My Level of Service will Determine My Outcome with Evan Riley

Kyle Mountsier: 0:00Did you know? This is auto collabs that sometimes Google literally breaks and every marketer in the country freaks out. For like about three and a half minutes I actually didn't know that. How does it break? Literally all of AdWords and Google Analytics just shuts down and what you find is marketers. They have these corners in their offices and you see that like if you could birds eye view you could you would just see them shaking in the corner. It's quite a while, Is it?

‍Paul J Daly: 0:47

because they think they've just done something very wrong or they just don't know what to do. They don't know what to do.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:52

They're like I can't look into analytics. Life is gone. Life as we know it, it's over.

Michael Cirillo: 0:57

This is precisely why old people hate young people.

Paul J Daly: 1:02

Is it precisely why? That's exactly why.

Michael Cirillo: 1:05

The one reason they're like. So let me get this straight. Something on the interwebs broken. I had to boil all my food. I had to mobile on with clippers, with scissors.

Paul J Daly: 1:21

I hope it never comes back.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:23

This is like the moment where I'm like why won't this website load? Why won't it load? And my dad looks at me like son do you? Remember middle school, right? Oh, man, that has nothing to do with anything that we're going to be probably talking about.

Paul J Daly: 1:44

Oh, I'm sure it ties in somewhere.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:46

It might sneak in. But, we are really excited to introduce you, our friends here in the auto collapse world, Evan from Flick Fusion. We're going to be hanging out with him today. I you know, I don't know much about Evan, I don't know too much about Flick Fusion outside of their video capacities, but you know, should be a should be a riveting conversation.

Paul J Daly: 2:10

Love the new people, absolutely. I love the new ones. I have high hopes. I have high hopes. I hope you have a good day. We're all kind of in good moods.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:19

Yeah, flick Fusion is going to be at a Sodu Khan. I'm excited about that. So you know, if you don't know about Flick Fusion, you get to get to introduce yourselves to him then, and I think Evan's going to be there.

Paul J Daly: 2:30

So if you don't know about a Sodu Khan, actually are you just not assume it's no, no, a Sodu Khan is our oil in your food. Yeah, yeah. Your grandparents and parents probably won't be there. Sodu Khan is like the automotive industries version of like South by Southwest. It's at Baltimore. In Baltimore this year you can go to a Sodu Khan dot com. We hope you can join us there. But for now we have this conversation with it.

Michael Cirillo: 3:01

Okay, so I moved to Texas and I realized that the grass in Texas is different than the beautiful Kentucky blue from Canada. And so what do I do, Evan? I join a bunch of groups. One is called Texas lawn care nuts and it's all about different mowers and different ways of cutting the grass. And then I see you join the call and I wonder is there a group for beautiful bald men?

Evan Riley: 3:34

the.

Paul J Daly: 3:41

And then, and then, and then you realize that this is it.

Michael Cirillo: 3:46

And then, in the spirit of mowing, I can't help but ask are you a razor in the shower kind of guy? Are you the like? I was wondering where he's going to go so that's an awesome question.

Evan Riley: 4:01

It took a long time to figure this out. Man, it's clippers here. Clippers are the rough stuff razors in the mirror. You got to do the ears like if you don't get this right, you're in trouble.

Michael Cirillo: 4:11

More annoying than having to do a bald dude and he's forgot the hairs behind his ears.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:19

Waving at you.

Evan Riley: 4:22

Back there years ago at NADA on day one, I realized I left a little and I was pumped up. We were back at NADA. If you remember that, it was like all right, let's get back. I do it was like.

Michael Cirillo: 4:38

Oh my gosh, I think I'm gonna be out there, you have a beautiful head. You look great bald, just like you know, I recall your mom and and thank her for not letting you, as a baby, lay on one side. The other because you got a perfect shape going on On the back with nobody notices.

Evan Riley: 4:56

Everybody think I thought I had a weird head. I got a big, very symmetric. But yeah, hey man, I was bald. Grandparents both sides mom, grandma, grandpa. It was kind. I was 22, one of the best students I ever made.

Paul J Daly: 5:10

Yeah.

Michael Cirillo: 5:11

I didn't. I don't know.

Paul J Daly: 5:11

I don't know why we're talking about this so deeply all of a sudden, but I don't know what Michael decided. But when you look back at my pictures from like my late 20s, I was like, but like, where was that friend that just told me man, it's time.

Michael Cirillo: 5:26

Yo, my wife was like you better do something about that cuz. Like I had, I went through the comb over. She's like you better do something about this cuz. One day our kids are gonna ask why your hair parts in a circle.

Evan Riley: 5:49

I got home she said how much did you pay for that? I was like I was like 25, 30 bucks for the tip and she was like Never again.

Michael Cirillo: 5:57

I'm not a motor one, bro. We need an automo, an automoers group.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:04

Moe M o w t.

Michael Cirillo: 6:08

For the a soda verse. If you think us and Evan should create the first ever.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:15

Comment like subscribe all of the lobby start to go fund me.

Paul J Daly: 6:20

We're gonna make this Seven.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:25

Reason why you're a sales director at a company in automotive, that's. That's the whole wrap. It's because you're bald. That's why.

Evan Riley: 6:35

I'm sure it was a really big hiring decision.

Michael Cirillo: 6:43

That at a boardroom table in front of 14 other bald men with beards.

Evan Riley: 6:47

It was a bill then when I was selling cars, it wasn't built in. Like you know, we're waiting for finance sitting there talking me to me and I don't want to talk about the car deal anymore. If they were bald, we were golden. When does it get into the car? Business 17 2017 is what I guess 16 is. When I started selling cars, I sold for about a little over a year and a half and a do you know?

Paul J Daly: 7:09

he goes ahead and he says that yeah, this is Paul's thing, this is my excited.

Speaker 2: 7:13

He's like I knew.

Paul J Daly: 7:15

I'm like well, every time somebody says that I'm just just flabbergasted that I didn't know that ahead of time, because if I was an industry partner I would. I would put that on my shirt. When I, when I started selling cars and realized that opens up so many more conversations for you, and people all of a sudden understand like oh, I know where you're coming from. Like just like one bald guy to another, like oh, I know where I know you're coming from. So okay, so you started selling cars. I just get excited about that.

Evan Riley: 7:44

That was my first real job Right. I just watched the real job episode and what I thought when I got into it. For sure, though, that's what happened, but it's kind of like when I was a bartender, when I was way younger, people would say don't worry, I'm a bartender, you didn't? You're like that's a little shady. So it always helps, sometimes once they get to know you. But just saying that isn't going to earn you anything.

Paul J Daly: 8:04

So you, that was your first real job and the jobs you had before that, it's obviously a bartender. We like hospitality type jobs.

Evan Riley: 8:11

Bartender server. Random construction jobs. Concrete tile, a little bit of framing, little bit of whatever Gosh so common right.

Paul J Daly: 8:20

Hardworking, knows how to talk to people. Automotive is just like. Come to us.

Evan Riley: 8:26

We have a 100%. They worked out real well.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:29

So starting selling cars like in that first year and a half, because you know it's always. It's always interesting to understand, like you know, what type of dealerships or dealership were you a part of and what was the experience and what kind of like crafted the reason why you still sit in a seat in auto today.

Evan Riley: 8:47

Yeah, that's a great question, man, and I look back on it. You know you forget day to day kind of how you get to this day here, but it's cool to think about it. Like, yeah, I was a bartender in a server and I looked online and I found a place that was higher names, a Chevy store out west to where I was living. I went in for the interview. I met with like what would end up being my one to one sales manager and then the, the general manager and then the owner that are the managing partner at the time and they just offered me the job right there. It was a great deal. Like I learned a lot, like way more than I could have thought of, just like I think a lot of people should be a server and a bartender. They should be like a requirement. I think you should have at least like a week in that first week of training and auto dealership If you want to participate like for real it was. I'm not immune to the idea and there were some people that didn't help it but I'm not immune to the idea that, dude, they're just going to rob for me. They're going to rob me, they just want my friends all this stuff because there was a small part of that but it wasn't intentional. Like I got in, I learned how it worked. I worked hard, I showed up to training on time. You know, showing up was half the battle. I was just there present and like one thing that I've always taken into, whether, whatever job it was, it's like my level of service will determine my outcome. And that was true. I thought for sure that at some point I was going to have to be like get a gold chain and start lying to people and like I thought us in the car I think it was Matilda or whatever that movie were put sawdust in the car and none of that ended up happening. What ended up happening was the guy that was running the store was actually a good guy in the community. He was somebody I could go talk to. My sales manager taught me a lot of life lessons that I ran into him at the grocery store like a year and a half ago and I just stopped and say, hey, I still say some the same stuff you told me on my very first day and I believe, today for real, and it's not only just automotive, you know. He always told me like at the end of any pitch, whether it's with anybody, not even just in a work environment, he was like one of the last reasons they should say why should I work with you as well? Because I work here and I'm going to tell you this I'll do what I can be a service to you and if you ever find out that I'm not doing that, I want to be the first one to know about the first one to fix it. And he said people don't care how much you know till they know how much you care. This was day one, two or three stuff, and all we were doing was moving cars on a lot, learn how to park them online and like back it up. But I was trying to absorb like life information. I didn't know much about finance either, learn about how that works and like basically, it was a natural. The easy part for me was always, like you know, need a need. That was perfect. That was awesome. I was always it was gonna be fine.

Kyle Mountsier: 11:18

How crazy is that? That like you get into auto, it's like you get to learn life skills, customer care service you learn about, like you are forced into learning about, financial responsibility, interest rates, all that type of stuff and parallel parking Right and it's like now I can look like you can spot someone that's worked in auto before they back into every spot they ever park in, ever right. Why are you back here?

Evan Riley: 11:56

No, I hate it.

Paul J Daly: 11:57

I know it's cool.

Evan Riley: 11:59

So that went on for a little while. We switched. I went to the internet department after like a couple months and, like, again I wasn't the top salesperson but like day to day it was a matter of like doing what was asked of me. They believed in a process, I was following the process and they switched me to the internet and so I was fielding internet leads and stuff like that and that switched a lot because it was like super, then I wasn't needed any of them, it wasn't a lot up. So it was like email, text, transactional, like a lot of. It was like beating up on price and stuff and it was like how could I, how can I get them to in front of me? That's. And I was ended up being all right at that. And you know, after about a year a little over a year I did real well there, paid off a bunch of debt, paid off a bunch of stuff. And you know there was an opportunity for here at Flick Fusion that just popped up kind of randomly, just like the car dealership one. Sometimes, like I think you know, life just winks at you a little bit and if you got your eyes open you might see it. I don't know that, if it was like all the behind the order or whatever, but it seemed to work out and I started here at Flick Fusion back in 18, and I've been working here since then.

Paul J Daly: 13:05

So Wow, so that was actually a really short like. It only took a year for you to make that and you got all of that knowledge and all of that packed into you that you still hold onto in one year in the deal yeah, yeah, it was a lot.

Evan Riley: 13:19

It was like a fire hydrant and you know.

Kyle Mountsier: 13:23

So how do you carry that like, because you know well. First of all, I guess was it something that you all were utilizing Flick Fusion in the dealership there. How did you have that relationship?

Evan Riley: 13:34

No, so Flick Fusion is based in Iowa. They have their home base in Iowa. That's where I'm from. We serve at dealerships all across the country and international through a couple of resellers and stuff like that. But it was a lot of happenstance, like I was in internet, we'd always have like monthly meetings and like you had 100 leads, the only convertible blah blah, however many. We'd have the internet department ones. And he'd talk about doing video. It was always talk about and I know he wanted to, but he just didn't really think about that. It was an option and I shot some from my phone. I shot some, just kind of sent them out to people. I'd do like little. You'd get asked for a walk around. If I get asked for something, I want to go show them. Whatever it is, I want to get a car deal out of it. It's the right car, I think, for them and so I wanted to do that. Flick Fusion when I went into it I didn't know much about the company. I didn't know a whole lot about it. A lot of what Flick Fusion does is kind of been in the background since the originations. One of the bigger little companies a lot of people have never heard of. We service a lot of our customers through a network of resellers, so I had not heard of it customer facing name, but I heard about what they were doing. They were working on an integration with the CRM that I was using then, so that helped them kind of want me on that side. It ended up being just a great relationship from the start. I went into interview honestly it was like a practice interview and I left thinking like, and I think I might stick around. And I thought what happened it was real and I mean I've told Tim, my boss said that before, but it's true. It was like maybe try this out and hey, stick with automotive. But I didn't sit in a seat six years ago and say, hey, I'm gonna work on automotive forever. But it's certainly given me a beautiful, beautiful life and it was not the one that I would have thought and it's not been the experience that like I would have thought coming out either.

Paul J Daly: 15:17

Right, right he just said automotive has given me a beautiful, beautiful life.

Evan Riley: 15:21

That's to say the leads, both later again.

Kyle Mountsier: 15:23

That's so nice.

Paul J Daly: 15:26

Man, just like I'm gonna hang on to that one. I know, just hang on.

Kyle Mountsier: 15:30

I'm loving that statement. So what is it, since you've been with Flick Fusion and obviously now being able to work with dealers across the country, other industry partners like your white label or resellers, what is it that you see that's unique about the way Flick Fusion is meeting the market and kind of like drawing all those people together, Because it sounds like there's a lot of collaboration that's necessary and you have, like a client, a customer impact point that you meet. You're not just like an internal tool. How does it, what does it like, to kind of like draw all those people together and start to organize around a common vision of what the tool accomplishes?

Evan Riley: 16:13

Yeah, it's been interesting. So, like I started like a lot working with our partners and resellers, helping them on an individual basis to they had an idea of what they wanna do with video and how they wanna take it, and we do a lot of custom work that allows us to do that in a lot of different ways. Most of what you'll see is just individual inventory videos on a website. Instead of just photos, there's a video and or an interactive 360. And we've been doing that for quite some time. I think the biggest benefits that I've seen is that again, like at my very first dealership, it was always like a thought but it's like man, this is gonna be hard. That was always. This thing is like, this is gonna be too hard to do. How are we gonna get this into the, get it into the regular process? And what I've gotten to see and be a small part of for individual stores and for big small resellers in between is, uh, taking that scare of like this is gonna be a big scary thing to. You got guys or girls or people on your lot right now that are doing this. Maybe it's not for their car, but they have their phone in their hands. Tell me. One person at automotive dealership doesn't know how to open their camera. I mean, they know how to do it and it's just taking that exact same mold and getting comfortable putting it out there. I'm like it's. It's especially. I love the impact of the inventory videos for the individual customer. For sure, we want to give the best automotive buying experience online as possible, but my favorite really is getting like the face and the name of the individual sales people in front of the online leads or Opportunities, or however you want to call. These are people, potential customers of yours Early and often and getting that introduction to start off with maybe their ball like me, or maybe they, maybe they just once they come in. It won't be as such a scary face and starting. That easy to do and that's been awesome to do. On again, a small level, whether it's an independent store or you know Big, a big client of ours that does it for hundreds of dealerships, you know. So my favorite story easily my favorite story of all time actually was one guy. We started, they needed some videos and we helped them out with like the really initial stuff, set it all up and I got this call from like a the june bug. They're the lock quarter guy Walking around the dealership and he said I take these cars to get the wheels and stuff on. I take them to get the rims and stuff on, the subs and stuff. I want to take a little video of this. And he said can we do that? And I said yeah, let's set it up. I didn't charge them. I said check with your manager before it goes online. They were on board with it. That person has since gone from doing that for one random car to every car on their lot, as well as rolling into their sales process. So I didn't do it. This young man in this case did the work, but I got to be along for the journey of another person who got to have a beautiful life and automotive. He's one of their top sales people today and still does this, and so, whether it's large impacts or small ones, it's making an impact somewhere. You know, there's times where it's like man, what am I really doing in automotive? Man, we're just a part of this little thing. But when I look closely, the impacts are there, man Even like who knows what. And again, I didn't do this for this young man. He did it himself, but getting to be along for the ride. That's easily been my favorite thing that I've ever done here, and it's not the only one. He's just got a special place in my heart for the first one. I said his name once and he said don't ever mention me again.

Paul J Daly: 19:24

So I'm after him Because we were about to be like who is it and where is he at? I know well, I did, and he's a humble he's like a silent soldier man.

Evan Riley: 19:33

He's just gonna be in the back doing it and he was like I don't want it, I don't want to do that.

Paul J Daly: 19:37

No we need to meet him.

Michael Cirillo: 19:38

We need to meet him. You know what I think's interesting about this, which I really appreciate you've kind of touched on here, which is Putting yourself on. Video is perhaps one something that Most people think is a scary thing, and I know, even in my own personal development journey, especially as I started to move into branding myself and things of that nature, I talked myself out of doing video for like six months. I would record and then I'd be like that thing is Not seeing the light of day right and, however, what I can say from my own experience touching on what you've said, is that the minute I finally accepted my insecurities and, like I will, this is how I look, that's how I sound and I put myself out there my confidence level went through the roof and and probably other aspects right, it's not just that, other aspects. There's an interesting psychology to it. So maybe for the sales professional or somebody within the dealership that's been talking themselves out of it, what you're saying is so important that but there's an upside to this your confidence will go through the roof. And, by the way, if you stumble on your words and you look nervous, there's actually really compelling psychology on that from the recipient's point of view, which is that their appreciation level of you skyrockets. They're so appreciative that you're doing something that makes you so clearly uncomfortable for their benefit and, like you said, then by the time they walk in those doors at the dealership, they see you and they go. That is the person I'm going to work with, because they put in effort where others weren't willing to. So there's, I love that you brought that up. It just I had to get that out because it's a close to home thing for me. But I know hundreds of thousands of people in this industry probably struggle to just take that first leap and hopefully this is encouragement for them to do so.

Evan Riley: 21:36

I've said I've got a phase for radio and if I can do it then you can do it. And it's that day, one lesson that I heard people don't care how much you know till they know how much you care, and going out and doing a little bit more and they can tell I'm uncomfortable, even to date, Trust me. I remember the first time I walked towards a lot of and like walked away a little bit because I was scared. Next time I went out but I shook their hand like I was taught to do. Same thing happened with video. I got over it and then it works. And then like, okay, it's working, Now it's easy. The second time's always easier, you know. So I love that it's going to be a. It's always that first one's the hardest. Just do it, Hit record, stumble, mess up great. Everybody messes up, Everybody messes up. Everybody goes in the mess up all the time.

Kyle Mountsier: 22:23

What a great encouragement. Well, you've proven that, whether it be a face for radio or a misline of hair for NADA, like hey, if you can do it, if your head can do it, then anybody should step out there and try it. So, evan, thanks so much for joining us. The conversation was fun, insightful and, I believe, probably helpful for more than one out there that are listening. I appreciate you on behalf of all three of us for joining us here on All. It Collapsed.

Evan Riley: 22:54

Yeah, absolutely, thank you, all right.

Paul J Daly: 22:59

I definitely didn't expect Michael to start the conversation.

Kyle Mountsier: 23:04

Could it never, never believe it.

Paul J Daly: 23:06

Could we ever really? He starts these conversations Like so here's a little behind the scenes for how the show works. The guest comes on and we say here's how the show works, and then whoever happens to start that spiel whether it's myself, Kyle or Michael they get the privilege of assigning who is opening the show interview and who is closing the interview. So Kyle was like Michael, he's going to get us in with a conversation and then we're going to talk for about, you know, 17, 20 minutes, and then, when it's natural, I'll land the plane and I'll get us out. Great, the rules have been set. The guest is all set, and then Michael starts talking and Kyle and I.

Kyle Mountsier: 23:42

I feel like at some point we're going to write like some doom and gloom game that's called like the rules of engagement, hashtag, auto collabs or something, and it'll be like so you're going to have to answer a question from Michael Cervillo first.

Paul J Daly: 23:57

Well, I think he finds sport Everybody's like.

Kyle Mountsier: 23:59

no, I'm done with the game.

Speaker 2: 24:00

I'm done with the game Because it takes you.

Michael Cirillo: 24:04

I've been doing interviews for like 12 years now and I just learned today the perfect segue is to just ask the next question whether or not it has anything to do with what you've been talking about. What's? Going to happen today we're talking about cutting our hair. And then I was like so when'd you get into the car business?

Paul J Daly: 24:24

I noticed that. Well, I think I think Michael felt some level of obligation, Like I got a so far down the rabbit hole, and I think Connor, I were like I don't know how to come back from this one.

Kyle Mountsier: 24:33

Yeah, I didn't know. And because I think he finds he brought it back really well, because the connection of the hair snafu with NADA was like sublime, I couldn't even believe you snuck that in you couldn't build that in if you wanted to.

Paul J Daly: 24:47

Man, I really appreciate it too. It's funny like you get the surprising amount of. I'm constantly surprised by the heart that comes out of the auto industry. From unexpected places. And when he says the auto industry gave me a beautiful, beautiful life. Something about the use of the word beautiful, and then twice it just like hit me in a place.

Kyle Mountsier: 25:08

Yeah, and then he hit us with the porter that has a beautiful life in auto, that's now a top salesperson. I'm like what do we even?

Michael Cirillo: 25:15

come on now, let's go, dare, we say a auto collabs a divinely appointed podcast Back to you by Soda, I think. Dare we say that I don't know? Let me get stuck. Let me stick it up now.

Paul J Daly: 25:30

Yeah, well, I'm glad we're in different states. Ha, ha, ha ha.

Kyle Mountsier: 25:38

Well we hope you enjoyed this episode of auto collabs. I think it may be one of our most fun yet, from the intro to the conversation, to the outro, and look, if you don't know where to grab the best hair products, you can probably hang out with Paul J, daly, michael Cirillo or Evan, but on behalf of all of us and myself, come out here. Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 2: 26:03

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 at esotucom. That's esotucom. 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.

Kyle Mountsier: 26:34

Welcome to Auto Collabs.

Speaker 2: 26:36

Ha, ha ha. Why are we recording?

Paul J Daly: 26:39

Yeah, we're rolling.

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