How In-Person Events Create Innovation And Collaboration with Greg Uland

Michael Cirillo: 0:00

Can you please with this same level of enthusiasm do the rest of

‍Unknown: 0:11

this is auto collabs.

Paul J Daly: 0:13

What I wish people knew is that when we drop in, when Nathan finally hits the record button, we've been winding each other up for like 10 minutes prior, solid 10 minutes

Kyle Mountsier: 0:24

just to figure out who's going to get angry, or whatever it may be.

Paul J Daly: 0:29

Show the 10 the 10 minutes usually involves an array of emotion, from anger to hysteria to laughter, I mean. And so by the time we get into this intros, we're all wound up today. I'm excited because we have Greg uland again. He is vying for the most. I think we do. We say this like I'm gonna We're tracking Nathan's tracking most appearances on asotu So far this year. It's a great spot to have Greg is somebody who's always paying attention to a broad spectrum of what's going on in the industry. And just by nature, I think of being the CMO for Reynolds, you're probably privy to a couple conversations in a couple different areas of the you know

Michael Cirillo: 1:06

what I mean? When you're a company that is as invested in this industry as ray, ray, there's no doubt that he's these conversations are much farther reaching than we probably could anticipate. So I hope you enjoy this one with Greg uland, top contender or the number one. We're gonna have those recurring we have

Paul J Daly: 1:26

to check with Nathan on that. We're

Michael Cirillo: 1:27

gonna have to fact check that. But either way, hope you enjoy this conversation with Greg. Welcome

Paul J Daly: 1:36

back to the show. I think you are definitely a front runner for most appearances good here?

Greg Uland: 1:42

Well, I was hoping, so that's what I've been going for. You

Paul J Daly: 1:44

know, it's only a trophy and everything good. I mean, it's

Greg Uland: 1:46

only August, so we got, you know, a few solid months left. If we can keep up with teens, we should be in good shape. So

Paul J Daly: 1:52

good, so good. The summer is always one of those times where, depending on who you talk to, you realize, like they don't want to talk to you at all, or they're actually doing a lot of work in the background, right? So like in the dealer world, we were just talking about this on the morning show today, that like they're working, they're selling cars, right? Especially last day of the month, but, but they're like, working, meanwhile, on the industry partner side, this is usually a time when we have a little bit of headroom to plan, to invest in the client base and do things that bring people together. So I don't know how you feel about that. That's how I'm feeling you have so I

Greg Uland: 2:28

never, I never feel like I have time to plan. Unfortunately, you know, that's the, you know, you run about 600 miles an hour, but that's, that's the world we live in, which is what makes it fun. You know, well, some

Paul J Daly: 2:38

people on your team have been planning one of the things, one of the things that that we talk about a lot in the asotu world is like, what happens when you get people together, which always takes planning, right? It takes meals, lodging, getting people to, like, set time aside in their schedules, and, like, we're about to spend a little time together in, is it technically Virginia, or is it Maryland? It's Virginia? Yeah, yeah. So you have had team planning, this amplify event, and where you are bringing people together, because you believe in the same thing that happens. So why did you start that event? This is the second year or second

Greg Uland: 3:10

year, yeah. So Well, first of all, you mentioned the team planning. I gotta give a shout out specifically to Ashley Rench. So, I mean, you guys interacted with her a little bit. But if anybody's coming, first of all, everybody should come. But you know, if you're there, find Ashley and at least meet her, because she is a rock star, and she's been making this whole thing happen. And also Colleen Whalen on our team, too. I think so. Anyhow, you know, a team is such a vague term. Those two, those two ladies, are absolute dynamite rock stars, and any anything we do doesn't happen without them. So anyhow, yeah, with, with, amplify, very, very excited August 1920 at Lansdowne resort in Leesburg, Virginia, which is the DC area. You know, really do this annually to to get people together to share. And it's kind of, it's kind of dual purpose. I suppose part of it is best practices. And you guys do a great job with this, obviously, with asotu con and bringing people together and sharing best practices. But it also has different tracks, where we can have Reynolds customers come to and we can do best practices in workshops, so they can walk away with a lot of tangible fingers on the keyboard, things. So it's a pretty diverse group that'll come in. It's a big group this year. Really excited about it, but yeah, idea sharing and having some things to walk away with, but also tactical fingers on the keyboard stuff too.

Paul J Daly: 4:31

What are the were you gonna say some Kyle?

Kyle Mountsier: 4:34

No, I was saying, that's awesome. But, and I was gonna, I was gonna probably ask the same thing that you were gonna ask, like, where are the key topics? That's exactly what I was gonna ask. Yeah, because, you know, I like, I'm always interested. Like, what am I gonna take away from from any of these events? And, you know, just me getting it to attend. I'm always, I always get value out of it. So I'm, I'm kind of excited to hear your answer. Because I'm like, All right, what notes Am I going. Maybe taken when I show up, right?

Greg Uland: 5:02

Yeah, I think, you know, the one that is of probably the most interest to everybody is cybersecurity, right? And how to handle that. And it's interesting because with cybersecurity, and you guys know this as well as anyone, right? Our industry, like every industry, has these cycles where certain things are really important today, and then 30 days from now, we don't have time to keep them top of mind, right and right? You've been doing this a while, so, but with cybersecurity, it's one that you just none of us, right, but dealers, especially, you can't afford to not have it front of mind, or at least have somebody on your team have it front of mind. So this is one where, you know, we'll have our the Reynolds Chief Privacy offer. Well, Farley will have a session. We're actually going to have Frank Abagnale there. If that name doesn't sound familiar to

Paul J Daly: 5:49

you. Oh, my God, no, I totally know who that is. Catch me, if you can. That's right,

Greg Uland: 5:53

that's right. So he'll be, he'll be there talking about, you know, privacy, cyber.

Paul J Daly: 5:58

Pause there for a second. Yeah, you guys know who that is, right? The movie, catch me. Oh,

Greg Uland: 6:02

it looks like some, some blank stares.

Paul J Daly: 6:04

I feel like I know

Kyle Mountsier: 6:05

that movie, but I don't know the name. In particular, is this, who

Paul J Daly: 6:08

the that's the guy, that's the character, yes, character, yes, they caught him, right? The FBI said, like, You're brilliant. And then he's just basically turned this into a life of, like, putting the white hat on, right.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:21

Interesting. Wow, wow. Very cool. Yeah, so

Greg Uland: 6:24

he's, he's great. That'll be a fun one to have there works. We're excited about that for sure. You know, entertaining, if nothing else. But he actually does have some really good, tangible takeaways. Then we'll have Reynolds, chief information security officer, Nicole Kalani, there too, for a Q and A so a lot of focus, because there's been a lot of demand, a lot of ask for it. So that'll be a big, a big topic. Obviously, I'm really excited about a bunch of new products and features that we're launching at at the show. So a lot of it centered around AI and this artificial intelligence world, and new products and new functionality being available there. So that's I'm getting pretty, pretty excited to just see the reaction, right? You work so hard. And your team, our team, like our product team, works so hard to get this stuff out the door and being able to see it in the real world, and getting that reaction and those interactions. I can't, I can't wait for that. So I'm excited to share that with with everybody. So we'll be, we'll be all over the place. You know, the thing that's new this year that I'm excited about half of us on this, on this podcast, are going to be judges at the automotive amplifiers contest. Michael, you and I are odd men out. Sorry,

Michael Cirillo: 7:33

I have a face for radio. It's just what it is. I don't think, I

Paul J Daly: 7:37

don't think it was a beauty contest.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:39

Anyway, it definitely wasn't. You know, I got made fun of for my gray hair recently. That was

Paul J Daly: 7:44

live. That was live, like Sass that you were just, yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 7:48

so it was just a full ribbing. Yeah, I'm excited about that. We've been talking about that for a little while. And I love any of these, like, best idea, innovative practices, things that, you know, I mean, I remember, as a dealer, like 20 group, best idea was always the thing that someone would bring back because they saw it implemented, they saw it work, and then they saw the path to doing that similarly for themselves. And so I think that's going to be, you know, a really key piece of people's kind of takeaways is like, oh, I can grab that, take that back to the dealership, and implement that, and potentially, like, in a couple days, really quickly and easily.

Michael Cirillo: 8:28

Yeah, you know what's like, snorkeling around my brain? You know what grinds my gears? Guys, come on. Like, what do we do? What do we do? Guys, to inject into our ecosystem, into our industry, this idea of, like, you don't have to wait for a bad thing to happen before it's important doing a good thing. Yeah, like, like, I mean, and actually, kind of both of these things, right? Like, cybersecurity, obviously, I don't know if you guys watch the news, but, like,

Paul J Daly: 8:59

try not to but, but, like, we

Michael Cirillo: 9:01

always right. It's not just our industry, it's human nature. I think we wait for bad things to happen. I mean, I imagine you guys are probably going to lean heavy into this and really, kind of, you know, take people by the by the arms, and say, Hey, like, cyber security is something you got to be, not just waiting till something bad happens to you. And then same thing with artificial intelligence, with all the people out there that are talking about how it's going to replace their job, it's like we're still in this grace period where you can do something about it. You don't have to wait till you're you know what I mean, like, do you guys plan on, what's your thoughts around that? Are you guys planning on, kind of wrapping your arms around the the attendees that way at this event, and kind of helping them understand, like you don't need to wait for bad stuff to happen before you take it seriously.

Greg Uland: 9:48

Yeah, for sure. You know, it's interesting. I was talking with, well, a friend of your guys, Steve Greenfield, yesterday, and we were chatting, and he was talking about how, you know, he really sees an opportunity for. For dealers to take costs out of the dealership. He kind of framed this up as this idea of, you know, for so long we focus on, okay, how do I get more revenue? How do I get more profitable? Well, you know, the easiest way to get more profitable is to remove costs, right? And it doesn't have to happen all at once, but taking steps to your point, Michael, now, to be more automated, to have these AI tools that when the time comes where somebody is ready to retire or ready to move on, maybe you don't have to replace them, right? And just, it's, it really meshed well with, I swear, every dealer that I talked to, especially the bigger ones that have scale. The first thing that they're, they're focused on is, you know, doing more with less. How do I sell more cars with fewer people? And it's, it's really something that that is an ongoing, ongoing battle. I mean, I think, and you guys are probably familiar with this too, but Glenn Mercer talks a lot about how, you know, you go back 30 years, and how many cars did the average sales person sell? Yeah, 10 a month, right? And last month, how many did the average sales

Unknown: 10:58

person sell? 10.

Greg Uland: 11:01

And you have all this software, the talent pool

Kyle Mountsier: 11:03

is drying up. It's not just like people retiring. There's, there's a clear gap in the talent pool. We noticed that as as an industry, yeah,

Greg Uland: 11:10

no, you're spot on. So yeah, how do you how do you make each person more efficient, more productive, and give them tools that actually help them do more, versus just help them, instead of writing stuff down on a piece of paper, typing it into a computer, right? There's a big difference between going digital and having things that artificial intelligence can do for you, which is where you're actually going to see those efficiency gains. So yeah, leaning into a lot of that because, and not, not just, you know, standing on the soap box, but, I mean, I swear, every dealer I talk to that's, that's kind of Top of Mind

Michael Cirillo: 11:41

is this Reynolds play to get out of printing 1.8 billion miles of paper,

Kyle Mountsier: 11:50

like the real estate costs in these printing facilities, though, that's great.

Greg Uland: 11:56

That's a good call back earlier this year. Michael, that's good. It is. He's great.

Paul J Daly: 12:00

You know what? I forgot to ask. I'm just he's I'm the callback guy. I did forget to ask this before soda Con last year when Kyle and I visited HQ and you brought out the scroll, yeah, felt like the Dead Sea Scroll of a car. This is a car deal. How many feet is that? 3939 feet. I was gonna see if, like, we could ship that in, like, the golden arc that it goes in after you put it away to a soda con. So we could roll it across the entire stage. Like, this is maybe, maybe next year's the year, yeah, yeah. We should do it. I feel like, yeah. I feel like we need to carry it in on an arc, yeah, absolutely. Like, open the lid and then we unroll this car deal. This is,

Greg Uland: 12:38

this is what regulations do to us, right? This is what, what's been pushed on it as an industry. But, you know, for next year, we'll probably have to have the way it's looking. And this isn't really, you know, necessarily funny, but 75 feet, yeah, we have a few more feet to add to that thing. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's

Kyle Mountsier: 12:54

wild. Yeah, is that? Do you think the cars rule will be a topic of conversation? I mean, we're starting to get into, you know, session opening back up again. You know, political wars going and cars were potentially becoming a little bit of a spotlight here in the fall, maybe a topic of conversation, even in just in the halls. Yeah,

Greg Uland: 13:12

I think it will be, I think it needs to be. Actually, we'll have Mike Stanton there also. He'll be on stage in the morning. So, you know, obviously this is something that he's very dialed into, and has a really passionate interest in making sure that it's done, right, you know, if it's done, but yeah, so that it'll certainly be a topic that's that's discussed. I think the struggle is, you know, for kind of open with this, where we have these cycles, right? But, you know, you hear, you hear about something for a year, and then it still doesn't happen. So it's like, I just let me know when it's actually going to happen. It's really hard, right? It's really hard to get focused on it when it just keeps

Unknown: 13:52

absolutely well,

Kyle Mountsier: 13:53

hey, Greg, it's been a pleasure hanging out with you again, and I'm really excited about the the event, if people haven't gotten the opportunity to find out about it or make their way to it, you said the room block is closing down, but how do they get more information? Where do they go and who's invited? Yeah,

Greg Uland: 14:15

ray, ray.com/amplify, has all the information there. You can register there. We do have few rooms left, probably in the room block, but not, not much. So make sure, if you need to stay, you get those, but definitely registered and come join us. It'll be a ton of fun. Really looking forward to it. It is, it is a two day event. We talked a lot about the important stuff, the content, but also day one golf, yeah, a little bit of golf. Lot of fun, you know, some some shenanigans, probably, and then golf

Paul J Daly: 14:44

and shenanigans. Can that sounds like a great title for a vlog for this event. Can anybody go? Yeah,

Greg Uland: 14:52

yeah. I mean, obviously it's tailored to dealers, but yeah, that's what I meant. They don't have to

Paul J Daly: 14:57

be a ray, ray customer. No,

Greg Uland: 14:58

no. I mean, we're probably right now they're. The registrations, we're probably, I don't know, 40% non current rentals customers, which is great, awesome. It's definitely an industry event. It's not a, not a rentals event. So we'll, we love, love to have everybody, awesome. Well, there

Kyle Mountsier: 15:12

you go, Greg, thanks. Can't wait to see you in a couple weeks. And yeah, I'm sure we'll talk to you soon. Thanks for joining us again on auto collabs. All right, thank

Greg Uland: 15:18

you guys. Good luck. Soon.

Paul J Daly: 15:22

You okay, so we got fact checked. Greg definitely, as his third appearance is the most appear has the most appearances on auto collabs. We do have, like, 120 episodes. You think

Michael Cirillo: 15:33

he's loud? I gotta up the like, do you think at this point he's just competing against himself? Why not? Oh, right. Like,

Paul J Daly: 15:39

it's a track star mentality. I don't know you know what we need to do? We need to get back on his podcast, because we got to do a podcast with him in person. That's right. And I wonder if anyone's ever been in studio for two episodes of that.

Kyle Mountsier: 15:51

Oh, but we have. We have been on that podcast twice. That's true. You? That's true.

Paul J Daly: 15:57

I remember studio twice. No, in studio once, yeah. So hey, well, hey, look, we're

Kyle Mountsier: 16:02

gonna be in person with him any either way, in just a couple weeks. I'm really excited about it. One I love, whenever you get to hang out with a room full of dealers, industry partners, the conversation about, just like, what happens when you get in a room with other people that are thinking and dream air about the next thing in auto, it's always good for me. But also, like these topics are things because they are a technology company and individually focused on serving dealers in particular way will be extremely focused, and I think that that garners a lot of results out of just like, without things that are getting taken away. It's

Michael Cirillo: 16:41

gonna be a blast. We hope you enjoyed this episode with Greg uland on behalf of Paul J Daly Kyle mountsier and myself. Michael Cirillo, thanks for joining us on auto collabs.

Unknown: 16:51

Sign up for our free and fun to read daily email for a free shot of relevant news and automotive retail media and pop culture. You can get it now@asotu.com That's asotu.com if you love this podcast, please leave us a review and share it with a friend. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time. Welcome to Annika. Last recording I.

‍