Chris Martinez: The Dealer’s Playbook for Growth, AI, and Staying a Student of the Game

This week on Word on the Street, Andrew sits down with Chris Martinez, a 22-year automotive veteran who’s done it all — from managing at CarMax to building and selling dealership software, and now leading the charge in AI-powered follow-up.

Chris shares what it was like growing dealerships from 50 to 500+ used cars a month, spotting white-space opportunities before the industry caught up, and how he’s using AI voice, SMS, and email automation to help dealers stay connected with customers long after the lead goes cold.

They dig into:

• How foundational experience in used cars creates better general managers
• Why social and language-targeted ads were his early growth secret
• Where AI is actually moving the needle for dealers today
• What the next era of lead follow-up and customer retention will look like

Whether you’re a GM, vendor, or entrepreneur in automotive, this episode is a masterclass in curiosity, resilience, and staying a student of the game.

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Transcript

This next guest cut his teeth, working at CarMax, helping them grow new stores before starting with a Toyota dealership and growing that dealership up to a thousand cars a month before he left with a product that he built at the dealership, ended up selling it, went back in and worked with a few other dealer groups, helping them grow their teams and sales. And now he's left again and start his new entrepreneurial adventure. All along the way, he's written several books about how he's doing this stuff and his experiences that are working well for dealers. This is my friend, Chris Martinez. I'm Andrew Street. This is Word on the Street. Enjoy this conversation.

Well, Chris Martinez, one of the first people I met in automotive, I think you've got something that a lot of people maybe don't have or they're developing. And it's like a really rich history on both sides of the desk with vendors, with auto, with dealers, with huge dealers, with small dealers. Can you give us like a quick overview of your background and your career? In my automotive career, it's, you know, it's been over twenty two years now. Started out at CarMax, was a manager there for for many years. You know, that's really my where I say my my college education was in automotive. You know, I'm saying like I really I learned service, merchandising, purchasing auctions, used cars. uh somebody told me a long time ago you know you want to find a really good gm one day just understand that the person that has had the most experience in used cars generally makes the best general managers and uh you know when i did learned everything i learned at carmax they started when i started there they had thirty locations and when i left they had over a hundred locations and i really got an opportunity to see what the business was like. I went in grand open stores. So I knew what it was like to go into new market entry where there was never a CarMax or, you know, going into stores where they're selling fifteen hundred used cars a month and seeing what that operation looked like because you did some training there for a month or two. You know what I'm saying? And you're looking at, you know, you know, at twenty two years old when I first started going into that, with eyes like a student just trying to understand how everything works, what are all the moving pieces. It was a great experience. I think it was, hands down, one of the reasons why I feel like I've been as successful as I have been in automotive was just that foundational piece that I learned everything, or not everything, but learned the structure, process, and stuff like that. But then I worked around a lot of great people when I left there into the traditional side of things. You know, Jim DeMeo was an amazing mentor of mine. And then a lot of the sales managers on that side, on this side that I learned from, internet directors. I've met some really good people over the years that I've just picked their brain and asked a bunch of questions and always learning and And even to this day, that's just my strategy. Hey, let me know what I don't know. Let me find out what I don't know. Let's ask questions. I've seen a lot of stores scale. We've done a lot of good, some opportunities where we had some stores that were just underperforming and we turned them around and some stores that were performing and doing well and we just made them even better. kind of everywhere I've gone, we've had that same kind of success, whether it was, you know, the financial crisis or any COVID or any things, you just always find out that the best players always do better than everybody else, right? So whether it's a down market or an up market, and that's what being a student of the game has helped me in any of those environments. And now, we're coming into a different period that, you know, the survival of the fittest, and you're going to see a lot of that these next year or so. And it's, it's going to be come down to that. So, uh, but you know, I've grown some stores over with some great people to, from fit, uh, fifty used cars to five hundred used cars from, you know, a hundred new cars to over six hundred new total doing, you know, over a thousand cars a month from a hundred and fifty to over a thousand cars a month. Groups going from three fifty to six ninety. Like I've seen the scale in different different parts of the country and help dealers not only on inside a store, but actually from a vendor point, you know, I created a software, as you know, in in a Toyota store and We took it to market and partnered with some good people and brought on some great people to help run and scale the company. And we sold it three years ago and it's been great. Now I'm out doing other things. I know that was kind of long-winded. No, dude, because it's a cool story. What you have, in my observation, I've been watching your career for eleven years now, maybe? Twelve years? Probably, huh? It's like a front-row education... for automotive, which you can't replicate with going to the best schools or or having somebody tell you the story, you're just rolling up your sleeves. And then like what I first learned about you, like what I first like observed about you is you're really hungry to grow continually. It's not like, well, I've learned it. I'm learning it at the store. So I'm good. It's also like, we're talking about Cardone. We're talking about Gary V. We're talking about now Alex or Mosey. Like you're reading the same, like outside of your day job stuff to get better and to, you know, figure out what players have figured out that works. And I feel like that's, uh, been a huge, cool springboard to watch for you and for other people who share that thirst for growing. And then I got your first, what was your first book called? Driving Sales. Driving Sales. Dude, yes. So I bought that. I read most of it before I came by. And I think it was like one of the first times I sat down with you and I'm like, will you sign this? Like a sales manager writing books about, you know, what you guys are doing that's turned into selling a thousand cars. Um, and, and the other observation I've got with you, Chris is like, I feel like this industry really helps propel entrepreneurial minded folks at the dealership. Like, you know, if you're, if you're a salesperson, you're sort of an entrepreneur, you're making it happen. You gotta make it happen. and then that can segue wherever it goes in your career whether it's just staying with the dealership or starting your own thing but like particularly with where you were with the toyota store where you guys were selling a thousand cars i don't know if it's jim de mayo he's an amazing human and if anybody had a problem with him i'd be the one of the first people to get his back but uh a lot of people left after, after working with that store forever and launched their own businesses, became principals, general managers at other stores. What, what do you feel like was it in Mon or was it at the dealership where you guys really, where you started taking more entrepreneurial ideas and starting building products? Yeah. You know, I think it's just really, you know, one, I think Jim, um, has a knack of getting really talented people to work together and continually trying to get top talent to work around him. You know what I'm saying? And so I think it just was one of those natural progressions when you get a lot of, you know, highly skilled individuals and more importantly, people that want to grow and work in that environment, because it's not the easiest environments, right? You've got to, you know, everybody's got a you know quotas and you've got to do things that you know push yourself out of your comfort zone um and when you're in an environment where it's kind of like a sink or swim mentality cream rises to the top right i think what i learned and and took away from from that from jim and even carmax was when you have these measurements in place it's all accountability right like if you don't hit certain things like you it's it's time to move on and you know and that it's either gonna make you stronger or you're gonna you're gonna leave right and i think as long as you had those those measurements in place you're pushing to do more but more importantly when you have leadership like that they allow you to to grow and be your own person, you know, because there's a lot of companies that don't allow you to do a lot of those things. You know, you see a lot of these more public companies. They're not going to let you say what you want to say on social media. You know, they're not going to let you do certain things. And and it was his ability to, you know, see that, you know, be more into the future of, hey, this is the way it's actually going to be. And let's just do it. And a lot of times it's about making the decision and then coming up with a plan as you go. And he was great at that. So, and I learned a lot from him. I'm like, as you're talking about it, I'm just like thinking back because you guys were the first dealership I started working with. And the first place where I got like an education on, uh, what a BDC is, how does a dealership potentially lose money selling cars, but it's still wildly profitable. Like, and it was kind of the wild, a bit of the wild west when it came to like, you know, there wasn't a ton of like as much OEM compliance and there wasn't a lot of restrictions with advertising, like as far as for my end with social and. there wasn't a lot of other dealers really spending on social too. So it was a fun opportunity where you guys had Dale Duke, you know, who great people, you know, I mean, he's still doing amazing things, you know? And I think, um, it's funny. We, we had this conversation, I had this conversation with somebody else the other day, and it came up about you know facebook i said you know what what's amazing is they like called us in their their new corporate office in downtown austin and they had this new team they were developing and they've got three people in it and it's uh automotive division for facebook and i was like man three people that's that's so they wanted to know what we were doing how and you were there And it was kind of neat because we were all in that that meeting and they're asking us a bunch of questions. And and I want to say like a year or two ago, maybe two years ago, I talked to someone at Facebook and they told me there was like three hundred and fifty people in that division. And then now you're telling me it's cut back to ten people. Now it's like thirty or forty people right now. OK, thirty, forty is to grow it. And it's shocking that they cut it down that much. That's interesting because I know what an impact social media does and for Facebook. And I know part of it was they took away those listings because I know a lot of it. They were growing towards, you know, Facebook as a listings thing. And it was automated. And are you talking about for a marketplace? Yeah, well, for marketplace. But it wasn't just marketplace. They actually let dealers put their their cars on there at one point. And then they kind of backtracked on that. So I don't know if that's what happened in some of the restructuring and stuff. I'm not sure. It's beyond me, but I think if I'm going to make an assumption, it's like, they a lot of it's when every business was dozing their staff and trying to figure out like getting a path to much more profitability and getting rid of uh the metaverse really as a focus and really doubling down on their uh profitable ad platform basically And they have a lot of staff and bandwidth for people who are spending the, you know, several million dollars monthly in e-comm and all these other industries and OEMs and tier one, where the dealership is the long tail of the spend level. and it just economically didn't make sense for them to try to work individually with stores they try to use call centers now their approach is working with agencies like us to really help fuel things and test you know beta test products and they're looking for the excuse to grow their team for auto again like i know this because that's what they're telling me But they need to see like a use case of because of them putting more energy and budget and brain damage into trying to really tap into automotive that it's resulting in increased spend on the platform from dealers. Because right now it's like the average dealer spends like twelve hundred dollars a month on social and runs the same automotive inventory ads, which is OK. But they're banging their heads against the wall like, OK, how do we get them to spend the paid search level of budget. And I think that, you know, and I've always felt like Facebook was our competitive edge in two thousand eleven when we were growing that store because it was I felt it was underpriced attention. I still think it's it's pretty underpriced. You know, I think there's like you said, you know, dealers spending twelve hundred bucks. And at the time we were spending thirty five grand a month. Um, and the amount of eyeballs we would get on our store and people coming in, like you could just see it. It was like, it was just such an immediate translation. Like you just, you just knew people knew. And even a lot, cause I was in a lot of those videos, I'd go to corner stores anywhere in, in, in Austin. I felt them, uh, people would recognize me and say, Oh, you're that guy on Facebook. Oh, you're that guy. And I would get that. all the time. It was, it was just weird. You know what I'm saying? So, and I, it was almost similar to like TV, like TV. When I get on commercials, it's rare when people like come and recognize me. Um, but if I'm on social media, I feel like more people recognize me for whatever reason. And it's just, you know, I don't know. I don't know if it's just the sign of the times now or what, but you know, I feel like not to bash on TV, because I feel like there's a place for TV. And I think there are, you know, people that come in and see me because they, they saw me on the news channel and, or prime time. And I'd get a lot of people to say, Hey, Chris, I saw you, but I felt like on a more localized level, I felt more like people just would recognize me more, uh, on social, which was kind of unique. Yeah, especially when you're like really, you know, the creative side of having like videos and stuff going through people's newsfeed when the newsfeed was pretty new and it had so much attention and it costs one penny to go through somebody's newsfeed. If you're spending thirty five grand. Everybody in Austin is going to see you now at some point. And I remember we were doing a lot of stuff with you and with a couple other people at the dealership that all spoke different languages. Yeah. Filipino, you know, Thai, Mandarin. Yeah, Vietnamese. Yeah, man. And then I could just target people that use the platform in that language. And so we are the only dealership communicating with the community, I like to think. And then we had people, you guys had people on staff that spoke that language that would handle those ups. It's pretty amazing. Those, uh, those were good times. You know, I think everything that I learned at every, every store I've been to, uh, I've, I've learned something from somebody, whether it's. learning something from a porter to technician, to sales, to the back office, uh, every role I, I try to, you know, learn something from someone because I don't know everything, you know, I wanna, I wanna be that, you know, student mentality forever because the more I learn and more it helps me grow, you know, and I don't feel like I've arrived by no means. You know, I continue writing books because they're more for me so that I can align my thoughts and kind of understand, you know, so I can look back at it later and say, okay, what was I thinking at this time? And then I go back and I go, okay, that makes sense. And then I can apply it continually. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's one of those things that I do more for me. And then, you know, if people are like me, they'll enjoy that kind of stuff. And, you know, it's funny because some of the feedback I'll get from some of the people that, you know, write reviews and I always look at the negative ones so I could learn how to get better. And a lot of the times they feel like, well, there's no, he's not really talking about any secrets or, and I'm like, well, no, I'm just giving you guys the basics. Like the basics still, you know, the blocking and tackling still run true. And You know, some people think there's like a magic bullet, but it's really not. It's just sticking to the fundamentals. And you've written and published eight books. Is that right? Yes, sir. Which I haven't done the surveys, but that's like eight more books than most people have published. Yes, sir. That's probably more than some. Yeah, for sure. I don't know about most, but yeah, because there's some individuals that I'm sure... write even more. I just happen to write books and it works for me. And after you have one published in a year or two goes by and you're thinking about more things that you've been doing that are working or different niches that you can drill down on, is that when you're like, okay, I didn't write at all. There's more to be written. Yeah. Well, cause you know, it helps me align my thoughts, right? Like recently I've been posting more on LinkedIn and doing more And as a result, I'm like, man, I could actually really expand on this area right here. And as I see, you know, engagement from, from the audience, it makes me help. Well, you know, I probably need to dig deeper in this and expand on certain things to maybe help other people that might benefit like I would. And more importantly, it puts it in a, in a, in a sequence or a framework that helps me down the road. So, you know, Today, I'm not in a store, but maybe five years, ten years down the road, maybe I'm back in a store. Who knows? I don't know what the future holds. I can tell you today, I'm focused on my software today, but tomorrow, five, ten years from down the road, maybe I'm back in a store one day. But who knows? I don't know. I think today, long term, I feel like I'm going to be where I'm at right now. But I've said that before. with the auto miner. And I sold when we sold that, I didn't know what else to do. And I was just like, Well, let me just keep stick to going back into a store. You know what I'm saying? So and that's what I did. You're just like, you have this, one of the minds, like one of the smartest people that I know that's in my network who sort of mentored me as he's like kind of telling me some of his experience. He's like, I need to write about that. Every time he's talking about it, he's like, oh, I should probably write a blog about that or a book about that. Like he kept bringing that up. And I feel like you've got this like ability to find the white space in between where all the noises of, hey, here's something that can deliver for dealers that isn't really been exploited yet, whether it's the running ads to different people in different languages, when everybody else is just running social ads to get people to like their page, you're way further downstream. And when people are running ads, just carpet bombing the whole market, you're building out the auto miner and being able to target specific people based on their equity, based on, um, you know their relationship with the dealership and moving them from sales to service um and now it's like i guess from like your time sitting at the dealership you kind of found some uh the white space for uh some lever some ways to leverage ai that aren't really being beaten over the head by twelve hundred other vendors can you talk about it yeah yeah yeah you know there's a like one there's probably, you know, several million AI companies in the United States and the world today. Right. I mean, there's, you, you hear AI at every corner and I feel like, you know, where in, uh, what I know in my wheelhouse, what is a heavy lift for me personally? What do I know that people struggle with and then. I felt like I looked at all of the landscape and what was going on and I felt like, well, you know what, here's a here's a spot that I feel like people just aren't paying attention to. And that was long term follow up. And I think some people and some companies do some light follow up, but they may just do email or they may do text only. And what I found was voice agents do that and execute it pretty well. And if I could train it with my experience in sales, then I think I could do it better than most. And as a result, I've been applying that same methodology that I've learned for, you know, twenty two years now. and it's been proven successful at a lot of places now. So and that's kind of why I decided to leave, you know, my current role at the store running a Mercedes store and and then go all in on the the technology that we've developed over the last year and said, you know what, I'm going to I'm going to do this. And, you know, last time I was fortunate enough to find a partner that helped us scale the first software this time, I wasn't as lucky to find a partner like him. But, you know, I learned a lot from him and I'm going to, I'm going to try to see if I can apply the same principles that he had that he brought to the team and see if I can do the same thing the second time around. So I'm looking forward to it so far. So good. Things are looking really good as we continue to keep executing the play. We get more and more case studies and it's pretty amazing. I'll give you a recent case study that we just did. Part of our sequence, we'll send out a communication, say in this scenario, we sent out a communication with SMS and that proved to be very fruitful. We got a hundred and ten people to select a date and time for their appointment and come in. And then the next day, the people who didn't respond to that first message, we sent out a voice agent to make the call. And as a result, we set another eighty eight appointments. So that was a forty four percent lift from that same lift list. Had we just done it one time, we may have not gotten those other forty four percent customers. Right. So and you see, you know, get that kind of traction. It just doesn't really work. Even if you had, you know, fifteen, twenty salespeople trying to execute that, it wouldn't be as successful in my opinion. The AI is really what was that heavy lift and helped. And you're dealing with a bunch of humans that may or may not be doing it, and you're doing a lot of sleuthing to figure out who your performers are. Okay, so tell me about that a little bit more. What list were you going after for this? So it just customers that, you know, we go after customers that, um, have either never bought a car, like, so they came in unsold prospects, for example. Right. So we'd go after customers that didn't buy a vehicle from, or didn't buy, um, they, they inquired with us, but they didn't, didn't buy. Right. And, and, you know, most salespeople after the. Seventy-five percent of all leads. don't get more than two contacts, if you know that. That's the number, right? Seventy-five percent of all leads don't get more than two contacts. And so when you have that information, you have a strategy to reach out to these types of customers with the right messaging. And it's not just like, hey, just checking in. It's based around real sales qualifying techniques It's about how you can overcome certain things and try to reframe it to try to keep pushing them to that next step. And it's been proven successful so far. And that's like the playbook that you developed while you were writing books, but also just like at the dealership to turn these cold or unresponsive leads end up finding a conversation that's going to get them to come in instead of, hey, did you did you forget about us or, you know, sending emojis or, you know, like things that I've seen a lot of dealers doing. But hey, say after twenty two years and a lot of success with BDCs, with training salespeople, here's the objection handling. Here's the ways to start the conversation to get them to respond. And I think it's cool. Like it's cause there's a lot of people doing AI for automotive who don't have that background. Yeah. And I think part of it too, is when I see a lot of the AI companies and don't get me wrong, there's some really good ones out there as well. There's, there's several that I know of, but they you know, when, it only stops after like one or two, like it's almost like a real salesperson, right? They stop after the second contact and there's no real play for long-term follow-up nurturing. You know what I'm saying? And some people, you know, some, some places want immediate results and we can do that, but realistically, you know, you can't sustain those types of immediate results. Like it's almost like a drug, right? They want, oh man, you just did this. And then you do it again, you know, next month, next month, next month. And reality is that first month you'll get that big boost, but then afterwards you'll get a normal cadence and you'll get normal customers just coming in natural customers that we follow and nurture with. And that's where the real magic is, right? So it's, yeah, it's cool to get that one big boost, but then it's, I feel like it's even better when you get that residual customer flow that comes in. Yeah, just nurturing leads while the dealers not doing it themselves, like just keeping that communication piece. And what channels are you running right now? Is it you're doing SMS, email and voice. And the voice is really the when you're when you include all three. It just, you know, you just get more traction. You know, we've had a lot of success with email. And depending on the timing and the actual subject line, I mean, the subject line is everything, right? We keep getting the AI even smarter, you know, You'll see when we get a miss, like the AI will send out a miss on a subject line and the open rate's terrible. And then you'll see when we have a win and we're like, okay, yes, let's focus on these types of messaging and it just keeps getting better. So this time of year, next year, I anticipate it to be even smarter than, well, this is the dumbest it'll ever be is today. Next year, it'll be even smarter. Is there another channel you want to add at some point? Down the road, I do see it. I see there's some people with WhatsApp and other communications that we can jump into. But right now, that's my focus right now. WhatsApp's killing it. That's one of the white spaces I'm finding right now. is driving people to start that, like everybody who's using WhatsApp, go ahead and like pull them, even if it's from Instagram or Facebook or TikTok now can drive traffic to chat on WhatsApp. And there's so much opportunity just because other dealers aren't doing it. It's such a big platform that people are comfortable talking on. I mean, I have a lot of people communicate to me on WhatsApp. It's interesting, but Uh, and then as you get more and more, you know, people from outside of the U S that travel here and, and move here, you know, that that's their method of communication. Yeah. Yeah, totally. That's where I started it. And then all of a sudden I started like, we would go after Spanish speakers that use platforms in Spanish and, and then drive it to Spanish speaking BDCs and WhatsApp. And then I started using WhatsApp myself to communicate with like the neighborhood dads of like, I'm like, okay, this is actually sweet. And all these other people are using it. So we're doing a lot more than just Spanish now. Uh, are there other places that you're seeing like an, a big untapped opportunity for dealers right now that is infancy or that's around the corner? I think that, um, The biggest thing for dealers today, I think, and it's probably a pretty big blind spot. And then there may be some people out there that may argue this, but I think that, you know, most dealers that I come across and talk to is, you know, the chat, chat GPT is like the big deal, right? Like there's eight hundred million people on that right now. It's going to get more. And that's just one platform. There's Grok and there's Google and there's all these other ones. I think that, you know, Google's doing everything they can to to get keep stay in that game because you know they've got those google adwords that you know is threatened today um but they're still king you know there's no doubt about that but as people search more and more through chat gpt and places like that that's going to be you you really got to do a better job of of making sure that you're popping up in those chat functions. You know what I'm saying? If they're searching for a dealer, a lot of people are just going to ChatGPT now and doing searches like they would in Google, but now they're doing it in ChatGPT. So if they can make sure that they're optimizing for those places, they'll be better off long term. I love it, dude. Yeah, there's a few players really trying to help dealerships that are kind of transitioning from SEO like the search engine optimization within primarily Google to drive traffic to the dealer's website. So now having that dealer's content and brand and footprint pop up in the LLMs and it's a totally different game and it's working more with like review sites and stuff like that. And like, I know this has happened for like traditional websites is like, their website traffic's down something like twenty percent in the last two years just organic traffic coming by the website because people are really finding answers in llms and dealerships are starting to see like organic traffic slipping oh yeah and i'll give you an example i mean customer i had before i left the store there was a customer my salesman came up to me one day and said hey hey boss we got I got this customer, she's using ChatGPT to, you know, against me from, you know, my offer. And we're working this deal over the phone, online. Salesperson can get her to come in, which is fine. And so he's trying to, you know, get her to come in. And she's saying, well, ChatGPT told me this. And then so she sends a screenshot to him. And so I said, give me the phone. I grabbed the phone and I'm like, okay, I can do this. And I jump on chat GPT too, to see if I can, you know, use, use it against her and not really use it against her, but use it to educate her because garbage in garbage out. Right. If you chat GPT is going to tell you what you want to hear. Based on how you frame it. Right. And if you know what it's talking about or how to actually explain things and understand a deeper understanding of what that process is, you can curate that message and make it so that, that it can help translate that for the customer. Well, I did that. She responded another time with ChatGPT, and then I used ChatGPT, and we just did a screenshot of what we did, our prompt, and we sent it to her. And it was a really good message, I thought, but she ended up just going dark on us and didn't return our call. But I say that to tell you that it's already – now it's now like if people aren't coming up with a plan for things like that you'll look up and there's going to be someone like me at the store that's going to be on top of it and they will take away that that business from you that you're not even paying attention about do you feel like a lot of dealers are pushing their sales people to use chat gpt to overcome objections and things like that i think some dealers are and there's a lot of CRMs and a lot of different AI companies that are actually trying to put that in stores today. And there's already little like co-pilots that they pop up and they'll give them word tracks on what to sell that customer in BDCs and stuff like that. And which, you know, I feel like dealers should be using. know because have you read some communications i i i'm very much that person that looks at i don't just focus on the showroom track i focus on internet phone ups i listen to phone calls i listen to more calls and uh i hate to to count uh but i listen i look at the transcripts on the emails and the text message threads and i see okay so what did this person say what could we have done to to improve that message. And if you have chat GPT or something similar, um, there's no reason in today's world that they shouldn't be using it a hundred percent time. Yeah. It's like, I mean, my sales team does this, but, um, like I was just at one of our clients, one of our dealerships, and just talking with some of the sales people. And then the new people are like, if it wasn't for ChatGPT, I'd be pretty lost. There's training, there's like great systems at this store, but for just them to have like this immediate resource right in front of them, instead of going back and forth to the desk or to their manager. And so our company's like taking transcripts from sales calls, And we used to like, there used to be a company Gong, which is still amazing, but now ChatGPT really does a lot of this where you can just have it really baked into what you do, your value props, who you serve, how you serve them best. And then just look at a transcript of a phone call and provide some feedback of like, Hey, you talked to us. Eighty percent of the time. You should try to talk. Forty percent of the time when they said this, you never responded to that. They really asked this question twice and you never really officially, you know, adequately answered it and gives you really good feedback. You know, what's great about that is what you just described. I do that with our agents. And guess what? You just got to tell them one time and they don't do it ever again the same way. They do it the way you told them to do it. And that's what I love about those voice agents that You train them one time and that's it. They'll follow the play a hundred percent of the time every time. And it's just unbelievable. Yeah. I like the idea of just like pitting AI against itself and being like, okay, review what you just did. Where'd you mess up? It's kind of cool, man. Oh man, well, we can wrap this thing down pretty quick, like slowly. I just got to, I got another call right after this, but when, okay, like let's fast forward down the road. When you're looking back at your career from your ranch on your front porch in the rocking chair, how would you want people to like look at your career and kind of what you stood for? You know, I don't, I, I, if everything that I do is, is really for my family. Like, I feel like if my family's good with me, cause you know, there's going to be, you know, I say things that people don't agree with and I, and I'd say things that some people agree with. Um, and so for me, if people just know, like I put in the work and, and, and that's really it. Like, I feel like if anything, I, if they want to look at me and say, Hey, look, this guy's. putting in the work he's doing, you know, what he says he does. And that's, that's all I can expect, you know, is hope that people know when I, when I set out to do something, I mean it, I'm not, you know, there's no fluff. I'm, I'm, I'm the type of person that's going to do the, do try to do everything I can to be right by people. And, uh, and that's it, you know, there's no, there's no facade. Like there's no, I'm not trying to prop up myself or anybody. I'm just trying to do right by people and perform at the highest level. I would already agree that that is kind of, that it's already going to be your legacy. Um, and you, you started an automotive, you said when you were. I was a month away from my twenty-third birthday. It was February of the February first, and my birthday is the twenty-eighth. So I was twenty-seven days away from my birthday. So you got that, you got that calendar. in your diary, you can go back to that twenty two year old Chris and tell him something. Do you have any feeling for what you would tell him? I would just say, just keep doing what you're doing, just just keep applying everything that you're learning as you as you continue to grow, but just keep just keep learning. I love it. Well, Chris, tell me where can people follow you and connect with the new AI platform that you are completely a trailblazer in? Igniteups.ai or they can just follow me on LinkedIn. Chris J. Martinez. It might be Chris Joseph Martinez or Christopher Martinez, but there's so many of them out there, right? Gotta help separate a lot of them. of the most common names in texas there's so many there's so many chris martinez's that it's it's a challenge i know i feel like i gotta change my name or something uh just so people can find me i see i understand why jamie foxx changed his name and i see why a lot of these actors do but i've you know chris martinez is is good yeah it's great There's only one other Andrew Street that keeps beating me with SEO, and he's like some amazing orthopedist in England. Really? That's awesome. Yeah. Well, Chris, your brother, man, and I'm one of your biggest cheerleaders, man. I appreciate that. Likewise here. I'm one of your biggest cheerleaders on my end. Believe me. Well, thanks. That's it. That's how you do it, I think. All right, man. I appreciate you, man. If there's anything I can do for you in the future, do you let me know, man? Same. I haven't had a chance to talk to that independent dealer. Oh shit. I should have asked you that. Like what dealers are a good fit with what you're doing? And I imagine it's all of them. It's all of them. I think the ones that have about two hundred cars a month that sell about two hundred cars a month, that's like the honey hole. I think when you get fifty cars a month, the data, you just don't have enough data. um unless we're doing the speed to lead and the speed to that's exactly what i was going to say if it's a smaller store trying to get from fifty to eighty eighty to a hundred speed to lead yes like that we can call a customer within ten seconds and really have a good conversation and qualify them and push them through as an appointment that's that's where the biggest benefit is But then those stores doing two hundred trying to get to two fifty or three hundred. That's where they've got a big enough CRM and database for you to start running your traps on. Oh, yeah. Well, the long term sequences, right, because they've got a pretty good equity, pretty good rate. Like there's some stores right now that we're doing a Nissan store that does, I don't know, five hundred cars a month. And we gave them four hundred and fifty four appointments last month or this month. And it's it's unreal. You know what I'm saying? So and we're just going to continue to keep driving traffic toward towards those places. And it's it's pretty amazing. What's the what's been the reaction like with some of these stores that are really getting like my Augusta store? He's got one store and he saw the traction and he said, man, I'm going to sign up my other store. So now we're signing up his other store. And, um, and it's just, it's been pretty consistent where, you know, we drive more traffic and, and now I've been looking at some of the CRM data and customers that never really engaged with our AI, but five days later showed up on the dealer's website. And now they're actually a lead. I can see that in real time, like, Hey, this customer, we send an email call text. We did it. two times and then five days later, they're in the dealership CRM. And so you're logging into the dealer CRM and navigating and kind of finding those opportunities that the dealer has that you might have helped generate? Yep. So I'm going to end up, I don't have the integration today, but I'm working on the integration to show that we're influencing a lot of their deals too. Yeah, dude. And what I love from what we do is like just taking that same list and going through their reels and their stories and their newsfeed. They're going to know that we want to talk to them. A hundred percent. And you know, the rule of seven, right? And it's really the rule of twenty. I mean, most people need to be influenced that they have to see something at least twenty times before they get influenced to make a decision. In marketing, it was always the rule of seven. They need it at least seven times. But anymore, it's like twenty times before they really say, you know what, I'm going to go do that. Yeah, especially with the amount of noise people have. Yeah, I forgot what it is. You get twenty six hundred impressions a day from your toothpaste to everything else. Right. Oh, man. Hey, well, thank you. And let's definitely keep in touch. I want to find some some you know lightweight ways to do some work together just yeah i'll tell you right now uh one of my stores he wants me to use the speed to lead on his facebook ad and uh i'll let you know how that goes yeah man just do lead gen and optimize for leads and it'll create your three dollar leads that's the goal sir that's the goal so all right man if there's anything i do let's keep let's keep in touch for sure and i'll let you know how it goes with that that case study You have a good one. Take care. See ya.