What's going to happen to those stores if they don't adapt to the technology changes in the near future or what's going on in our industry right now? Everything that the customer typically asks for, they get that before they even step foot into the dealership. It helps us to scale our operations faster. It makes our processes more efficient across all systems. It drives productivity, right? Everyone comes out better based upon how they adapted during those challenging times. A big thank you to our sponsors for making today's episode possible. Uber for Business, dealer on, and impel. And now let's get into the show.
如果那些商店在不久的将来不适应技术变化或者不跟上我们行业目前的发展会怎么样?客户通常需要的所有东西,他们在进入经销商之前就已经得到了。这有助于我们更快地扩展业务,使我们的流程在各个系统中更高效,提升生产力,对吗?在那些充满挑战的时期,大家通过适应变化变得更好。非常感谢我们的赞助商,让今天的节目成为可能。感谢Uber for Business、Dealer On和Impel。现在让我们进入节目的内容。
Jeremy Nalling on the CDG podcast. Jeremy, welcome. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Good to have you on, dude. Excited about this. This is a different type of episode. You're a specialist. You're all up in the dealership tech. And I think people are going to find this very interesting and different. Good. I'm looking forward to talking about it. It's something I'm very passionate about. I think as I was reading up on you a little bit before this, you are an enigma in the car business. You've been in the industry and with the same group since the 90s.
Let's define why this is unique. Well, first of all, the turnover in the car business is like three days. So let's just start there. And honestly, it has gotten better. COVID, it got better because people were making a lot of money. But needless to say, deal trips have been investing a lot more into employees and stuff like that. So really turnover has been improving in the great picture. But the second thing is what fascinated me so much is seeing that in your role to be with one company, let alone one dealership for so many years, is particularly difficult because it's technology. Technology is changing and you've got to change with it, right?
You're not a retailer. I get a mechanic is actually not a great reason because even they have to deal so much technologies. But the point I'm trying to make is like, you're not a salesperson. Like those roles are obviously evolving as well. But like a technology first role is evolving the fastest. And so for you to reinvent yourself, we're going to talk a lot about that today. So anyways, that's my little setup here. Just give us, get us started by telling us about what brought you to Rormann and really these past 25 years, what it's been like for you at Rormann.
I started off in the Wash Bay at a Toyota store that was a competitor here in the city. And there was a GSM who came to work for us. And he ended up connecting with me after he left and I ended up joining the Rormann team. And so for 25 years, it's just been a lot of growth in that in my role. And it started off as a salesperson. And about a year into it, I was like, man, there's got to be an easier way to get customers. Yeah. So I heard of a credit union in town and it turns out they're the credit union for the largest pharmaceutical company here in the Midwest. And I approached that company and was able to work out a deal to be their sole Honda sales rep. And so I would provide vehicles to their employees and their families. I would deliver cars to their houses to their offices. And I did that for almost 10 years. And so that was my day to day.
When I turned 29 or 30, I jumped into management and it was with the same group. I was here for about five years doing that. And then I got an edge and left and went to Florida for a very short step. And then ended up having to come back to the Indiana stores. For an outside reason. And that turned out to be one of the best blessings that happened to me. It helped me to advance further in my career. I was, I came back as a GSM, but I did in that role prior. But shortly after that, I was able to attend in a DA Academy. And Ryan Rorman, he sent me to Tyson's Corner to go through the motions there and further my education. Then there was the change and that happened in 2019.
During that time, I'll be very honest with you. I was not the tech guy at the stores. I wasn't the guy who dove deep into it. I knew about it. I knew we used it. It made us successful. But I wasn't the guy that got deep in the weeds on what products we use and how we implement them. But in 2019, a lot of that shifted. And COVID was good in so many different areas of everyone's life. And it helped me to dig very deep into it. And I'll not forget the day that Ryan Rorman had come into one of our meetings. And he brought a Surface Pro. And on that Surface Pro, he started to talk about data and KPIs and where are we missing opportunities. And I knew that day that it was going to change because that was the first time it had really been discussed in that type of setting.
And from that day forward, every day, I would dive in and I would look at reports and I would look at how to become better, how to separate us from other stores in the area or other stores in our group and how we could thrive. And that led me to a new role with Ryan's brother, Trey, inside of our Lafayette area stores. And we ran through COVID. We sold at the Honda store there. We sold to zero before selling to zero was a thing. And we did that during the hardest times in the industry before COVID actually started to thrive. We did that in July, August of 2020. And we did it by delivering cars, delivering an experience using video, using all the tech abilities that we have to make the consumer feel comfortable where they were buying the car at so that they didn't have to come into our location.
Can you explain to the audience what you mean by selling to zero? Yeah, selling to zero selling out in new cars and selling to zero is, you know, it became a term, especially during the later parts of COVID and during the microchip shortage. But we were able to complete that task and it felt very fulfilling to do that. And so from there, we continued to grow as a group. And at that time, Ryan took over as the CEO of our organization and he built a director team. And that director team, they invited me to join them on this journey. And so here we are, you know, four years later.
And I feel that I am further advanced than most individuals in the industry when it comes to technology and how we use it on a day-to-day basis and how we drive performance and enhance the user experience and the consumer experience. Yeah, you're very close to this. So what are you focused on today, right, at the dealer group? Just give us like a little summary. What is your main focus with that when it comes to technology? CDPs, marketing extensions, ID resolution, data enrichment, how we can again further separate our self-ass technology continues to thrive in the industry.
All right, so like I call myself like Spark Notes, right? That's like my nickname here. So basically for anyone that's like foreign to this, right, you are, let's call you like a data whiz, right? CDP is, you know, you're pretty much, as an example, you're grabbing, you know, all this data and from your system that is maybe, you know, bad data, it's, you know, messy data, right? You can't, it's not very actionable, right? Dealers, every lead goes into your system. I mean, again, you'll speak a lot more intelligently to this than I will, but you're basically trying to make sense of all that ultimately drive return on investment, right, to the dealership, whether it be getting the right message to the right customer, better communication, I mean, again, I'm way over simplifying this. You're probably cringing right now, but I'm trying to, I'm trying to connect the dots here for just before we get started.
You know, I would say that one way of looking at data, CDP is, you know, controlling and mastering your data, having a cleanse data profile on your consumers, whether they be service or your sold customers or just everybody in your DMS and CRM in general, and being able to target market to that consumer exactly where they are in the journey and being able to no longer have wasted ad spend, but have the right ad spend for every consumer out there. You know, it's crazy that you're saying this, this morning, I commented on someone's post on X, they were talking about like marketing and automotive. So I put that, that quote that I'm sure you know and love, which says, half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don't know which half. Yeah. Isn't that the truth, right? How have we all felt that? So, and your job is to figure out which half. So now take us, take us one level deeper now, right? You've seen this business evolve from, from, you know, pen and paper to websites to, you know, apps and, you know, digital retailing in the last two weeks back to pen and paper. That's solved now though. So now we're back to digital. Give us a little overview of what's the state of dealership technology today. Like tell us like, table set a little bit for us. Where are we at today? Right. What's the current state? Where are we going?
Well, I think that you still have, you have the innovators, right? You have the innovators that they want to bring in new tech, introduce it to everybody. And then you have old school that still fills that, hey, we've been able to do this for 40 years. Why do I need to change? And, you know, I think that the culture of that would be showing them how you can perform better with tech. And I feel that honestly, through every challenge time, think about it. Through every challenge time in our industry, we always come out better. Everyone comes out better based upon how they adapted during those challenging times. And I think that that's very true.
Now we are not on CDK. So we didn't get to go through this experience that just happened. But I feel that for the stores that were posting and commenting, how they adapted, and they're still selling 30, 40, 50 cars or whatever through that time, I feel that those guys in that group, they learned a lot. They learned how to adapt when they were down. And I feel that now that the light switch has gone back on at these stores, they're going to be able to go in there and drive even better using their products and knowing that they can embrace it even more, knowing what it was like to walk away and not have it. But then you have the troops that they didn't sell any cars and they closed down and they didn't perform at all. And they struggled. What's going to happen to those stores if they don't adapt to the technology changes in the near future or what's going on in our industry right now? Those are the ones that are struggling.
I'm curious, like, how does someone, how does a vendor, how do they get your attention? We've all been gotten to pictures, right? I'm going to make you more money. I'm going to save you money. I'm going to save you time. Cool. Everyone tells you that 20 times a day, I get the emails. You know, I've gotten the phone calls as you could probably get 50 times more than me. How do they get your attention? You know, I like to toy with the product. So like, if it's something that is new, I think everybody has a DR tool. I think there's so many different people. Yeah, there's a retailing platform. I think that there's a lot of cameras. I think there's a lot of video that's out there. What does your tool do different that the other guy doesn't do? That's something that's going to get my attention. How does it make the user experience better? Our sales reps and managers, they have to log into so many different platforms now. Can you unify that? And does it include helping me to eliminate another product that I'm paying for? Because yours has multiple use cases.
This episode is brought to you by Deal or On. These days, car buyers demand more than just a generic browsing experience from Deal or Ship websites. They want a personalized shopping journey that allows them to buy cars the way they want to buy them. Introducing Deal or On Signals. Deal or On Signals integrated with the Advanced Cosmos website platform delivers just that. Signals leverages your first party data to provide unique website experiences without third party cookies or logins. The result? A 2.5x increase in website engagement and happier customers for your dealership. Visit Deal or On.com slash CDG to schedule your demo of Deal or On Signals and discover the power of true website personalization. That's Deal or On.com slash CDG or click the link in the show notes below.
本集由 Deal or On 赞助。现如今,购车者希望在 Deal 或 Ship 网站上获得的不仅仅是普通的浏览体验,他们想要的是个性化的购物旅程,让他们能够按照自己的方式购买汽车。介绍一下 Deal or On Signals。Deal or On Signals 与高级 Cosmos 网站平台集成,正是为了实现这一目标。Signals 利用第一方数据提供独特的网站体验,无需依赖第三方 cookies 或登录。结果是什么呢?网站参与度增加了 2.5 倍,使您的经销商客户更加满意。访问 Deal or On.com 斜杠 CDG 预约 Deal or On Signals 的演示,发现真正个性化网站的力量。这是 Deal or On.com 斜杠 CDG,或点击下方节目说明中的链接。
You just mentioned a really important topic, which is given what happened here with CDK and the outage as you know, sort of this single point of failure. How do you feel about integrated tools? Like you just said, Ken, you mentioned putting tools together. Does that change your opinion on integrated tools? Or does it just change your opinion on cybersecurity? What's your thought? Well, I think that cybersecurity is important no matter what tool you have. But I would say with integrated tools, it's helpful in the sense that it helps us to you shouldn't have three different tools that can all be used as one. Does it make sense? So I shouldn't have to tie in a video to an information tool to a way to send it out and share it to a consumer only to be responded to in a fourth different valset. I think that the more integrations that you see of tech coming together and building unified tool, I think that helps everybody in the industry.
Given these dealership outages that the industry just experienced, are you hedging that? And I know you don't use CDK, it's fine. But regardless of what tool you do use, are you hedging that in any way? Like did a conversation pop up in the meeting with your team? Like, hey, do we need a second DMS? Like, what's the, are you making any changes whatsoever? Because of that?
Yeah. Well, back to CDP. A CDP will help with that. So if you do have an outage or if a DMS shuts down, you still have all your consumer data. And you can take it another layer further and put it into a storage cloud as well. And we'll be doing that. That will again further help us should something ever happen, which, you know, hopefully that we never see that. But should it happen, we'll be prepared.
You mentioned CDPs multiple times. But talk to me about what are the latest tools you're using to enhance the customer experience. Like just give us a little overview. Um, AI, AI is everywhere. So. Okay, but wait, wait, everyone says AI, right? It's like everywhere. Like everything is like, I see like 20 year old websites and like suddenly like, you know, AI, cool. What does that really mean to you? What's that mean to me? I believe AI is something as a product that helps to meet the customer a little bit closer in their journey and be able to provide them those experiences without human involvement and be able to get them further down the funnel. And so for us, it can start on the website. It can start with backgrounding of vehicles and giving the customer the ability to look at different features and communicate with a chat that actually knows how to answer questions and take conversation further before setting the appointment.
AI is technology that can take those questions and turn it into a lead. And then that lead is then again, down the funnel a little bit further in communication before handing it off to a sales rep to take the purchase experience further. And what state are you seeing the tools you're using? Like at what state are they with respect to delivering a customer experience that is at least at parity with a human, maybe better. That's obviously the goal. But like, what state do you think we're at? Depends on what group you're with, right? So for us, I would say that we're at a state where we are very transparent with the consumer. And by using that innovation, we can provide the consumer with all the questions that they want on a vehicle before they even come into the door. We provide them with the car facts, the digital retailing tool access videos, photos, feature view videos of the vehicle, service records, car facts. I mean, everything that the customer typically asked for, they get that before they even step foot into the dealership, before they even get our second response from us. They get that answer. And then it's followed up with video of the vehicle, walkarounds, introductions. Now, is that is that all manual? What you're saying right now? Are you doing that like manually or is that also? No. The video, yes, the video walk around is manual because that's more of a self, self introduction to the consumer. But as for everything else, it's all automated. And so part of my deal with in Pell, when we launched with them as a partner, we wanted another tech stack to be automated as part of the initial greeting to the consumer. We were able to put that together with them. And it's been very successful for us by doing that.
So I want to ask you about specific tools. And I also want to give a shout out to Impel and tell us a sponsor to CG podcast. But they also recently, they actually made an acquisition of outsell, which is another tech player in our industry. So shout out Devon, who's been on the podcast himself and Impel for doing great things. Tell me more about that. And let's talk a little bit about the tools. You mentioned Impel, but I want to talk about what are the tools where you're seeing AI being utilized, the best possible right now for the dealership? Conversational, being able to communicate with the customers, whether we're open closed, it's a holiday or the sales reps busy, those conversations can continue to take place. Backgrounding of vehicles. So a lot of our areas have photo booths, but there are those other areas that do not have photo booths.
So we use the AI to be able to place the vehicle into a virtual photo booth, which obviously helps with the way the vehicle looks on your SRP page. And then you take it additional steps further in its information sharing. So we like the fact that it can share out information packets. Which is a consumer without us having to depend upon a person to remember to send out a packet every single time. It's already done on new and used vehicles. Yeah, no, I'm just curious where you're seeing AI really bringing value at the current state across the dealership. Yeah. Appointment setting for sales and for service, long-term engagement for service consumers.
And staying on top of follow-up with internet leads for sales reps and BD agents. You know, there's been a lot of talk about where is AI really going to make a dent in the dealership? Is it incremental? Is it just an efficiency play? Is it going to replace people? Right? Like how do you see this evolving in the dealership? I would say both, right? So I think it's definitely incremental. It enables us to drive greater revenue both sales and service, improving our results from leads and conversions and setting service appointments. But it also delivers some efficiency points. It helps us to scale our operations faster. It makes our processes more efficient across all systems. And it drives productivity, right? So like, for example, on sales, it handles all leads that we're currently in communication with.
All internet leads that let me make that clear and chat. But email and texting, I don't have to worry about someone fumbling the ball on not following up to a text or not typing in all caps or anything like that. It's a very proficient email that goes out to the consumer that answers the prior question that they have. And it has a lot of empathy to it now. So the AI in PEL uses sympathetic to a consumer. I mean, if you should see some of these conversations that take place, if a customer says, hey, I've been in my car was in an accident, I was a total loss, the AI's initial response is, hey, I'm so sorry to hear about that. Please let me know how I can see further.
I mean, that's great to know that those conversations are taking place. But I mean, it helps us to build a stronger relationship with the consumer. Our AI's agent's name is Megan. Megan is a household name that stays with the consumer for a very long period of time now. And it helps to provide that white glove service. It helps for the salespeople to be more efficient and what they're focusing on with the consumer inside of the showroom. And the days of having 20 salespeople on a sales floor, we don't need that anymore. Our average sales rep per store is 12 to 15, is that? And it's, again, it's assisted by AI helping. Tell me like, you know, there's dealer principles listening to this thinking, okay, where can I cut costs? And then there's BDC directors thinking, okay, am I going to have a job? And I think there's a balance to all of that.
I'm of the belief that AI, I've seen how we use it here at Cardio Ship Guy, right? Like simple stuff, improving, editing, whatever it may be. I'm of the belief that it's an enhancer here. It won't necessarily replace rather it will, you know, supercharge the people that learn how to use it. So what is your message as someone who's in the weeds on this daily? Wait, what is your message to a dealer principle versus like a BDC director right now about where this technology is going to take our industry and how you can either, you know, run from it, you know, embrace it. Like, what's your message to them? Yeah, I would say embrace change. And, you know, for us, you know, we're in some large metro areas and we've been able to pretty much eliminate BDC departments.
And I'm from the build school, right? So I remember the days where you had five to seven people working inside of a BDC and you had, you know, 15, 20 salespeople on the floor. But look at it this way. Now we've been able to slim that down to where at some stores, I just have a BD coordinator. That coordinator helps to oversee daily tasks, responsibilities, and manage handoffs. At quite a few stores, we have no coordinators and we have no BD agents. We have a whole digital sales floor, salespeople that work alongside the AI to be able to drive that consumer experience. And then obviously we need the sales reps to deliver the vehicles and get things ready inside of the store when the consumer comes in. And for the larger stores, you're always going to have maybe two agents, that two to three agents that help to manage those handoffs, but also can assist with the service handoffs as well.
But I would say that, you know, it's not that you're eliminating your BD agents. You can actually give your BD agents the opportunity to become digital salespeople. That's what I was just going to say. I was waiting for you to say, because I was going to say, well, it sounds to be like what you've done is you've almost expanded the role to, you know, enable them to actually sell, right? And everyone is more of this like sales role on the floor and assisted by tech as opposed to like, you are only internet, you are only floor. Now, now I think that the two have to work hand in hand. And I believe that if you take a BD agent, I love the BD agents.
They know the CRM the best. They know how to follow up the best. They know how to provide the white glove experience. They're not afraid to make phone calls and talk to a consumer. So I would actually encourage BD agents to step away from that role and embrace the AI, increase your income, and jump onto the sales floor and provide that best experience to consumers for years to come. How do you think service is going to change given, you know, where we're heading? I mean, from your perspective, you run many service centers. Do you think that that is like the, is that the limit for service? Like is it just communication? Do you see it like being embedded deeper than that? What's your thought? Yeah. So we have several service directors in the group. And I know that, you know, initially we're hesitant on one of them was on, do I want to launch AI? And he had so many concerns about it. And he absolutely loves it now. So we launched service AI with Impel at more than half of our locations.
And the return on that investment has been just twofold. I mean, it's great because it's helped us to identify within our DMS opportunities of consumers that haven't been in the shop for a long period of time. It's also helped us to eliminate those customers that no longer own the vehicle from our DMS. And now we're helping to provide better marketing that goes out to the consumers. But, you know, with the product that they have, and I'm sure that it's separate from others, it's about the engagements. It's the text messaging and again, the empathetic communications that they send out to consumers. They don't own the vehicle anymore.
They're empathetic to that. If they haven't been in in two years because they feel like, hey, I can get my oil change down to the street, it can respond to that. And, you know, again, it drives that customer back to the service scheduler, giving them the ability to go ahead and schedule that appointment themselves. And once again, helping for those service agents to focus more on consumers that are in front of them and only getting involved when that handoff is required. This episode is brought to you by Uber.
Courtesy transportation is no longer a nice to have. It's a need to have. That's why 80% of dealership respondents agree that providing on-demand courtesy rides with Uber has helped retain customers based on Uber survey of 79 organizations in 2023. With Central, you can request a ride on behalf of your customers, even if they don't have the Uber app. Card dealerships are loving Uber for business because it's a headache-free solution for offering white glove service and seamlessly handling tasks like pickup and delivery of auto parts and replacing shuttles and loaner cars.
Dealers can request one way or round trip rides, add multiple riders and locations, and even monitor trips in real time. Plus, you'll get monthly reports to keep track of everything. If you're ready to reduce the costs associated with maintaining shuttles and limit the liability of loaner vehicles, it's time to partner with Uber. Visit t.uber.com slash CDG Auto today to learn more or visit the link in the show notes below. Now, how are you getting feedback from your consumers here? Right? Like, if I post something on social media, people will scorch to earth in five seconds. I know right away what people think. How are you working with your customer to really know how do they feel about this type of transaction?
Is it actually better off with a consumer regardless of where you're implementing AI tools and whatnot? Right? How do you know you're doing the right thing? So, within their dashboards, you can actually look at the conversations as they take place. And again, just like any product, you have to have training around it. And if you train your people the right way to be able to get engaged with the consumer at the handoff point, acknowledging Megan, acknowledging whoever turned that texture, that handoff to them, it's seamless. And, you know, we grew from that. And I think that with the service side, it grew really quick. So, we had tons of appointments that we had scheduled. So, we had to correct that issue as well.
And by doing so, we throttled the system down to not do so many engagements at once to be able to, again, accommodate the customer's needs. I want to move forward to like the economy a little bit and just talk about what you're seeing in the market, right? You have your fingers on the pulse. You're very closely. Can you give us a little overview to just trends that you're noticing right now in real time, whether it be lead flow, volume of customers, sales, like just give us a little overview right now. What do you see? You know, I think, and I talked to many people across the industry outside of our region. And I would say that as of right now, it seems like leads are going down on new vehicles at a time when we've had the most new cars in the past, you know, two to three years on the ground. And so that's a question, right? So what's holding the customers back? Is it the rate? Is it the still the availability on certain trends or colors?
Is it buyer confidence in the market? I don't know the answer to that. I know that we're taking multiple approaches to make sure that we continue to keep our turn rate moving and to look at different ways of being creative to find opportunities for our salespeople to work. Now, but why do you think leads are dropping here? Like, do you think it's just the combination? Like, obviously, there's more new car inventory, but, you know, new cars are availability is rising. What are you seeing as the drivers on your end? And also, can you, and one thing I didn't ask you, just give us like, how many stores are you overseeing?
Like, give us a little sense of the volume we're talking about here to scale? Yeah, so I oversee 22 stores all on the sales and digital retailing side, along with the implementation. And so with those regions that we're in, I can go back to exercises that we would show inside of our manager meetings in the stores that, you know, at a time in 2020 and 2021, a 75 mile radius may only serve up, you know, 2,000 new cars on the ground against all makes and models. And now if you go do a search on these third party sites and you look at that same 75 miles, you're looking at 25,000 to 40,000 new cars spread across hundreds of dealerships.
So that's a reason. There's more options for consumers now to submit leads to other vehicles. But when you look at brand specific, you're no longer the only guy on the page with inventory. It's you and 40 other stores that are fighting for valuable merchandising space on those third party sites. Speaking of third party sites, like, how do you differentiate there? Like, what's your, you know, are you doing anything unique? Is it strictly price and? It's algorithm. And if you can define the best ways to perform on the algorithm, that helps your relevancy when showing up on those pages and driving that.
And, you know, those are some key areas that we focused on. And we did that a couple of years ago. And it helped us so much. So it helps to keep us. So like, when you say algorithm, right, how are we, how are we optimising this algorithm? Right? Because, you know, what's that like, what are some of the levers that you can share with us? I'll share some simple ones that I think everybody knows. Obviously, price is always going to be something new listing, a new listing.
So for instance, if on auto trader, you have a vehicle that just lands on your lot, you have seven days, seven days that that new batch new vehicle listing badge is available to you. If you don't photo your cars until day you miss six days of the best merchandising that you can receive, then you tie in some other things like 360s, spin the car. Those are all things that help to drive the algorithm on the third party sites. Good customer reviews. Each third party, whether it be cars, auto trader, or car gurus, they all have different things that drive the algorithm. And if you've not taken notice to that, and it's not part of your merchandising practice, you're missing out.
I like you. I mean, I think that would you agree, like, to be good at this, you have to be a tinkerer, right? Like, it feels like, like what you just mentioned is such a fine detail that I just have to imagine 99% of dealers overlook. Okay, maybe not 99%. But like, you just mentioned that seven day banner, you just missed your perfect merchandising period, right? Like, these are details that you really have to be a tinkerer and be in there to see, right? And know the trends, understand, you know, what matters. Yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, you know, we talked about this just over the past few weeks of our meetings was it's not a process unless it's written down. And so if you don't have a process for your merchandising, for those that are responsible for your merchandising to check these boxes, it's not being done. Jeremy Nalling, all right.
So you've been at RORMAND for 25 years. You've accomplished a lot. What's your plan for the next decade? Well, well, at least for the next decade, it will be to continue to grow with the RORMAND organization. And, you know, their family is separate from a public group. It's separate from a lot of deal groups across the industry. And since that, they're very innovative. They work closely together. So they're third generation, the grandchildren, Ryan and Trey and Chase and Luke and Connor and Logan. I mean, these grandchildren are in the day-to-day operations of the stores. And they all hold a specific role to not only drive growth, but to drive culture. This group, this family believes more in values and training and making sure that we provide the best experience for our employees on a day-to-day basis. And I can say that in confidence. I've been with the group for 25 years. You don't stay somewhere because you're comfortable. You stay somewhere because you love it. And it helps you to thrive and grow in what you do on a day-to-day basis. And, you know, aside from that, they've now helped me to make my son a better person. So my son just recently graduated from Northwood University. Nice. Congrats.
And, by the way, can you just provide some context on what Northwood is for anyone that's not aware? Yeah, sure. So I'll take you back to 2019. My son was going to go to IU. All for his whole life, he was going to go to Indiana University. And during COVID, he ended up having to come work for us. We were down salespeople. And I ended up bringing him and a couple of his buddies to come work for us at some stores. And he looked at me and he says, hey, I want to go check out Northwood. I'm like, really? And he's like, yeah, I want to go to look at Northwood. And so we made the drive up, those about six-hour drive up. And Northwood University, for those who don't know, it's the only automotive university in the United States. And what it does is that they hire OEMs, hire directly out of there, dealer principals, send their students, their children there to learn. And then obviously anybody who has a true passion for the auto industry, that's where they go. And my son developed that passion. So Dominic has achieved his bachelor's in three years. And he's spinning it up as master's degree now. So he has about three weeks left. And I was in NBA all in four years.
And because of Dominic's growth inside of there, it caught the attention of LG Bright and LG's the automotive chair at Northwood University. Just an amazing guy with a huge background in the auto industry. And so after Dominic's first year there, LG asked me, say, hey, Jeremy, would you be interested in talking to the students? And I was like, okay, yeah, it'd be cool. And so I did. And it led to me being a, I volunteer now there every semester. I have a group of school classroom students that we talk about automotive management and marketing with. We brought interns onto the group. We've had a great time. We participate in their auto shows. We participate in a lot of other events with the university.
What's impactful is that it was supported by the Roman family. So JR Roman coincidentally actually went to Northwood University and I wasn't aware of that at the time. And when I came to Ryan's and hey, Ryan, they're asking me to teach here. What are your thoughts? He goes, do it. Go after it. And so they want me to do it every week. And he goes, is it virtually? And I'm like, yeah, I have to go up there a couple times a year. But yeah, it's virtually. And he goes absolutely make the time for it and do it. And so now, not only are we able to help provide a lot of tech insight and process and accountability to the students of tomorrow, but they're actually able to help give back to me and help me to learn and grow through some of the experiences that they're going through at the school. And to see these kids go through all that they're doing for a three to four year period and they're not getting paid a dime. But yet they're coming out in the industry and they already know about a financial statement. They know about marketing. They know about process tasks, not a work through a DMS. That's the kids of tomorrow.
Well, I love your passion. I mean, he's just oozing out. I can just tell that this really, really gets you going and it's awesome to see. And also to see, like you said, your son having that opportunity is awesome, right? Because I remember when I was early in the car business, I just learned about NADA Academy. And I had no way to go. Right? It's just like small independent just starting the business had no way to go. I had to hook up at the franchise and I was frustrated. Right now I ended up figuring out brute forcing my way and learning by experience and many, many mistakes that some of which were very expensive. And it was quite it was a hell of a school. I'll tell you that. I mean, definitely learned the ins and outs the hard way. But it's awesome to see how excited you are about this and investing in your son and just the future. It's awesome.
Yeah, NADA has a campus up there. Cox Automotive has a campus up there and so does CDK along with many other tech partners have involvement there. But then they have the women in automotive. They have the teddings fixed up round table that happens at the campus. NADA is actually getting a new building built up there right now because the current one is almost all of that's taking place right now. Yeah, it's great. All right. So I have to imagine lots of dealers listening to this or vendor. I mean, people are going to want to reach out to you for advice or to chat. So I'm just going to say, if you'd like to reach out to you, they can find you on LinkedIn. Does that work? Yeah, it is. And the Roarner Group is always looking for people. So if you're in a rooftop where you don't know if you're somewhere where you feel that you're not thriving. And you feel that there's so much more that you like to share and grow with. That's what we welcome. We welcome those individuals to join our organization. You're the ultimate evangelist. You love your products. You love your companies. I love it. Any closing thoughts for us before we wrap up here? Any parting words?
I'm a huge fan of what you're doing in the industry. I really, I think that you are are, you know, I'll go talk to one interview specifically that you did. And I want to tell you, you opened up with Brian Benstock on an interview. And I've been a huge fan of that guy for a long time. I was in the gym with him a few weeks ago. And you know, to hear his passion, and he's been in the industry longer than I have. I was four years old when he, when he started on May 10th, I was born on the 10th. And when he said that in the interview, I was like, man, he still has it. He's still going and he's still making a market in this industry. I can assure you that our organization, Ryan Rorman and his brothers, they have that same passion. So, you know, if you're not in the right spot, find the good spot, we're always looking for good talent inside of our group. And, you know, I think that the what you're doing for the industry helps to know that there's dealers out there that still want to grow and change and be impactful. And I thank you again for the interview and opportunity to spend time with you. Jeremy Nalling, thanks so much for coming on. This was awesome. You're a wealth of knowledge, head of blast. And I think we're going to love it. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, Josh. Appreciate it. This episode is brought to you by my very own car dealership guy, industry job boards. CDG jobs is revolutionizing how talent connects with top automotive companies.
Here's a shocker. We're not using any fancy technology or AI. We literally built a simple HTML job board. That's it. But it works really, really well. And the best part, it's completely free for CDG listeners to post and fill positions at their firm. So I'm sure you're wondering what sets us apart. Well, when companies hire through CDG jobs, they're choosing from a pool of the most informed candidates in the industry. Don't wait. Whether you're hiring or seeking a new opportunity, visit CDGjobs.com today or click the link in the show notes below. That's CDGjobs.com. All right. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Please give the podcast a rating. Consider subscribing to the show and check the show notes for links to what we talked about. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you guys next time.