How Two Mormon Missionaries Built a Multi-Billion Dollar Empire (+ The AI Playbook Behind It)

Summary

Podium co-founders Eric Rea and Dennis Steele sit down with the Car Dealership Guy podcast to tell the origin story behind their AI platform, now used by 4,000 auto dealerships for reviews, texting, and voice-based customer service. They recount their first dealership pitch, where a GM who'd just been shown his bad Google reviews wrote a check for the entire year on the spot, a moment that convinced them dealerships, not the tire shops Podium started with, would build the company. From there, they walk through how AI agents like Jerry, their BDC agent launched in 2023, and their newer Operator and Rainmaker tools are replacing the average dealership's bloated, twenty-tool software stack.

The conversation gets concrete about results: a 700-location collision repair network now lets Podium's voice agent handle 61% of its after-hours calls, putting it on pace to help book $1 billion in repairs this year with a customer satisfaction score of 96%, higher than the network's own human call center. Eric and Dennis also explain why they'd tell young people to learn to use AI agents instead of learning to code, and how Operator can turn a vague management request into a finished outreach campaign in under ten minutes. For dealers wondering how much of their stack AI will actually replace, this episode lays out where Podium thinks the industry is headed.

Key takeaways

Podium's first big dealership pitch in 2014 ended with the GM, after seeing his dealership's 3.5-star Google rating, writing a check for a full year on the spot, convincing Eric and Dennis to pivot from tire shops to dealerships.
A 700-location collision repair network's voice AI now handles 61% of after-hours calls with a 96% customer satisfaction score, and is on pace to help book $1 billion in repairs this year.
Podium's Operator agent turned a request to find 100 lapsed customers across 37 dealership locations into a complete, ready-to-run outreach campaign in under 10 minutes.