What’s Next for Car Dealers? A Conversation with David Kain

In this episode of Word on the Street, we sit down with David Kain, an automotive industry veteran with deep expertise in digital retailing, dealership operations, and vendor-dealer relationships. From launching Ford Direct to building Kain Automotive and pioneering Digital 20 Groups, David has been at the forefront of innovation in the car business for over two decades.

We dive into the future of dealership marketing, the evolving role of digital retail, and the biggest opportunities dealers need to capitalize on now. Whether you're a dealer, vendor, or industry enthusiast, this episode is packed with valuable insights and takeaways.

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Transcript

Hey guys, if you're ready to hear from one of the industry's best known faces and voices, who's been on all sides of the table from running his family's dealership group, to starting Ford Direct, to launching Kane Automotive, consulting with countless dealers, merging in with NCM, launching a twenty group for vendors, you're in the right place. This is David Kane. Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy the conversation.

David Kain, I'm happy to have you here. How are you today? I'm doing great, Andrew. It's wonderful to be with you. I don't know what the weather is like in your neck of the woods, but we're seeing something very rare. We've got sunshine and warm temperatures, which is great for early March. Are you in Lexington right now? I am in Louisville, which is where we've made our home now. Okay. Yeah, same, same, but different. Yeah, I'm in Austin. It's beautiful. And more importantly, how is Eve? Before we got on this call, you were doing some tech support. Yes, absolutely. She's doing wonderful and you've met her. She really loves meeting all of our friends and the clients that come to town for annual workshops. So It's great. And certainly, she is representative of so many spouses in the automotive industry who appreciates all our long hours and our effort to try to help our clients really achieve good success. okay i think that's the unspoken hero in the next room that you know gives the bandwidth for travel and nods the head and is it ear to listen to you know any anything you've got on your plate yeah and you know uh Although we smile a lot in public, potentially we don't always smile when we walk through that door at home. And when you've got someone who's willing to listen to all your tales of woe and make you feel like you still know what you're doing and are capable, it's great to have someone in your corner. Yeah, I try to take like sometimes I'll like stop when I'm like kind of huffing and puffing towards my front door. I'm like... I'm about to walk in to an unsuspecting person that is going to be, I'm going to come in hot or with a huge agenda, but I need to take a breath and ease into this. Well, I think we all can remember if it wasn't just yesterday, but it was within a certain amount of time. where we were sitting in the driveway, sitting in front of our home on the street, and we're still decompressing or we're completing a phone call that we were just trying to squeeze in one more before we walk in the door. I completely can relate. Well, let me give a quick intro. And this is an unfair introduction because you could do a better job. But just from my observation, ever since i've been paying attention to the automotive industry exclusively for maybe the last ten years i've known your name i've known your face i've known the the things that you have been a part of and it's been just a unifying presence for the automotive industry for everybody from all sides of the desk from vendors to customers to dealers to fixed ops and Being a level-headed voice at times, at least when you're on camera or you're on stage or when you're training or when you're running a twenty group, to helping to connect dots and to start healthy conversations. And I know automotive has been in your life and in your blood and in your family for generations now. And now you've done a couple super interesting things over the last twenty five years. But if it's fair, can we start with just Ford Direct and kind of what the motivation was to get to get started with that and how that began? Yeah, that's great. And, you know, a mirror back, you know, as I sit here with you and Ashley and you know, and I've seen you present and I've seen Ashley present and you would, you would love this now that Ashley works with you. But when she was a member of our internet BBC manager, and she's got everybody in the room huddled up around her in the middle and she's got her computer and showing them all how to do social media. And you've got, you know, Rightfully, some of the acclaimed leaders in all of automotive digital sitting there learning from Ashley. And Ashley, I don't know if I'm calling the timeline right, but that was probably about eight to ten years ago, maybe even longer. And boy, oh boy, you have really come a long way. So she's in the right place, and you've recruited a really wonderful talent. So yeah, just throw that out there. Want to give kudos when they're deserved. But for direct, I was... on Ford's dealer council in the year, and to kind of set the stage properly. The reason why I got on dealer council was I politic for it because in the Cincinnati region, uh, our regional manager named Larry, he, he was, um, messaging the dealers and saying that, um, Ford was creating what they called the, um, Ford Retail Network. And the Ford Retail Network was a simple way to basically say Ford Motor Company wanted to take over in several markets and buy all the dealerships. And in this case, in Sensei region, it was the Indianapolis market. And they wanted to take over all the stores, put a figurehead dealer in there to manage it. And Ford Motor Company was going to start, you know, being the retailer in those markets. So they already had Salt Lake City. They had Rochester, New York, Oklahoma City, Tulsa. And they were known as like the Tulsa Auto Collection and stuff. So I thought, well, I'm thirty nine years old. I'm dealer principal of one of our family stores, our Ford store. And I thought, well, that's crazy. Had plenty of calls with Larry and was know at the dealer council meetings just you know we can't do that we're the ford retail network right and then at the same time the ford motor company uh the vice president general manager his name was bob ruey at the time he goes um an article in automotive news now that the internet's available we're going to start selling cars direct to consumers um But don't worry, Ford dealers, you still get to service the cars. And so I thought, here my dad started our family Ford store the year I was born, in this is crazy. I'm finally running the store and now Ford's getting ready to take over. And, you know, in two fronts. So I was talking to a friend of mine, Steve Moses, who is from Moses Ford in West Virginia and Moses Auto Group. He says, look, if you want to do anything about it, you got to get elected to dealer council. So I got elected to dealer council, told everybody, you know, I want to do this. So We all get to pick our committee assignments. So I selected information technology and internet. And on this little subcommittee of which our primary job was to interact with DMSs, information technology, and then the side thing in the year, two thousand called the internet. And for those of you who remember the days, Internet for Automotive started around in our case, our newspaper came to us and said, do you want to build a website? And I was like, sure, we want to be first. What's a website? And so... They plug it in and about ten minutes later, something renders on the screen and he goes, that's a website. And I'm like, we're in, let's get this going. Then we, my dad and I are at NADA and Autobotel pitches his pill bottle to us when we're walking through the aisles and we catch it and it says, you know, your cure for slow business is, you know, get on the internet with Autobotel. So get on the internet with Autobotel. We hold a host state of Kentucky. And so by the year, I'm just all excited about the internet. And so we get up there, I get on that committee and, and we hear from the, the, report outs from Ford that, oh, you all don't have to worry about the internet. Ford's got you covered. We're going to take care of it. And then a member of our committee, who this will be a really well-known name to all Ford dealers who are listening, is a dear friend of mine named Leo Hillock. And Leo worked for Pal Ford, which was an auto nation's dealership down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And he's on the committee and he goes, look, rather than try to work with Ford on, you know, trying to tug a war with them, why don't we create a business with them? And I've written it up. It's on two pieces of paper, Ford Direct. And so our subcommittee gets together, Tim Wickstrom from Wickstrom Ford in Barrington, Illinois. He pulls us together and every other dealer on the committee is like, what the hell is this? We don't know what this is. And Leo goes, well, look, I bought the domain, already owned FordDirect.com, and here's the business plan. So we literally spent the next several days during our committee assignments and the next several weeks. And then what happened was we needed somebody to go to Detroit and build the business with Ford's legal team and Ford's business leaders. And I was a young dealer and I said, I'll do it. So I fly up on Tuesday morning, come home on Thursday night, run the store the rest of the week. And we built Ford Direct from scratch. And some really acclaimed names in automotive, Randy Ortiz and Barry Engel and, you know, names that were in Ford's Consumer Connect, Elena Ford's division, if you will. And we put together this business plan. We presented it to Fred Beans and some of the other well-known dealers out in the world, Burt Bachman. And I remember Jim O'Connor with Ford Division says, if you can get these five dealers to go along with it, we'll do it. And we did it. And then they said, you know how the goalposts get moved? They said, if you can raise X amount of million dollars, we'll do it. So we did that. And at this point, they couldn't turn us down because we're just rambunctious. And there's five of us on this committee and we pulled it off. And so I became the first employee and chief operating officer for direct in August of two thousand. And in December of two thousand, I remember I was in the room And I'll throw some names out. Steve St. Andre, the owner of Shift Digital, he's in there. He runs marketing. Leo ran dealer relations. And several other, Jared Rowe, who became the CEO or president of AutoTrader. We're all in there. And Jeff Drucker with a company called Trilogy said, if you hit enter, Ford Direct will go live. And so, you know, we hit enter, right, hit enter. And sure enough, servers all fired up and Ford Direct went live. And it was a glorious day. We called all the dealers on the dealer council that were founders and investors. And here we are, twenty five years later. Ford Direct is still operating and many iterations of wonderful leadership. And it's still doing its daily chores and helping Ford dealers. Well, David, with all the detail, it sounds true that you did this. You're pivotal with this scrappy, fearless, don't take no startup. Yeah. yes we were very fortunate and if i hadn't been for my dear friend leo hillock it never would have happened and uh so you know all four dealers owe a big debt of gratitude to him i love these stories of just is that the first venture that you that you officially started from scratch yes and i did not know what we were getting into We were really excited about it. And of course, there were a lot of opinions. Interesting enough, I'm now involved in conversations with Amazon Autos and what they're doing. I've worked with Roadster and provided advice for them and other online retailing-type platforms. But way back then in two thousand, we had two types of leads you could get. You could get a lead, which was traditional for twenty five bucks. And we tell you Ashley's name or email address, what kind of vehicle she wanted, whether she had trade in or what we nicknamed the shrink wrap deal. And for two hundred and fifty bucks, we'd give you the deal. And yeah. As you probably can imagine, nobody wanted to do a shrink wrap deal. It's got a good name, though. Oh, boy, it was. And Ford Direct's a good name. These are all... Somebody's good with branding over on your side. Yes. You know, and way back then, they called it cyber squatting. But when Leo bought that URL, it was the stroke of genius. Yes. So... Was this a good springboard, you feel like, with Ford Direct, kind of getting an understanding for getting something started from scratch, your background in auto, to starting the consulting side with Kane Automotive? Is that right? Yeah. And to understand the dynamics there, how Ford Direct was governed, if you will, we had a CEO and then we had Steve St. Andre, who was Chief Marketing Officer and I was Chief Operations Officer. And my job was to help dealers know how to sell cars. And I went to them and I said, guys, we've got to create training. We've got to do this. And they said, Ford Division handles training. You just concentrate on getting the products sold and all that other stuff. So I said, well, there's a need in the market. And after three and a half years, I left and started Kane Automotive and took my database and Ashley appreciates database marketing and SDU. And I started with the dealers that I was on dealer council with. And I said, remember me, I'll teach you how to sell cars over the internet. And sure enough, that's what I did. And Vernon Krause became my very first customer. Vernon and I served on dealer council together and he owned Cherokee Automotive Group down in Georgia, right north of Atlanta. And then he told his friend about me and then the dominoes started to fall. And these weren't, it started out, it sounds like it was one-off consulting with Cherokee. It wasn't trying to assemble a twenty group. Were twenty groups a thing at the time? They were a thing for automotive and have been for You know, since nineteen forty seven, when NCM created them and Henry Ford, the second actually attended that first meeting. But but the digital twenty groups didn't exist. And I went to NADA where my father served on the board of directors for twenty plus years. And I said, hey, I'd love to love to create twenty groups for you. And they said, no, that's OK. We're going to we're going to let our regular moderators just teach digital or talk about digital. And so I went to NCM and I said, hey, you know, I've been doing workshops for you and doing presentations of twenty groups. Can I create digital twenty groups? And they said, yeah, we don't know anything about digital. So sure, do digital twenty groups. So we created that. Ironically, our mutual friend Sean Niffin became a member of that very first group about our third meeting. And boy, it really took off. And that group celebrated its sixteenth year, just this year. And what a wonderful education that was for me. Niff, who is also known as Sean Niffen, he and I then said, well, these BDC internet directors are now doing digital marketing. So we probably need to create a digital marketing twenty group. So he and I founded that one and I became the moderator. He became a member of that. And then, you know, he's he never likes to rest. So we created a marketing director, twenty group, and that started about a year and a half ago. And so now there's three twenty groups. We did have two Internet BBC twenty groups, but as the other groups grew, We compress those into one. And so now NCM has three, twenty groups. And after we were acquired, one of the things that when NIF came on board, we talked about is that he would slide over and just become the moderator of those groups. And so we just formally pass the baton to him. And and if he I hope he doesn't wreck those groups because we've worked awful hard to create them. It seems like a legendary one-two punch between you and Niv. If there's anybody who has the credibility and the chops to do it. He's really funny. Go ahead. Ash knows him all too well. He wants people to succeed. When he says servant leadership, he means that with all his heart. He's as serious about servant leadership as he is about bourbon. So that just goes to show how serious he is about that. And that's like, we were fortunate to have Niff join us in one of these conversations on the podcast and hear his story of getting all the way up to working with you and getting started. And it was still pretty new for him. And he's like, okay, it's a big change, a big lifestyle change. And it's like, I feel like there's no other skill set I have. I think I'm pretty good at finding really good talent who's more experienced and, you know, has a deeper understanding and categories that are really meaningful to our clients. Like Ashley, like she's been, uh, she knew you way before I did. Like she's been coming to your events since when, when did you start going Ashley? I was trying to remember, we were talking about it before we started the podcast. And I think the first one I went to with Niff and Mel. was like, um, I think. And this is before you started doing the, the twenty groups. Yes. Yeah. My first twenty group, I think, was twenty fifteen. Um, at least the first one I remember was twenty fifteen. That's cool. Yeah. You're pioneer and social for for car dealerships. It's an amazing puzzle piece to master. No one was even talking about it. So anytime I went to the meetings, they were like, can we talk to Ashley? Commodity. Yeah. It was fun. Well, David, you had mentioned rolling your company in with NCM after twenty years of running your consulting firm and launching your own conference that had the most intimate, cool atmosphere of any conference, maybe. But what kind of led you to make that decision? And what made you feel like, hey, here's the right stepping stone for you? Well, um, luckily for me early on, um, digital was such an unknown commodity and, uh, I had been doing presentations for NADA, twenty groups. And then, then this, uh, gentleman reached out, his name was Jeff Lampton. And he was a moderator for NCM and he says, Hey, I need a speaker for my twenty group to talk about digital selling and such. So I spoke to him and boy, what a wonderful opportunity that was. So I spoke to one of his twenty groups and I spoke to another and then another moderator asked me to to get involved. And so for over uh, eighteen years, nineteen years now, um, I had been doing twenty group presentations, then we created the twenty groups, but then we were part of the NCM Institute, and we provided the internet BDC training, of which my colleague, uh, Chelsea Stilwell, uh, flies to Kansas City and, and, uh, six times a year she teaches internet BDC, and then four times a year she teaches digital marketing. And so we were already part of the knitting with NCM. And then Brenda Strummer, the chief operating officer, her and I had become good friends and talked about business collaboration, how we could do more together as companies, because even after all these years, they still didn't have anything formal with respect to digital. And so Paul Folletti, who's the CEO, he and I had danced around a few times and he was like, you know, what if you sold, what if you sold? And the third time truly proved to be charm. And maybe it was a combination of me, um, you know, hitting a certain age and, and, uh, Twenty years is a lot of time to be involved in this. And so they said, you know, you could you could come in and sell the company. You know, we'd grow digital within MCM and you could relax a little bit. And and I thought that sounded pretty attractive. So that's the situation I'm in. Now I'm not working. Eighteen hour days, I'm working twelve hour days. So it's a lot less than it was. And instead of traveling every week of the month, I'm only traveling about three weeks of the month. the wind down is starting to appear on the horizon and I'm expecting that to be the case. And so this year, one of my, my key focuses is to change the cane clients and friends, digital success workshop to the NCM clients and friends, digital success workshop of which I'm proud to say dealer OMG, has raised their hand and said they want to be one of the first participants in that as a speaker and a sponsor. And so we're really looking to have the members that attend be very well educated. And I'll put this plug in, it's going to take place September ninth through eleventh. And instead of the rolling hills of Eastern Kentucky, I'm sorry, of Central Kentucky, I forget where I live sometimes, of Central Kentucky, we're now going to move to the Midwestern Plains of Kansas City. And so we're going to have some fun events that weave in what Kansas City is known for and And so we're really excited about what that's going to look like. Yeah, I'm fired up for it. Like we've got well, I've got Sherry, one of our somebody that's been on our staff for a few years with some a lot of automotive chops lives in Kansas City. It's going to be a good opportunity to get together with her, which is going to be fun. But we had like our leadership team together in Austin a few Mondays ago when the email came out. about NCM's, you know, about the conference. And we just looked at each other and it took four seconds. It's like, say yes, just say yes. Let's, let's book it and, and claim that spot. And we'll figure out who's speaking and exactly what the educational, you know, presentation will be about and how to make it good. But yeah, it was, it's a no brainer for us. Yeah. It, it, as you pointed out, we, we really, have a point of pride in bringing the foremost experts in each of the disciplines and being able to have the attendees walk up to you after you present, meet you, sit at a consultation table and literally strategize as to what your company can do for theirs and the trials and tribulations they've been through. And so just, you know, that's for social. Imagine for search, imagine for CRM, imagine for all of that. And not have a thousand people in the room to where, you know, you have to wait in the line of twenty people to get to speak to the speaker. You know, you might have two or three waiting, but they'll get to know who Andrew Street is, who Ashley is, who Dave is. And, you know, you look at your team members And it affords them and the attendees the opportunity to be with someone who lives and breathes this. And I don't know about you guys, but I bet every podcast, every interaction with a client, your brain just grows. and your knowledge base just grows. And it's very humbling to be in this position, because people share stuff with you. And it's pretty magical to always have fresh inputs. And what was that movie, Short Circuit, where the little robot says, need input? I think that's what the three of us are like. We need input, and we thrive on it when we're in those kind of situations. Yeah, I feel like we don't really have an excuse to do anything but keep growing and learning and it seems like just by extension of you being so energized and out there and having these types of conversations that keep you up to speed and a little bit ahead of the curve of what's coming up and what to expect. It's also like come with the byproduct of having a huge Rolodex. That's like something you can't learn. It's not something you can buy or get in college. It's something that comes from being out there and being completely immersed in the industry. Yeah. You know, it's interesting you bring that up because Dave Spanicki and I, who, along with Brent Williams, just did our newest endeavor. And people say, I'm an entrepreneur. I've started a lot of businesses. I've lucked into a lot of businesses. And so when Brent Williams approached me about doing Vendor Twenty Groups, we thought, well, what the heck? That's a good idea. Dave Spanicki and I got involved. And now we're in April going to launch our fourth Vendor Twenty Group. And You know, Dave Lemon was the, uh, you know, executive director chairman from DROMG of our very first vendor, twenty group. And, and some people, you know, like, well, I didn't know you were going to create others and, and we wouldn't have, that was not on a roadmap. That was not our ambition. But the desire and, you know, one of the key tenets of our twenty groups is if we got a social media company, we don't need another social media company. We need a search company, a pay-per-click company, you know, transportation company. So you got all these business owners coming together and collaborating. How do you recruit? What's your acquisition cost of customers? What events should I go to? When I get to the event, what should I do? Is this remarkable? After twenty years, I'm like, hell, I need to open up a new business because I'm getting so smart interacting with all these business people. yeah it seems like a natural step that wasn't clear it wasn't obvious that was there but then when it comes up it's like okay yes let's do that and um yeah we were fortunate to get onto the first vendor twenty group where we can network and just kind of look over the fence at other vendors and what their headwinds are and what's helped them, what's hurt them for recruiting staff, for serving their dealers, for managing conversations, for hiring remote and all these different things that come across our desks to have a platform where we can openly talk about it without being too vulnerable, you know, without feeling like, Hey, we're feeding too much information back into people that could be seen as competing for the same dollars. Um, what's the experience been like so far? Like the difference between vendor, vendor, vendor, twenty groups and dealer, twenty groups. Has there been a, I think, I think if you, if you think about it, the, um, dealer, twenty groups, the environment is pretty narrow. Um, you know, we've got our, um, internet leads, we've got our website, we've got our CRM, we've got our communication elements, we do some social interactions and so on and so forth. So it's very compressed into this one operation, unless you're like Garber that has seventy some stores, you know, with the right way use cars and then their traditional retail and some of the other big groups like Germain that Ashley worked at with twenty some rooftops. But there's a lot of single point stores But operationally, we're all kind of in the same path. When you go to the vendor-twenty groups, some are serving independent dealers. Some are really well integrated in state associations. Some have relationships with OEMs. And so it's really vast and expansive. And so you'll sit there and someone will say, well, you know, we finally decided we're going to get involved in OEM programs. So we need to work with Unite Digital. We need to work with Shift Digital. Somebody work with those. And it's remarkable that collaborative spirit that goes back and forth. And, you know, in the hallway, they might whisper company secrets to their best buddy or have a non-disclosure agreement, you know, peer to peer, company to company. But in the open forum, they're not expressing company secrets or intellectual property and things of that nature. They're literally just kind of helping each other collaborate, think through. It's really, really awesome. And some of the partnerships that have been formed in like you guys and reunion marketing and some of the things that you all have done and the cross pollination of I know that guy or I know you and Dave Sponicky went on the road to the Northeast and met some of our clients and put on a heck of a nice roadshow. So those kind of outputs, I promise nobody ever deliberately lined that out on a spreadsheet and said, you know, first we're going to do this and then we're going to do this. It just happened organically. And it's like, it seems like you're on like a unique bridge that you've created between dealerships and vendors now. And it gives you a unique lens into both sides and, and an ear and some conversations that nobody on planet earth probably has really. And is there kind of a takeaway that you've had with the V twenty groups and with the dealership, twenty groups and your involvement with consulting with dealers, that is like, here's some thoughts for vendors that they can do to best serve dealers. Yeah, it's interesting. I am building a course right now for one of our clients that says, my team needs to learn about the automotive dealerships. What should we know? How does a dealership operate? And so one of the things that I've learned as I am involved in these twenty groups is, We've got these wonderful staffs. They're very talented and they know how to communicate with dealers. They just don't have a clue what a dealership operation really entails, what it takes to win the President's Award or the Chairman's Award or what pump in and pump out is, what market share is and how reputation makes all the difference in whether or not a dealer opens up another point and factory relationships. So what we're doing right now is I'm now building coursework for us to be able to leverage, not just to the client that I'm doing it for, but to literally be able to help all of our vendors kind of understand some of those dynamics, and I was really lucky. I've got eight brothers and sisters, and I was raised in our family store, and my wife describes it sometimes, and Ashley, you'll appreciate this. She says, you act like your mother was laying on the showroom floor giving birth to you kids, and to some degree, it was almost like that, you know, when you have your your ninth kid, your dad just picks it up and takes it to the dealership. Right. And you know, the beat goes on. But, but dad, I remember I was a sales manager at our store, our main store. We had three others while I was there and had six brands. But what was interesting was dad, I said, Dad, I want to start learning about how to operate the store. And so, you know, if you could give me the operations manual, I'll start reading it at night. And he goes, I'm the operations manual. I sit thirty feet from you, buddy. If you ever need anything, you just let me know. And that's what I would do is each day I would just go have lunch or, you know, be with him and And I just absorbed this guy who last year in March, he passed away after ninety four years. He'd been in the car business since nineteen fifty two as a dealer, before that as a salesperson while he was in school. And he just raised us all to do that. And right above me is this plaque that he received. It's a DeSoto master salesperson plaque. and uh when he passed away i asked my family i said that's the one item i really value because you know de soto got slammed a bunch and i bet maybe existing there might be a few other de soto master sales persons but uh that was a really cool one and dad always taught us he goes you know be involved understand how the business changes, read up on it and be prepared to lead. And I think his encouragement for me to, after twenty years at the store, be brave enough to create, along with a wonderful team of members of our committee, Ford Direct and the dealers of the two thousand Ford Dealer Council that invested in that idea and got it going. That was the spirit that my dad gave me. Not that he wanted to get rid of me at the dealership because I had to operate it for several years, but I sure appreciated his spirit in pushing me out of the nest and say, go forth and try something different. That's cool. That's good. Hard to get hard to hear, you know, hard to take action on advice like, OK, well, I thought this was going to be my, you know, my home forever. But what else is out there and how can I serve this industry that I've learned so much about? And it's like it's hard to beat in my experience like that. just interaction with somebody who has a vast amount of knowledge that they might not even realize how much they actually know until they start teaching other people. And it's like when we when I first started doing auto We had our first dealer that would sell Toyotas and they would lose money on average per car sold. And I was coming in and I was focused on e-commerce for marketing. And I'm like, how does this how are you guys still in business? I finally flew out to my first digital dealer and sat next to him. I'm like, how do you guys how does this work? what is a DMS what is what is an internet department and what is a BDC and what's the difference and you know asking everything I can figure out within a two-hour flight to Florida while we're drinking Bloody Mary on just like let me just get a crash course on how in the hell these things operate um but outside of like getting all that from your father is there like a good resource that you really like to listen to or or read to keep you up to speed with where the industry is Well, we've got so many generous participants out there. And someone that I pay real close attention to who really is in the know is Cliff Banks, who you all know well. And he studies the industry, particularly now from investment mergers and acquisition type thing. Also, the dealer principals that I interact with on a regular basis, they coach me and whisper in my ear, what about this? What about that? And keeping your OEM relationships really close at hand and making sure you're aware of what those are. So for me, I've been really lucky because now I've got these vendor relationships. I've got the employees that I interact with on a regular basis, the principals, and of course the OEMs. It's just a real mosaic that helps me. And then you pay attention to guys you know, like Jamie Butters, the editor of Automotive News, who's become a real good friend of mine and shares a lot of good information with me. You know, you look at big titans in the industry like Cox Automotive that studies consumer behavior and David Steinberg at Four Eyes and the generosity of those companies that do the reporting for us is just amazing. And then I love Steve Greenfield who's paying attention to new investments and, uh, I like cats, you know, it's, it's just a really good harmonious, uh, relationship. So, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of really smart people out there. And, and then I'd like to pay attention to guys like, uh, Jay the giant with, uh, um, techie on and what they're doing and what a industry disruptor can do and be. And we've got it in a lot of different segments, dealer OMG, industry leader, industry disruptor, but very innovative and very creative, but steady. And it's one thing to be disruptive and a creator, Boy, dealers sure like steady performance. And I think that's part of your gift is you do all that. Did we get that recorded, Ashley? Yeah. One resource that's been so beneficial for me personally and our team has been the car dealership guide. Oh, yeah. Yeah, his emails just give me a quick glimpse of what in the hell is going on in the industry and help feed my lips with things to talk about and directions to go with marketing strategies based on where the market is. Yeah, Yossi, I liked how he was real quiet about it. And then he's a good marketer, Andrew. You got to remember this. gets paid to reveal themselves from a big giant like, uh, Alex better at cars commerce. And, and, you know, then they DA a couple of years ago, you know, comes out, that's a big deal. And, uh, and he continues to do really meaningful work. And, uh, obviously he relies on a real team of, uh, talented team members to, you know, dissect and dig and come up with all those great stories. And he's a lot like these sports reporters that, you know, all of a sudden someone's, you know, like that Steve Wojnowski, I think I'm not, I think I'm probably messing up his name, but he's now left to go work at a university. But Woj always knew what the latest was and people trusted him. And, and so now that's happening with Yossi and I think that's really cool. It's fun to watch too. It keeps them kind of like mysterious excitement and the industry at the same time providing a lot of value. Yes. Okay. I think we can skip a few sections that I thought we were going to talk about just to give you your day back. with some more fun maybe questions but um any personal stories from with board direct or with kane automotive or b-twenties or something you're working on now that was like a big aha moment of this is why i do it and we're getting this thing's gonna work this thing is producing results okay so uh it's kind of a interesting story um it's where you use the tempers of dealers to have something really remarkable play out. So in the year, two thousand Ford Motor Company had a Firestone tire issue going on. They also had this program they denounced called Blue Over Certified. And Jerry Reynolds, who's a dear friend of mine, who has his own show called The Car Pro Show, Jerry was the first two-time dealer council chairperson. And so we were at that point doing what they called Ford star broadcast. And it was kind of the precursor to what we're doing even today. And so they announced Ford has special announcement and, you know, we're going to have a Ford star broadcast. And we hadn't, we barely started leaking out anything about Ford direct because We'd had some dealer meetings and stuff. So we taste it. And Jerry goes, I have a feeling this is going to be the largest Ford Star broadcast ever because everybody's thinking we're going to talk about Firestone Tires and Blue Oval Certified. And it came live. And I'm sitting there. Bill Keith is sitting there. Jerry's sitting there. And we're talking about Ford Direct. And we kind of caught the dealers unaware. And they thought we were going to come up with a solution to those issues or an announcement on them. And we were announcing Ford Direct. Had we not done that, our signups wouldn't have been anything. But we, within weeks, were able to get over four thousand Ford dealers to sign up for that program. Yes. And it was amazing. And we count that broadcast. which at that time was Ford's largest audience ever. But that just goes to show how luck will work in your favor. What a cool experience. Yeah. Like that seems like it put the wind in the sails for this last. Twenty five years of navigating new companies and startups and. Yeah. And what you do with industry. Yeah. What's the. What's your favorite car right now? Wow. There's so many. I, I love fast cars. I love BMWs. You know, my, my favorite was a BMW, a thirty series convertible and it was fast and very explosive, but you don't have to have a big engine. to be effective. I love my Mini Cooper and they just put a real rush when you accelerate. But I'll share this story. I got my, I turned sixteen August twentieth, nineteen sixty-six. And being a car dealers kid, I already knew how to drive. I learned to drive on the lot since I was around fourteen, thirteen, fourteen. And, uh, thirty days later, I got my license. Thirty days later, I got pulled over in a Ford, uh, nineteen sixty, sorry, I'm saying sixty-six, seventy-six. Yeah, so sixteen years old and seventy-six. Got pulled over doing eighty-six miles per hour in a fifty-five mile per hour zone, uh, coming home from school in a Ford four-cylinder Mustang. or what was known as a Mustang too. It was white with red striping. It was awesome. And I'll never forget looking in the rear view mirror because there was a four lane highway. There's a huge grassy medium and this police officer, his name was Paul Herbst because he pulled me over two more times and gave me tickets each time. I saw him hit the grass and spin and then he accelerated. I was already pulled over and crying almost when he stopped me. Here's the good news. Back in seventy six, you could go sit with the judge and he would forgive you if you were contrite. Really? Just a sincere apology? Yeah. Judge Blackard, I'm so sorry. You remember his name? Oh, yeah. It wasn't as effective the third time. But luckily for me, he was older and his memory wasn't that good. So, yeah. He would say, well, what we're going to do is we're going to make this just improper equipment and we'll not worry about it. And I was like, sounds good to me, sir. Man, well, David, thank you for your time. And it sounds like you've got a little bit, a few more hours in your day that you can mountain bike and get out there on the trails around Louisville. Plan to do that today. So thank you very much for giving me some time back and as I'm pedaling, up and down the hills of Cherokee Park today, I'll remember this wonderful conversation. Oh, that's great. That makes me feel great. And yeah, I guess folks can look up NCM. Where can they go if they wanna grab tickets? Yeah, so we're gonna be announcing it today. So we'll have a webpage up and they'll be able to access it through NCM Associates. And then we'll have ncmassociates.com. And then we'll also be blasting some emails out and have it all over social media. So keep that in mind. The NCM clients and friends digital success workshop this September ninth through the eleventh in Kansas City and dealer will be there front and center. Yeah, I'll help do my job to spread the word. And also, if people are interested in V-Twenty, I imagine go right to Dave Sponicky and send him a DM or email him. Absolutely. Yeah. Yes. Well, David, it's been a real pleasure and I appreciate your willingness to do this with us. Oh, it was great and great to see Ashley. And I can't wait to see you guys in person. Likewise, my friend. Good seeing you.