August 14, 2025 • 26 mins
From hype to hesitation—Laurie Halter reveals what dealerships really think about AI in the service drive.
Laurie Halter isn’t just a PR veteran with her finger on the industry’s pulse—she’s now bringing hard data to the AI conversation in fixed ops. In this episode, she joins Paul, Kyle, and Michael to unpack her latest independent research report, a deep dive into how AI is (and isn’t) being adopted in dealership service departments. From vendor hype to dealer hesitation, Laurie’s findings cut through the noise and spotlight a glaring gap between what’s being built and what’s actually needed on the ground.
The crew explores the report’s surprising revelations, including which AI tools dealerships are most likely to adopt first, why predictive maintenance is still a distant goal, and how smarter technology could help tackle the industry’s massive technician shortage. Laurie also shares why independent, neutral research matters now more than ever, and how early collaboration between vendors and dealers will determine AI’s real impact on customer experience.
Get the report here: https://charismacommunications.com/reports/ai-in-the-service-drive/
Takeaways:
00:00 – The PR Pro Who Turned AI Researcher
02:15 – Why Deep-Dive Research Is Missing in Auto
04:55 – The Disconnect Between Dealers and Vendors
06:45 – Inside the “AI in the Service Drive” Report
08:09 – Vendors Think Dealers Are Ready—They’re Not
09:32 – Outbound Texting: The First Step in AI Adoption
13:14 – AI as a Solution to the Technician Shortage
15:38 – Who’s Reading This Report First (Hint: It’s Not Who You Think)
18:07 – AI Adoption Has to Start at the Top
19:24 – Customer Experience Is the Real AI Litmus Test
20:48 – What Laurie Might Research Next
Connect with Laurie Halter at https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurie-halter-1255b6/
Learn more about Charisma! Communications at https://www.charismacommunications.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Paul J Daly (00:00):
Okay, I have a riddle for you. What is
(00:01):
optimistic, technologicallyfocused, people centered and on
the show today.
Unknown (00:12):
This is auto Collabs.
Paul J Daly (00:18):
That's not allowed, no chat. GPT is only that way if
you tell it starts with the
Unknown (00:23):
letter L and rhymes with Ori halter.
Paul J Daly (00:28):
I'm so excited.
Laurie alter is today's guest,and she is just so much fun to
be around. She's one of thosepeople that if you're in the
proximity the blast radius ofher overall energy, you just
start to feel like you should besmiling and being a little more
positive, which makes sense,because she's so
Unknown (00:47):
right. Yeah, dare we say, she brings the charisma.
Paul J Daly (00:53):
You know, I wasn't even thinking about
Unknown (00:55):
that, Laurie, you're welcome.
Paul J Daly (00:57):
I know communications. Laurie is one of
the most seasoned PR people inthe auto industry. We're very
excited to just call her afriend and to have her on the
show today to talk about a topicthat everybody's talking about.
Ai, so we hope you enjoy thisconversation. Lori halter,
(01:17):
Laurie, it has been way too longsince we've had the opportunity
to sit down and have a podcasttype conversation. Thanks for
joining us today on autoCollabs.
Laurie Halter (01:25):
I'm so excited to be here, guys, it has been I was
just telling you off screen.
It's been a minute, so I'mexcited to be on with you both.
Oh, likewise.
Paul J Daly (01:33):
So entrepreneurs, no grass ever grows under our
feet, right? We are alwaystrying to do something new, and
you're one of those people thatit's like, Catch Me If You Can.
If anyone's ever run into you ata conference or an event, or has
been engaged with you in any waythey know,
Kyle Mountsier (01:48):
literally, Paul, look no, this is not a joke. I
think I actually played Catch MeIf You Can, at the last
conference where, like, I waslike,
Unknown (02:03):
we were like, both you were running this way and I was
running
Kyle Mountsier (02:06):
this it was amazing. You could have and,
like, gotten one of those good,like, side swipe videos where
it's like, that person's alwaysrunning the other way. It would
have been magical.
Paul J Daly (02:15):
Yeah, so you in the vein of that is that you've been
in this industry for a longtime. You've been helping a lot
of people. You kind of have yourfingerprints all over a lot of
industry partners anddealerships and and the
communications and the publicrelations and the a lot of what
people see and hear aboutcompanies. A lot of times you're
in the back channels, kind ofcrafting messages and trying to
(02:36):
understand the needs, andunderstand the needs, not just
at the industry partners, but ofyou know, what we all focus on
is like, how can we serve thedealers best? And you kind of
had this new idea over the lastmonths. And like every great
entrepreneur, you don't justhave ideas. You actually say,
I'm going to do that thing. Soyou've done a thing, and now you
have independent research aboutto be published into the
(02:57):
industry, or it is publishedinto the industry. And you
focused on service. Tell us alittle bit about why you decided
to, like, synthesize researchand give it to the industry.
Laurie Halter (03:08):
Well, I love that. And in truthfully, like
you guys said, I'm anentrepreneur at heart, so part
of it right is like, Okay, nowI'm bored. What can I do next?
But
Paul J Daly (03:16):
what does it mean now I'm bored?
Unknown (03:19):
Me on a Monday. Just every
Laurie Halter (03:21):
single entrepreneur ever. But really,
where it came from is as owninga PR firm and working with
dealers, vendors, investorsacross the industry, we realized
that there's a hole. There was ahole in the content. So there's
a lot of fantastic contentcreators. You guys are a great
example of that. But like deepdive research that really gets
(03:44):
into the heart of some of thesetopics, was missing, and so we
decided to step in and kind ofbe in that space. So we our
first report was on the CDKbreach last summer, and it was
all about cyber security in thedealerships. We released that,
and then afterward, we reallystarted seeing a need for AI
(04:04):
based research, because that'sall any of us are talking about,
right? Is ai, ai, and we decidedto dive into that within fixed
ops. So this is our secondresearch that we put out, and it
really came from, like I said, aneed that I saw. You know,
publishers are doing a great jobwith the articles. You all are
doing great job with digitalcontent. But we really didn't
(04:26):
see like deep diving research onsome of these topics, and so
that's where the idea came from.
Kyle Mountsier (04:33):
Yeah, it's interesting to me, because a lot
of times the research that yousee within our industry is
either done by someone that hasa product they can sell or
someone from outside of theindustry that doesn't really
understand it, right, like aMcKinsey comes in, does a deep
research, and you can, you canread it, and go, Yeah, I think
you got like
Unknown (04:51):
88%
Paul J Daly (04:52):
of it, right, but you don't have the context,
Kyle Mountsier (04:55):
the context of that 12% right? Yes,
Laurie Halter (04:57):
yes. And we're seeing on the back end as a PR.
I'm like, I understand theanalysts, I understand the
research, I understand thecompanies that are paying to be
a part of those reports. Butwhat happens is, like you guys
talked about, then you're notgetting as independent
information as you need. And sowith this report, we really
focused on, like, there was nopaid opportunities, nothing
sponsored it truly was justgoing out into the industry,
(05:20):
talking to dealers, talking tovendors, talking to investors,
and trying to bring about a veryneutrally played report of
information about AI in theservice.
Kyle Mountsier (05:29):
What was something that you learned along
the way? Because, you know, youventure into something like
this, and it's not like youhaven't written before,
understood the industry before,done like your own personal
research, but what was somethingthat you've learned
contextually, that maybe youweren't expecting, not maybe
specifically about AI, but like,as you're starting to do these
research, things that you'relike, I just never thought about
(05:51):
doing that piece or whatcontextually?
Laurie Halter (05:53):
Yeah, I think what we've learned overall,
that's been fascinating, and itshould be like, a no brainer is,
everybody wants informationabout what the dealer actually
thinks, right? So the dealer,it's it like all these vendors
and tech partners are creatingproducts for the dealers, but no
one's going to the dealers tosay, like, what do you actually
want in these products? So oneof the most interesting things,
(06:15):
I think, to come out of this isthere's truly a hole in the
industry when it comes to like,dealers speaking to vendors
about this is what we want youto create, and vendors actually
creating things that are fit theneed of the dealers. So I think,
like for me, I was like, Oh mygosh, there's a complete
disconnect between what thedealers are actually needing and
what's being produced for thisindustry.
Paul J Daly (06:37):
Okay, so tell us a little bit about the report.
What's the premise of thereport, the type of research
that was done to generate thefindings.
Laurie Halter (06:45):
Okay, also, let me start with so the report is
and the service drive, we had acompletely independent research
team do it. So I've had peoplesay, like, you're a PR firm. How
could this possibly be, youknow, like, neutral. And the
truth is, I kept myselfcompletely out of it, like I
wasn't a part of any of theinterviews. But our research
team went out. They spoke withdealers, vendors in the space,
(07:07):
investors in the space, didtheir own research, spoke with
some of the media companies thathave reported on AI, and really
put together this verycomprehensive guide on what AI
is. Where are we, truthfully inthe market with it, and we're
further behind than we thought,than we like to think. And what
do the dealers really thinkabout the technology? Like, do
(07:29):
they think AI is helping? Is ithelping? And so from that, we
came up with, like, an 80 pagereport with a also a vendor
guide that takes 12 to 15 of thevendors that we found the
research time found through AIand rank them like based on,
here's what they do, here'stheir cost, here's the benefit
to the dealer. We really werefocusing on being that resource
(07:52):
in the space that's neutral andsays, Look, we're going to get
everybody together and tell youwhere we're at. How much does it
cost, and is it really going tofit the needs of what you're
doing in your dealership?
Kyle Mountsier (08:03):
We're behind. So what do you mean, like, what
specifically are we behind? Inmy thoughts, yeah,
Laurie Halter (08:09):
yeah. So I think the vendors think that adoption
is at a certain level, and thatthe dealers can't wait to help,
like, streamline their processand help with customer service.
The dealerships we talked to arelike, we are hesitant. I don't I
don't know what I think aboutthis. I don't know if I like it.
So I think when I see behindlike the vendors, I think, and
(08:31):
this goes back a little bit tothe disconnect I was talking
about in terms of like, thatintermediary between the dealers
and the vendors. I think thevendors thoughts are that
everybody is understanding whatAI is, how it works, what it
does. Meanwhile, the dealers arelike, whoa, whoa, whoa, could
this even help us? Let's, let'stake a step back, like, Could
this even help us? And where canI
Paul J Daly (08:50):
think, I think one of the helpful parts of the
report, and this is early on inthere, is you talk about clear
categories emerging in the AIspace, AI space, which I think
is super helpful. And sosegmenting the guide out into
these segments, because I think,like you said, everyone's AI
this, AI that. So AI is this bigumbrella term that people can
(09:13):
get, like, literally swallowedup by so you broke it down into
four categories. It'scommunication, AI, marketing,
AI, service operations, AI andinfrastructure and consulting.
So do you Did you see, or do youknow from the research or other
hand, what people tend to adopt?
First
Laurie Halter (09:32):
Great question, and it's definitely by far like
the biggest adoption and thebiggest thought of AI right now
on the dealer side, is outboundtax. Like in their like in their
mind, outbound tax, you know, tobring in service appointments,
is number one, and it shouldprobably be step one. But I
think what's missing is, likethe deeper understanding that
that is just the very tip of theiceberg, right? Like you go from
(09:55):
then you go into the marketing,which is outbound in inbound
tax, you go into service.
Scheduling would probably benumber two. And then you get
into three and four is reallylike, okay, technician, how do
we help solve the technicianshortage with AI tools? And the
fourth, then finally, is like,predictive maintenance and
analytics, like so that's, we'renowhere near predictive
maintenance and analytics, butthat is kind of the, the final
(10:16):
kind of category that we seecoming into automotive
Kyle Mountsier (10:24):
it is interesting to me, because, you
know, and this is my argumentis, I think that the largest
llms in the world are probablyasking themselves in board
meetings. They're probablygoing, how do we get into
retail, auto? Yeah, the money'sso big, right? They know that.
(10:48):
They know that it's there, yep,but there, there's no translator
to do that like I think aboutthe financial sector right now.
We just read last week that thefinancial sector is, is getting
an overhaul, because Claude andperplexity is capacity, or
Claude capacity, specifically,when it comes to what anthropic
has built for financial modelingand buying and buying and
(11:11):
selling, you know, on exchangesis like, far surpasses any
analysts expectations, yeah, andyet, perplexity hasn't come and
like Gone, direct to service,drive, selling, right? And we
always, we always struggled itwith this as an industry, ever
since the technologicalrevolution in the like, you
(11:31):
know, 2005 to 2013 range where,where we kind of have a bunch of
purpose built solutions. But youknow, a sales force, a HubSpot,
a perplexity, you know, any ofthose find it a struggle to come
into, into auto Where did yousee a gap in your research,
anywhere, of like purpose builtsolutions, kind of having to
(11:52):
pave the way for, you know, theadoption that an industry is
ready to take
Laurie Halter (11:57):
such a good question. Call it, and it's we
totally found that. I mean. SoI'll give one example from the
report ally peters out ofcalendar. We all know and love
Allie. She was one of thepeople, the fix ops directors
that we interviewed, and she waslike, Look, anyone who's going
to come in now, I will give ashout out to Mike karma. They're
the ones she had talked about interms of being the best partner.
She was like, anyone who's goingto come in and try and sell us,
(12:18):
AI is going to need to work handin hand with us, and we will
pilot it. Because she said thatsame thing. She said, Anyone
coming in from the outside isnot going to understand the
intricacies that are neededwithin this space,
Paul J Daly (12:30):
but they're going to think that they do. They're
going to think the hard part.
Yeah. So she
Laurie Halter (12:33):
was saying, like, I think for AI vendors, or, you
know, anyone out there a salesforce, they need to really be
like, understand the space andbe willing to collaborate with
us as they build it. Because,you know, anyone just coming in
with an overall solution, it'sjust too intricate. Pit stops
and automotive in general, it'sjust too intricate. There's too
(12:54):
many steps. The other thing weheard is they really, and we've
heard this for tech till we'llhear till the end of tech
streamline. They're just like,we don't want one more plugin.
Please, please, please, buildinto, you know, our our existing
systems, so we don't have tojust add one more thing on top
of the DMS. I
Paul J Daly (13:14):
want to go back to one of the things you said.
I've, I've never heard of yet tohear this the first time where I
saw somebody directly or heardsomebody directly tie deploying
AI to helping with thetechnician shortage. Unpack that
for a minute.
Laurie Halter (13:30):
Yeah. So, so this is fascinating. I mean, I think
I was reading in the report.
Now, don't quote me, but I thinkit's something like, we're,
we're at a 600,000 persontechnician, technician shortage.
Unknown (13:46):
Problem.
Paul J Daly (13:49):
Hold on, it says roughly in 20 as of 2022, there
were 733, techs employed. Butindustry forecast project a need
for 1.346 by the end of thisyear. Right now, yep, leaving a
shortfall of over 600,000600,000
Kyle Mountsier (14:06):
short fall, my
Laurie Halter (14:07):
goodness, crazy, right? And we're hearing that. I
mean, we're hearing that, youguys, for sure, are hearing
that. I'm sure I hear that everyday. Automotive News is doing
stories on that all the time. Soone way that AI can really help
with that is by speeding up theprocess, by getting in there and
saying, this is kind of thepredictive maintenance and parts
we were talking about as well.
If we can say, if AI can say, weknow this amount of cars come in
(14:30):
at this time needing thisindividual repair, then we're
better able to stock the parts.
The technicians are better ableto fix the problem if they've
got the AI tools in their spacethat are even like, let's take a
simple you know, the video walkaround for the consumer that's
going to speed up the consumersaying, Yes, this, go ahead,
(14:51):
move forward with these. Andthey have the parts in stock. So
I think it will just like, byspeeding up the entire process,
they're going to help. Hire moretechnicians, speed up their
workload, and have them get moredone on a daily basis to
increase that output. But it's amassive problem that we as an
industry are kind of burying ourhead in the sand, to be honest.
(15:13):
Well,
Paul J Daly (15:13):
you're trying to help that i Who are the people
you know? The report is out, whoare the people that seem to be
the quickest adopters of theinformation in here. Who are the
people that are reading it,first, feeding back on it, first
out
Unknown (15:28):
of like, dealers, vendors
Paul J Daly (15:29):
or investors? Yes, yeah. And even when we say
dealers, if you could break thatdown when we get to the dealers
part, who in the dealership? Sovendors, 100%
Laurie Halter (15:38):
Yeah, yeah.
Vendors, 100% what I wassurprised that is a lot of
principles. It's actually theprinciples and the general
managers that are downloading.
We thought it'd be a lot of thefixed ops directors. But it's
truly like from the downloadside, because we see all the
downloads that are coming in.
It's like group dealership,group heads and things. So I
think that
Paul J Daly (15:58):
kind of makes sense, though, because you think
of like, the closer you get tothe front line, the more things
you have on your decision areato deal with today.
Laurie Halter (16:06):
Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, the vendor
guide is, like, I said, a greatresource, because we, Chris who
put our research together, haslike, tons of checklists and
like options, and here's thefeature, and here's a little bit
about the company. So if they'rejust getting into AI and they're
really feeling overwhelmed, it'sa great resource to just kind of
give you, like, a broad spectrumof the space. And here's the
(16:28):
people who can are here to helphelp you with it. So yeah, I
would say on the dealershipside, 100% like the owners are
the ones reading it over, thefixed ops
Kyle Mountsier (16:37):
directors, yeah.
And it's interesting, though,because, like, and this is where
I'm really intrigued,specifically along along AI and
and in the service drive, like,your average technician isn't
spending probably, you know, Iwould say I spend an average of
two hours a day in an AI toolfor, like, personal or business
(17:00):
use, right? And so spending timein other industry, in in, like,
global industry, AI tooling,yeah, can, if you're not doing
that, can create a gap. I, Iguess my question would be like,
who is spending the time in thetools, right? If, if, if the
dealer principal and people likethat, are trying to think about,
(17:23):
how do I use this? How do, howdo my people leverage this? You
know, when it, when it comes to,like, the adoption across the
the dealership operations,that's going to be a hard one to
press down. I imagine that,like, this is an education
framework that probably needs toget driven into the dealership
(17:46):
other rather than just beingkind of a research thing, right?
It's like, how do you, how doyou see that coming out as as
you explore, like, how to givethis research to the industry
you're you're thinking about,like, how what other avenues Can
I do this? How do you how do youexplore giving it more deeply
into the store where everybodyin the store is, like, ready and
waiting for this?
Laurie Halter (18:07):
Yeah, I think that's such a good question. I
mean, like I said, I think it'sgoing to have to be principle
and top down, which is why we'reseeing the group owners like,
reading the downloading theresearch, because, like anything
else, it's just really going tohave to take the owners that are
saying, Okay, we actually can'tignore this anymore. We need, we
really need to move forward withthis. I was just speaking the
other day with the dealer ownerwho I won't mention, but you
(18:29):
know, I said, Would you beinterested in talking to me
about this research and givingme kind of the dealer
perspective? And he said, to behonest, Lori, I talked to you,
but we're not doing any of it inour dealership. So I think, like
the adoption, while I would loveto push this research into every
area of the dealership, I thinkthe adoption starts at the very
top, and you have to have adealer, owner or principal who's
(18:52):
like, we're going to do this,and I'm going to be the champion
of it. Because
Paul J Daly (18:57):
you know what's going to happen is that, if
they're not saying that now isthey're going to go to a 20
group meeting, or they're goingto come back and not just one,
but like, three or four of thepeople in the 20 group meeting
are going to be, you know,opening up the books and showing
the difference, and then thatdealer principal is going to
come back and be like, Heyeverybody, why aren't we using
AI? Yes, right? We need give mesome AI right now, right? And
(19:21):
give me some AI. Why I'm waitingfor that, right? Yep, yep. 100%
Laurie Halter (19:24):
like, totally.
Williams is another one weinterviewed. You know, he's a
great big so such a smart guy.
And he's saying, like, I don'tcare, the AI tool can do, can
make us as fast as possible,could, like, send out. He goes.
He was, like, at the end of theday, I'm, I'm very concerned
about customer experience. Howis it helping our customer
experience period? And if it'snot, and they're just talking
about speeding up the processand, like, you know, online
(19:48):
scheduling, he's like, I don'tcare. Come in. Show me how it
helps with our customerexperience from beginning to
end, and then maybe we'll giveyou a chance.
Paul J Daly (19:57):
It makes a lot of sense. So I
Laurie Halter (19:58):
think the other and. Answer to your question.
Kyle beyond like, who's going todo it in the dealership? The
vendors who are most interestedin getting into the space need
to truly collaborate and partnerwith their early dealerships
that they're going into. So itgets back to what Ali was
saying, like, vendors, if you'reinterested in truly helping in
this space, go find a coupledealerships that are willing to
(20:20):
collaborate with you as youbuild it out. I think that's
going to be so key.
Kyle Mountsier (20:24):
Yep. All right.
So wait before you Oh, you hadlast one. I did. I wanted to
know what the next researchpaper is. What are you
researching? Right? You got Igotta know, like, what? What can
we look out for? Do you knowwhat's on the horizon?
Paul J Daly (20:38):
Ratio of people in a company who wear flat broom
black hats to work every day.
Profitability over time? How didyou know, 100%
Laurie Halter (20:48):
no, we're looking at a couple different you know,
a lot of people that were like,retail AI and stuff reach out,
were like, Hey, we're not partof the report. I don't think
we're going to go right intoanother AI report, because I
think, you know, we've done onetons of interest in the OEM
process, and how do vendors getinvolved in the OEM
certification process? And,like, what does that look like?
(21:09):
So we might, we might go intosomething like that. We the the
honest, truthful answer is, wehaven't decided yet, but we try
to do research based on trends.
So like the CDK breach, we didcyber security. I heard more and
more and more across theindustry that AI in the Service
Drive is being adopted fasterthan anywhere else. So it
typically the nucleus kind of isdriven by things we're just
hearing in the industry or bigtrends that are happening right
(21:31):
now.
Kyle Mountsier (21:33):
Very cool. Well, Laurie, kudos to you for pulling
these together. I think it'sawesome research. We'll make
sure that the show notes areriddled with with how to get
these. Where can people go?
Like, give the audio listeners alanding spot for these.
Laurie Halter (21:48):
Probably the easiest thing to do is go to my
website, which is www dotcharisma, communications, com,
and at the top bar there's AI inthe service drive. Like,
Paul J Daly (21:57):
easy, easy, easy
Kyle Mountsier (21:59):
to go, good.
Well. Lori, thank you so muchfor hanging out with us. It was
fun talking with you and likedreaming up what AI is gonna
look like and how people can useit. And thanks for joining us
here on auto Collabs.
Unknown (22:11):
Thanks so much. I really appreciate it, guys.
Kyle Mountsier (22:17):
Okay, I'm actually really impressed that a
PR firm saw it fit to go, Hey,look, how do we talk about
solutions that are much morebroad than maybe even the thing
that we do every single day, anddive into a topic like how AI is
going to be leveraged throughoutthe dealership? And I think, you
know, it serves the industry ina very unique way, the way that
(22:37):
they went about the research,the third party impact of it,
and it's a lot of the thingsthat you know, we've been
talking about, but really put ina very well thought out clear
way, so that operators industrypartners can even be thinking
about how to bring AI tools tomarket and serve the dealer and
(22:58):
serve the customer in a reallygreat way. Yeah. Yeah,
Unknown (23:00):
something. Go ahead.
No, you go no, you're probablybetter. Okay, fine. I'll go for
you. Interesting.
Michael Cirillo (23:09):
What comes to my mind is this kind of a
validation around the fact thatthere are those of us, the three
of us included, who are havingactive conversations and playing
around with and implementing AIin a variety of different, I
guess, methodologies. And wehave conversations that can
(23:30):
sometimes be challenging,because it's kind of assumed
that everyone is seeing it theway that we're seeing it and
doing it the way that we'redoing it. And so we end up
actually talking to a smallmicrocosm of people that are
early adopters, that are forwardthinking, or whatever it might
be. And then, you know, to herpoint, hey, like most of the
industry that we're findingright now likes hearing about
(23:52):
it, but they're kind of notimplementing, are they doing it
right? Yeah.
Unknown (23:56):
And that kind of brings the bigger picture into into
view, which is, I think that'sgoing to be the way it is. I
mean, every second scroll onreels for me is some AI expert,
you know, preaching about thecautioning against the impending
doom of the world and and thenso it seems fast for me, but
her, you know, some of the stuffthat she's brought up these
(24:17):
different stages of adoptionand, and all of those sorts of
things that we're seeing in theindustry kind of just reminded
me, like, Ah, it's moving fastfor us because we're in it.
We're like, in a driver's seat,
Paul J Daly (24:27):
but not everybody else. That's so true. And every
time you you show someone, andthis is going to this
demographic of people who don'tuse it are going to get smaller
and smaller really quickly. Butstill, there's so many people. I
mean, how many times a day doyou witness or hear something
where you're like, I mean, youcould have just done that in
like, 30 seconds, right? It'spainful, right? It's hard. Like
(24:49):
I asked Kyle the other wherewere we last week and and we
want, oh yeah, we walked into awe walked into a restaurant like
a fast cow. Do you ever look atthe world and I'm like. I'm
like, yeah, that purple on thatboard is wrong, and why is that
there? And then I said to Kyle.
I was like, isn't it? Don't youjust wish you could shut off the
analysis that happens wheneveryou walk into a business. He's
like, it's brutal, like,efficiency analysis, design
(25:11):
analysis. But again, back toyour point, Michael, the stages.
I think that is one of the mostimportant parts of the
conversation that she wastalking about, what is stage
1234, we need to get people intoat least testing the waters in
stage one so we can move themthrough and so we hope that you
check out the report. We'regonna link it in the comments so
that you can get to it. Lori isreally easy to find to online.
(25:34):
I'm sure she would love youconnect with her on LinkedIn or
otherwise. But our time forhere, for now is done so on
behalf of Kyle Mountsier,Michael Cirillo and myself,
thanks for joining us and thecharismatic Lori holster on auto
Collabs.
Unknown (25:51):
Sign up for our free and fun to read daily email for
a free shot of relevant news andautomotive retail media and pop
culture. You can get itnow@asotu.com that's asotu.com
if you love this podcast, pleaseleave us a review and share it
with a friend. Thanks again forlistening. We'll see you next
time.
(26:22):
Welcome to Annika lab.
Okay, I have a riddle for you. What is
(00:01):
optimistic, technologicallyfocused, people centered and on
the show today.
Unknown (00:12):
This is auto Collabs.
Paul J Daly (00:18):
That's not allowed, no chat. GPT is only that way if
you tell it starts with the
Unknown (00:23):
letter L and rhymes with Ori halter.
Paul J Daly (00:28):
I'm so excited.
Laurie alter is today's guest,and she is just so much fun to
be around. She's one of thosepeople that if you're in the
proximity the blast radius ofher overall energy, you just
start to feel like you should besmiling and being a little more
positive, which makes sense,because she's so
Unknown (00:47):
right. Yeah, dare we say, she brings the charisma.
Paul J Daly (00:53):
You know, I wasn't even thinking about
Unknown (00:55):
that, Laurie, you're welcome.
Paul J Daly (00:57):
I know communications. Laurie is one of
the most seasoned PR people inthe auto industry. We're very
excited to just call her afriend and to have her on the
show today to talk about a topicthat everybody's talking about.
Ai, so we hope you enjoy thisconversation. Lori halter,
(01:17):
Laurie, it has been way too longsince we've had the opportunity
to sit down and have a podcasttype conversation. Thanks for
joining us today on autoCollabs.
Laurie Halter (01:25):
I'm so excited to be here, guys, it has been I was
just telling you off screen.
It's been a minute, so I'mexcited to be on with you both.
Oh, likewise.
Paul J Daly (01:33):
So entrepreneurs, no grass ever grows under our
feet, right? We are alwaystrying to do something new, and
you're one of those people thatit's like, Catch Me If You Can.
If anyone's ever run into you ata conference or an event, or has
been engaged with you in any waythey know,
Kyle Mountsier (01:48):
literally, Paul, look no, this is not a joke. I
think I actually played Catch MeIf You Can, at the last
conference where, like, I waslike,
Unknown (02:03):
we were like, both you were running this way and I was
running
Kyle Mountsier (02:06):
this it was amazing. You could have and,
like, gotten one of those good,like, side swipe videos where
it's like, that person's alwaysrunning the other way. It would
have been magical.
Paul J Daly (02:15):
Yeah, so you in the vein of that is that you've been
in this industry for a longtime. You've been helping a lot
of people. You kind of have yourfingerprints all over a lot of
industry partners anddealerships and and the
communications and the publicrelations and the a lot of what
people see and hear aboutcompanies. A lot of times you're
in the back channels, kind ofcrafting messages and trying to
(02:36):
understand the needs, andunderstand the needs, not just
at the industry partners, but ofyou know, what we all focus on
is like, how can we serve thedealers best? And you kind of
had this new idea over the lastmonths. And like every great
entrepreneur, you don't justhave ideas. You actually say,
I'm going to do that thing. Soyou've done a thing, and now you
have independent research aboutto be published into the
(02:57):
industry, or it is publishedinto the industry. And you
focused on service. Tell us alittle bit about why you decided
to, like, synthesize researchand give it to the industry.
Laurie Halter (03:08):
Well, I love that. And in truthfully, like
you guys said, I'm anentrepreneur at heart, so part
of it right is like, Okay, nowI'm bored. What can I do next?
But
Paul J Daly (03:16):
what does it mean now I'm bored?
Unknown (03:19):
Me on a Monday. Just every
Laurie Halter (03:21):
single entrepreneur ever. But really,
where it came from is as owninga PR firm and working with
dealers, vendors, investorsacross the industry, we realized
that there's a hole. There was ahole in the content. So there's
a lot of fantastic contentcreators. You guys are a great
example of that. But like deepdive research that really gets
(03:44):
into the heart of some of thesetopics, was missing, and so we
decided to step in and kind ofbe in that space. So we our
first report was on the CDKbreach last summer, and it was
all about cyber security in thedealerships. We released that,
and then afterward, we reallystarted seeing a need for AI
(04:04):
based research, because that'sall any of us are talking about,
right? Is ai, ai, and we decidedto dive into that within fixed
ops. So this is our secondresearch that we put out, and it
really came from, like I said, aneed that I saw. You know,
publishers are doing a great jobwith the articles. You all are
doing great job with digitalcontent. But we really didn't
(04:26):
see like deep diving research onsome of these topics, and so
that's where the idea came from.
Kyle Mountsier (04:33):
Yeah, it's interesting to me, because a lot
of times the research that yousee within our industry is
either done by someone that hasa product they can sell or
someone from outside of theindustry that doesn't really
understand it, right, like aMcKinsey comes in, does a deep
research, and you can, you canread it, and go, Yeah, I think
you got like
Unknown (04:51):
88%
Paul J Daly (04:52):
of it, right, but you don't have the context,
Kyle Mountsier (04:55):
the context of that 12% right? Yes,
Laurie Halter (04:57):
yes. And we're seeing on the back end as a PR.
I'm like, I understand theanalysts, I understand the
research, I understand thecompanies that are paying to be
a part of those reports. Butwhat happens is, like you guys
talked about, then you're notgetting as independent
information as you need. And sowith this report, we really
focused on, like, there was nopaid opportunities, nothing
sponsored it truly was justgoing out into the industry,
(05:20):
talking to dealers, talking tovendors, talking to investors,
and trying to bring about a veryneutrally played report of
information about AI in theservice.
Kyle Mountsier (05:29):
What was something that you learned along
the way? Because, you know, youventure into something like
this, and it's not like youhaven't written before,
understood the industry before,done like your own personal
research, but what was somethingthat you've learned
contextually, that maybe youweren't expecting, not maybe
specifically about AI, but like,as you're starting to do these
research, things that you'relike, I just never thought about
(05:51):
doing that piece or whatcontextually?
Laurie Halter (05:53):
Yeah, I think what we've learned overall,
that's been fascinating, and itshould be like, a no brainer is,
everybody wants informationabout what the dealer actually
thinks, right? So the dealer,it's it like all these vendors
and tech partners are creatingproducts for the dealers, but no
one's going to the dealers tosay, like, what do you actually
want in these products? So oneof the most interesting things,
(06:15):
I think, to come out of this isthere's truly a hole in the
industry when it comes to like,dealers speaking to vendors
about this is what we want youto create, and vendors actually
creating things that are fit theneed of the dealers. So I think,
like for me, I was like, Oh mygosh, there's a complete
disconnect between what thedealers are actually needing and
what's being produced for thisindustry.
Paul J Daly (06:37):
Okay, so tell us a little bit about the report.
What's the premise of thereport, the type of research
that was done to generate thefindings.
Laurie Halter (06:45):
Okay, also, let me start with so the report is
and the service drive, we had acompletely independent research
team do it. So I've had peoplesay, like, you're a PR firm. How
could this possibly be, youknow, like, neutral. And the
truth is, I kept myselfcompletely out of it, like I
wasn't a part of any of theinterviews. But our research
team went out. They spoke withdealers, vendors in the space,
(07:07):
investors in the space, didtheir own research, spoke with
some of the media companies thathave reported on AI, and really
put together this verycomprehensive guide on what AI
is. Where are we, truthfully inthe market with it, and we're
further behind than we thought,than we like to think. And what
do the dealers really thinkabout the technology? Like, do
(07:29):
they think AI is helping? Is ithelping? And so from that, we
came up with, like, an 80 pagereport with a also a vendor
guide that takes 12 to 15 of thevendors that we found the
research time found through AIand rank them like based on,
here's what they do, here'stheir cost, here's the benefit
to the dealer. We really werefocusing on being that resource
(07:52):
in the space that's neutral andsays, Look, we're going to get
everybody together and tell youwhere we're at. How much does it
cost, and is it really going tofit the needs of what you're
doing in your dealership?
Kyle Mountsier (08:03):
We're behind. So what do you mean, like, what
specifically are we behind? Inmy thoughts, yeah,
Laurie Halter (08:09):
yeah. So I think the vendors think that adoption
is at a certain level, and thatthe dealers can't wait to help,
like, streamline their processand help with customer service.
The dealerships we talked to arelike, we are hesitant. I don't I
don't know what I think aboutthis. I don't know if I like it.
So I think when I see behindlike the vendors, I think, and
(08:31):
this goes back a little bit tothe disconnect I was talking
about in terms of like, thatintermediary between the dealers
and the vendors. I think thevendors thoughts are that
everybody is understanding whatAI is, how it works, what it
does. Meanwhile, the dealers arelike, whoa, whoa, whoa, could
this even help us? Let's, let'stake a step back, like, Could
this even help us? And where canI
Paul J Daly (08:50):
think, I think one of the helpful parts of the
report, and this is early on inthere, is you talk about clear
categories emerging in the AIspace, AI space, which I think
is super helpful. And sosegmenting the guide out into
these segments, because I think,like you said, everyone's AI
this, AI that. So AI is this bigumbrella term that people can
(09:13):
get, like, literally swallowedup by so you broke it down into
four categories. It'scommunication, AI, marketing,
AI, service operations, AI andinfrastructure and consulting.
So do you Did you see, or do youknow from the research or other
hand, what people tend to adopt?
First
Laurie Halter (09:32):
Great question, and it's definitely by far like
the biggest adoption and thebiggest thought of AI right now
on the dealer side, is outboundtax. Like in their like in their
mind, outbound tax, you know, tobring in service appointments,
is number one, and it shouldprobably be step one. But I
think what's missing is, likethe deeper understanding that
that is just the very tip of theiceberg, right? Like you go from
(09:55):
then you go into the marketing,which is outbound in inbound
tax, you go into service.
Scheduling would probably benumber two. And then you get
into three and four is reallylike, okay, technician, how do
we help solve the technicianshortage with AI tools? And the
fourth, then finally, is like,predictive maintenance and
analytics, like so that's, we'renowhere near predictive
maintenance and analytics, butthat is kind of the, the final
(10:16):
kind of category that we seecoming into automotive
Kyle Mountsier (10:24):
it is interesting to me, because, you
know, and this is my argumentis, I think that the largest
llms in the world are probablyasking themselves in board
meetings. They're probablygoing, how do we get into
retail, auto? Yeah, the money'sso big, right? They know that.
(10:48):
They know that it's there, yep,but there, there's no translator
to do that like I think aboutthe financial sector right now.
We just read last week that thefinancial sector is, is getting
an overhaul, because Claude andperplexity is capacity, or
Claude capacity, specifically,when it comes to what anthropic
has built for financial modelingand buying and buying and
(11:11):
selling, you know, on exchangesis like, far surpasses any
analysts expectations, yeah, andyet, perplexity hasn't come and
like Gone, direct to service,drive, selling, right? And we
always, we always struggled itwith this as an industry, ever
since the technologicalrevolution in the like, you
(11:31):
know, 2005 to 2013 range where,where we kind of have a bunch of
purpose built solutions. But youknow, a sales force, a HubSpot,
a perplexity, you know, any ofthose find it a struggle to come
into, into auto Where did yousee a gap in your research,
anywhere, of like purpose builtsolutions, kind of having to
(11:52):
pave the way for, you know, theadoption that an industry is
ready to take
Laurie Halter (11:57):
such a good question. Call it, and it's we
totally found that. I mean. SoI'll give one example from the
report ally peters out ofcalendar. We all know and love
Allie. She was one of thepeople, the fix ops directors
that we interviewed, and she waslike, Look, anyone who's going
to come in now, I will give ashout out to Mike karma. They're
the ones she had talked about interms of being the best partner.
She was like, anyone who's goingto come in and try and sell us,
(12:18):
AI is going to need to work handin hand with us, and we will
pilot it. Because she said thatsame thing. She said, Anyone
coming in from the outside isnot going to understand the
intricacies that are neededwithin this space,
Paul J Daly (12:30):
but they're going to think that they do. They're
going to think the hard part.
Yeah. So she
Laurie Halter (12:33):
was saying, like, I think for AI vendors, or, you
know, anyone out there a salesforce, they need to really be
like, understand the space andbe willing to collaborate with
us as they build it. Because,you know, anyone just coming in
with an overall solution, it'sjust too intricate. Pit stops
and automotive in general, it'sjust too intricate. There's too
(12:54):
many steps. The other thing weheard is they really, and we've
heard this for tech till we'llhear till the end of tech
streamline. They're just like,we don't want one more plugin.
Please, please, please, buildinto, you know, our our existing
systems, so we don't have tojust add one more thing on top
of the DMS. I
Paul J Daly (13:14):
want to go back to one of the things you said.
I've, I've never heard of yet tohear this the first time where I
saw somebody directly or heardsomebody directly tie deploying
AI to helping with thetechnician shortage. Unpack that
for a minute.
Laurie Halter (13:30):
Yeah. So, so this is fascinating. I mean, I think
I was reading in the report.
Now, don't quote me, but I thinkit's something like, we're,
we're at a 600,000 persontechnician, technician shortage.
Unknown (13:46):
Problem.
Paul J Daly (13:49):
Hold on, it says roughly in 20 as of 2022, there
were 733, techs employed. Butindustry forecast project a need
for 1.346 by the end of thisyear. Right now, yep, leaving a
shortfall of over 600,000600,000
Kyle Mountsier (14:06):
short fall, my
Laurie Halter (14:07):
goodness, crazy, right? And we're hearing that. I
mean, we're hearing that, youguys, for sure, are hearing
that. I'm sure I hear that everyday. Automotive News is doing
stories on that all the time. Soone way that AI can really help
with that is by speeding up theprocess, by getting in there and
saying, this is kind of thepredictive maintenance and parts
we were talking about as well.
If we can say, if AI can say, weknow this amount of cars come in
(14:30):
at this time needing thisindividual repair, then we're
better able to stock the parts.
The technicians are better ableto fix the problem if they've
got the AI tools in their spacethat are even like, let's take a
simple you know, the video walkaround for the consumer that's
going to speed up the consumersaying, Yes, this, go ahead,
(14:51):
move forward with these. Andthey have the parts in stock. So
I think it will just like, byspeeding up the entire process,
they're going to help. Hire moretechnicians, speed up their
workload, and have them get moredone on a daily basis to
increase that output. But it's amassive problem that we as an
industry are kind of burying ourhead in the sand, to be honest.
(15:13):
Well,
Paul J Daly (15:13):
you're trying to help that i Who are the people
you know? The report is out, whoare the people that seem to be
the quickest adopters of theinformation in here. Who are the
people that are reading it,first, feeding back on it, first
out
Unknown (15:28):
of like, dealers, vendors
Paul J Daly (15:29):
or investors? Yes, yeah. And even when we say
dealers, if you could break thatdown when we get to the dealers
part, who in the dealership? Sovendors, 100%
Laurie Halter (15:38):
Yeah, yeah.
Vendors, 100% what I wassurprised that is a lot of
principles. It's actually theprinciples and the general
managers that are downloading.
We thought it'd be a lot of thefixed ops directors. But it's
truly like from the downloadside, because we see all the
downloads that are coming in.
It's like group dealership,group heads and things. So I
think that
Paul J Daly (15:58):
kind of makes sense, though, because you think
of like, the closer you get tothe front line, the more things
you have on your decision areato deal with today.
Laurie Halter (16:06):
Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, the vendor
guide is, like, I said, a greatresource, because we, Chris who
put our research together, haslike, tons of checklists and
like options, and here's thefeature, and here's a little bit
about the company. So if they'rejust getting into AI and they're
really feeling overwhelmed, it'sa great resource to just kind of
give you, like, a broad spectrumof the space. And here's the
(16:28):
people who can are here to helphelp you with it. So yeah, I
would say on the dealershipside, 100% like the owners are
the ones reading it over, thefixed ops
Kyle Mountsier (16:37):
directors, yeah.
And it's interesting, though,because, like, and this is where
I'm really intrigued,specifically along along AI and
and in the service drive, like,your average technician isn't
spending probably, you know, Iwould say I spend an average of
two hours a day in an AI toolfor, like, personal or business
(17:00):
use, right? And so spending timein other industry, in in, like,
global industry, AI tooling,yeah, can, if you're not doing
that, can create a gap. I, Iguess my question would be like,
who is spending the time in thetools, right? If, if, if the
dealer principal and people likethat, are trying to think about,
(17:23):
how do I use this? How do, howdo my people leverage this? You
know, when it, when it comes to,like, the adoption across the
the dealership operations,that's going to be a hard one to
press down. I imagine that,like, this is an education
framework that probably needs toget driven into the dealership
(17:46):
other rather than just beingkind of a research thing, right?
It's like, how do you, how doyou see that coming out as as
you explore, like, how to givethis research to the industry
you're you're thinking about,like, how what other avenues Can
I do this? How do you how do youexplore giving it more deeply
into the store where everybodyin the store is, like, ready and
waiting for this?
Laurie Halter (18:07):
Yeah, I think that's such a good question. I
mean, like I said, I think it'sgoing to have to be principle
and top down, which is why we'reseeing the group owners like,
reading the downloading theresearch, because, like anything
else, it's just really going tohave to take the owners that are
saying, Okay, we actually can'tignore this anymore. We need, we
really need to move forward withthis. I was just speaking the
other day with the dealer ownerwho I won't mention, but you
(18:29):
know, I said, Would you beinterested in talking to me
about this research and givingme kind of the dealer
perspective? And he said, to behonest, Lori, I talked to you,
but we're not doing any of it inour dealership. So I think, like
the adoption, while I would loveto push this research into every
area of the dealership, I thinkthe adoption starts at the very
top, and you have to have adealer, owner or principal who's
(18:52):
like, we're going to do this,and I'm going to be the champion
of it. Because
Paul J Daly (18:57):
you know what's going to happen is that, if
they're not saying that now isthey're going to go to a 20
group meeting, or they're goingto come back and not just one,
but like, three or four of thepeople in the 20 group meeting
are going to be, you know,opening up the books and showing
the difference, and then thatdealer principal is going to
come back and be like, Heyeverybody, why aren't we using
AI? Yes, right? We need give mesome AI right now, right? And
(19:21):
give me some AI. Why I'm waitingfor that, right? Yep, yep. 100%
Laurie Halter (19:24):
like, totally.
Williams is another one weinterviewed. You know, he's a
great big so such a smart guy.
And he's saying, like, I don'tcare, the AI tool can do, can
make us as fast as possible,could, like, send out. He goes.
He was, like, at the end of theday, I'm, I'm very concerned
about customer experience. Howis it helping our customer
experience period? And if it'snot, and they're just talking
about speeding up the processand, like, you know, online
(19:48):
scheduling, he's like, I don'tcare. Come in. Show me how it
helps with our customerexperience from beginning to
end, and then maybe we'll giveyou a chance.
Paul J Daly (19:57):
It makes a lot of sense. So I
Laurie Halter (19:58):
think the other and. Answer to your question.
Kyle beyond like, who's going todo it in the dealership? The
vendors who are most interestedin getting into the space need
to truly collaborate and partnerwith their early dealerships
that they're going into. So itgets back to what Ali was
saying, like, vendors, if you'reinterested in truly helping in
this space, go find a coupledealerships that are willing to
(20:20):
collaborate with you as youbuild it out. I think that's
going to be so key.
Kyle Mountsier (20:24):
Yep. All right.
So wait before you Oh, you hadlast one. I did. I wanted to
know what the next researchpaper is. What are you
researching? Right? You got Igotta know, like, what? What can
we look out for? Do you knowwhat's on the horizon?
Paul J Daly (20:38):
Ratio of people in a company who wear flat broom
black hats to work every day.
Profitability over time? How didyou know, 100%
Laurie Halter (20:48):
no, we're looking at a couple different you know,
a lot of people that were like,retail AI and stuff reach out,
were like, Hey, we're not partof the report. I don't think
we're going to go right intoanother AI report, because I
think, you know, we've done onetons of interest in the OEM
process, and how do vendors getinvolved in the OEM
certification process? And,like, what does that look like?
(21:09):
So we might, we might go intosomething like that. We the the
honest, truthful answer is, wehaven't decided yet, but we try
to do research based on trends.
So like the CDK breach, we didcyber security. I heard more and
more and more across theindustry that AI in the Service
Drive is being adopted fasterthan anywhere else. So it
typically the nucleus kind of isdriven by things we're just
hearing in the industry or bigtrends that are happening right
(21:31):
now.
Kyle Mountsier (21:33):
Very cool. Well, Laurie, kudos to you for pulling
these together. I think it'sawesome research. We'll make
sure that the show notes areriddled with with how to get
these. Where can people go?
Like, give the audio listeners alanding spot for these.
Laurie Halter (21:48):
Probably the easiest thing to do is go to my
website, which is www dotcharisma, communications, com,
and at the top bar there's AI inthe service drive. Like,
Paul J Daly (21:57):
easy, easy, easy
Kyle Mountsier (21:59):
to go, good.
Well. Lori, thank you so muchfor hanging out with us. It was
fun talking with you and likedreaming up what AI is gonna
look like and how people can useit. And thanks for joining us
here on auto Collabs.
Unknown (22:11):
Thanks so much. I really appreciate it, guys.
Kyle Mountsier (22:17):
Okay, I'm actually really impressed that a
PR firm saw it fit to go, Hey,look, how do we talk about
solutions that are much morebroad than maybe even the thing
that we do every single day, anddive into a topic like how AI is
going to be leveraged throughoutthe dealership? And I think, you
know, it serves the industry ina very unique way, the way that
(22:37):
they went about the research,the third party impact of it,
and it's a lot of the thingsthat you know, we've been
talking about, but really put ina very well thought out clear
way, so that operators industrypartners can even be thinking
about how to bring AI tools tomarket and serve the dealer and
(22:58):
serve the customer in a reallygreat way. Yeah. Yeah,
Unknown (23:00):
something. Go ahead.
No, you go no, you're probablybetter. Okay, fine. I'll go for
you. Interesting.
Michael Cirillo (23:09):
What comes to my mind is this kind of a
validation around the fact thatthere are those of us, the three
of us included, who are havingactive conversations and playing
around with and implementing AIin a variety of different, I
guess, methodologies. And wehave conversations that can
(23:30):
sometimes be challenging,because it's kind of assumed
that everyone is seeing it theway that we're seeing it and
doing it the way that we'redoing it. And so we end up
actually talking to a smallmicrocosm of people that are
early adopters, that are forwardthinking, or whatever it might
be. And then, you know, to herpoint, hey, like most of the
industry that we're findingright now likes hearing about
(23:52):
it, but they're kind of notimplementing, are they doing it
right? Yeah.
Unknown (23:56):
And that kind of brings the bigger picture into into
view, which is, I think that'sgoing to be the way it is. I
mean, every second scroll onreels for me is some AI expert,
you know, preaching about thecautioning against the impending
doom of the world and and thenso it seems fast for me, but
her, you know, some of the stuffthat she's brought up these
(24:17):
different stages of adoptionand, and all of those sorts of
things that we're seeing in theindustry kind of just reminded
me, like, Ah, it's moving fastfor us because we're in it.
We're like, in a driver's seat,
Paul J Daly (24:27):
but not everybody else. That's so true. And every
time you you show someone, andthis is going to this
demographic of people who don'tuse it are going to get smaller
and smaller really quickly. Butstill, there's so many people. I
mean, how many times a day doyou witness or hear something
where you're like, I mean, youcould have just done that in
like, 30 seconds, right? It'spainful, right? It's hard. Like
(24:49):
I asked Kyle the other wherewere we last week and and we
want, oh yeah, we walked into awe walked into a restaurant like
a fast cow. Do you ever look atthe world and I'm like. I'm
like, yeah, that purple on thatboard is wrong, and why is that
there? And then I said to Kyle.
I was like, isn't it? Don't youjust wish you could shut off the
analysis that happens wheneveryou walk into a business. He's
like, it's brutal, like,efficiency analysis, design
(25:11):
analysis. But again, back toyour point, Michael, the stages.
I think that is one of the mostimportant parts of the
conversation that she wastalking about, what is stage
1234, we need to get people intoat least testing the waters in
stage one so we can move themthrough and so we hope that you
check out the report. We'regonna link it in the comments so
that you can get to it. Lori isreally easy to find to online.
(25:34):
I'm sure she would love youconnect with her on LinkedIn or
otherwise. But our time forhere, for now is done so on
behalf of Kyle Mountsier,Michael Cirillo and myself,
thanks for joining us and thecharismatic Lori holster on auto
Collabs.
Unknown (25:51):
Sign up for our free and fun to read daily email for
a free shot of relevant news andautomotive retail media and pop
culture. You can get itnow@asotu.com that's asotu.com
if you love this podcast, pleaseleave us a review and share it
with a friend. Thanks again forlistening. We'll see you next
time.
(26:22):
Welcome to Annika lab.
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