Grinning from Ear to Ear with Jordan Cox

Paul Daly: 0:00Hey, it's me. So we're already starting this episode where Michael is laughing for a reason I still don't understand. Kyle is yawning and rubbing his face. And I can't believe it's been so long since we've recorded an auto collabs

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:12

in the world happened to us

Unknown: 0:20

this is auto collabs

Michael Cirillo: 0:23

Hi. I'm laughing because this is like when you can't stop laughing in church, you know, you should, but you can't.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:35

They can't do

Michael Cirillo: 0:37

this story that my friend just told me yesterday, which is so completely asinine and uncommon, popped into my head, right when you were like, Okay, let's record,

Paul Daly: 0:50

dude, tell.

Michael Cirillo: 0:51

I know. So here. First time, I am not going to tell the different podcasts. This though is something I'm going to tell the both of you after. Because I think you will agree that this is the most inappropriate crazy. Yeah, we can talk about. But for those that listen to auto collabs, this, I want to do a reach out to our audience. If you are curious, even remotely curious what the story is, you're gonna have to show up on our socials on YouTube, on a podcast, app, leave reviews, do all the things and in your review, you have to say I needed to hear the story at some point it will come out. That's but I'm going to tell the two of you after

Kyle Mountsier: 1:29

podcast for all things that you can't talk about.

Paul Daly: 1:32

We've talked about this right before right before we're sure we can retire. What looks like a small

Kyle Mountsier: 1:40

talk about we can talk about the fact that Jordan Cox is going to be hanging out with us. Oh, yeah, he's the he's the marketing director for gates. Automotive marketing guys always close to heart for the three of us, you know, tend to like that. I'm telling you. Jordan has probably some of the most energy that I've ever seen on social media. It's like a tie between him and Steve rustler. Right. Like who can just get full lit in every like, maybe hint Nathaniel grec. Like, like, who in the game is just

Paul Daly: 2:12

always just full strong? Right. Very strong contenders.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:16

So yeah. So we hope that you enjoyed this conversation that we have with Jordan Cox.

Paul Daly: 2:23

Alright, Jordan, you and I had the chance to meet in person for the first time several weeks ago in Lexington, Lexington, Kentucky. And I have to say, I really enjoyed being next to someone who actually has more energy than I do at a live

Jordan Cox: 2:42

well, I gotta say the feeling is mutual, because I loved every second of it. Even that morning, I'm like, Paul, I know I told you this story already. But the fact that we were just getting coffee, and the ability to turn around, and it's Paul Daly in person and engaged forever on LinkedIn, but just seeing you in person and finally getting a chance to shake your hand and smile at you and have that two way conversation. And I loved it. Second of it. Well, I love that.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:09

The second thing you said if you if for some reason, you're listening to the audio podcast, and you've never followed Jordan on LinkedIn, he said, I got to shake your hand and smile at you. Because that's like, those are the that's the thing that you'll know joy is like big old smile. He's got a big old smile on right now. He's wearing his sunglasses inside. smile all day. And so like, like most people are like, I get to shake your hand and get to meet you and say hi, and tell you about myself. And he's like, I got to smile at you when

Paul Daly: 3:43

you have a great smile. It's like one of those smiles actually, that you're like, how can how can I like be negative? Or how can I feel down when I have this like coming at me? And it's very unique. It's also incredibly incredibly genuine. Jordan, why don't you talk about this for a second. So why we're at Kane event. You won an award and well let you talk about the award what and my favorite memory of any content that we made on the ground was when you're walking up to show the camera your award when we're going to do a little podcast and it broke your hands and the first thing you did was look up and be like Please tell me you were rolling that's the thing you know Yeah, I was

Kyle Mountsier: 4:27

always be rolling always be capturing content.

Paul Daly: 4:30

Tell us about the tell us about the with the award. And kind of what that was for and and why you chose to do what you featured in that presentation.

Jordan Cox: 4:39

Sure. Me and here I'm laughing in in smiling so big that I'm crying. I'm having such a great time. Thank you so much. We're only like two minutes into this. So much more to go. So that award was at the David Kain client workshop, the Digital Workshop that they had two weeks ago down on Lexington. It's an event that David came puts on every year. This is the 18th time he's done it I know David from, just because he's an expert in the automotive industry and everything digital. And Tim Cox praises him for being the smartest man in automotive. And I always make the joke that I'm gonna top that and make him and say that he's the most beautiful man in automotive. you've ever seen him, he's got these beautiful glasses, he's got this beautiful white hair, I always make the joke, he's a silver fox, he loves it, he loves the attention. But we were at that event, and we had the opportunity to participate, I had the opportunity to participate in the best idea competition. And they went through and selected these ahead of time, so you could submit a video, you can be a part of it that way, it was just really cool. And really fun to do that. And I'm kind of lucky, I get to see David Kain three times a year in our 20 group. So anyone who doesn't know what a 20 group is, it's 20 Different dealers from around the nation get together and actually around North America, because we even have some people from Canada, that had been a part of ours before. So that's always really cool to go to that and be a part of that.

Paul Daly: 6:01

Talk about talking about what you actually what the subject matter of your brochure, your award was, because I think that that's the thing. That's the thing that really got my attention. I think a lot of listeners will benefit. Because he kind of had this mentality of like, Hey, you can do this, too. And here's how. So go ahead. I'll let you talk.

Jordan Cox: 6:19

Yeah, Paul, the concept that I pitched was, hey, you have such great stories at your dealership, and you need to be able to share that and no one can tell that story better than you and your staff. So what you should do is create a platform for that. And you do that through creating a podcast. And just telling that story on a continual basis. You should also do it through creating employee spotlight videos. So it's a two minute piece of content about your employee, they sit down, you interview them, but you cut it down to about a two minute piece of the employee just telling a specific story. And again, you're guiding them through that and kind of telling that process and then cutting it down afterwards. And you can complete this in about an eight hour day. And I know that sounds crazy, like if you've never done it before, but I promise, do it once. It might feel like a train wreck the first time but I swear you can get through it and get it done. In an eight hour day, you can shoot four episodes of your podcast for the entire month. If you release them once a week, and then you can also shoot for employee spotlight videos. I would say your production workflow should look like you have an employee do the employee spotlight video, and then you have him sit down into the podcast episode with them. Their podcast episode is really kind of structured. I would even say similar to what you guys do, just because you guys always talk about relevant news. I think that's important to consumers. And there's ways to kind of intertwine your dealership story into that. So just doing like a really short hook at the beginning. 15 seconds. Hey, guys, thanks for tuning in for episode today. We've got some great content planned for you today. We've got this news article, we've got the second news article. But first, we're sitting down with our sales manager from our Toyota store. So Scott, you're over here doing this Yeti, Yeti, Yeti, you go right into got it down. He's like

Paul Daly: 8:10

I started listening. I started listening like, Oh, what is it gonna be? Oh, he's on our show. He's on our show.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:18

How long have you been doing the podcasts then?

Jordan Cox: 8:20

Look at that. It's a podcast and the podcast, right? It's like Inception. Yeah. So we've been doing it now for about a year and four months, we started at the beginning of 2022. We went through and created. So that was season one. Season One is different than what season two is. And just so you guys know and your audience knows, don't feel like what you're doing today. You have to stick to for the rest of your life. Right? Go through, do it for one season, get that done, and then figure out what you want that next big idea to be whether it's a workflow difference, whether it's development difference, or even just a different feel. So season one was all about long form content. This is gonna sound crazy, but we would have that employee sit down for an organic conversation. And sometimes they would be almost two hours long. Whoa,

Paul Daly: 9:04

yeah. So Rogan want to be over here now Rogan?

Jordan Cox: 9:07

So I was like, man, so Joe Rogan can do this and sit down and have this conversation. And again, we would intertwine not just like their story, their background, where they came from, but we would also intertwine. For Season One, we would intertwine some education about the industry or if they were an expert on Toyota, if they were an expert on Chevy, and just talk about the differences between the two. Or if we had a finance manager on we were talking about, hey, how would you rebuild your credit if you're starting over? If you have bad credit? How do you rebuild that? How do you start over and start fresh and yes, it's going to take a while to get through that info. Exactly. And Ansel Roosevelt's if it takeaways that they can have from that, which is awesome. Tell us

Paul Daly: 9:49

what the result was of you doing that and how long it took before you were like, Okay, this is actually doing something Sure.

Jordan Cox: 9:59

The way We got so much interaction. First of all, I need to preface this, it's not like you just toss it out on a podcast platform and and get those views that way, there's got to be a bigger strategy behind it. So some ways that we did it was we branded it on all of our websites for our for rooftops in our group website. And then we also wanted to brand it on our vehicle VDPs. So we would actually put these Why buy photos. So you've probably seen this a lot is that you've got your vehicle photos, and then at the very end, they would have some Wi Fi photos. Here's some photos in the dealership, here's what this is. And we would put this promo in there, too. And then we can track and see how many clicks we were getting from that. And you might be like, Well, how do you get that click from over there, it's simple, you just make a domain, we pick gates, car talk.com. And anytime that anyone would see that VDP and get that promo, they could just enter in Gates car talk.com. And it would forward directly to where they could listen to that and experience that. So now my hands are

Paul Daly: 10:59

getting there because they weren't clicking through, they're actually typing in exact domain. I love I'd never thought of that. But you think about it, like promoting educational content in the merchandising slider, which could show up on any like, right, like that's going to show up on your third parties. And that's going to show up. And all of a sudden, like you see a nice photo of like authoritative looking people at a podcasting format you're familiar with, like, three, like, how to build how to understand vehicle financing correctly, to where there's so many in the show right now.

Jordan Cox: 11:34

And there's, there's so many different layers to that, too, is that now all of a sudden, you can also release the same thing on your social channels, so that you can get that employee looking like the hero, talking about what they love, giving people applicable steps that they can take in their life, whether it's how to buy a new car, should you lease should you should you find it? Should you lease? What are the rate differences? What are the difference in ownership type? There's just a lot of different things you can do from there. And I got to answer your question first, before we get on to the next thing. Your question was, How soon did you get all the interaction?

Paul Daly: 12:06

Do you answered the question? I didn't know I needed to ask though.

Unknown: 12:11

Yeah, how long though, because I think a lot of people make content. And there's this thought, like, Hey, I made something. And then it's like planting a seed in the ground. And then just like anxiously watching the desert results in it, right? I don't think that seed works, because no, there's no tree yet.

Jordan Cox: 12:25

Exactly. And it also matters how you launch it. When we first did it, we dropped 10 episodes all at one time. So we waited, built that content up, dropped all 10 At one time, and then continued building after that, after we dropped those first 10 episodes. Within four weeks, we had over 460 hours consumed through podcasting platforms through YouTube hosting, and a few other ways, methods through there. And yes, there are some ways that you can't really calculate all that listening time. So like on Spotify, you can kind of see what your estimated listening time was, you know, what your downloads were? You know what your average listen time was for those episodes. But on YouTube, it does tell you how many views you had, and how much time was listened and consumed. So those are some really easy metrics to see. What was also crazy was the gap between season one and season two, if you go through and see it was it would have been the very last episode and season one that had something crazy, like 1300 listens on it. Just because that one sat there for a little bit on

Kyle Mountsier: 13:32

its own. Finding backing into it. Yeah,

Jordan Cox: 13:35

exactly. But the other nice thing is now the sudden even though that exists, they can go back and listen to those other episodes. Which is interesting.

Kyle Mountsier: 13:43

Yeah, that's awesome. Man, what a great idea. And just like highlighting, integrating into the shopping journey, that's really cool. So what what was your path to get to this point, like in the marketing in the demand gen side of auto? Where did you do? Have you always done marketing? Or was it like a passion project that turned into a role? Or where did that come from?

Jordan Cox: 14:06

Sure. And that's a great question, Kyle, because a lot of times marketers either come from inside out or they come from outside auto, I actually sold at a an independent import to independent import dealerships for about seven years before I made that transition over to marketing, okay. But before I even was doing that, I was really big into web development, and even just design as a whole. And everybody probably remembers MySpace. And what you could do is you could go through and learn. You could go through and learn HTML and CSS, and you could change your MySpace profile. So after I learned that, I was like, Oh my gosh, you can do this. So I went through and did a lot of self taught with HTML for CSS two, and then learning PHP server side programming, a lot of cool stuff like that. So eventually, those two paths kind of crossed and I said, Man, digital marketing is where it's at. It's fun.

Kyle Mountsier: 14:59

That's Oh, cool, man, that's really neat. Like the two is like, okay, I can I can see the way that my my combined experiences lead me to this right now what are the things that what are you working on right now? Is there like? I mean, I know you're doing season two and that of that. But what's kind of like on the horizon for you or your career path or gates automotive like what are you guys the challenge that you're trying to solve?

Jordan Cox: 15:23

Great question, there's always a challenge that you want to solve with whatever solution you're trying to roll out. And as long as it actually makes sense that you're trying to solve it, because a lot of people waste so much time chasing their tails, saying, Oh, I just want to go through and build this because it looks cool. It's got to really solve a problem. And one of the things we just rolled out, which was super simple, was, we wanted to allow people to actually scan a QR code from somewhere, take them to a SMS conversation, a text message conversation, and then automatically engagement with the correct store. And this was like a super simple solution. And it's something that we struggled with for a while, because we used to have to send it to one person. So let's say they saw our TV spot, they wanted to do a instant cash offer on their car, they pull out their camera, they scan the QR code, and generate that text, I used to go to a person like me, and then I had to filter that over to our BDC and communicate that somehow. So a really simple solution for that is to use Twilio. With Twilio, you can program that incoming text message, you can ask them, hey, which store is closest to you, 123 or four. Once that person responds 123 or four, then that goes directly to who that contact is at that store. That was a really simple solution. And it literally cost one cent per message in and out of that. So it's like ridiculously cheap. And, you know, I'm not saying you seem

Kyle Mountsier: 16:54

like gain deficiency, or is that kind of true? For sure we have.

Jordan Cox: 16:58

And we're only so we just released that on May on May 1. So the first this month, four days ago. Oh yeah. And so even just now, we've had a few that have come in. And we're able to engage that conversation just like that. Because an easy stat that we talk about a lot in, in internet sales, internet marketing, stuff like that is we need to engage with that customer as soon as possible. Because we need to continue that conversation, continue that journey. Because if we wait till minute 24 of that conversation, it doesn't matter. If you respond at minute 24 hour 24, that customer is already checked out. So the faster we can get it to who needs to respond to it, the better. So it literally will get to them within like, you know, five seconds. And yeah, it's not like,

Kyle Mountsier: 17:40

here's a QR code, submit a lead on my website. Wait till we get back to you. That's

Jordan Cox: 17:49

exactly, and we did a so we always communicate with our internet sales staff. And we're releasing something like this. So we did a live demo with them a couple days ago saying, Hey, here's what's going to roll out. I want everybody to pull out their phone and just do a test with this. They were amazed at how fast that that lead ended up getting into their phone. So they could continue that text message. They're like, wow, that was fast, or it's like that. But again, like, who thought that something so simple would work and improve our efficiency and improve that customer journey. Anytime you can make it easy for your staff or improve anything for your customer to make it easier to do business with you. You should do it. It's always worth it.

Paul Daly: 18:25

Jordan, tell us something we just kind of premiere in this TV show we're doing. Yeah. That's kind of rewriting the narrative around retail auto. Tell us something good from within your stores or your group. Just something inspirational are some good things that you think people outside the auto industry probably wouldn't assume is happening.

Jordan Cox: 18:46

I think there's so you guys said it best. This morning on on your morning episode was I think the word was rewrite. And, yep, you're almost rewriting that history, and allowing everybody to communicate what's going on within automotive. And I mean, maybe if you can hop in here and explain it better than I can, that will be great. But will

Kyle Mountsier: 19:12

your store what's happening in your store that's like

Paul Daly: 19:15

day in day out where you're like, Oh, I bet if people knew this was happening in an auto dealership, it's so good that they'd be surprised.

Jordan Cox: 19:21

Okay, here's a good example. Someone can come in off the street and get in as a sales consultant with us. I mean, it's not that easy, but anybody can sell cars.

Paul Daly: 19:30

Right? It's not open interviews that

Jordan Cox: 19:34

don't show up at the door right now. Give us some time. But selling cars can come from anywhere. And man that reminds me of that movie Ratatouille. I don't know why I always make movie references. But one of the main lines on ratatouille from Pixar is

Paul Daly: 19:50

anyone can cook Exactly.

Jordan Cox: 19:52

So that's the line is that he's he's trying to figure out what that means. Anybody can cook because anybody can't cook But cooking can come from anyone. And you'd be surprised. These people that are looking for something from just selling cars. And the stereotypical car salesman is, is a burned out guy who can't succeed, that's on his last dollar. Sometimes that's true, but it's not. There. There's so many times that we find someone and we finally plug them in. And they they just blossom and they become more confident. And they realize that they have a path and a career. And it's more meaningful than just selling a car. It's helping someone buy the next thing to get them to that family vacation, or they just had a baby, or they went through a difficult life change, or they just got their dream job. And they need to get a car that can drive a little bit more distance. And seeing the sales consultants really see that bigger picture. It's it's really eye opening. And that happens on a daily basis. It's amazing. That's awesome.

Kyle Mountsier: 20:58

Well, Jordan, thank you so much for spending a little time with us. If you aren't checking out his podcast more than cars by gates automotive that's what you got to search it and I just looked it's like on every podcast platform. So

Jordan Cox: 21:12

Dave's Car Talk look that up. Yeah.

Kyle Mountsier: 21:16

Gates Car Talk. Yeah, head to you got to check it out. You get his laugh, you get a smile, make sure you connect with him on LinkedIn or Facebook or anywhere where you get social content. But Jordan on behalf of myself and Paul Daly and also Michael Cirillo couldn't be here today.

Paul Daly: 21:31

We really think very much.

Jordan Cox: 21:33

Yeah, yeah. Kyle, Paul, and Michael, love you guys so much. You guys are you guys are big stars in my world. Thank you. It's my pleasure.

Paul Daly: 21:42

All right after that interview, and after the intro, My cheeks hurt so bad because when he says in the beginning of the interview, I just wanted to smile. I just wanted to say hi, shake your head greatest. Glad you brought that up. I

Kyle Mountsier: 21:58

think it's like this like little chuckle. You know, it's great. This is

Michael Cirillo: 22:04

this is a topic, we're obviously pretty passionate about some of the stuff that he brought up, especially as it pertains to dealerships, podcasting, I've wondered this forever, like I get it people are like motors, millions of podcasts, or no. And where are we given a fit in, I think of the regional impact, doing something that is still largely out of the norm for the general public. Like imagine if you're the only dealership that says, hey, tune into our pod, where we're going to show you the hidden features of vehicles and how you can save money and how you can get served this done and edited, uncover all of the topics and put it out there. For me, it's like, well, who cares if only 100 people a month listen to that, you know how difficult it is to get 100 people into an auditorium or to a conference or into your store. Like you've got captive listeners where you can actually engage with them, and they're gonna build a relationship with you without having ever stepped foot in your your business. I guess we're passionate about it.

Kyle Mountsier: 23:03

He said that in just a few weeks, they had over 400 hours of listening. And maybe for those that have that have done podcast, you know, and like thought about the number of hours and multiplied however long the podcast is like, it's not, it's not a mind blowing number. But think about that. A total of over 400 hours in a couple of weeks, people have paid attention to your brand. Like there's that's some loyalists there. And I don't care even if it's if it's your employees, if your employees are that attached to hearing about other employees, whatever it is that type of brand affinity to the logo to the core. And then like as that spreads, and we know that long form is still is actually growing as as a as a medium. And so, I mean, he said he said that, like the first conversations with Joe Rogan style two hours long. Oh, that's commitment. It's unbelievable that you can pull that off. And if people are listening that long to something you know, they're probably servicing with you buying a few cars, their family members, right. So like why not find those people because they're going to be the real cheerleaders for your

Paul Daly: 24:10

No doubt Well look, a pod marketing podcaster in brain. automotive would obviously be one of our favorite interviews. Thank you so much for spending some time with us on behalf of Kyle Mountsier, Michael Cirillo, and myself. Thanks for listening to auto collabs.

Unknown: 24:25

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