Car Dealer Wins Senate Seat, CBT 40 Under 40, $15M Chat.com

Speaker 1  0:04  
It's Wednesday, November 7, and Kyle and I are standing outside in beautiful Austin, Texas. We smell barbecue in the air, worth all the trade show. I mean, the trade show the state association reps, and we're going to talk a little bit about what's going on with Bernie Moreno? Bernie Moreno, why not?

Paul J Daly  0:24  
Why not? So we are. We had a great time last night with so many of the state association reps and couple industry partners at a nice dinner. They get together once a year all the communications people, and they try to figure out how they're going to tell the story, how they're going to communicate legislation to the dealers, how they're going to go back with that they're

Kyle Mountsier  0:45  
going to be stretched in the middle of they've got such an intense job because, like, there's, there's no 80 person, you know, staff, staff at the ATA, right? So it's a limited staff, plus they're, they're always having to communicate some pretty tough stuff, right? It might be legislative work. It might be what's going on with consumers that have reached out to them. So it was fun. They're really cool crew. They're our vibe. And so we're excited to kind of have a little chat with them. Just talk about

Paul J Daly  1:12  
storytelling, talk about getting get opening up the communication flow, making it easier, making you feel better about what you do, all those things I know we're heading into probably what is a hour and a half long therapy session with Michael Cirillo. That's really what it is. Cirillo is here. Cirillo is around here somewhere. We were hanging out with him yesterday. Man, he's just lazy today. He said he should be right here, still sleeping, yeah, but that's what's going on. We have what are we talking

Kyle Mountsier  1:40  
about? We do have a webinar on Friday the 15th next we're adding companies. We've moved it. Some of you thought it was yesterday site, gotcha. But we'll be live with you next week, Friday November 15, at 1pm Eastern, talking about looking back at the advertising performance of your 2024, years, so that you can project into the next year. And we'll have part two just a little bit later, yep.

Paul J Daly  2:01  
And we're also releasing episode four of season one of more than cars. Next Wednesday. Wow, next Wednesday the 13th. So the best way to find that or to join us there is go to our LinkedIn page, ASOTU. Just search it LinkedIn, click on Events, and you'll see right there. You can join the event. Be with us for the live stream. You can watch it after but it's more fun if you're with us on the live stream.

Kyle Mountsier  2:22  
Let's get into it. Let's

Paul J Daly  2:24  
do it. I mean, if everybody was a little I mean, all the news is politics. There's a picture on electric of Elon Musk and President Trump kissing on the screen. Real awkward. But we're not going to talk about any of that stuff. But we are going to talk about Bernie Moreno, the former auto dealer, and Trump backed Republican. He flipped a long standing Democratic Senate seat in Ohio, securing a narrow, narrow victory over Sherrod Brown. He won 50.2 There you go. Stents of the vote, defeating the 46.4% that brown received, I guess, gaining a seat for the Republicans in the Senate, the race was one of the most expensive contests in history. Which Good thing they had a dealer in on that one absolutely had all the better back. You know, a dealer had to have the most expensive thing, right? So there was this thing, and we covered it back in the day, but his opponent, and people are now looking at this as a critical error. Uh, his opponent, Sherrod Brown, targeted his dealership passed, implying that he would say anything to sell a car. So basically saying that you shouldn't vote for him, that he is dishonest just because he's a car dealer, the backlash on that was actually, I think, a lot stronger as people from the community even were like, No, this came in. His dude came in his defense. So that was really great to see a watch. You know, he's been a critic of federal EV mandates, arguing for more consumer choice, or arguing that Ohioans, as well as the general market, should not be subjected to the standards set by California. And credited his auto industry colleagues for their unwavering support, saying, quote, I appreciate the hundreds of phenomenal entrepreneurs in the car dealership. Look car dealers.

Kyle Mountsier  4:02  
I mean, if you can't see our excitement on our faces that another car dealer is in the Senate that that, like when you look at his and we have yet to meet Bernie, but like when you look at his past, is just done great for the auto industry this. The one interesting part to this is, like, his stance on EV mandates and a lot, and the auto industry shares a lot of that. But now you look at a an office that now potentially is going to have Elon very close to it and and potentially seeing these wide, sweeping federal things like we covered yesterday, so it'll be interesting to see how he kind of like pairs against that narrative. But kudos. We got a good one in there, car guy in the center. Hey, maybe

Paul J Daly  4:44  
we'll go visit him during a soda con. There you go. Hey, we gotta get we got an inside man. We got an inside guy. Inside Man, uh, I was going to say speaking of an inside man, but that doesn't make it doesn't make any sense. Our friends at CBT news have announced their second annual 40 under 40 awards spotlighting the. Rising Stars in the industry. The honorees, they say, demonstrate exceptional talent in areas like sales, marketing, innovation shaping the future of automotive retail. They also, you know, are talking about their involvement in the community, their injections in the customer experience and making that better. And they say that this is the group that is inspiring the next generation. Absolutely, people in auto retail. Co founders Jim and Bridget Fitzpatrick said, quote, The resilience and dedication demonstrated by every member of the retail automotive community is truly inspiring. Snaps for that, right? Big snaps. And there are a couple really close man. I mean, there's probably a lot of friends of ASOTU on this list. You know, we don't know about everybody, right? But two that we've had on the program that we know really well. Michael lutzky, formerly with nada Academy and now Riverhead Maza, dealer principal. River head Maza and Nathaniel Greg click, yes. What is his title these days, chief digital brand leader at Mohawk. I mean Mohawk, if

Kyle Mountsier  5:57  
you don't know these two guys, go find out about them. Nathaniel, Greg click the and the Mohawk team. We're going to be actually highlighting that whole team. You can find out a lot about them. And then Michael, Michael Lucchi, coming from being in the NADA dealer, Academy, education side of things, and then becoming a dealer, and really carrying the heart of what it means to love people more than you love cars. So to see those two highlighted in this 40, and I can't wait to meet the rest. Like, it's always cool to get these 40 under 40 list, because you're like, oh, that's probably more of our there's another

Paul J Daly  6:31  
40 people we didn't know about, necessarily, that we do now I will say, Michael, we so these love people more than you love car shirts. We started making them for full stores, yeah, with the dealerships brand underneath it, instead of ASOTU and Michael was one of the first hand raisers. So at Riverhead Mazda, every single staff member, sales, service, front, back, everybody has these shirts, and they've really embraced this and made this one of the values in their company. So in their stated values is we love people more than we love cars. So extra shout outs for that this morning. Extra shout outs. I mean shouting, oh, man, so that's a loud sound in

Kyle Mountsier  7:09  
the background. You might not be able to hear,

Paul J Daly  7:12  
but it was intense. So this is what always happens. It's quiet, it's real, like this, and then it's like whatever, like 730 or 830 Eastern click, and the construction on that building started, but it just went somebody pulled a skid steer behind us, and they're just dumping dirt in a hole. For some reason they keep backing up and the beeps happening. They don't know what goes forward. What

Kyle Mountsier  7:29  
happens? Yeah. Alright, here is the craziest I think, news of the last day, even though the election was a part of our last day's news cycle. But open AI has made waves by purchasing the domain chat.com Formerly it was owned by and purchased last year by HubSpot, Starbucks. I thought that last year, just last year, and this is a move, obviously signaling their approach to user interaction. Sam Altman open AI's CEO shared the new domain, which now directly points to chat GPT,

Paul J Daly  8:03  
did we say what they paid for

Kyle Mountsier  8:04  
it? We don't know. Oh, I thought you said 15. Oh, well, so darmesh paid 15 point 4 million. Oh, and the note is that he sold it for a profit, yeah? So probably more than that. Gosh, yeah. Uh, obviously, you know, the majority of the conversation has actually been with Shah, because he's been vocal about this domain. Cited that chat based UX is the next big trend in software for natural, intuitive interactions. The move obviously aligns with open AI's recent branding efforts, including new models like the oh one, aimed at simplifying and enhancing user perception of what actually chat with these, with these AI bots is so it's going to be interesting. I mean, we've seen search come to it. We've seen, oh, one get kind of leaked a little bit, yep. And now you see chat.com There's obviously so much momentum for what they're doing. And paying attention to it is extremely important. You

Paul J Daly  9:02  
know, there's one of those situations, chat.com, a very easy way to get to it. That's it. But they can't start calling it just chat. It's like, that's going to get in the trick bag, because then everyone can use the word chat. It's not like, you can, you know, own the word chat, right? Gemini, all the other models can say, like, chat with our model, chat.com, without, without a case. So it's, you know, chat, GPT, we

Kyle Mountsier  9:22  
say it a lot, so it's normal, yeah, but it's easy to forget. Um, is as easy as Google Doc? Oh, way easier track with that. Way easier chat with that. All right, if you want to stay up to date on that stuff, we are actually releasing a brand new publication, newsletter authoring, center of AI in the auto industry, you can go to auto industry.ai today. Sign up for that. The first newsletter drops next Tuesday. If you made it to this point in the pod, you're one of those. You should be on the list, auto industry.ai.

Paul J Daly  9:53  
Alright. I guess that does it for a show. We have a Sunday give slash therapy session. We're going to go have fun. Grab some bread. Fist and we will catch you in just a little bit. See ya

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

‍