Make It Pretty, Then Make It Ugly with Luis Delgado of Altura Automotive

Paul J Daly: 0:00

I've never asked either you this

‍Unknown: 0:07

this is Auto Collabs

Paul J Daly: 0:09

Are you the type of people that likes making a scene? Or like if such a scene is being made Do you naturally like move away from it or toward it? Like let me see what that's about or like, let's

Unknown: 0:19

get out of here. I'm out.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:23

You're out row mins on the scene for me.

Paul J Daly: 0:26

Okay, okay,

Kyle Mountsier: 0:27

depends on the scene. Like flashmob totally a part of that

Paul J Daly: 0:32

ridiculous let you be like the good kind of flash mob like we're dancing. Yeah. Is there a lot of flash mobs circa 2020? That I didn't want to be anywhere near

Michael Cirillo: 0:42

apples in Walmart Supercenter and people just start dancing around me. He's all he's all.

Paul J Daly: 0:48

He starts juggling apples. Yeah. I think for me, kind

Michael Cirillo: 0:53

of guy do that. Like, it drives me nuts when people yell to each other in a store.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:02

Yeah, you run you're like, No, it's not me if Dean

Michael Cirillo: 1:05

steps away, walk up to David.

Paul J Daly: 1:08

Like you're not gonna have much choice in either direction. But today's guest Luis Delgado of Altura. Social is somebody who I would say is probably masterclass at making a scene and walking away from it always kind of smelling like roses, because he's so likable. He like he did an episode of I've seen him do it elsewhere. And we'll see whether or not he's actually going to make a scene on the podcast. We hope you enjoyed this conversation with Luis here we go even wait for this a long time. Luis. Thanks for joining us today on Auto Collabs.

Luis Delgado: 1:44

Pleasure to be here guys. Thank you guys. I still can't believe you let me on that stage man. neither can

Paul J Daly: 1:48

we. So moving on. Fast. Thanks for joining us today. Now Luis. Thanks for being with us. You are always just bring so much energy to whatever room you're in. And if you're on a live stage that energy like multiplies by a factor of 11 Why don't we just start off because I think a lot of people don't know who you are in the industry, but they're about to as soon as your camera comes back on as soon as so we're gonna on the audio version for a second if his if his camera comes back on. We're just gonna keep rolling. But it seems like it's gonna

Luis Delgado: 2:26

continue rolling because this thing is being there we go. Okay. They just can't contain the energy man too much. And no one in this room EMP.

Paul J Daly: 2:36

So tell tell the people. What do you do in the auto industry? And how the heck did you get here?

Luis Delgado: 2:41

All right, how I got here is actually sort of by accident. Well, there's no really no accident really. But but we can really connect the dots moving forward, right, we can only connect them backwards. Right. So we actually encountered the automotive space. With Patrick from nevermind. There you go.

Paul J Daly: 3:01

Going up. Yeah,

Luis Delgado: 3:02

I'm gonna go ahead and just change to my change to my local camera, because I'm trying to be all fancy for you guys. And now

Paul J Daly: 3:09

that's what happens. That's one thing that we've learned when you try to be fancy, it typically backfires on you.

Luis Delgado: 3:16

All right, I'm done. There you go.

Paul J Daly: 3:18

Oh my gosh, that's what you really look like, I'm just

Luis Delgado: 3:23

let's roll. This thing isn't going to

Paul J Daly: 3:25

turn. Okay. So you said you, you first and foremost you came you? You came into the auto industry by meeting Patrick you met Patrick a bad gm of beaver Toyota and coming Georgia. Correct? Yeah,

Luis Delgado: 3:35

he's crazy enough to you know, get us in and, and give us a shot at where we were already working with regards to the Hispanic market. He he saw the opportunity that a lot of there's a lot of gap there's a big gap when it comes to serving the Hispanic community. Right? And it's not necessarily because the Hispanics are not there. They're definitely there but there's just a lack of infrastructure lack of folks being able to cater to the Hispanic market and and Patrick saw this and he saw that we didn't have we were working on something that was not necessarily perfect that it was you know, needs some work but he gave us a he was crazy enough to give us a budget to advertise and then crazy enough to really you know, to figure it out along the way which is a lot of times how things start up right you don't really know where you're going and then you you start working the kinks and then start breaking stuff and then then then you know stuff works and then and then now you go to the store and Mexican store

Paul J Daly: 4:35

Alright, so so basically you you kind of took over creating the Hispanic content for his store. I know you I'm gonna I'm going to fast track you a little bit. You leaned into John Duran, who is kind of like the point person to the Hispanic market and built a brand helped John build his brand, meanwhile, built a massive community of Hispanic buyers, employees etc. That now see and hear the content you're making on behalf of beaver Toyota, and has become a pretty significant part of their store. Did I get that? Right? Mostly?

Luis Delgado: 5:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely gotta right. Yeah. Yes, indeed, and, but fast tracking moving. Now what we do now with in the automotive space is we're building a, we're building a training platform. So there's a big gap when it comes to Hispanics in being in Hispanics being served to to be able to buy a car. Now what I see what John, see what my business partner saw when we went to a soda con is, Hey, there's this big gap of Hispanics that want to buy a card, and they don't necessarily know that they can add a franchise. But what about the other side of the people that don't know that there's a massive opportunity to serve the Hispanic market. So essentially, there's another big gap of people being trained that are not necessarily in the automotive space. That might be waiters that might be, you know, people in retail people in Macy's people and in other spots that are good at selling, but don't know that there's a big opportunity to cater to the Hispanic market in the automotive space. So what we're doing is building a training platform where we, our goal is to change the conversation with with with professionals, so that the professional the salesperson professional, chooses where they want to go work in the conversation is switched by telling the dealer, basically, the salesperson chooses a deal that they want to work for and say, Hey, Kyle, you want to do I want to work for you? By the way, I have 10 appointments for this Saturday.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:35

Ah, right. See now the leveraging the pocket? Well, because the Hispanic, I mean, like as a community, the the the essence of the word community is built up in the Hispanic, okay, like it is core and central to the way that that, that that group of people interacts? And says, like, I'm going to be attached to whatever this community does, right?

Luis Delgado: 7:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So our goal is to continue building this momentum and in teaching folks how to get into the Hispanic to the, into the automotive space, coaching them on how to be self sufficient, and at the same time, getting the getting, there's a fear as a business owner, and probably as a dealer, there's a fear of, I'm going to build up this guy's brand, and then he's going to leave without a doubt and take and take his his business and his prospect. Now, if the professional is going to leave, they're going to leave regardless, right, so trying to get the fear out of that of the dealer saying I'm going to build his brand, but rather, I'm going to help them build his brand and we're all going to grow we're going to build, we're going to build a massive community within the dealer, so that everybody's happy, and we all grow together, if some of them leave well, maybe, you know, it was it was as a leader if somebody leaves from my organization, it's probably my fault that they left right, so good, good people should not leave just like that. So our goal is to coach folks and to have their the to have the leverage of choosing who they want to work for and being an asset to the dealer rather than use a salesperson now some our goal obviously is also to grow the organization with other dealers but I think that there's a massive opportunity to be of service as Altura to be of service to other Hispanics that don't know the massive opportunity the automotive space can provide for their families for their children for you know in in the same sense your experience

Unknown: 8:34

right now right like literally you are living that experience as an industry partner saying like I didn't have any idea about the auto industry and then got a foot in and then started to do work and saw that there was all this meaning have like all this opportunity in the market to be a great place for the Hispanic community to buy a car and build trust also this great opportunity for people to step into the same thing they you stepped in in this industry to say there's all kinds of blue sky and opportunity in this industry and

Paul J Daly: 9:02

so I think it's really natural that you kind of like are holding the the you know the rope from both sides and trying to pull the two sides together.

Luis Delgado: 9:07

Yeah, yeah, no, I did encounter the automotive space at my younger age I actually got introduced to a Buy Here Pay Here. So I firsthand encountered fixed interest rates I encountered just the move steel on old prices right where there's like this card is good this cars bad this card is bad, it's gotta go you sell it go ahead and sell it so in a lot of the clientele were Hispanics so it left a very not necessarily a good taste in my mouth. I was becoming somebody else. And I totally dipped I quit from one day to the next actually for within four months. I quit I met my father for the first time ever. And then I was like man, this crush my life and this is not who I want to become. And then I quit and I started my marketing venture in and but I got encountered to the automotive space through about Here Pay Here and it was horrible experience. But by working at a buy here I work in the sale He's being a GM and in finance at the end a Buy Here Pay Here and yeah, yeah. And that's when I, that's when it kind of clicked in my head. I'm like, Dude, there's so many Hispanics, there's so many people that need service and they don't know that they can buy a franchise they don't know that they can they might be because a lot of folks, a lot of Hispanic folks, maybe they don't feel worthy of going to like a beaver Toyota. Right on top right? Yeah, this nasty place, I'd rather go to a gravel place, you know, where I know for a fact that I'm gonna get financed, regardless of whether I got ITN number or driver's license, all this stuff, they're gonna buy a car anyways. Which, by the way, by 2025 25% of all car sales are going to be Hispanics. Right? Next Next year, that's next year, it's

Kyle Mountsier: 10:48

like if you don't have 25% market share at your at your are 25% of your purchases happening from that client base. You're just missing them way behind. Yeah, somebody's

Luis Delgado: 10:58

getting that.

Paul J Daly: 11:00

Wow, sure varies Market to Market. But as a whole,

Michael Cirillo: 11:02

I think there's like there might be some people that are listening or watching and being like, Well, why is that and there's something just really powerful aside from market segmentation and how important principle that is in marketing. What's happening here is that they're, you know, like, if I were to go to Europe, or South America or Mexico, the minute I meet another American or another Canadian, I'm instantly gravitating towards that individual, because I know it's somebody else that understands me, my circumstances, my way of life, my culture. That's what's happening here for the people that are wondering why this is so powerful, because you have a large Hispanic community, and they are now in a different country. They're gravitating towards their community, their culture, that they understand people. And the power of that is that when a powerful recommendation enters that group, they are more likely to talk about it in the same way that when I moved from Canada to America, I found groups of people that I knew understood my way of life, and have since purchased cars when I bought a car, they've since gone to the same dealerships to buy cars that I bought cars from. That's that's the powerful, you know, thing that's happening here. So when you say that such a large percentage of people are going to be buying cars and 2025 in the Hispanic community, I want the dealers that are paying attention to this to understand the very simple mechanism at play here, which is that, that we gravitate to our culture, because it's it's what we understand. And referral traffic through that group is so much more powerful than reading a Google review. Yeah,

Luis Delgado: 12:42

yeah, yeah. Yeah. And when we talked, Paul, over there in the soda con, you mentioned something very powerful. You said, the Hispanic market is not like a button that you press and you're like, Oh, I got Hispanics now, right? In a sense, it's almost like that. Because when a dealer thinks, Well, you know, we need we need more sales. But what about Hispanics? Well, yeah, let's go ahead and make a commercial and run some ads and do all this stuff, right, and start generating leads, right? And in a sense, it's almost like pressing a button. But if there's no infrastructure, if there's no, you know, system to build a relationship and service and finance and sales, then then you're literally just pressing a button to fill your fridge with food, and you don't know how to cook.

Paul J Daly: 13:23

Right? Yeah, you don't have a way to open can

Kyle Mountsier: 13:26

Well, that's I think, I think what's interesting is it is pressing a button, but not in the typical way, the way that we say and especially in any retail industry, like if we want more, more customers, we know how to do that we just go spend money on getting more leads, right? Sending more paid traffic, whatever it may be, right, running a commercial running an ad, and all of a sudden, we get a we get lift, right. But the button that you actually press first is the hiring path, right. And that's where you're saying, like, even getting the right hiring done is hard, because maybe that person doesn't feel like there's a career opportunity there. And so it's like, it's going all the way to the education of there's a career opportunity here. And also, if you work here, then we'll support you in your community building because we know that that's important. And then like, if you do that it actually is a lot quicker than going and spending money. Because like what you just said is no if you have the person there, like the community is already close to that person. You may not even have to go spend a whole bunch of money to go like create leads or you know,

Michael Cirillo: 14:35

oh my god. Cool. All your striking. Earlier you said such a powerful thing you said self sufficient. You said we teach them how to be self sufficient. And now on the back of what you just said, Kyle about it's not about junk dealers are like well, I'm spending I got to spend more money on on generating leads. It's like bro, you're already spending money, too. Hit me, Johnny. Like, just list off the names on your payroll. If we can't teach them to be self sufficient, then you're in them. Yeah, you're in a trap that because they should be generating their own leads. Yeah,

Luis Delgado: 15:15

yeah. And I feel that there's a lack of support from the dealer of the of the salesperson. So they tell, I feel like the dealer tells a salesperson be self sufficient get your own leads, but you got to do it over there. I'm not gonna help you out. Because if I help you, then you leave. Right? So it's like, it's like a broken, you know, that's a great point,

Paul J Daly: 15:36

right? Because the, the what if I help you build this brand, and I helped you get, you know, more appointments and help build, and then you're successful, and you're, you leave at the same time, I'm saying go over there, grab a phonebook, grab your personal network, right, and basically, generate your own traffic. So people come in, and because they want to talk to you only because you generated it. They're saying literally the same. That is an amazing point.

Michael Cirillo: 16:02

Even to your point, Paul, you're you're explaining self sufficiently greater than most business people do. I think most business people do it. He say what Louisa sand and say, go be self sufficient. And then the person is going, oh, what does that even mean? I just graduated from a school system that doesn't teach us about self sufficiency at all. What is self sufficiency mean? Yeah,

Luis Delgado: 16:24

yeah. Now think of this now switching the coin in, in, in educating the salesperson of being self sufficient, and what that really means. So they're like, you know, what, that dealer over that thought they were cool, but I went in that didn't really like the field, but I like I like how I felt over here. And I'm gonna go ahead and you know, and create my brand and, and book a bunch of appointments for one day, and I'm gonna show up and tell them, hey, I really want to work here. This is where I want to work. This is where I want to bring my, my brand. By the way, we got I got 10 appointments for this Saturday, five appointments for this other day. And then you kind of skipped in a way we can talk about the onboarding sometime sometime along the way, but we got to sell cars, right? As a dealer. I'm gonna be like, Well, shit. Yeah. Let's sell. I mean, right. We can talk about onboarding later on. So yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 17:10

so what so what are some of the key things that you're building into that? Because I think that that's like a universal thing that that people could be looking for a career should be thinking about? How do I build up something that's desirable, right, like everybody wants to be wanted as an employee. So what are like maybe one or two key things that you're zeroing in on in that training?

Luis Delgado: 17:31

Okay, it's very simple. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen real quick. Let's see percent.

Kyle Mountsier: 17:37

Like watch digits. I'm just gonna go ahead and educate everyone right here.

Paul J Daly: 17:41

I don't think we've ever done a screen share on this podcast before. I'm excited. We're gonna have to explain it for the people in the audio. So right now, Luis is intently looking at his screen figuring out how do we share it? Yeah, just like every zoom call you've ever been on? No matter how many times you've done it. You just like Why won't this share but it isn't a platform thing. Just

Michael Cirillo: 18:03

like DACA checked off the compliancy requirement. Yeah. audio experience.

Paul J Daly: 18:09

We are now looking at Luis it is a picture of a chihuahua in a sombrero. I'm just not Oh, that was your screensaver. I got it.

Luis Delgado: 18:23

That's a good one, man. Very good.

Paul J Daly: 18:25

Very professional.

Kyle Mountsier: 18:29

All right. All right. All right, check this out. So explain the screen because you got like three very simple images very simple. Okay, that that you're that you're walking someone within

Luis Delgado: 18:38

within invent the wheel guys. Okay, we this is we literally just slap a name on it just so to have some recognition. But it's very simple. It's a methodology. It is we call it the AAA system. The first A, and the AAA is audio visuals. And what we're doing is we're creating direct response videos not branding. What a brand name would be would be more like hey, come to crazy Eddie Ford's we got over 300 cars and we can finance everyone go to crazy Eddie ford.com. That's branding. And what we're teaching folks is creating direct response. What that means is hey, this is crazy Eddie Ford's we got over 300 cars and by the way, if you're in the market for a car we can get we can start a pre approval started in less than 30 seconds. Click this button right now to book your appointment. 15/22 Video Direct response. Okay, now once we make the video pretty, then we make it really ugly by adding a bunch of graphics and a bunch of stuff.

Paul J Daly: 19:36

Step one, make the video pretty step to make that pretty video ugly. It's ugly.

Luis Delgado: 19:41

I suppose. It's the perfect balance of pretty and ugly, right. And now the second A

Kyle Mountsier: 19:47

is creating the hands like intentionally make it pretty then make it ugly. Yes. Perfect. Yeah.

Luis Delgado: 19:53

And you've seen it before. You've seen you've seen this app. Right? And you're like, Man, this video is so pretty, but it's so ugly. What They do that, let me go ahead and opt in just to see what. Okay, the second A is we create on Facebook forms, right? You guys are familiar with it, everybody in the dead hope dealer world is familiar,

Paul J Daly: 20:11

zoom in some more zoom in some more on that one, okay, you go on Facebook

Luis Delgado: 20:15

form, and then we use Facebook's own targeting or we use lip sync.com. for third party data, we buy third party data from them. And then the third A is we make appointments, we all within the same flow of the ad, okay, and this is connected to a Google Calendar and then it sends to the salesperson or it can send to the to the dealer CRM. So to visualize this, this is an ad that we from this guy called the Health Insurance dude, who as you can see, he made a really pretty video, but he made it ugly, he put some B roll in the back to put this fractal stuff here. And then he put the subtitles here, right, and it's an unfeasible form. Now they take that take people to this second page where people can get acquainted with overview how it works, the products and stuff, but essentially, within the Facebook forum, they give us their information. And then on the thank you page, instead of telling them which is by the way, what everybody's doing on the thank you page, they tell them Hey, thanks, dude. I guess we'll call you back some time. Instead of doing that you're inviting folks to book their own appointments, all while they're in the toilet watching kiddie videos, right? So people are busy these days. Right? They don't have time that's out there. No, and you're right, they don't mess around, right? If they're in the market for a car, they're probably going to go ahead and opt in and never answer your back. And then there's going to be some folks were like, well, you know what, I still got some time here. Let me go ahead and booked. booked my appointment, right. So this is the basis of what we're doing. We're helping teaching people by the way, we're using AI so that they get an unlimited amount of creative juices flowing with prompts so that they can create their own direct response video, and then we teach them how to build their infrastructure as a brand, or as a dealer, and then we send this traffic to appointments. Now the cool thing is that

Paul J Daly: 22:06

when I'm gonna use I think we're gonna get in all kinds of trouble here. You think so? I do good. You know why? Why? You're good. You know why? Because Never once have we done any kind of product demonstration on the show. And this is so entertaining, we're letting it go

Kyle Mountsier: 22:29

it is wildly if

Paul J Daly: 22:31

you have to go to the video version and watch the video version because this man like he went full on game day on us. He's like, check this out. I John met with the play by play for automotive.com. And now he just shot across No, but I'm realizing how he had a sim to trick bag the whole time because he started with a pretty camera. And then he made it ugly, right? off camera. We just thought time like he's just

Kyle Mountsier: 23:05

a master class didn't even notice. I'm telling you in content. Well,

Paul J Daly: 23:10

let's talk about him making it pretty and making it ugly at ASOTU CON get this beautiful session, it was packed full of people about Hispanic marketing. And I'm sitting outside one of the breakout halls in the main hall. And all of a sudden I hear this very loud music. I mean, and then a band comes marching in. Meanwhile, Kyle is on the podcast stage, talking with Mike Stanton, president of NADA. And this massive mariachi band walks into I've actually I feel like they expanded the definition of a mariachi band is a Mexican

Luis Delgado: 23:43

Sinfonica. Is that what it was? I mean, what you got 15 People with like flutes and trombones, that makes

Paul J Daly: 23:50

more sense. Okay. And so and he just found a way to get everybody looking at him and going, what the heck is he doing? But Mission accomplished, though, but they

Kyle Mountsier: 24:02

love but here's, here's, here's what I think and I love this and we'll wrap on this. But the whole point of like, like how to demand the attention of an audience, a community a segment is be ready to like put yourself out there and you're saying that to the salespeople, you're saying that to the dealers, you're saying that to yourself in the way that you go to market? And I think that, like, if anybody can learn anything from this, it is you have to be willing to do something that you haven't done before. Yes, and maybe that's higher than next Hispanic salesperson that's run your first Hispanic at try it like figure it out. Because the upside is crazy. And when 25% of the of the buying population is Hispanic, like you'd be silly not to at least try and figure that thing out. So Luis, thank you so much for John maddening this podcast because it was stellar. Really appreciate you In your participation in this community. Thanks for joining us. Thank

Luis Delgado: 25:03

you. And hey, before we leave, I just want to share something check this out. Oh, no. This if you're not watching the video, the podcast, this is the only link

Kyle Mountsier: 25:15

that we can we won't be able to hear the audio.

Luis Delgado: 25:17

That's fine. But you can see that

Paul J Daly: 25:20

throat Look at that.

Kyle Mountsier: 25:22

Well throw the footage on.

Paul J Daly: 25:25

And we'll actually drive drop a little audio into the show as well. Yeah,

Luis Delgado: 25:29

yeah. Yeah. Sounds good. Guys. Appreciate your time. You made a scene. Oh,

Kyle Mountsier: 25:37

my God, he made a scene. Look, we said it in during the conversation. I'm telling you right now, if you are a listener of this podcast, and you do not do yourself the favor of finding this podcast on LinkedIn, YouTube, wherever we post it, you are doing yourself a disservice. Day find minute about 17 and watch the teleprompter go.

Paul J Daly: 26:03

He just he just took right over. He's like, hold on. I have a confession. I

Michael Cirillo: 26:07

feel like I need to make a confession now. Because before we started this, you're like, do you guys, do you guys, like lean into a scene or lean away from a scene and then I'm sitting here I'm like, totally leaning into what I didn't know was a scene at the time writing ferocious, exact

Paul J Daly: 26:23

scene? Because he's an expert at it. Yeah, there was like,

Kyle Mountsier: 26:28

and here's what's so interesting is is I do believe that that the Hispanic market, from a franchise dealer perspective is only understood by a wildly small sliver of the entire franchise market. And that is that's like it. Whatever you think it doesn't make good business sense when 25% of vehicle transactions are going to be made by someone who's Hispanic of descent, like learning. That community is extremely important.

Paul J Daly: 27:03

Without a doubt. I mean, we've seen it firsthand. It seems like I think in a couple years from now, it's gonna seem like a real no brainer. I think we're getting to the early adopters phase. We're about to get through the early adopters phase, right? Because these have been people who have been like crushing the market for the last five years. Because they understand it's there. I think the cats out of the bag or is going to be out of the bag very quickly in the next 12 to 24 months and the stat that he gave us right 25% by 2025. So next year, a quarter of all vehicles sold by franchise dealers will be sold to Hispanics.

Michael Cirillo: 27:35

So we're talking about millions of vehicles. Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 27:39

like 4 million. Plus, I know well, it was a lot of fun. We hope you had a lot of fun with us. You should definitely check out our tour. You should check out Luis. If you have the opportunity to meet him, you should definitely do that. But for now, on behalf of Kyle Mountsier, Michael Cirillo, who doesn't like a scene and myself. Thanks for joining us today on Auto Collabs.

Unknown: 28:00

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