¶ Intro / Opening
Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Yes.
This is Auto Collabs.
See if you've been around the automotive community just long enough, you may have heard those words spoken kind of like that, although I don't do it justice. We're talking about a man, Glenn Lundy and today we get to have the opportunity to have him on Auto Collabs podcast. So thanks for joining us, man. This look, there's some stories that I think everybody can tell about just the way that they've interacted with Glenn Lundy, in the automotive.
Let me let me tell the very first Glenn Lundy ASOTU story is the very first interaction that ever existed. I had never spoken to Glenn Lundy, in my life. I had seen him a little bit around online but not a lot. And the lockdowns were ending it was November towards like September 20, October 2020. And we were gonna do that event in Philly, where everyone flew in and I just was trying to see who had some energy and who would come out and who was crazy
enough to do it. And I just called him, I got his number, and I called him and I introduced myself. I told him what we were doing as ASOTU. And I asked him if he would come. And he said, Yes, he he literally heard the passion, he sized me up. And he flew out on his own dime. And he gave the keynote at the very first in person ASOTU event and we'll we'll link it up because it exists online. And that's just for me, that was like that was the shot in the arm that I needed. And I think it was so
good for the industry. And that was my very first Glenn Lundy experience and the very first Glenn Lundy ASOTU experience. He's an OG
you know, my first experience was kind of similar, but it was in reverse. I got a phone call one day, I was producing videos for the YouTube channel that I have. And out of nowhere, I get a phone call. And I it's a number I don't recognize. And I answer, you know, thanks for calling, Michael speaking.
All your professionals on
Yeah, and it was like this. Yeah, what you up to? Speaking. And he's like this Glenn Lundy, what'd you do? I was like, yeah, hey, so he's like, I watched your video, I need you to come in. I need you to come and visit me and in Kentucky. I'm buying your plane ticket right now. I was like, Oh, what was going on? And next thing, you know, 48 hours later, plane tickets booked. Everything's, because that's
how long it actually took you to fly from Canada to Kentucky.
Just the next right to the airport. And I'm packing and I remember vividly this experience of packing and I look over at my wife and I'm like, this is like a Tinder date. Like some dude, I've never met, you know, another 24 hours beyond that boots on the ground. And I'm Uncle Mike, like, the guy just welcomed me into his family to a degree that no stranger has ever done it and, and now we just have such an awesome relationship with one another. You know,
it's awesome. Well, I'll tell you what, the thing that I know about Glenn is he's always willing to say yes, if he can and that's that's what I love. Like he's he's on a podcast with us and right before that he's texting with Grant Cardone and he's on Dave Meltzer's show and all this. Like you just think some people might be untouchable at some point once they kind of get to a point. And he's just willing to say yes, especially for the automotive community, and you hear it in his voice. You hear
it in his passion. So we're excited to share with you our conversation with Glenn Lundy.
One of the things that I love about all of us banding together to create the Auto Collabs podcast is something that we said when we were all together in Philly. We're finding others who are shooting up a beacon and creating a campfire, so to speak to rally around no better example of this. Then our pal our friend, Glenn Lundy. He is the founder of the 800% Elite Automotive Club and he joins us here now he's going to be a featured speaker at ASOTU CON, which we're excited to hear his
remarks. Glenn, thanks so much for joining us on Auto Collabs
at kidding me thanks for having me. This is like the only place I really want to be the other stuff. I just do that stuff so that you guys will invite me into this room.
You can afford raffle tickets for pageants.
But no man, you guys are awesome. This is this. Well, we're excited to have a bunch of new podcast. Well, we're excited
to have you especially because you know there are a few people that we come across obviously that start from zero and take it to one as quickly as you have which is always in inspiring and it really just creates something cool, but I want to maybe just turn it over to you for those that may not yet have heard of the man. Glenn Lundy tell us a little bit about your background in automotive and how it is that you created 800% Elite Automotive club.
Yeah, man. Obviously, you know, Glenn Lundy husband to one father to eight, that's right, I got eight babies, and I've been in the industry for 25 years now. And Michael really, I had two seasons in auto, I had one season where I was at a dealership for eight years, and the dealership never grew at all. We were selling 120 cars when I started selling 121 I left. And then I had another season and another dealership, a
Chevy Buick store. And in that store, we grew 800%, we went from selling 120 cars a month to averaging 850 with our best month being just over 1000 in both of these were in small towns, right? Both were in small towns, both word and well known brands. And when I decided to leave retail, we took a look at you know, what really was the difference between similar stores, similar town size, massively different results. And ultimately, you know, the formulas the pattern showed
themselves. And I've gone out now and we're helping owners and general managers of car dealerships all over North America, we've got 104 rooftops now that we're serving, and ultimately just injecting them with some of that secret sauce on how they can grow and scale their volume, profitability, employee retention, and most importantly, the overall culture in the dealership.
All right, so because everyone's asking, right now, what's the secret sauce? Now I get we all get that there's there is some secret sauce to making sure that you're embedded into, you know, interacting with these dealers. Obviously, there's personality embedded in that and not and not every dealership just up. It's there's no prescription. And none of us would argue that. But I'm guessing there were there
were a few key things. Because when you go from an eight year tender tenure that probably a lot of people don't even know about you, which is that early eight years to the ladder at eight years. You know, that's honestly, like, I think I had heard you say that maybe once you because I've heard your story a couple of times through the breakfast of champions
stuff. You know, for me coming from a place where I have I kind of started in a larger store set and then went to a smaller store and kind of grew that incrementally, but not massively. What's what was that? Was it a shift in your mindset? Or was it a team thing? Or what? What are the like? Maybe one or two key factors, though? There's obviously a laundry list typically when that happens, and it's not a prescription. But what were those couple of key factors? Well, I
think one of the first things is contrary to popular belief in this industry. And Michael, don't get mad at me and Brian Benstock, don't get mad at me. Spizak Don't get mad at me. Very Contrary to popular belief, it's not all about data. Right? Everybody thinks it's data ones and zeros. It's numbers. It's lead counts, it's formulas and all that stuff. And
yes, that stuff has value. But the reality is it's people, it's people, the right people in leadership, the right people that you hire the right people to fire in your organization, we have a very long tradition in this industry of putting the wrong people in leadership positions, and driving, trying to drive results through the wrong paths. Right. And it's ultimately it's through our people are we should not have revolving doors with our people and long relationships with our
data companies. We should have long relationships with our people. And if we have to adjust our data companies, we adjust our data companies. Well, why I think that's one of them is let
¶ Glenn talked about his start in the industry and how he got promoted because of sales results, but not because he knew how to lead people. We talked about putting the right people in the right place to help you succeed.
me ask you a question about that. You said we have a long history of putting the wrong people in place. What can you drill into that for a second? Yeah, so this guy right here, man, I used to be an awful human being like, seriously, I was bad, right? Like, I was a bad dude in the car business in my early years, but I sold a lot of cars. So guess what's
back further than 10 minutes though.
So but I got who got promoted, I got promoted. Why did I get promoted? Because I sold a lot of cars. Right? And so it didn't matter. That was a bad dude. And I had bad character and all of those things. They put me in leadership positions. And of course, we didn't grow or scale. And I think we do that in this industry. All too often. We we weighed so heavily on performance versus actually looking at who is driving the culture in the energy in that
building. Well, there are different skill sets, right totally being able to sell a car and being able to lead people who sell cars are not the Same. So thank you. Thanks for 800% accurate 800% and 800%.
It's a thing every time he says it.
Right? There's a misnomer in business that just because I'm the one that owns the thing, I gotta be doing things in the business, right? I have a client, because of that level of self awareness that that you're talking about when he's like, Yeah, I own these rooftops. I am not the right person to lead the teams though. And he, he knows his role. And I think that's a when he first told me that I thought, wow, that's, that's kind of douchey.
And then I was like, ah, actually, no, he has enough self awareness to realize that just because I put up the money for the thing doesn't mean, I'm the right person to work in it. Yeah. And so he's found people, and that's how his organization thrives. What's your take on that? Should should maybe, perhaps more be looking inward and saying, Hey, am I the right person for this position I've placed myself in?
Well, I think, you know, John Maxwell says it best, right, the best way to train and develop people is first I do than I do. And you watch, then you do, and I watch, then you do. And then the fifth component to that as you teach, right. And so I think it's important if you own a business, that you do
¶ Glenn believes that you should learn a new skill to pass it on, not just to be good at something yourself.
everything initially, so that you at least have enough knowledge and wherewithal to be able to hold people accountable. Right to to the results. I think the problem in this industry, though, is we learn to do something, we actually get a little bit of ego attached to that, then we don't want to let it go. We don't think anybody else can do it as well as we
can. And so the the intention should be learning it so that you can pass it on to the next right, that last part, teach, don't learn it so that you can hang your hat on it every day.
So I think it's a combination of knowing and understanding how your how your dealership operates, but just enough information and knowledge that to know that if it's not in your wheelhouse, hire somebody who's passionate about that, hire someone who's going to be an expert at that, and just make sure you know, at least enough to hold them accountable to do the job. Are
you finding that like as you go through dealerships, that more and more, especially executive management, is willing to do that, that work of recognizing what it takes to do the job today? Right? Like I think of a general manager and owner or even a GSM, or something like that, that maybe came up through the 90s and
early 2000s in sales. And yes, they've trained and led and been a part of the transition to maybe a more digital ecosystem or a new culture wave, but haven't gone back and re taught themselves actually doing that work. Are you seeing people moving back toward that? Or are you encouraging that at all to go, Hey, look, if you haven't gotten written a service ticket, or taking a customer from A to Z, or, you know, even even, you know, help change a tire or
anything like that? Are you seeing people go back to that or encouraging that.
But I'm past that now Kyle? I'm past that. I am a manager. Now. I don't have to do those things anymore. I have people for that. No, man, it's a freaking pandemic and epidemic, one of those types of "emics" in this industry that they don't do that, right. They don't go back and learn the thing. Everybody use the CRM to its fullest. But me everyone post on social media twice a day, but me, everyone you know, and it's just like, so yes, I highly encourage leadership to get in the
¶ Leadership means getting in the trenches with your team and being involved.
trenches with your people learn the technology be be, you don't have to be the best but be involved, right? Just be involved. And when your people see that you're involved, they want they don't want to disappoint you, they want to let you down and and they'll ultimately shine in the different areas. And it helps to be it helps you as a leader to be able to get people in the right seats when you're in the room learning the same things. And you're like, Oh man, Michael's really frickin good at
this. I had no idea. Look, he's taught me this, this and that. And Paul's amazing over here and Kyle's amazing over here. And it gives us better insight on putting people in those right places. So I don't see it enough. And I do encourage it to answer your question.
Okay. Okay, so now I'm going to bring it home because we This podcast is called Auto Collabs. So we got to talk about some level of collaboration and what what I think that like, the next step on that, and I love, I'm sure everyone's seen the what is it? The Undercover Boss, right? Yeah, where all of a sudden, like the boss goes undercover. And then the person is telling them like, what should be done at their level. And I never thought of it that way. Right? That's for me. That's like the
ultimate collaboration. Like when a Dealer principal or General Manager to GSM or Fixed Ops director or anything like that goes and does the work. And then because they've done the work When that maybe when they're doing the work, the person is more apt to say, hey, look, you know, Boss, we've been doing it this way for a hot minute, and I don't think it's working. You know, like, can you see a a deeper level of Industry Collaboration if those bonds were broken in our industry?
Oh, yeah, man. Oh, yeah. And we can expand it even further than that, Kyle? Like, really, if you if we want to take it out? Obviously, there's two sides to every coin, right? No, a no object can exist in this plane anyway, without having two sides, right? I mean, a piece of paper has two sides, it doesn't matter how thin it is, right? And so the more eyeballs we can get on something, the more perspectives we can get on something, the more of a holistic view, we receive, right? I'll use 800%
club for an example. 800% Club is a comp collaboration of franchised dealers, independent dealers, large dealership groups, single point dealers, dealers that are in big cities, dealers that are in small towns, dealers in the United States of America, and dealers that are in Canada, right, we have all of
it. And so because of that, when we get in our certain when we when we do our q&a sessions, in our best practices sessions, we're getting perspective, from an independent store selling 30 cars in Louisiana, we're getting perspective from a franchise store selling 600 cars a month over in Tampa, Florida. And then we're getting perspective from a Chevy store in Canada, and everything in between. And all of that together gives us such a well rounded picture of what's really happening in the
industry. It's powerful man. It's really truly powerful. So yes, absolutely, Kyle, the collaboration, the key to collaboration is listening, right listening to other people's perspectives, with an understanding that we may not always agree or do the same things that we that they do. But by seeing all the sides, we get a full view of what's really going on.
You know, I like the idea that you have all this broad variety of types of businesses sizes of dealerships, even, you know, different geographies. It's great. But you said in the beginning that you know, fixing the people issue and focusing on the people issue, you get to go in, I almost kind of see you as like, you know, the the the nicer, friendlier Gordon Ramsay, right where you you get called in to a place you want to be like this place is a disaster, right? Like
oh, you idiot. And so and so but you get to go in to all these this different variety of places. What are the common things that you see in all of them? Like what are the people issues that you see that are consistent across all those big and small and independent and franchise and Canadian in the united US? Like what do you see every
time every time you say Canadian, I feel like Cirilo is gonna stand up and like come to attend. And
I'm like, where's the hand to kiss? You just see one come, I said.
The one thing that I see across the board and it is an area of growth, development and opportunity for 99% of the dealerships in this country. The one thing I see across the board, and it falls in line with some other missions in my life, but I believe if you change the way you start your day and make a massive impact in your life, what I see in dealerships all over the country is that their morning routine is awful. morning routines at most dealerships are terrible, right?
So and So trickles in at what other whatever time the other person trickles in at whatever time they trickle in after staying up to playing Fortnite till 330 in the morning or drinking or partying or whatever it is that they were doing. They show up at whatever time and they're carrying their two cans of Rockstar energy or Red Bull or whatever the heck it is right? They got their two cans and they feel like Rockstar
makes its money by like finding a dealership person. Yes, yes, exactly
right and Monster Energy Rockstar and then they've got like an IV of coffee sticking in like the back of them right? And then they all come in the store at whatever time and around nine o'clock they look at each other and say who's getting breakfast, what are we having for breakfast, and then they're like, let's get McDonald's Okay, let's get there who's gonna go get and then they
figure that all out. Guys don't have this and then they all go get breakfast and at about 10 3011 o'clock, we will start actually getting to work. That is one of the areas one of the first things that we look at while I'm working with dealerships is I'm like dude, let's let's get a powerful morning routine in place for your people. Right where we start at a certain time. We listen we encourage we advise and develop people at a certain
time. We they know what to do the first couple hours of the day that keeps them efficient, keeps them moving keeps objects in motion tend to stay in motion that whole dill, and it ends up trickling down to where if they're making powerful decisions in the morning. Now they have to make better decisions at night. So they're not up playing Fortnite till 330. They're not out drinking all night. And when they make better decisions that night, we all know nothing good happens
after midnight anyway. So if we can get our people in bed before midnight and get them rising with intention and purpose, now they develop his better humans. And the ripple effect goes goes from there. So that would be that was one thing I see across the board is the way dealerships start their day is terrible.
I want to hear a disaster story. I don't know. What to do I want today. As you're saying this, like, I know, there's a situation where you went in, and you dropped some truth. And you you lay this out. And everyone's like, it's kind of like, give us give us an example of when it didn't work, and why. And then give us an example of when it really worked and why. Oh, my goodness, when an example of when changing the way they started their day didn't work.
No, no, no, no, when there was such resistance to changing that they didn't write and it kind of imploded. I mean, like, I'm thinking Gordon Ramsay, think of my frame of mind, right? Someone's throwing it off. I mean, it. I don't I don't know, Paul, I guess I don't suck, I don't
fail. is so simple? Well, that's what I was just thinking. It's so simple,
that it works, right? And I tell Okay, I will say this, I tell every dealer that I work with, I say, hey, in the first month, we're gonna see some awesome results. everyone on your team is gonna be excited. In the second month, you're gonna fire somebody or somebody's gonna quit, like every single time because what we do in this industry is we get all Oh, yeah, great. We're gonna do this. And then we don't follow through on it. And our
teams are used to that. They're used to Oh, yeah, just ignore him for five or six weeks. And we'll be right back to doing whatever we're doing. Right. Right. So when we continue to apply pressure past six weeks, seven weeks, eight weeks, nine weeks, they start to realize we're actually serious about it. We you start to figure out who on your team is actually willing to change and who's not. So but I don't consider firing people or people quitting. I don't
consider that a bad thing. Like, that's usually required for us to break out of what we've been doing. And to move into what we what we are doing. Yeah. Have you ever seen? Have you ever seen a situation where someone didn't get fired or didn't quit? Was it wasn't a big change? I didn't quit,
like did did like that second month doesn't happen. Like everyone gets retained every time not happened
yet. Right? Every single dealership that I've worked with has lost people in month two. And then tell us what happens in month three. Then in month three, there's a little bit well actually want to we usually see a dip, right like because we do lose some people the energy's a little bit weird. Now people don't know exactly what's going on. And then of course, because we're in the auto industry, there's nobody in the pipeline. So now we've got to go figure out who are we
going to hire? And, you know, we start calling all the people hey, can you help me run to figure out an ad? Okay, yeah, sure, let's go, right. But once we start to get key people in place, we find two things, we find that the people that are still there tend to rise to the
challenge. So 90 days, in 120 days in, we start to see that the eight car guy becomes a 12 car guy, or the manager that was kind of dragging their feet a little bit all of a sudden steps up and has newfound energy, right when we remove those cancers from the situation. Every time I see people rise, and and we get great results 90 days in 120 days, and we typically see 25% increase in volume from where we were, if they stay the course up till that point.
How long do you How long does it typically take for someone to truly feel like they've turned it around, and now they're in a groove, their habits are in place, their team is aligned and fire in the same direction because everybody wants everything now, right? And just told us that month one, you'll be excited because it's new month two is going to suck. You should just give them an envelope. Like don't open this for 35 days. Right? And it's and it's a well written job ad.
Right, I opened up I told you we're gonna need that. Real that's, that's so then month three. So like, How long before? Would you say before you're like, okay, the training wheels are off now. And they're confidently riding in that direction? Yeah. 18 To 24 months. So real time 24 Right. Real time. Yeah, it takes it takes some time, right? Because I mean, you're gonna see results early, you're
gonna see some results. And then it's a matter of how do we maintain those results and how do we continue to grow and scale how do we not Get comfortable with a 25% increase, right? It's 25. Now we got to take it to 30 and 35 and 40. And we got to
take it to 102 103 100. And really until you run into the problems, because we don't know what problems we're going to face until we run into them, right 100 car dealerships have different problems in 200 car dealerships 400 car dealerships have different problems than 200 car dealerships. And so until we get there, we can't really solve the problem until you kind of
run into it. And so it takes a while 18 to 24 months in, you now have the right people in place, you've gotten rid of anybody that's not on board, your team knows that it's a growth culture, you have your partners in place, as far as the different vendors, from Marketing, and so on and so forth. You know, what's working and what's not working, you're telling your story online, you've started to really
establish your identity. And at that point, we start to see, you know, there's still a lot to learn and a lot of love space to grow. But at that point, you start to see that who you were is no longer who you are. And that's when you can start pouring, pouring some fuel on the fire at that point.
Do you find that that becomes part of the job like constant reminders of hey, but this is the path like I think about what you were saying, Paul, like, that's a good chunk of time, 18 to 24 months, that's like, that's, that's it. This is the car industry. This is like dog years, 24 months is like yours to a car dealer. But I also tend to think that the time is passing anyways, and you have to do something in that time
anyways, why not? Finally untangle this box of Christmas lights and get things set up properly? How do you how do you mitigate some of that human kind of carnal desire of life, but it's got to happen. Now, how do you do that for these dealers?
Yeah, so awareness is everything right? And then holding people accountable and continuing to reiterate. So I understand that it takes quite a while. 67 days actually before biologically, it becomes easier to do something than to not do something. So the conversation I have with my dealers right out the gate is you have to stop thinking in 30 day windows. I know the manufacturer told you that things change every 30 days. I know that you tell your employees their hero to zero on
the first of every month. I know that your entire career has been built in 30 day windows. And this is why you've grown incrementally and you're not able to truly multiply. I was just reading right here. Little shout out to you know, Automotive News and you can't see it because my little background thing, but I was just reading it right? It's because we're not sponsored. Yeah, Bosch Bosch has a plan, right? Bosch
has a plan. They're putting $3 billion into play so that they can get relief from chip crisis's. And their plan is by 2026. They're gonna have some things in place where they'll never be in danger of a chip crisis again, right? This is how real companies think. Real companies don't think in 30 day windows, they're planning four years out. That's good. A
¶ We wrapped up by talking about how you need more than a 30 day plan. Glenn thinks that the biggest issue in the automotive industry is that you can't reinvent the wheel or make big moves in 30 days. He encouraged us to have more vision.
they're investing today for a result they want four years from now. And that's literally the biggest issue I think with our industry is dude, you cannot reinvent the wheel in 30 days. It's good cannot make big moves in 30 days. Give yourself some stinking runway, right? Give yourself some runway, have a three year plan, have a five year plan, have a 10 year plan and start deciding right now to invest today to get the results three years from now, five years from now. And 10 years from now.
Well, I know you're a busy man, you have a lot of things to do. And so thank you so much for just spending 30 minutes with this community. You are a true collaborator and a great great friend Glenn. Best of luck to you whatever else you're doing today we look forward to hanging out with you can't wait man ASOTU CON i will see you there so that is the one and only Glen Lundy. I'm so excited that he's doing his morning show live at ASOTU CON . Um, so ya know
if i Okay, look, I'm excited. gotcha
moment. How excited are you Kyle? First of all, here's okay. It is eastern time here on Central.
Let me clarify it's Eastern Time. Right so it's already 1230 Kyle 430 Okay. Plus, it's ASOTU time. The two nights before will be some they will not be early nights to bed if you know what I mean. So I'll be there a lot of Fortnite
was not early nice to bed if you know what I mean. So, so Glen, and does a morning show and if you don't know it, he did a morning show called Rise and grind. Which he did in 1000 episodes where every single weekday morning 530 he'd wake up at like 330 Prepare the show, run it himself. 530 He did 1000 episodes. I mean, we saw him, he was like in Vegas. And so that's Pacific Time, his show starts at 530 Eastern time. And it was like 11 o'clock, Pacific. And he's like, Oh, I gotta sleep for
like 38 seconds. And then I gotta get up and do my show, the man was committed, he stopped for a minute, he's back doing it again. And he's going to do it live from ASOTU CON at 530. And I'm going to do my very, very best to be that I feel like I have to be there. And I will, because it's going to be awesome. I don't know what condition I'm gonna be in after it. But I will be there. It's gonna be tough, but we'll be there.
I love the guys mindset. Like there is no question about his level of commitment, especially. And like the clarity of his vision. Yes. And I and I think that's what's required in order to have a commitment level like his I did want to make one correction as we were winding that interview down. He said, Nothing good ever starts after midnight, and I'm not kidding you boys. I wrote down a note that said all of that you're sure all my children work and I'll see myself out.
talks a lot about cultures of counsel, though, like counsel S E. L, not CIL, like, I'm not here to lead up a council of people. I'm here to counsel collaborate. And I think that just that feeds into what we're trying to have happen here on Auto Collabs. podcast is it's a big counsel. We want voices heard, we recognize everybody's had different vantage points and experiences and things that they've accomplished or failures. And we want to bring
all of that in. And I love how he's doing that at the at the single and dealer group, rooftop level.
Well, we hope that you drew a little energy from that interview with Glenn, we hope that you draw a little energy from just being in this environment with other people that are doing things that are moving in the right direction, and they're really committed to walking with one another and improving one another. On behalf of Kyle mounts here Michael Cirillo, and myself, thank you for listening to Auto Collabs.
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