Fixed Ops Friday w/ Love, Golightley, & Carlstedt

What's on tap for today's Fixed Ops Friday show?

Sam D'Arc: Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. We're doing better as a result of social media presence. If it doesn't do those three things, then it's on the chopping block — it's a return-on-investment discussion. Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of Daily Dealer Live. I'm your host, Sam, coming to you live from CDG Studios in Boca Raton, Florida. Thanks for choosing to be here this Friday, June the 12th. It's Fixed Ops Friday, which we all know is the most profitable part of our dealerships, and for most stores it's still running on reactive firefight mode. Today we fix that.

Sam: Joel Love joins the show. He's a service director at Toyota of Montgomery — yes, I'm going to ask that question, Roll Tide or not? Joel Love went all in on video MPIs and is rebuilding his drive around retention. Ryan Carlstedt is back, of Willis Auto Group. He's got nine brands, 86% video compliance, customer-pay gross is up 16%, and they're breaking records every single month. Plus, Podium's Liam Golightley joins the show. They just wrapped up an invite-only summit in Park City, Deer Valley — super elite, for four of the five largest dealer groups in the country. He's bringing the receipts on what AI is actually doing in service drives: one store, 30 days, $56,000 in found gross, video, retention, AI, accountability. It's all Fixed Ops Friday today. But first, let's go to today's automotive industry headlines.

What are today's biggest auto industry headlines?

Sam: Kicking off today's show with an economic update. Inflation hit 4.2% in May — that's the highest reading since April 2023, driven primarily by energy costs tied to the Iran conflict. Gas prices rose 8.6% in May and are up 40.5% on an annual basis. For anyone who's driven by a gas station lately, though, the national average has pulled back slightly from its peak of $4.52 to around $4.15. Housing and food also posted modest gains.

Cox Automotive's chief economist said that between the inflation reading and last week's jobs report — 172,000 jobs added, unemployment holding at 4.3% — the case for rate cuts this summer is essentially gone. So if you're hoping for that, don't hold your breath. And with new-vehicle loan rates at 9.87% and prices approaching $50,000, inflation outpacing wage growth is the pressure point dealers will feel most directly on the floor.

In other news, CarGurus' May Intelligence Report shows overall new-vehicle demand up 6.2% from April and 5.7% year-over-year — the first time new demand has actually overtaken 2025 levels. Toyota is leading the pack by a wide margin, nearing 20% of total new market share and the only brand with days-on-market under 50. GM was the only other brand above 15% share. The used market also accelerated in May, with prices jumping to $30,200 — up $500 from April — as inventory grows but the mix shifts toward higher-priced listings. Vehicles 11 years and older are actually seeing the strongest demand share, driven by affordability-conscious buyers working their way down the pricing ladder. Unsurprisingly, hybrids are still the fastest movers on both the new and used side, with new retail hybrid sales up 33% year-over-year and used up 42%.

Up next, some good news for Ford truck dealers: Novelis restarted production at its Oswego, New York aluminum plant this week. The facility that supplies the aluminum body panels for F-Series trucks had been offline for months following two fires. The disruption already cost Ford an estimated $2 billion in impact and contributed to F-Series sales falling 16% in Q1, while Ram posted a 20% gain over the same period. With the plant back online, Ford's ability to rebuild F-Series inventory and protect its most profitable vehicle line improves meaningfully heading into the summer selling season.

And we're closing out today with a big recall. Stellantis is recalling more than 1.3 million Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator vehicles globally — 2021 through 2025 models — over a fire risk tied to hydraulic power-steering pump wiring that can cause combustible materials to overheat. NHTSA is aware of 51 fires and one injury potentially linked to the issue, and owners are being advised to park outside and away from structures until repairs are completed. Owner notification letters go out July 9th. This is the third major Jeep recall in recent months — Grand Cherokee airbag software in May, PHEV battery fires in November — and now Stellantis, in the middle of a quality overhaul, has hired 2,000 engineers to address exactly these kinds of issues. But the near-term reality for Jeep dealers is that customer communication and service-lane capacity are both going to be under pressure. For more on this recall and others, get full details at the CDG recall tracker.

And that, folks, is a wrap on today's auto industry headlines. Welcome to Fixed Ops Friday.

Who's joining today's Fixed Ops Friday panel?

Sam: And as a reminder, we're streaming live across all the CDG social media platforms — post your comments into today's show and we'll bring them into the conversation; you make us better as we talk together. The Automotive Retired Guy comes in and says, "Sam, what's up? What's up, War Eagle?" Dan C says, "Happy Fixed Ops Friday." Shout out to Ken C74. Scott Simons thinks I'm tan — this is a different camera, so that's the perception. Lauren Klein, love to be back. Eager K is talking about his trip to Monaco — one day we'll have Eager K on the show. Jeremy Todd, thanks for the props: "This is the best automotive podcast, hands down. Love Fixed Ops Friday." And to our loyal listening audience, thanks for being here to make this show what it is every single Friday, three times a week.

Sam: And without further ado, let's go to Montgomery, Alabama. Welcome, Joel Love, service director, Toyota of Montgomery. Welcome to the show.

Joel Love: Hey, Sam. How are you?

Sam: It's good to have you here, Joel. Joel, we've got to ask you, man — Roll Tide or no? Who's your team?

Joel: The Dawgs. Georgia.

Sam: Okay, all right. Is that allowed, being in Montgomery? Are you allowed to do that?

Joel: I catch a pretty good bit of grief about it, but it's all right.

Sam: Well, I've heard a rumor — who's the owner of your store?

Joel: Oh, yeah, it's Coach Saban.

Sam: How could you do Georgia? By the way, I've been to Athens, Georgia — I've seen football games there, what a great place to see it. But you know, I would think a condition of your employment would be Alabama.

Joel: No, no, no. Thank God.

Sam: Okay, all right. So, hey, we're excited to have you. Tell everybody who you are, what you do, and how business is this June of 2026 at your Toyota store.

Joel: Business is going good, with three consecutive record-breaking months.

Sam: Congrats.

Joel: And we're moving in the right direction. We're looking forward to breaking another record this month.

How did Joel Love turn three straight months into record sales?

Sam: So give our audience one tip — what's one thing you've done that's helped you achieve three months of record sales?

Joel: Video MPIs.

Sam: Okay, we've talked a lot about video MPI on the show. Walk us through what you did — where you implemented video MPI, how long have you been doing it?

Joel: We started it here in January. On my previous store I'd been doing them since 2017, but here we started in January, and we're moving forward full bore — technicians have bought in. I had one technician who argued with me about doing them at first, and then he saw how many hours he produced after his first month, and he said, "Hey, I apologize, I'm all in."

Sam: Yeah. So did you recently become service director? Are you newer at that store?

Joel: About a year.

Sam: Okay. So what caused you to say, "Hey, January, we're going to implement video MPI"? What was the process before, and what was the market pressure that made you say we're going to actually deliver on this? Everybody talks about it, not everybody delivers.

Joel: Well, we got help from Coach Saban's group buying us and getting everything turned around.

Sam: Yeah. Who — what platform do you use to deliver video MPI?

Joel: We do video through Reynolds.

Sam: Okay, true video through Reynolds, very good. So a lot of service directors in your position say retention is a priority, but you're making it the center of your leadership focus right now. We'll come back to video MPI in a minute — what's driving that retention focus in June of 2026? Is there something you're seeing in the numbers, or is it more about where you think the market's headed?

Joel: It's where we need to be. As a Toyota dealership, we're currently at 80 to 85% retention. We want to be up at 90%.

Sam: Yeah.

Joel: We're focusing — our CSI has improved greatly in the last three or four, six months — and we're improving that by giving world-class service, taking care of our customers, communicating.

What impact have video MPIs had on approval rates and retention?

Sam: Yeah. So in June of '26, we've seen video MPIs live or die by advisor and tech buy-in. Coming back to the video MPI piece, how did you get your team on board in January, and what did the pushback look like from those who were against it initially, Joel?

Joel: "Am I going to get paid for this?" That was the biggest thing from the technicians.

Sam: Absolutely.

Joel: You're going to make more money doing it. You know, whenever you go to the doctor, you want to talk to the doctor, not the nurse. The technicians are the doctor, and that's what I've instilled in my technicians — hey, you're the doctor, they want to hear from you. That's how we're doing it.

Sam: And what percent deliver rate on ROs are you getting MPIs created? And then what's the percent open rate from the customer?

Joel: We're at 88.7% on deliver rate, and we're at 63% on open rate.

Sam: Okay. How do you explain that difference? That's interesting — that's a 30-point delta between send and open. Why don't more customers open the video? What do you think the big stop is?

Joel: I think the biggest stop is making sure we have the correct information — the correct cell phone number, that it's going to the correct number. We may not be sending them to the correct number, but we are sending them.

Sam: Has your auto group gone through a data cleanse — a CDP? Have you done that?

Joel: Not yet.

Sam: Who's your DMS provider?

Joel: Reynolds.

Sam: It's Reynolds, yeah, okay, so all of them are integrated there. Have you thought about the data-cleanse piece? Because that's an interesting point — a 30-point delta on interaction and engagement. If we have the wrong cell number or wrong email address, that's going to impact how it lands. What's prevented the group from cleansing the data? What needs to happen for you to do it?

Joel: Well, they've just acquired us, so we're in the process of getting everything turned around.

Sam: Oh, okay — Nick Saban just bought your dealership. Got it. Who owned it prior?

Joel: It was Sutherland Automotive Group.

Sam: Okay, okay. What did — I know this requires you to guess — but what did Nick Saban see in your store that made him say, "I want to make this part of the auto group"?

Joel: I think being a Toyota owner — he's got a lot of Mercedes-Benz stores, right.

Sam: Yeah, huh. So when a customer watches their vehicle inspection on video, how does that change the conversation at write-up? Are you seeing a difference in approval rates on recommended work from the customers who engage and open it?

Joel: Absolutely. We're at a 78% approval rate on video MPIs.

Sam: Versus what, without?

Joel: Without, we're at a 32% approval rate.

Sam: Wow, so it's more than double the approval when the customer watches the video.

Joel: And we send a text message to the customer as soon as we write up the repair order — we print that they're going to be receiving a video.

Sam: Yeah. What message would you give to service directors watching this show who may not be requiring video MPIs — maybe it's optional? You started it in January — what do you wish you'd done 12 months ago, and what message would you give to anybody kicking the tires on this?

Joel: Just do it. Don't wait around, do it right now.

What is UVeye and why is it worth the expense?

Sam: Yeah, yeah. What else are you doing to improve retention? You've got a great retention number and it's increasing — video MPI is one of the prongs. Is there anything else our audience could learn from today?

Joel: We're fortunate, we have UVeye on the service drive.

Sam: Okay. That's a great tool for my service advisors — if you can sell tires, you can get retention; that's a great tool to sell tires. All right, let me pressure-test that — I know it's a capable tool, but Joel, it's expensive. The expense load to any service department is significant having UVeye. Tell me what the ROI is on it and where you've seen the most lift having a technology like that. For the audience that doesn't know — whether it's UVeye or ACV's new tool, I think it's called Viper — there are different tools where you can run a vehicle through a camera tunnel. What does the UVeye product do, and what's the ROI been given the expense?

Joel: We run all of our appraisals through it. The used-car department and the service department split the cost, so our ROI is great. Our tire sales are at — right now we're doing 500-and-some tires this month.

Sam: Wow, okay, it's paying for itself. Do you use it in your used-vehicle acquisition process — anything that way?

Joel: We have salespeople on the drive.

Sam: Yeah, do you use the UVeye process for that as well? Walk us through what that looks like.

Joel: If our used-car department is looking for Tacomas, it'll ping the used-car manager — hey, we have this model Tacoma that just came in on the service drive.

Sam: So they can be there on the service drive trying to get the customer to trade or sell?

Joel: Whatever's needed.

Sam: Yeah, so it's been a win-win for you. Well, Joel, as we wrap up today, we appreciate you being on, especially with this new Nick Saban store acquisition. One ask before I let you go — how do we get Nick Saban on the show? Can you go to your boss and say, "Daily Dealer Live, Nick Saban, come on"? We can have a little debate about Alabama versus Georgia heading into football season in the fall.

Joel: We can try, but he's pretty busy.

Sam: I know he's busy, he's got a good TV gig, but there's no better TV gig than Daily Dealer Live, so maybe he'd still join up. Hey, you're in CDG Circles — give our audience a sense of what you get out of that. What's the value of CDG Circles for you, Joel, as a service director at a Toyota store making big changes with video MPIs and UVeye and everything else you're doing?

Joel: For someone who's been in the business since 1987, there are a lot of smart people in CDG Circles — this younger generation, this AI — I've learned so much just in CDG Circles on the AI side.

Sam: It is, man, they're smart. Lauren Klein comes into the chat and says, "Are you using Toyota Smart Path in the service drive?"

Joel: Yes.

Sam: Okay, very good. Paul Salsman says, "Tire sales equal client stickiness." And then there's a bunch of conversation about Nick Saban — so we've got to have Saban on to join you. But Joel Love, service director, Toyota of Montgomery, we'll have you back at the end of the show as part of the roundtable. Thanks for being here with us today.

Joel: All right.

Sam: All right, I've got to figure out how you work for Saban and end up a Georgia fan — go Dawgs. There's a little healthy dose of competition between Roll Tide and Go Dawgs. All right, let's keep it going.

What happened at Podium Connect in Park City?

Sam: Eager K continues to be active in the chat today, and Dan C says Joe Agresti of Dream Motor Group would be a great guest on the show — we'd love that; whether it's Fixed Ops Friday or any other day, if you've got a great idea for a dealer guest, reach out to Hannah or myself, DM me on any of the CDG social platforms. We want the best from automotive here for you, three times a week. Let's transition to our next guest, Liam Golightley, SVP Dealer Success at Podium. Liam, welcome to the show, it's great to see you. Liam, I missed out on something this week and I'm so bummed — tell us what you guys were doing up in Park City, Utah.

Liam Golightley: Yeah, we've been here three days. It's been nestled in the mountains, it's been amazing. We've had 75 dealers — top-10 dealers down to some of the most innovative 20-to-50-location dealership groups. It's been fantastic. We had OpenAI speak, the folks behind ChatGPT. We started with a lot of discussion around how the experience of your customer is going to change — you've talked about this on the podcast, this AI-agent shopping — and then we talked a lot about our new products, and we had about five and a half hours yesterday just on workshopping: how do you transform your dealership? The product is great, but what do you actually have to do to get the best ROI from the product? So that was a big focus too.

Sam: So you call the event Podium Connect — is this the first of many, or is this a recurring thing?

Liam: It's our annual event, usually somewhere gorgeous like Park City. Really the idea is we bring together a bunch of brilliant, innovative customers to share best practices, and then of course we set up workshops and talk about all our latest and greatest products.

Sam: Yeah. Give us a glimpse inside the room — I think it's fascinating that you had someone from OpenAI there to challenge automotive about what the future looks like in an AI-infused world. I think we're all trying to figure out what it means, what it looks like, and how we run toward that future. What were a couple of the takeaways from the OpenAI session that we might be able to learn from?

Liam: Yeah, I think one takeaway is that right now we're talking about AI talking to humans, and most customers are still pretty much shopping the same way. But even your own use of ChatGPT has changed — you started out doing a bit of research, treating it like Google; now that journey has expanded, where you want your AI to go look at every site out there, do the research for you, and pull in a lot of the information that used to live only on a dealership site. Then our CEO showed an example of his shopping agent, where instead of shopping at one or two dealers, his agent shopped at fifty dealers. So a lot of that is: it's not a matter of if, it's when — how do dealers react to that world? There's a lot of conversation about volume going up ten times, which means your appointment-set rate may go down because of that volume, and there's price and margin compression possible. A lot of discussion about how that changes staffing, pricing, everything. It was a really interesting discussion from both the really big groups down to the smaller groups.

Sam: So from OpenAI's perspective, what are a couple of things dealers can do today to prepare for that eventuality? A couple weeks ago we had on a dealer from Salt Lake City — a Subaru dealer who created an agent that would respond to agent inquiries, so the dealer had an agent, the customer had an agent, and they could transact a full deal start to finish. I think it may have been the first of its kind. What can dealers be doing today to prepare for that, according to OpenAI?

Liam: Yeah, I think a lot of the discussion in the room was: we're in a state of massive change right now. There are things like, how do I make sure I show up in ChatGPT — and all those questions are changing every month. I think the reality is one of the biggest things you can do is make sure you're creating the vision for your dealership — you're exploring, you're in circles, you're talking about what the latest tools are. Whatever you're doing, you need to be out there trying new things and exploring. Challenge how you think the business is versus what it's actually doing. Consolidation in automotive is real — it's something dealers are really focused on, and we're seeing more CRM companies add AI into their tech stack. A recent example is Cox, which acquired Fullpath, so now they've got the ability to put a CDP and some AI into existing tools.

What separates an AI-native platform from one with AI bolted on?

Sam: What separates a platform that was actually built for AI from one that just has something bolted on, Liam, in your perspective?

Liam: Yeah, I think there's a couple of things to think about. The first is, when it comes to some of the more traditional things — think about it almost like the BlackBerry-iPhone moment. The iPhone came out with a touchscreen, and BlackBerry responded by saying, "Okay, we'll add a screen to our BlackBerry." I had a BlackBerry, and I'll tell you, I don't have one anymore.

Sam: I loved it — that was the hardest thing to give up, Liam. I couldn't go back now.

Liam: Yeah, the reality was that was a transformational moment, and I think AI is very similar — you really have to think about it as this revolutionary time. What I'll tell you is the conversion and the quality of the AI is the most important thing. It's not like you're just going to plug ChatGPT in and it's going to be great — you need to be thinking about what really converts. I had a dealership principal I'm pretty close with call me and say, "Listen, we love you guys, we like your AI, but my CRM is giving it to me for free, I've got to try it." I said, "All right, that's fair." He called me four or five weeks later and said, "That wasn't free — that was actually extremely expensive, because I've lost a bunch of sales, I had my worst month." I think that's a mentality shift: free software — this isn't actually software, it's an employee. You wouldn't put your lowest-converting, cheapest employee in your dealership; you need the one that really converts. That's hard for a dealer to think through.

How does Podium measure AI quality and conversion?

Sam: So Liam, I'd say one of the greatest responsibilities of GMs and dealer principals going forward is to learn the different types of AI, learn how to implement it, and then learn how to get buy-in with their team. You said something interesting — you said dealers need to go after quality AI. What differentiates quality from non-quality? How can a dealer in 2026 know if it's quality, good AI that they can implement into their tech stack?

Liam: I think that's one of the hardest things for a dealer, because every AI company can come in and give you a really cool demo. The thing we think about is: is it the number-one converting thing? We have a whole team whose only job is that — because we've got 18,000 AI agents out there, we're constantly running tests on what converts best. If you say this versus that, which one makes a difference? I was talking to a bunch of dealers this morning with the view of the mountains, and they were saying, "Oh, we do this thing, we do that thing," and they were kind of opposite things. I think part of our responsibility is to test — when you look across millions and millions of conversations, what actually leads to more appointments, not just what looks cool or demos cool. I think that's the thing that matters at the end of the day.

Liam: One other thing I'll say: we had a big customer we work with — a 600-location service group — and they cared about conversion, but they've also built this amazing brand, so they cared a lot about: does this represent their brand, does it have the empathy? We deployed our voice AI agent across all 600 locations. They had this crazy benefit, but they also cared, does the voice represent their brand, does it have the empathy? A lot of what we focused on was yes, let's get the appointments, but also how is the quality of those calls. We were on a panel yesterday, and the CTO said their humans have a 98% CSAT and they've been measuring the voice AI at 96% CSAT — just off the humans. I think to them that was an incredible thing — not only did it drive, I think he said, 500 incremental appointments, but it's also about the experience of their customer. So you've got to balance both conversion and does it have the empathy, does it represent your brand.

Sam: You know, this is a bit of a different conversation, but Matt Bowers posted something to LinkedIn — we're going to try to get him on the show next week — he talked about how there's a deficit of training in automotive, people being trained to really engage well with customers. I think you make an interesting point — I've been in many retail situations and engaged with employees of other organizations, and the experience is horrible in many cases. It seems to me, particularly coming out of the COVID era, that AI has the opportunity to not just beat humans by a few percentage points but absolutely crush them, because humans are becoming worse at it without training. Liam, do you see that — where AI actually has a leg up because it doesn't have the bad habits a lot of people do?

Liam: I think that's right. It's been especially interesting with some of these big groups — they're saying, this idea of consistency, training my ten thousand people is quite difficult, but training an AI to represent my brand, represent my values, and be consistent is great. One thing that came up — I was talking to a group we work with, a hundred-plus-location group — they said they're actually starting to use this as a training tool for their GMs. We hadn't built the AI for that, but because we've spent so much time honing it and reflecting their values, they're saying, "We're going to show this to our folks," and they're using the conversations to model their process. I thought that was fascinating — not something we intended, but it makes sense.

What did one dealer learn about the calls they were missing?

Sam: Let's go to a stat you shared with us behind the scenes — you talked about one dealer's first 30 days: 23 booked appointments, $56,000 in gross profit, all from customers the team never would have reached on their own. What was the before state at that particular store?

Liam: Yeah, he was actually on the panel — I was asking him a little bit about it. He'd launched our sales product, our service product, and our voice product — all of our AI products. His reality was: they thought they were doing these things, they didn't realize they were missing this many calls. They thought they were going and outbounding to service customers who hadn't come in for an appointment yet, but they realized they weren't doing as good a job as they thought. That was his big takeaway — they thought they were doing this stuff, but they hadn't realized what they were leaving behind.

Sam: And I imagine that's more common, unfortunately, than many people realize. Going back to the training piece, I think AI in a lot of cases is going to be able to deliver an experience that humans haven't been trained well to deliver in the last five to ten years.

Liam: I think that's right. One other interesting thing we heard from the panel: by taking a lot of that mundane stuff off their plate, AI lets people focus more on retention, on the higher-value activities they weren't doing before. I think that was one of the fascinating takeaways — people were even talking about maybe comping their salesperson if a customer came in with their first service appointment. That was some of the discussion and creativity in the room, and I thought it was absolutely fascinating.

What's the biggest mindset shift dealers need to make with AI?

Sam: So when you think about implementing AI across the different areas Podium makes available to dealers today, what's the biggest mindset shift from old-age automotive to today that you see some dealers, maybe even on the panel in Park City, struggling to get past — and what's holding them back in that old way of thinking, Liam?

Liam: I think the main thing — we had a whole session, and there were probably 50 takeaways, but I'll give you a couple of the key ones. The first was that buy-in is just incredibly important, and it starts at the top. We had Emmitt Smith as one of our speakers, and he was talking about the same thing — real transformation has to start with a leader. I lead the dealership success team; we have folks in every region going into dealers, and there are these different dealer mentalities. Some are saying, "All right, I'll plug in the AI, I'll do the same thing I was doing, the same cadences, the same process" — and the reality is, if this is the industrial revolution, you haven't really changed. Others are saying, "No, this is a completely different model." The leaders who are scared are worried about their job, but the other type of leader is creating a vision of what this could be and the opportunity — saying, "No, your role is going to morph, you're going to do more of this proactive stuff, less of the mundane stuff." That type of leader is encouraging opportunity, encouraging exploration, making new roles. We had 75 dealers in the room, and there were a bunch of new AI roles represented — not just at the big companies, even the smaller ones had five AI roles in the room. It was fascinating.

Sam: Yeah, so it's the difference between a negative, deficit mindset and one of opportunity and positivity.

Liam: That's exactly right. It's realizing this is a time of evolution, and with evolution comes an amazing opportunity for you to flourish.

Sam: Yeah, that's fascinating, I appreciate you sharing that — one of the biggest challenges is just embracing that change, being positive about it. So you were pretty direct about what most vendors are getting wrong in June of 2026 — AI layered on top of legacy systems isn't a real solution. What's the tell that a dealer is buying that story without knowing it?

Liam: I think a lot of it is: how are you looking at your metrics, how has the actual conversion gone, and really the depth of thinking about that. Some dealers are saying, "Well, I'm using the same cadence I've used for the past ten years." Well, hang on a second — is that even the right way to think about it? Should you just be calling and texting three times a day for every customer, or should you be thinking about a completely different way that AI is finding the most valuable thing for that customer? When you start really getting into that depth, that's when people start to think differently.

Sam: Was there anybody in the room this week at Park City who walked in with one mindset and walked out completely thinking about automotive and AI a different way? With OpenAI there as an example — no better source for challenging us to rethink — did anybody have a 180?

Liam: There were a couple of 180s.

Sam: You should out who this was, Liam, come on, tell us who it is.

Liam: I told everyone, no outing. There were a couple of mindset shifts — one was just on: the customer experience changes are going to force me to adopt AI, even if I'm not ready, I'm going to have to.

What is Podium's new operational AI agent?

Liam: The other one was — one of the things we gave a sneak peek at, and most of our AI agents have been customer-facing, but we launched an agent this week that's actually helping the managers, the GM, the dealer principals. It's an operational AI agent. The idea was, I sat with a GM last week and asked him for some of his data, and it took him ten minutes to pull the ten different dashboards in his CRM.

Sam: Yeah, yeah.

Liam: This can text the owner every morning, or you can have a voice call about what opportunities you're missing, who needs coaching. They had a fundamental "whoa" moment.

Sam: One of the big groups told you this is new and different. What's the tool, Liam? What's the tool?

Liam: You'll have to get my product team back to give you the full glimpse, but it's this AI operator, is what we're calling it. It's a full — imagine never having to log into your tools again — everything coming to you proactively, like a chief of staff, telling you where the customers are you've left hanging, what your best opportunity is tomorrow, who needs coaching on your team. All this stuff — if you think about the GM, the GSM, the service director, the busiest people in the world — I've sat with them and I don't know how they do it. So the idea is to really help them flourish and focus on the right things.

Sam: And is it in ideation, or is it live?

Liam: We gave a sneak preview to the folks at the event, and we'll be sharing more soon, but I'll tell you, people's minds exploded.

Sam: Do you think there's a day this whole idea of a DMS in automotive, or a CRM, like a box where information is contained and somebody owns it and you pay for access — do you think that's an old notion that goes away in the next two to five years?

Liam: Yeah, I think there are going to be new categories, and we gave a sneak peek at that today, where those old tools don't even seem like the right way of thinking about it anymore. I think we should have the team come back and share more, but I really do think that if you think about building these tools before AI, they were probably built quite differently than building after AI, which opens up a whole different world.

Sam: You're getting a lot of comments in the chat — Lauren Klein says, "So many myths and pushback about AI, when most have been using some form of it for years." Eager K says, "I love Liam's energy," and goes on, "We are old-school and it's hard for us old people to get with the program, but it's awesome to see companies like yours being forward-thinking and getting people into a room that challenges the way we think about this." Lauren Klein says there are guys out there still using filing cards to keep their customers straight because they don't trust the CRM.

Liam: I think that's right — I think one reason the CRM may eventually go away, one day.

Sam: All right, as we wrap up today, appreciate your time, Liam. What's next in the Podium world? You've talked about some products you're ideating — you've got the voice AI products across different platforms, different departments in automotive. What's next for you, what are you working on next?

Liam: Yeah, I think really it's bringing everything together — the example you shared, of somebody using all of our AI products together, who was using a bunch of discrete solutions before and now has it all in the same place. And listen, OpenAI — we've been partners, we were doing AI before AI was cool — but a lot of what's next is just massively improving conversion and continuing to iterate on that, and this world where you truly think about how you operate your dealership in a completely different way. I think the idea of having to log into dashboards and figure out what to do next is going to seem like a crazy notion in the next few years.

Sam: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see as things change, because the one thing that's certain is things are changing very quickly. Did the OpenAI rep talk about the new version of ChatGPT that was just released, and any feedback on that? I know it takes a lot more data to perform tasks, but it seems a lot more capable today.

Liam: Yeah, whether it's the new OpenAI model or the new Anthropic model, these models are changing the game every month, and that's why at Podium our responsibility is to be testing every single new model — we often test OpenAI's models before they release. We talked a little bit about it, and a lot of that is going to show up in some of the releases we're launching.

Sam: Awesome. Liam Golightley, SVP Dealer Success at Podium, live from Park City, Utah — thanks for being here with us.

Liam: Thanks, Sam, I appreciate it.

Sam: All right, thank you. Interesting conversation — I love the debates about what changes in automotive with technology and what the new roles look like in the future. I think some of the best automotive groups are fully engaged in those conversations, because it's not going to stay the way it is today — technology will evolve, AI will evolve, and our ability to deliver our best to customers will evolve alongside it. Paul Salsman says he's seen people at work using notebooks — referencing people still writing things down on paper. Eager K says, "I was very skeptical myself at first about AI for a long time, but times do change, and those who don't adapt die like dinosaurs." Paul, that was me — notebooks, sticky notes, Post-its. Anyway, all right, let's keep it going. Next up, Ryan Carlstedt, executive vice president of fixed operations, Willis Auto Group. Ryan, welcome to the show.

How is Willis Auto Group's “guest care turned up to 11” culture showing up in the numbers?

Ryan Carlstedt: Hey, Sam, how's it going? I feel like Fixed Ops Friday has turned into Football Friday — we've got the Alabama store.

Sam: I know, Roll Tide, right? You got Tide, you got Joel over there saying Go Dawgs — what do you got, Ryan?

Ryan: Go Hawks. It's been all SEC — we had Liam mention Emmitt Smith, I think he went to Florida. I'm a Big Ten guy — Hawkeyes all the way.

Sam: That's fair, that's fair. You know what struck me, Ryan, though — we're talking football like it's pencils and paper in the world of... it's not football right now, it's soccer, Ryan. Do you have a team?

Ryan: Yeah, I'm not a big soccer guy — I've got an almost-eight-year-old son who started playing soccer, that was my first delve into it. One of our vendors brought me a jersey today, celebrating the World Cup — I can't wait to get home and show it to my son, he's going to be so proud his dad has a soccer jersey now. But I'm just an old-school football guy.

Sam: All right, well, football it is — we'll get into more of that in the fall, but for tonight, I know Team USA plays, so Ryan, you and I need to figure out a way to watch the World Cup and support Team USA. Lucas T. Genesis comes into the chat and says, "Go Dawgs," and Lauren Klein says hey to Ryan. Eager K says, "We're having so much fun here, guys and gals." Paul Salsman says soccer — the World Cup — has the country and the globe all abuzz. So Ryan, you were on Fixed Ops Friday back in March, and you talked about turning guest care up to an 11, Spinal Tap style — I had to admit I didn't know Spinal Tap. How's that theme playing out across your nine stores over the last few months? What does an 11 look like now in practice versus when you launched it?

Ryan: It's going great. Our customer-service scores, our CSI scores, are off the charts. Our culture here just can't be beat — you go to our service drives, the advisors are having fun, they work so well as a team. If you watch these shows every week, we always talk about video, right?

Sam: We do, yes.

Ryan: Video is a thing here too, but I still feel like that culture — employees having fun, enjoying coming to work — translates to sales too.

Sam: Yeah. And when you look at your customer-pay growth year-over-year, what's driving that?

Ryan: It's videos, but it's culture too — culture drives it.

What specifically drives Willis Auto Group's culture and customer-pay growth?

Sam: So you've said customer-pay growth year-over-year — what's one thing aside from video you'd attribute to that growth? Because there are some groups where customer pay is flat in '26.

Ryan: For us, it's constant training with our advisors, it's the culture, it's having fun. Our team is great, they're truly a team, they help each other, and I can't get away from that — I think that drives it more than anything else. When you're having fun at work, your customers see that, and it makes it less stressful. Nobody wants to spend a bunch of money to repair their vehicle — it's fun to buy a car, but you come back in and see us when it's broken, and when the team's a team and in a happy mood, it takes that weight off. When it's more friendly, it's not a transaction anymore, it's friends talking, and our team does a great job at that.

Sam: So you've talked a lot about the outputs — a happy team, people engaged, a positive atmosphere. Those are all the result of something, and we have a lot of guests come on and say "culture, culture, culture," and it drives me nuts because it's a bit of a buzzword and it's tough to point to what creates it. So I'm going to challenge you, Ryan — give us a couple of things in 2026, within your organization specifically, that create that enjoyment at work and that positive engagement with customers. What are the outputs?

Ryan: We scorecard everything, and we reward and celebrate top performers. We celebrate the verbatims on the CSI surveys — our executive team reads those, and we go around and tell people, "Hey, I saw that one go through, great job," or "did you see the comment that person put?" Even when I'm talking to our technicians about doing the videos, we see that come through in the verbatims, where our guests are saying, "We love the video." It's rewarding, and it's continually sharpening the saw. In college I had to read Seven Habits of Highly Effective People probably twenty times, and one of the habits stuck with me — sharpening the saw, constant ongoing training. My management team — all the fixed-operations managers — we just started a book report on Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace. When you hold your people accountable, the cream rises to the top. It's a day-to-day thing, constantly going around talking to your people. And just like I started off talking about football, I like to joke around and talk to my people about what's going on away from work more than work — race cars, shooting guns, the football game, whatever — let's lighten it up. When we go around and talk to our people, it's about making work fun.

Sam: Yeah. Lauren Klein comes into the chat and says, "Your people are your best product" — Eager K agrees, a hundred percent. No dealership can survive without its staff, but there's a difference between people who enjoy what they're doing and those who don't.

What AI tools and training programs is Willis Auto Group using?

Sam: You talk about training — you've also heard the conversation we just had with Podium on AI. Are there any AI tools you're implementing as a way to help alleviate some of the lift and pressure on service advisors, technicians, and other staff in 2026?

Ryan: We haven't gotten anything new since the last time I was on the show, but on the fixed-ops side, we use Numa, we love Numa — the selling tools that help me sell the job. You can take a service advisor who's green or new to the business and give them the tools in their tool belt to help them sell and learn more. We also have a process for service contracts — Hendrick, when he was on earlier, was talking about service contracts; that process is a nightmare for our service advisors, calling in, waiting on hold, going through line by line. We had a service advisor who used AI on his computer — he copy-and-pasted a bunch of part numbers, complaints and corrections, and it spit out a spreadsheet, and now he just emails that spreadsheet to the contract company. It took a one-to-one-and-a-half-hour process down to fifteen minutes. And then one of my younger managers said, "Why don't we bring our whole service advisor team together, all of them, at 6:30 in the morning, and have each one bring the one thing they do that they don't think anybody else does, and share it?" So now we can cascade that one little thing that made my job easier, made it more enjoyable, to our whole team of service advisors. Maybe you go in with one idea and leave with three, maybe you go in with one and leave with twenty — you're going to come out with more than you came in with.

Sam: How often are you doing that, Ryan?

Ryan: We do a monthly 6:30 training session, and we vary up the topic — that's just one of them. We try to make them seasonal — getting into winter we'll talk about tires more, AC systems this time of year — we try to make them relevant to whatever our monthly special is or whatever's going on in the economy or the weather.

How is Willis Auto Group building its service-tech pipeline?

Sam: So last time you were on, you talked about your summer apprenticeship program — it was the fifth year running, you had roughly eight of sixteen graduates still with you. In March you mentioned a kid between his junior and senior year who you kept on part-time through DMACC. How's Eli tracking now, and what does that pipeline look like heading into this summer?

Ryan: Oh, fantastic — Eli's still locked in, still working for us part-time. We brought in four new interns this summer, they started the last couple weeks, and I think this is our best crew yet. We've got one who really likes European cars — he's locked in over at our Land Rover store, he's going to spend the whole ten weeks there. We've got another young man who owns a Volvo and loves Volvo, so he's spending the whole ten weeks at Volvo. We met a young woman from DMACC, Des Moines Area Community College — she spent her first week at Lexus and told us, "I love it at Lexus, I like the culture, I want to stay at Lexus the whole ten weeks." She's going to stay on past the ten weeks because she needs more credit hours. And then our last young man is from a local West Des Moines Valley High School — I went over and talked to a few students there, there were three who were really interested in automotive, and I sat down with them in the library. You could tell right away this kid gets it. I talked to him about the trade and the benefits of it, but when it comes to the hiring process, I let my managers and our recruiter do that — I don't push them either way, I don't let my bias push it. My team came out of the interview and said, "This kid's a grand slam" — they described him as an old soul. His favorite car is like a 1972 Pontiac something-or-other, he likes to restore eight-track players as a hobby. We put him at Cadillac, and hopefully he doesn't get a big head, but after a few days our Cadillac manager was in my office saying, "We've got a unicorn here." This kid loves General Motors cars — we got slow the other day and he picked up a broom and started sweeping the floor without being asked. He took some glass cleaner and a microfiber and cleaned up his technician's toolbox, and by day three he was already welding unsupervised because he knows how to do it. And he's doing this the summer before his senior year of high school.

Sam: Sounds like you'll make him a Willis guy for life.

Ryan: You found something that excites him, lights him up, he finds purpose in, and then it just expands and flows into other things.

Sam: So last time you were on, you talked about video MPI, culture, and a lot of the other things you've worked on to help grow the dealership and continue to break records. What are you working on next as we wrap up, Ryan, before we go to our roundtable?

Ryan: Again, it's just sharpening the saw. My management team — I've got a big team and I love them all, I think it's the strongest team I've ever had, and we're all better at one thing and not as good at another. We run our business on the EOS Traction book, and another one is EOS Life — it talks about the four quadrants: I like it and I'm good at it, I like it and I'm not good at it, I don't like it but I'm good at it, and I don't like it and I'm not good at it. My focus with my team for the rest of the year is to figure out a way to focus on the "I like it and I'm good at it" box, and find people for the "I don't like it and I'm not good at it" box who are better at that, and come together even more as a team to help each other on projects and management, and really make work fun for all of us. I love coming to work every day — most of my team does, and we can only make it better.

Sam: Ryan Carlstedt, EVP fixed operations at Willis Auto Group, thanks for joining the show today. We'll have you back momentarily as part of our roundtable.

Ryan: Thanks, Sam.

What's the difference between brand loyalty and dealership retention?

Sam: Great conversations today across different areas of automotive, fixed ops in particular. A lot of comments online between Eager K, Lauren Klein, Paul Salsman, Dan C and the rest of the group — too many to bring up individually, but let's wrap out today. Let's go back to Joel Love, service director at Toyota of Montgomery, and Ryan Carlstedt, EVP fixed ops at Willis Auto Group. Gentlemen, welcome back to the show, and to the Daily Dealer Live Fixed Ops Friday roundtable. Thanks for being here, both of you. Do we need to start with a football conversation? We probably don't, do we?

Ryan: Let's talk about the guys in the NFL and pro.

Sam: Not national championships, but a lot of people in the big leagues. Well, let's start here — let's talk about loyalty, brand loyalty versus retention. Joel said it earlier, Toyota customers are loyal, but loyalty isn't retention, Ryan — across luxury and volume brands, do you buy that distinction, the difference between loyalty and retention?

Ryan: Yeah, I think loyalty is probably more to a brand, in my book — you know, I love Toyota, I love Lexus — but retention is sticking with your dealer, sticking with the people who sold you the car and then you bring it back for service. You can love Lexus, but you could go to three different Lexus stores. I think retention is truly keeping people in your own circle of business, at your dealership.

Sam: So give me one thing each that you're doing in 2026 to keep retention or loyalty back at the dealership — you want them back in your store. We talked about the Cox facts a couple weeks ago, about how we're seeing defection to independent repair facilities — gross dollars are up, but RO count is down, and we're losing it to independent repair facilities. What's one thing each of you is doing in 2026 to retain that customer back to your stores? We'll start with Joel.

Joel: Well, our BDC is tearing up the list every day with outbound calls, and they've done a great job winning customers back for us.

Sam: Yeah, you heard Podium talk about how, in some cases in 2026, AI can do a better job on that outbound. Do you buy it, or do you think your people are better, Joel?

Joel: I think AI is good for a lot of things. We use Flyfly and it does a great job backstopping for us, and Impel does a great job on our text messaging. So yeah, it can, but people are people — we're in the people business.

Sam: Joel — Dan comes into the chat and says, "How could Joel not brag about UGA baseball?" UGA baseball looks pretty good right now, so, coming back to our sports conversation — all right, Ryan, one thing: keep customers from defecting to independent repair facilities, June of '26?

Ryan: Yeah, just like Joel said, the BDC plays a big part in that here at Willis. Again, it goes back to EOS and our proven process — step five in the proven process for us is to create customer advocates. There's a Danny Meyer video that Lexus shows all the time, about being the favorite, and how favorite is inarguable. We teach that to our team from new-hire orientations — our goal is to be their favorite, and favorite comes from relationship. Joel said it right at the end — we're in the people business. Our now chairman of the board, a retired DP, always used to say, "We're in the people business, we just happen to sell and service vehicles," and that's embraced companywide, and it's that relationship that brings people back to the dealer.

Sam: I agree with that, the relationship drives a lot.

What happens to a declined service recommendation 30 days later?

Sam: Let's talk about declined service — last question for our roundtable today on this Fixed Ops Friday, thank you both for being here. Tell us what happens in your store to a declined service recommendation 30 days later — is there human follow-up, is there AI follow-up, or does nothing happen at all? Which declined-service follow-up is important to retention, important to getting that RO count back from the independent repair facilities? Starting with you, Ryan, what happens?

Ryan: We've tried a lot of different things on that. Our autopoint inspections used to do a three-pronged approach to declines, then we turned it over to our BDC, and that's in the hands of AI now. Just like Joel said, AI is better at some things than others, and I think declined service is one of AI's strengths — it makes it really easy. We add an op code to the repair order that just says "declined service," it doesn't have to be specific, and Numa goes in, looks for that op code, and it triggers and markets to those people.

Sam: Joel?

Joel: Yep, same way — AI does a great job with that. Impel does us a wonderful job with our client services, and then after 30 days our BDC takes it over.

Sam: Yeah, you hit it both ways. Well, Joel Love, service director, Toyota of Montgomery — Go Dawgs or Roll Tide, I'm not sure which — and Ryan Carlstedt, EVP fixed ops, from Des Moines, Iowa — Go Iowa, I guess.

Ryan: Hawkeyes.

Sam: Hawkeyes, there you go — EVP fixed ops at Willis Auto Group. Thank you both for being on the roundtable today on Daily Dealer Live, Fixed Ops Friday.

Joel: Thank you.

Sam: All right, everybody, thanks for watching live Fixed Ops Friday. We're a little bit off-site today — a ton of awesome comments in the chat, go back and check that out if you're watching this on repeat or rerun. And to our Daily Dealer Live audience, thanks for watching, where we break down the biggest moves in the car business as they happen. Don't forget, we're here live every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 1 p.m. Eastern — that means we're back Monday. So if this is your world, hit like, hit subscribe, turn on notifications so you never miss a beat. We'll see you next episode — thanks for being here, everybody.