.

What we discuss in this episode:

When Kyle worked at Nelson Mazda, he learned what it takes to innovate within the dealership and how to leverage existing resources to build deeper customer relationships and experiences.
His mission is to help the dealer community build and create innovative teams that can do the same which is why he ultimately left the dealership to pursue the bigger vision.
The car business is a people business. It's critical for dealership owners and managers to understand that there is so much more to the people on their team than the work they do each day. Perhaps your receptionist is passionate about photography or maybe there is a sales representative who knows how to code. When you get to know your team on a more personal level, you might be surprised to find that they have talents and skills that could contribute to the store and bring them even more satisfaction about the work they do each day.
Individuals such as Liza Borches understand the value of building a happy and fulfilling workplace culture and can track its effects on bottom-line sales.
Kyle shares how their media producer came to them from a dead-end job at a local television station. Later they learned that he had an amazing YouTube channel where he was deploying talents and skills that would positively affect their business. They would have had no idea unless they took the time to get to know him on a more personal level. As a result, the workplace satisfaction level and productivity have increased because they were all able to identify the tie-in.
Listen to the full episode for even more insights from Kyle Mountsier

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Thanks, Kyle Mountsier

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Michael: One of my biggest regrets producing the dealer playbook is all of the pre and post conversations that never get recorded. So many laughs so much fun. None of them. I'm sitting down with my man, Kyle Mt. Sear. He is a partner@asodo.com, which you definitely need to check out he's the chief nerd of things is I think the way that we're going to describe you and things of things, chief nerd of things, it's an official title moving into the 21st century in the metaverse.

[00:00:32] Perfect. Thanks so much for joining me on the dealer.

[00:00:35] Kyle: Yeah, glad to be here. I've I've been a long time follower and a mainly a fan of your audacious claims on LinkedIn and the way that you create conversations on there. Because I feel like you just call out every. But in a really kind way.

[00:00:51] So it's good. It's good to be around. And actually being able to consider you a friend as as of recent, which is really cool. So yeah

[00:00:58] Michael: and and I'm glad to finally have connected with you in a much more meaningful way and start building this friendship. I think, it doesn't happen very often, especially in.

[00:01:07] I think what we could characterize sometimes as a shark tank industry, there's a lot of competitive nature and things of that nature, but every now and again, You cross paths with someone who you're like, man, we're like, we're so similar minded and we're moving in the same direction. And so it's been really cool.

[00:01:24] Just opening the door with you and Paul at a Sodoku and the dealer playbook to be like, okay, there's synergy here. Let's amplify this thing. Let's get this message out. Yeah. I guess my first, my, my first question I want to ask you is maybe tell us a little bit more about a soda we got.

[00:01:40] Paul's take, I'm interested in your perspective. What, what made you guys want to do this? What's the mission that you guys are on with this? Yeah

[00:01:47] Kyle: obviously Paul started a SOTU back in the early stages of the pandemic and it was really his, his load to bear and his mission and his vision.

[00:01:55] And I had been, I followed it. I was a part of the first live stream, watched it. But early on in my automotive career I remember I'll never forget. I was listening to. Pat my pastor at the time in Florida, in Pensacola, Florida. And there was this moment where he was explaining something and I can't remember the, really the context it's slightly irrelevant once you hear it.

[00:02:19] But essentially the stick was this, people that lie and people that are hated. Lawyers tax collectors and use car salesman. And at that point I was granted at a franchise dealership selling new and used cars, and I was. And it hit me real wrong because I was like, no, that's not, I'm not classified in there.

[00:02:43] And not just that, but that probably means that there's a lot of people in those first two categories that aren't classified in there. And ever since then, I've, I went up to him immediately and was like, we gotta reclassify that and that can never come out of your mouth again, dude, legitimately I was leading worship at this church, right?

[00:03:01] Like I'm the guy singing and playing guitar at the front of the church. And he's used car salesman, those jerks, so that's my day job. And so at that moment I realized, wow, there's a perception of this industry that is so deep that someone can be sitting in front of you and that's their day job.

[00:03:19] And you still call it out that way. And so for the past, however many years, that is 10 years since that 11 years since that happened, it's been a part of my mission to, to shift that when I was selling cars, when I was at the last dealership I was at. And so then fast forward to.

[00:03:35] You know about a year ago now when Paul and I really started communicating and talking after we had met probably five months after he started. So to that, it was that it was really clear early on that, that we were on a crash course to do that together, to draw a big circle. As we say around the industry, bring more people together, create more conversations that are leading to the shift in the culture and perception of the automotive industry.

[00:03:59] So that all led together. And then all of a sudden we had this big event in Vegas at digital dealer in Vegas. And we came out of that with the, with this 30,000 foot view that our friend Darren gave us. And it was like, wow. You are creating something that can be the center point for people that are talking the same way.

[00:04:17] It's we got on the phone with you. You're like, man, I just realized there's a landing place for me, with other people that are thinking, doing, and talking about the same things. And so we just decided to put a stamp on it and formalize it. Yeah.

[00:04:31] Michael: I love it. And I love, Paul in different language, but really paints a visual to what you're saying here. He's when we met my admission to you guys was like, dude, I've been doing this for so long. I thought I was alone in the woods and all of a sudden, a beacon on a hill lights up and that lights up another beam and you start realizing no, there's more of us.

[00:04:49] So I love the way you articulated. Let's draw a circle around this thing. And bring and be inclusive of so many people that are thinking the same thing, but maybe just needed a landing spot for it. I love the way that you say that I got to see firsthand how the machine of a soda works. You guys are a bunch of crazy people in a really good way, but it even opened my mind even nine years into producing this.

[00:05:15] Of what it means to be scrappy and like just pump out information at the speed of light. Like I was like, wait, what are you talking about four minutes. We just talked about this four minutes ago. It's already

[00:05:26] Kyle: online. Got it. Got to throw it up, right? Yeah. We have this we have this this w these two words that we say, and we call it production debt and what we are, our whole goal on anything is to limit the production debt that we have to, that we have to executing something to the end of.

[00:05:42] So whether that be a podcast or a live stream or covering an event. So how do we minimize the production debt necessary to get this live? So how do we record for the edit? How do we press fresco on record and five minutes later, it's a podcast. So all of that, like we have to grab the right team members to make sure that our production debt is as close to zero as possible because we're living in a world.

[00:06:06] Where everybody's tick talking the thing they did five seconds ago. And so if you're in any sort of making media and you're talking about five minutes, you're behind,

[00:06:15] Michael: I don't know why, as you were saying that I was hearing the voice of the great Don LaFontaine who did pretty much every movie trailer.

[00:06:23] And you're like, cause you said. In a world where everyone is tick talking five minutes ago, one man, one team, zero production debt. Yes. I love that. It makes so much sense and it's amazing, and I guess the reason I bring that up in that context is it was, it's amazing what happens when we can be a little bit vulnerable and realize that what we've learned.

[00:06:53] Should not limit our ability to move forward and learn into the future. So here I am, Tim Zion, Paul, like I'm watching, I'm observing and I'm like, okay. I thought I have this on lock my production process. And now all of a sudden I'm seeing dudes with mobile phones rolling around, going from there to Adobe rush.

[00:07:12] And then from Adobe rush straight out to Instagram. If I wasn't in the right frame of mind, if I kept myself limited, like I had already figured it out, or my process was better than anybody

[00:07:23] Kyle: else. It had to have some red camera's there.

[00:07:26] Michael: I needed my 4k, this and that, and the next thing. And so it's so enlightening and I think it's a worthwhile message for this industry to be like there's always more to learn.

[00:07:36] And when you actually get into the weeds of what that means and execute on it versus thinking you already know it all. Magic happens by way of accelerated growth. And it hats off to you guys. You had a big announcement there. We won't get into it, but I want to key in, on something that you said earlier, this is my day job.

[00:07:53] So at the time you're working in dealership, obviously now you've made the transition out to the service consultancy news broadcasting. Like all of these sorts of things went to the dark side, went to the dark side. I know a lot of people feel this way. Like they're always there. There's this. Debate. Oh man, what do I do?

[00:08:12] How do I do it? All these sorts of things. What led you from. Shut your mouth. This is my day job. Never talk about this ever again, to making the transition to just for a sake of fewer words,

[00:08:26] Kyle: the vendor side, right? Yeah, no. This has come under hot debate in my. As well as with others and especially because what I initially and still have left it for is to build this thing called contagious auto, which is really a marketing training and consultancy company to, to be able to train and equip marketers.

[00:08:44] And the big thing that I saw over about an eight month, eight month timeline leading up to that was these really savvy marketers at mid to large sized group. Anywhere between three to 20 stores Lee being incredible at their group, executing at a very high level, understanding data efficiency, brand, all of that at a very high level, but being squeezed so tight because they don't have support from either a team or budget or the executive team.

[00:09:18] They don't have a seat at the operational table and leaving for the vendor. For the opportunity of growth that they weren't afforded, or the opportunity of support that they weren't afforded at the retail side or even work-life balance, right? They're interfacing with all of these vendors every single day.

[00:09:37] And they're watching everybody sitting at home on zoom doing the same thing. They are with probably less expertise because they are sick, they're siloed. And this person is acquiring all this expertise being required to work extra hours. Pull a heavier load because they have a limited scale team and all of a sudden they're exiting.

[00:09:54] And so my big desire was to give dealers. The perspective of the ROI of not just that person, but a whole team and what that can do for their dealership, what that can do for their brand. Because I believe that the highest executing marketer and marketing team actually build a more sustainable long-term brand, not just for one individual dealership, but for the industry as a whole, because as more people see that as the actual brand, not the perceived brand that I just talked about.

[00:10:24] But the actual brand, the actual what people are doing in the communities and how they desire to have a great customer experience and franchise retail survives, then the brand survives cost per sale. Go down increasing the fi flywheel of lifetime value of a custom. And I'm seeing these people leave in droves.

[00:10:42] And so I was like, we've got to do something about it. We've got to train more of them because when they leave, nobody can replace them. And we've got to train the dealers that, that's an extremely important person in your team. And you have to care for them in a unique way, different than maybe a salesperson or a service rider.

[00:10:59] Michael: Yeah, this is tremendous too. I'm going to get it.

[00:11:03] Kyle: You better watch it. I'm going to get on some big soap box out here.

[00:11:07] Michael: Good. Good. Good. Let me pull it out for you because there was a lot of talk at an ADA at time of recording this we're on the heels of an ADA. It was last week at time of recording.

[00:11:16] For those of you listening in the year 2047 there was a lot of talk about the great resignation, Erica, Tiffany. In her presentation, talked about the fact that we should be so proud to work in this industry, that when we onboard people or when we're out in public, we should be active, actively promoting that you can build an amazing.

[00:11:43] Within this industry yet, to your point, people are exiting and droves which really underscores the importance of topics like culture. I know the great lies of borches is huge on the culture conversation and can actually map it back to bottom line revenue. What's your take on that? W what are we seeing as far as great resignation and what from your vantage point now, working with several other dealerships and dealer groups, how can we start to what's the first step we can focus or key in, on to mitigate this exit?

[00:12:13] Yeah.

[00:12:13] Kyle: I think one is just like recognizing with your people what's happening around them, to see their friend sitting at home, making YouTube videos and making a bunch of money as a 25 year old or whatever. You've got to recognize that's a reality that they are facing decision making with your hourly employee.

[00:12:32] That's making, 12, 13, 14, $15 an hour is staring across the table at some point. That just got hired on at target for $24 an hour. Don't think that they're not paying attention to that. They're absolutely. Your culture has to be so strong that you don't lose those people now. Are we losing a bunch of sales managers outside of the industry?

[00:12:55] I don't think so. We're losing them maybe to other stores because they're there they're far enough in, but you're losing a lot of those frontline employees or employees that have transferable skills, which right now, probably the employees with the most transferable skills in the dealership to similar paying jobs or higher paying jobs are on either it operations or marketing, which a lot of times get grouped into one.

[00:13:18] And so all of a sudden they are squeezed to do three roles into one role and looking outside and going wait, I can grow, be coached, have opportunities to learn and have a team. In another place and I have transferable skills, right? That's why we don't see a lot of sales managers leaving.

[00:13:35] They have transferable skills, but the outside world looking in, doesn't see that. And I want to be very careful. I know that those people have transferable management skills outside of the industry, but the outside world doesn't see that. But the outside world does see those transferable skills in it,

[00:13:50] Michael: marketing and operations.

[00:13:52] It's funny you say that I've even been looking at my children in this context where I'm. And you know what? God bless my wife. I love her. I'm not saying anything. I, we don't chuckle about already offline, but she's like an 87 year old trapped in a 36 year old body because her. Desire, first of all, to learn tech or any like dude watching her one thumb text, people makes me want to just pluck the phone out of her hand and throw it at us.

[00:14:22] Kyle: Just like here's the Nokia. Yeah. Two

[00:14:26] Michael: thumbs required, but I think about my children in this kind of. We're moving into a world, look at Brian Kramer is about to complete the first transaction in the metaverse. I know you guys have been highlighting that and he's been talking about it.

[00:14:39] What a time to be alive. But if we want to set up this generation, think of what we can do in our own homes to actually make sure that our children at a very baseline level know how to use a computer can type can understand that there is such a thing as an algorithm and maybe learn a little bit about it.

[00:14:58] Like I'm even thinking about nine years into this deal. I have a twelve-year-old and I'm like, you know what? I'm going to see if I can teach them how to edit podcasts and teach them a little bit about sound production. Look, you and I are both sound engineers. When I got my sound engineering degree, I quickly became a statistic.

[00:15:13] I worked on some albums, got the cool Vancouver, British Columbia, work at mushroom studios and work on. That was great. But then here I am in the car industry all these years later because we don't ever really know what's going to happen here. I am producing other people's shows and, deploying a skill set in a very small minute way compared to what we did for music production.

[00:15:35] But still. If I can teach my twelve-year-old, he's going up into the workforce with an actual skill set that any business could utilize.

[00:15:44] Kyle: Absolutely. I I think about this, I people always ask me, did you have a mark? Cause I did marketing as I was leaving the franchise side.

[00:15:51] Did you have a marketing degree? Did you do any of that? No. I recorded an album in college. I created the album art, had to take the photos, write the copy. All of that type of stuff starts to lean into those transferable skills. And I think, and then you think about this with the dealers, not pigeonholing people into something everybody's got a side.

[00:16:13] So find out what their side hustle is and utilize it to, to your advantage as. All right, let them keep doing the side hustle, but maybe that person is great with a man at Nelson. We had a person on the team that love to code. That was his thing, right? So we utilize that expertise. And just with a small portion of his, he was a sales person with a small portion of his time.

[00:16:39] We said, Hey, look, we need this expertise over here. We don't have a full-time position for you, but we can now draw that in. But what's cool about that is now if he loses the sales job, he also loses the ability to get paid for doing something that also is a side hustle. So look for that.

[00:16:55] And I think, look for that and your people give them the access to do some of those things that are quote unquote side hustles as a part of their regular jobs so that they don't feel ostracized from the rest of life, what they love to do. Yeah.

[00:17:09] Michael: Oh man. Integrating the rest of your life. That's really what the dealer playbook is about.

[00:17:14] Dude. This is why I'm like early on. I realized I am so sick of talking about sales strategies or just those things we gravitate towards it, like this integrating the rest of your life into the thing you do to make money. I was like, oh man that right there, Kyle, seriously, like just, it resonates so deeply with me because guaranteed then.

[00:17:37] What's really cool is I'm imagining this as the case, then that individual who shows up to quote unquote sell is now thinking about his work in a different way. Maybe more excited about it becomes more efficient at it. And, but it also gets them thinking about, it'd be a cool solution over here.

[00:17:54] Maybe I could code this little thing that would improve the.

[00:17:57] Kyle: And what happens is when you give people the access to start thinking a little freely or thinking in the way that they're most creative, because everybody's creative ever. I said this in a in a Tampa digital dealer workshop last year.

[00:18:10] I said, if you think you're not creative, you're lying to yourself. Because like you wake up every day and put clothes on, you're creating something. Your brain is creating something all the time. And so just leveraging the place where they are. The most creative or the most engaged into what they're currently doing.

[00:18:29] It actually opens up that they become more free in the other elements where you might've locked them into a process that they felt stuck in. They all of a sudden are free to think again. And their brain is it's sparks something. Whoa. I didn't realize that was happening. Actually, this is really interesting. Speaking of a soda. We have a new employee, that's a producer for us. And he went to school for media and said in his schooling, if I ever go work for a news station, I know that's the place where a media people go to die. And what did he do right after college?

[00:19:02] He went to a new station, right? Naturally. It's interesting because he also has a YouTube. Dedicated to Legos not just dedicated to Legos so much so that he worked for Lego and almost was on there, like Lego, the show that highlighted people that do Legos, right? Yeah.

[00:19:22] Michael: What's his name? I gotta look this guy up real time.

[00:19:24] Kyle: Isaac, Donna. Sorry. He's now out there in the world, but he's got a whole YouTube channel. He's got these, bunch of guys that just talk. It's great. We didn't know all this, and this is what happens literally, and we make fun of him. So he knows this. If you ever listened to this, he comes to his interview with us.

[00:19:42] It's a video interview. He's got a suit and tie on. I get it. You're coming to an interview, right? This guy is shaking. Not kidding you shaking. And Yeah, I've got some I've got some switcher capacity and I've done this at the news station and this at the news station, we find out a week later he has a YouTube channel.

[00:20:02] We get him back on the phone and we're like, first of all, scrap the suit and tie. When you come to the second interview for us real quick. Okay. And do it with the Lego's in the background. Cool. He's yeah, fine. We bring him on. We're like, so what do you use for YouTube? Oh, stream yard. It's amazing.

[00:20:18] What do you do for that? All of a sudden he's yeah, my buddy's a Tik TOK star. He does this. He tells me this. We're like, wait a second. That's the guy we need. So all of a sudden then he starts feeding us back all these crazy ideas or this is the person that we need over here plugged in.

[00:20:35] But he had this job level mentality that said, I need to be buttoned up and have all this job experience. So trans translate that to the dealership or whatever company you have that someone's listening to this go access that in your people, because so many people have that. They just don't think they're allowed to bring it in.

[00:20:56] Michael: What's the holdup or the reservation, perhaps from a leadership level. Like why aren't we thinking this way in Europe?

[00:21:06] Kyle: I think some of it is just fear. It's just straight up fear. It's if I let them get a little bit a taste of that again, then they're going to leave to go do it full time or whatever, or someone's going to pluck them up because they see that expertise one. If they leave to go do that or that someone plucks them up, celebrate that. First of all. But two probably the reality is they're not going to go to. Because now they're fulfilled in doing those things. And yeah. So I think that's the reality.

[00:21:37] To be just like super blunt and honest. Yeah. That's part of the reason why I'm on the vendor side because the desire to speak and the desire to lead our industry was just not able to be fully fulfilled within the dealership world. Could it have ever been? I don't know maybe not.

[00:21:59] And so sometimes that person has to leave, but sometimes you give them the access to that and all of a sudden they, they have no desire to leave because they're getting fulfilled in multiple ways. Yeah.

[00:22:09] Michael: Here's something too though that if I could interject this, what, the reason it works. And it's not just like you straight a believing, like you have this vision to impact, that's predicated upon you being able to reach more.

[00:22:22] So you, you have all this proof from where the rubber meets the road. And now predicated on that proof you say, but I want to reach more dealerships. I've made an imprint here. Yup.

[00:22:34] Kyle: So it was my thing. It was like, yes, I've done what I can here. I like this has to get out further. And if I continue to do this, I can't do this stuff.

[00:22:45] And that was just where I was at. Like my, my I tell this story, my my wife said, I said, I don't need to be the guy. And my wife said to me, she said the most prophetic words to me. She said, no you do, you have to be the guy. And I was like, It feels weird. She goes, no, that's okay.

[00:23:03] Sometimes there needs to be someone that stands up and says the thing. And you just have to be that. I was like, wow, that's that? It took me like three days to wrap that around my brain. Cause it felt super prideful. And still even sometimes it does. And I have to watch that, but at the same time, it's whatever.

[00:23:22] Whatever someone's called to whatever someone needs to be that might be at your company, or it might be doing something else. That's important.

[00:23:29] Michael: I love this concept of. Having a purpose though. And, or like you said, being called to do something, we don't need to be all like, oh, I'm Jesus. And I need 12 disciples level of calling here, but I believe that each of us are on this planet to enrich and enhance, to bring a light to darkness, each of us human beings, and I know it like, look, dude I'm pushing 40 this year and I'm just settling into the. Thought of what you just said of oh, there's some, there are things that I am naturally good at and I can use those things for good. Yes. I don't need to be egotistical or ego maniacal about it, but I just naturally know I know I'm natural with like you were saying earlier, art and creativity and design and music, and how can I use those to.

[00:24:24] Help enrich and enhance the life of somebody else. And I think it's tremendous and we need people like our wives to say those things to us to, cause they see our, they can see our greatness in a way that we can't of ourselves. But that then becomes the, what we're meant to do is help up.

[00:24:42] That's what I see a Soto is doing. That's what I see you doing. That's what I hope I'm contributing to is helping others see that the greatness. Is inherent, like you just had a a new baby. Congratulations to that. First and foremost, this is really weird. Okay. But this is there's follow me down this warm hole for 10 seconds.

[00:25:04] I'm ready. I have a sister who's in the healthcare profession. One day I was driving home and I had this thought. The phrase of walking through the valley of the shadow of death, why do they call, why do they reference that during the birthing process? And it's literally referenced to baby passing through and the mortality rate being so high and how much trauma there is on mother.

[00:25:26] But also it got me thinking I'm like this must be traumatic for baby as well. So I asked my sister. I said, Amy, I'm going somewhere with this. Just follow me. Like I just said to you, it's traumatic on mother. We know that. And not to diminish that at all. That's not the intention here, but is it also traumatic on baby?

[00:25:49] And she says, it's, life-threatening late traumatic. And I said, so you mean to tell me. This is where my brain immediately went. Co you mean to tell me that my first experience in life was passing through an intense, insane trial and rising victorious

[00:26:10] Kyle: bingo track with me here real quick. I'm going to give you one better because that literally happened on Saturday.

[00:26:16] So my wife we, she was laboring for, I dunno, I think 13 or 14 hours fairly slowly coming along. It came time to have baby and about two minutes into pushing the, that the ready to have baby time. The doctor looks at my wife and says, do you hear that? That's the baby's heart rate dropping.

[00:26:40] We need to get baby out.

[00:26:45] And, oh, this is the first time I got a little emotional about that. And in that moment, there was a massive amount of trauma for my wife. But a trauma that she was able to assess report on through her brainwaves and accurately push through to get baby out. But baby was not able to, and actually are on the chart.

[00:27:07] We looked at later, it said that our baby came out as a high risk and she rose triumphantly in under three minutes. She had a, her oxygen level was as low as 40. Wow. For three minutes. And then literally the person grabs the oxygen mask. And before she's about to put it on, it jumps from 40 to 80 in three seconds.

[00:27:32] A minute later, she was, they considered her a perfectly healthy baby by all vital signs. Yeah. So that was nuts. But to, to your point it was an extremely traumatic event to my daughter and I love that you put it that way and I'm excited to, I feel like there's a tie into this, but I had to give like a real world example of that is actually a reality.

[00:27:56] 'cause that labor was so intense. My baby's heart rate dropped so significantly that when she came out, she was still recovering from the trauma.

[00:28:09] Michael: I don't believe in coincidences. There is a tie in, but I want to just say this on the back of that, I don't believe in coincidence is I believe in divine. I didn't know up until two days ago, I didn't know you and I were going to have this conversation. I didn't know that the conversation was going to go in this direction, nor did you.

[00:28:29] And I certainly didn't know that you had that experience. And yet somehow here we are bringing it, using this as an analogy. And really, I guess what I want to say is time. Here's the tie-in, this is a people business and. The sooner we can stop looking at our people as an expense and see them as the true investment that they are.

[00:28:56] If we could just recognize that the only reason each of us are on this planet is because we are victors, not victims that we are great inherently born. Designed to overcome and to be big and to expand. How does that shift the way as a leader of an organization? I see the people, they're not my people.

[00:29:28] They are their own person who have made a choice to be here. Boy does that.

[00:29:36] Kyle: And they are not just that, but they are uniquely designed, equipped and positioned. For the time and place that they are currently at with you under your care uniquely designed. Wow. With even the worst employee, the one where you're like that employee doesn't get it.

[00:29:57] They don't understand, they can't execute. That person is actually uniquely designed for your organization right now in that time and place for however long they're with you to do exactly what they need to do for you and for others. That's how unique it is,

[00:30:16] Michael: dude. And when I think of it in that context, there are certain words that come to my mind to describe people. And it's not Susie and marketing. It's not IMO technologist. It is the words that come to my mind. You already used one of them unique, precious, tender, powerful. We are so much more than what we do for a living, but if we can deploy who we really are and the passions, and you mentioned the word fulfillment, I love that word.

[00:30:51] If we can create an environment by which fulfillment and happiness can exist. We don't need to talk about the car business anymore. We talk about people who happen to do the car business. Yes. And it's a vastly different conversation. That was for me, that was an undertone to NADH. There was a lot of talk of the great resignation and how do we find, retain and help grow our talent.

[00:31:20] You were in the control room, right? Everybody was mad by the way. They're like, you're not Kyle. Yeah. So context for those listening Kyle, and his wife brought in a new baby to the world. And so he said, Hey man, can you go and grab the mic and help us out with some live streams?

[00:31:37] And I said, I'd love to. So I jumped at that, but I was, I had Kyle's badge. Is press pass and people were not happy that I was not Kyle. Let's just say that. But that was the undertone, but you were there in the control room, obviously seeing and hearing everything as it's happening. What were some of your, did you pick up on that same kind of people focus at this end, ADA?

[00:32:00] Kyle: Yeah. I think, what I loved is that it seemed like every press release that happened was like blank partnered with. It wasn't like blink created new thing. It was blank partnered with blank company, X partner with company Y whether that be dealership or other company. And I think that's indicative of that undertone, right?

[00:32:20] That if more people are partnering together, it means they're seeing others as the value that they bring to their company, their customers. And so I think the collaboration. Aspect of what I was able to see on this side, not being physical, there was indicative of the tone that the industry is carrying right now that it's, it's when dealers band together, no crisis can, when it's the tone of there's AR there's disruptors, there are barbarians at the gate.

[00:32:50] If we don't get it. Then we're all gonna lose. So let's why we'd rather do this together for a long time, than separate for a little bit of time. And so I think that's why, where the hell human element is really palpable right now.

[00:33:02] Michael: I love it, man. I love talking to you. I love what you're doing.

[00:33:06] You and Paul are creating over@asoda.com. Definitely, people need to check that out, but how else can those listening or watching learn more about you? Get in touch with.

[00:33:15] Kyle: Yeah, I think my LinkedIn is a, you can learn a lot about me. I try and be very open with my feelings about the industry, about the world there.

[00:33:23] So Kyle mounts here, I'm actually the only one in the world. So if you Google me, you can do that. It's hard to not find me. You can email me@kyleatasodi.com and love to have a conversation. You just had

[00:33:36] Michael: to throw it. I was the only Michael Cirillo before. So the fact that you're still the only Kyle Mountsier the

[00:33:43] Kyle: internet is that's it, that's an achievement, like six pages on Google.

[00:33:48] You can find me. So I always did. I always tell my wife, I'm like, look, if anyone wants to find me, it's not going to I just can't. I just can't piss anyone off too bad. That's basically

[00:33:56] Michael: what it comes out to. I have a funny story, but it's going to go on the, after the call. Nobody else gets to hear.

[00:34:04] Sorry guys. Love you. Kyle, thanks so much for joining me on the dealer. Thanks. Surreal.

[00:34:21] I'm Michael Cirillo and you've been listening to the dealer playbook podcast. If you haven't yet, please click the subscribe button wherever you're listening. Right now, leave a rating or review and share it with a colleague. Thanks for listening.