Shooting 3/4 Shots of Malibus with Peter Duffy

Paul J Daly: 0:00You know best practices. Let's go down the best practice list for podcasts.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:09

This is auto collabs number one you don't talk about the drink you're drinking on the podcast.

Paul J Daly: 0:14

And then no, I was gonna say hold on make sure that Kyle is chewing something when you hit record number one. That means you can get the first word in this is happening live.

Michael Cirillo: 0:24

Second rule of podcasting Don't try and purchase pre-sale foo fighters tickets, because they're coming online right now. Take us are about to become available. Sit tight. Oh, I've never sat so tight. Don't the foo fighters come to Canada? They do actually no, but it's been. I haven't been to a show since 2008 Avril Lavigne, no cool fighters for Avril Lavigne. For Avril Lavigne and nickelback.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:05

Nickelblack played the same eight.

Paul J Daly: 1:06

I thought they were the same band for a while. No, I never did Lay them over you know I music layover.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:18

I bet the chord progression exactly. They're very, very different, very different.

Paul J Daly: 1:22

Hey look, it's funny that we're talking about rock and roll at the beginning of the show, because today's guests Kind of feels rock and roll. To me I don't, if you feel a little bit rock and roll and what I know about this crew and and dealer.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:34

Image pro and Peter Duffy is like, they're a little bit rock and roll, they're a little. I don't think little, yeah, like they don't really care what you think they're gonna come with with all the heat, with all the energy of what the thinking. If you don't know that and Want to like get a little sniff into what they're actually about, you can go search them on YouTube, find, find their little video and you'll be like, oh, about to get into it thing, right.

Michael Cirillo: 1:59

And if you don't know who they are, they. They had this dude right. Like dad, they got this guy.

Paul J Daly: 2:09

That's sitting there for this intro, or no?

Michael Cirillo: 2:11

you just have a cowboy in your head. It's Texas it's.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:15

Texas right next, the.

Paul J Daly: 2:16

The Mountie hat is right on the other side. It's like cowboy hat, mountie hat that would be contraband, it's property of the Queen.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:27

For some reason, he now wears boots to sleep. It's crazy.

Speaker 2: 2:31

I don't know what happening well, all of that, we really really hope that you enjoy this interview and conversation with big Duffy.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:45

All right, we are hanging out with, in long form, peter, a Duffy junior. He, I think, for some reason, must have intentionally put that at his title if you're watching the video podcast. Peter, thanks for joining us on auto claps today.

Peter Duffy: 2:59

Thanks, thank you, kyle.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:00

All right. So my first question for the people that are just listening behind you, you've got a massive rock on the wall. It's not an actual rock, it's a picture of a rock is Does that signify anything in your life? People on the audio it's actually, that is actually a mountain.

Peter Duffy: 3:19

It's a. It's actually a very famous mountain, I'm pretty famous mountain and I know that it is. It's half dome from Yosemite, which is arguably one of the most featured rocks in the world. Really, yeah, I don't an.

Paul J Daly: 3:33

Apple screensaver at some point.

Peter Duffy: 3:36

It is actually so. This is from a specific Location up there and so it's pretty easy to get to. But you know you can drive up there and everything yeah are you rough?

Kyle Mountsier: 3:47

I believe that was the iOS, yosemite.

Peter Duffy: 3:54

Sure, it is alright.

Paul J Daly: 3:56

Like right.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:57

Did you just buy it because it was the iOS, yosemite or no? Climbed it have you?

Peter Duffy: 4:04

I have not come to have dome, but I've done a couple of other bigger mountains. In fact, there's one far back there on the left called Cathedral, which is pretty amazing, and that's like the first mountain climb that I've ever Actually led, the climb where I placed the gear and then someone else was coming up and, you know, getting through it. But yeah, I think the my entire life has been a series of climbing mountains, just like, I suppose, anyone else's. But I Often use those terms when I'm talking to our team. You know, like if we don't quit, or if we quit, we're for sure not going to the top. So don't quit, no matter what, even if we're second or third up at the top of the Mountain, at least we got to the top, don't worry about it.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:44

So we, I just had to, I just had to guess that, like a guy with a mountain picture in his background had some stories around the mountain picture, I took the picture too, so like it's kind of good right wait a second.

Paul J Daly: 4:56

Yeah, see, I was flying and I built that too, and I was piloting.

Peter Duffy: 5:07

You thought I hung a picture on my wall that someone else took. Are you serious?

Kyle Mountsier: 5:11

Oh, that's all of my pictures, well.

Peter Duffy: 5:16

So no, I'm a professional photographer. That's how we got to where we are with dealer in its program. This is not a joke, right? So we're not just a little company that built an app and tried to sell it to auto dealers. We're the guys that actually did it on the ground, with the keys and the boxes of keys in the cold and the hot and the running around.

Paul J Daly: 5:33

Yeah, but I've met. I've met those guys and I used to run around a lot with a lot of those guys in my reconditioning days and Many of those were not professional photographers.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:43

Right taking pictures of haptome and you somebody.

Peter Duffy: 5:49

I think, I think I think you're probably right, paul, and I think that is why they are still a lot photographers and I'm not Okay well, tell us, tell us the story.

Paul J Daly: 6:03

We always like to ask people how they made their way into automotive. Obviously, you made your way onto a lot with a camera, probably having a passion for photography, before you started snapping three-quarter shots of Malibu's. How did you? How did you? And so how did you end up in, I Don't know, nathan hold?

Kyle Mountsier: 6:23

on, nathan, write that down. Snapping three-quarter shots of Malibu's that's the title. Alright, boom.

Paul J Daly: 6:28

No, but how did you end up into the auto industry to begin with? How much time do you have like? 15 minutes left.

Peter Duffy: 6:37

Yeah, Long story short. I'm a licensed mortician, so right out of high school, obviously right, yeah. Licent, mortician, rock climber, professional photographer. I got it all, buddy, no. So I Was a mortician earlier on and I had an opportunity to go to Japan and work in Japan at a Japanese mortuary for about a year and when I went I kind of picked up videography. You know, hi mini DV stuff shooting my friends bands, a lot of jackass stuff, let's, you know, jumping in bushes and stuff like that. I do this stuff and then I'm Little bit later, when I got to Japan, I picked up a still camera and then after Japan I back backed around the world for like three or four months and Came back with all these really great pictures and I'm you know flowers and butterflies and the Great Wall of China type shit, right. And so I get Back and I start selling them in Bed and breakfasts and things like this and I'm like, okay, maybe, maybe I can be a photographer instead of a mortician all the time, and you know this kind of stuff. And so I came out to California to be California photographer and and it worked out okay at first. But I went to school and got kicked out of school for not having enough money to finish and when I got through that part I was like, well, I'm not going back to Connecticut, I'm not going back to New England, I'm staying here. I came to California be a photographer. That's what I'm doing. And so, you know, wading my way through the portraits in the weddings and all this kind of stuff, I found one dealer had me take portraits of them, or no, I did it for a school assignment actually, where I took portraits of them in front of a bunch of friars. It was the Calabasas for our dealership at the time in LA, and it came out really cool and I was like, okay, I kind of see where this is going. And the general manager had me go photograph the concourses elegance. Have you ever been there in Monterey Very, very prestigious car show, like if you ever thought you knew how much money there was in the world. You don't know until you do this thing, if you ever want to fill the women with the babushka. Yeah, you hear me right. Lines of Ferraris post in pre-World War, two cars, you know this kind of thing. And so I photographed them. I mean we're talking six million dollar Audi's and Ferraris that are like really old, you know, I mean it really well done. And so I came back from there and I gave all the pictures to me goes, hey, these we're gonna use this for the auto group magazines, kind of thing. And I was like, great, this is cool. And I kind of walked out of there and I was like, oh, cars, I love, photography, I love. And then it was like, oh, I see what's going on here. So the two came to get a.

Paul J Daly: 9:27

Chevy Malibu on a lot.

Peter Duffy: 9:30

So then, no, it turns out. So now I'm scanning Craigslist right for weddings and portraits, just to stay Fat, and I'm embalming bodies on the side. I know that's Right. I had to pay the right right at the pay, the car pay. What do you want for me?

Kyle Mountsier: 9:47

So Ferraris, flowers and bodies.

Peter Duffy: 9:49

You know that's like his tagline so then, this dealership in Southern California and this is 2009, by the way Built a studio because, you remember, ebay motors was going to be like the next big thing.

Kyle Mountsier: 10:03

It's the cars, that's the other, the auto trader.

Peter Duffy: 10:05

And so there was this one general manager, steve Chapman, who's like really forward thinking at the time and he goes I'm going to build a studio, I'm going to have professional pictures and I put them out, and so I didn't even answer the Craigslist that, I just went Right to the dealership. I was like I'm your man and they're like cool shoot two, two cars and figure it out. And I knew they built the studio but didn't have enough light in there and stuff because of my knowledge of photography and I went back to my garage and got every light I had, came back down there, shot the two cars. They loved it and I agreed on this Whopping price that you would never get today per car. And so then I'm photographing 60, 70 cars at 75 bucks a piece or something at the time, and it was night, yeah, which doesn't happen now. I think these kids are out there doing them for 15 or 20 bucks nowadays, right, and so An inflation goes up, which is crazy, but anyway. So you have me doing this, and then I kind of duplicated that. They gave me another store, etc, etc. I saw the writing in the wall and I've been an entrepreneur my whole life, but you get to that point. It was like cool, now we have 35, 40 dealers, 25, 26 photographers. It's a good business, like you know, but it's also a landscaping business, right, like I'm all you're on, you pay me the money. There's no scalability. There wasn't any kind of people yeah. Right. So in 2016, you'll love this part we're moving into some new offices. I have these really good friends of mine that own a bunch of dominoes, pizzas super business minded, and we're smoking some weed and we're moving into our new office.

Paul J Daly: 11:34

It's a very northern california story, remember. He's in northern california, everybody. He's in northern california.

Kyle Mountsier: 11:40

He's not.

Paul J Daly: 11:42

And we're like we have an idea for these commercials.

Peter Duffy: 11:45

You can believe it or whatever, but you know we got.

Michael Cirillo: 11:48

We got a little ice to this, can't we?

Paul J Daly: 11:49

It's not a bad word, it's the story.

Peter Duffy: 11:52

Oh no, Did we lose?

Paul J Daly: 11:54

it.

Peter Duffy: 11:57

Yeah, I got.

Speaker 2: 11:58

Nope, all right, uh-oh.

Paul J Daly: 12:03

Here's the part where the entrepreneur gets interrupted by a phone call and then it messes up his earbuds and Michael and Kyle and I are sitting here staring at Peter and we can no longer hear him.

Kyle Mountsier: 12:17

So he's putting his earbuds back in. Earbuds are strange.

Paul J Daly: 12:21

Now the narrators hey, we're back everybody. Thanks for staying with us through that segment. We just narrated our way through that.

Peter Duffy: 12:28

We just worked it out. We just got a good hanger with the weed right See, that was perfect, though that wasn't intentional. So my friends go, hey, you need to scale. We're getting calls from different parts of the country but I can't go do photos in Missouri, right, like for at this time 35 bucks a piece or $30 piece. And I was like, okay, I was like, but I need to get them to do the proper compositions. And like in that moment I was like, oh, if I could give them a wireframe guide and teach them where to stand and take these pictures in sequence and then send them to me, we can edit and put these online and box them up and publish them for the dealership. I was like, okay, I'm doing it, and we invented wireframe guides even though everyone else does it, by the way, so we've got the patent on that, did the whole thing, and we went right, for this is 2016. So then I accidentally sold eight dealerships. By just chance they were already existing clients of ours but they wanted more coverage. And then I was like, oh, in-house gets them faster time to market and started like it all started to kind of come together. And so then fast forward to today and we have, I don't know, hundreds and hundreds and not going to throw out numbers, but it's hundreds and hundreds of dealers in five countries. So it's a pretty, pretty fun story, yeah.

Michael Cirillo: 13:51

What kind of so you have captured people in peak moments of their life, at weddings and such, and you've also seen them at the end of their life as a mortician. What sort of philosophical beliefs have you thought through about life in general, and how has that contributed to the leader that you are today?

Peter Duffy: 14:23

I think you're just not that important. You're on a blue ball flying through space, right? You're only important to the people that really love you your friends, your family and that sort of thing and when you have a team that trusts you, right. So having being leader means being able to have a relationship, right, like they have to trust me and I have to trust them, but I actually have to trust them first and then also to show them that I'm a little bit vulnerable. So I have to make sure that I know when I'm wrong, I say it out loud, so they go. Peter, if it's these wrong, we can admit we're wrong as well, or when we're incorrect, and we can kind of fix things faster. But overall, I think people don't take enough risk, and I was probably like scared to take risk too. I'm afraid of losing the things that I've acquired in my life, whether that's monies or things or whatever. But I kind of don't really care about that. Now. I'm kind of like when you get into your 45s, you kind of care less about what people think about what you wear. You know that kind of thing as opposed to being in high school when it's so important. And I think that now I just I'm in it for the glory, I don't care about the money. So if I do write, or my team does write, by the dealership and we deliver what we said we were going to do for results and they know that we have a ridiculous retention rate People stay with dealerships for a long time. We have clients that we've been with us since we used to shoot cars, which we don't do anymore, and so it's pretty, pretty great to be a part of that. You could take it all away and I'm smart enough to build it again and I have the team behind me to be able to do it.

Kyle Mountsier: 16:25

So do you still like? Are you still a photographer at heart? Are you still carrying a camera on vacation?

Peter Duffy: 16:32

There's literally a multimedia guy right here doing it right now and there's another camera right here and we have all the same gear. So you guys have seen these cowboy videos that we do. Right, we produce those entirely in-house. The only thing is I'm directing at that point usually, but Louie and I usually write them and we have the same cowboy guy and he's a pretty great comedian, but my best friend is a cinematographer out of New York City, so we just like assemble the team, we have a blast, and those things are, I don't know, $150,000 commercial. We do for 50. You know what I mean, because we know how to do it.

Michael Cirillo: 17:14

Whose idea was it to have the cowboy walking around NADA talking into a banana like he was on a set?

Peter Duffy: 17:21

A little bit of all of us. He'll be a digital dealer too. We're not going to get him for a SOTICON, but he'll be there at digital dealer.

Paul J Daly: 17:30

I thought it would be a little much for SOTICON Plus.

Peter Duffy: 17:32

it's our first time. We wanted to know you. It's a small thing.

Paul J Daly: 17:35

You know everybody be like okay yeah here's a bracelet.

Peter Duffy: 17:37

Yeah, banana guy, yeah, and then it's over right.

Paul J Daly: 17:41

So the commercials. Let's talk about the commercials for a minute. Like getting to know you a little bit here. I've kind of understand a little bit more about your personality and like, when you put something like those commercials into the world, it definitely could be attention getting, for sure, but it could also be polarizing. Some people really appreciate it. Some people could not like the way dealers are portrayed or some of the elements. So like, what has the response been to them and how have you kind of handled both sides of it?

Peter Duffy: 18:08

I would say 90% has been astronomically wonderful. And then I would say we have a good we have one or two here there, even existing clients that might be, you know, not so happy about the profaneness.

Paul J Daly: 18:27

Like I wish you wouldn't do that, but not so much that I don't want your products.

Peter Duffy: 18:31

We dialed it back in the second one in a more clever way. We got better at it, just like anything, I guess. But you need to crack a few eggs to make an omelet. What do you want from me? Like we're, you know, like I think that that video went straight to the top of lethia. It went straight to the top of song. It went straight to the top group one, and we Almost do group on almost exclusively now, so it's gotten a lot of attention in a way that you know the the man, so Sasquatch or Dr Squatch or whatever it is right.

Paul J Daly: 19:03

That's what oh, that dollar shave called the Sasquatch.

Peter Duffy: 19:06

Yeah, yeah you know, so We'll continue to do that. In fact, we're probably gonna have that. That guy on routine are here shortly and he's gonna do a lot more for us.

Paul J Daly: 19:18

Oh, that's amazing.

Peter Duffy: 19:20

Yeah, it's a great.

Paul J Daly: 19:20

It's definitely a. You know, when I think about brand development in general, like distinct and memorable are At the top of the list for what you want and and oftentimes that's confused with fashionable or fancy or refine. Right but if it's refined or fancy and not distinct or memorable, then you just disappear really quickly.

Peter Duffy: 19:41

Well, there's two things happening there too. Like one, we know how to have fun clearly right, but when we, when you get to our website, it's very clean and very serious, because what we're doing for you is very serious, how we get your attention or we want to show you that we are fun people to work with right, without, like you know, going too far, but making sure that the when we need to be professional, we are right, but other than that, you like to have fun, like you guys, right.

Paul J Daly: 20:12

It's funny, I think. I think like, as I, as I reflect back to the a soda journey over the last couple of years, it really is trying to find that balance, because very quickly people can say, oh, you're just about fun, right when, if you have, if you have substance though, right, yes, right right they will. They will move on Right, they will move on with and then then you get labeled. As you know you just well. You're a lot of fun to be around, but I actually need to grow my business right, and so Find finding that right balance in the contrast of being able to write your photographer. Contrast is the most important thing, understanding that you need both sides in order to make a compelling image or to make a compelling story.

Peter Duffy: 20:55

I'm hundred percent. I see that more than cars, for example right, like you're out there peeling off the plastic with the lady and having a lot of fun with her. But then, when we sat down with the general manager and this other, this other fellow, this sales guy, Maria is a dude. It was just like you know what I mean, like you've got that feeling from from people, like I got it and like that's not easy for me. So you hit a nerve and like so you can. You can do both, I think, and. And if you do both, well then you got a little magic right.

Paul J Daly: 21:36

Little magic. I think that's a great way to end it. Yeah, a little bit of magic, peter. I think that that encapsulates this conversation. Thank you so much for spending some time with us. Looking forward to hanging out at a SodaCon in person. That's going to be amazing, but on behalf of all of us here, kyle Michael, myself and the Soda Crew thanks for giving us some of your time. I will see you guys in a few weeks. Thank you so much, peter. Okay, coming back into this, I think what we ended the intro on, talking about Cirillo in cowboy boots and just like that Talty just felt so on brand for this episode, absolutely.

Kyle Mountsier: 22:21

Yeah, it was like yeah. I mean just the fact that, like photos, flowers and dead bodies, you know we're kind of the themes of everything it's like. Of course, that runs together to creating an automotive centric SAS company you know climbing, photographing mortician.

Paul J Daly: 22:36

You know in search of used vehicles to photograph.

Michael Cirillo: 22:42

I felt all sorts of sacrilege thinking. The question which was did rock climbing somehow influence your desire to become a mortician? Because from a marketers perspective, that is a fantastic lead gate. Absolutely, it's a lead gate.

Paul J Daly: 23:00

That's unbelievable, Well I mortician would either make you a more astute rock climber or a more nervous rock climber. Yeah.

Michael Cirillo: 23:09

I'd be the latter Right.

Kyle Mountsier: 23:11

You know this is his story is really, really native to a lot of auto, where, basically, you begin doing a thing because you know it's the better way and so many dealerships you know, and dealer groups and employees at dealers do this. It's like, hey, I know, this is the better way, this has to get done, and then out of that becomes tech or process or something new that then much more, many more people in the industry begin to adopt. And so I love this story because it continues to point back to that thread and theme of entrepreneurialism. We say that dealers are entrepreneurs and I think that that's like what we key in on when we mean they're entrepreneurs, they're like that the McKelvey right, so we had this didn't exist, so we had to X, right? Yeah, I think that that's the, that that's like the key in for me on this one.

Michael Cirillo: 24:03

Well, and stringing it all together, from our conversation that we had with Melissa, which has still left me in a contemplative state, I'm like, oh, you know what, how each of our inroads into the vertical of automotive seem less accidental and more like, yeah, because there's space in this industry For all industries, all industries. This is like seven degrees of Kevin Bacon. Of course, he was a mortician rock climber photographer who what did he say? Flowers butterflies in the great wall of China His way into automotive. Because, like that's all roads, seven degrees of automotive, all roads lead into automotive. Automotive, that's great.

Paul J Daly: 24:46

All the all roads lead to automotive. That'll be the next podcast we start.

Michael Cirillo: 24:49

Hey, hey, well, well, we hope you guys are doing great, well, well, this one's got to know it's, I'm taking it, I'm taking it. All roads lead to some real, though. We hope you enjoyed this episode of auto collapse On behalf of Paul J Daily. Calm out here myself, mike. This really will catch you on the next episode.

Speaker 2: 25:07

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 a so to dot com. That's ASO T you dot 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.

Michael Cirillo: 25:38

Welcome to auto collapse.

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