Auto Collabs
The walls are closing in on Franchised Retail Auto Dealers as the industry is moving at break-neck velocity toward a new way of doing business. The convergence of economic and social volatility, new entrants like Tesla and Carvana, and the new rules of retail are putting Auto Dealers in a crucible that will either destroy them or refine them.Auto Collabs brings you deep into real-talk conversations with the brightest operators and innovators in the Retail Auto Industry who believe the Dealer network is the single greatest way to serve the transportation needs of communities across the country. The only way Retail Auto Dealers and Industry Partners will survive is by committing to innovate together, so let’s get started. Welcome to Auto Collabs. // Auto Collabs is produced by Automotive State of the Union (ASOTU). Learn more at https://www.asotu.com
Auto Collabs
Time-Lapsing A Moldy Whopper with Glenn Lundy
Attention-grabbing creativity, franchise fatigue, and the art of brand-building in the modern age.
Glenn Lundy isn’t just a podcaster or speaker—he’s a professional attention architect who’s been helping auto dealers think differently for years. With thousands of episodes under his belt and a heart for growth (and a growing family, literally), Glenn joins Paul, Kyle, and Michael to riff on why the rules of attention have changed and how creative thinking can outperform a fat ad budget. From Burger King's moldy Whopper to AI-powered robot dogs, this conversation is a masterclass in making people look your way without selling your soul to Facebook ads.
But it’s not just about flash. Glenn gets real about the human side of leadership—especially in an industry filled with third- and fourth-generation owners who might not actually want to grow. They talk about the psychological ceilings we impose on ourselves, the trap of “just enough” success, and why authentic, creative messaging is the dealership's best bet for long-term retention. Oh, and there's a mosquito attack that turns into a branding metaphor. You can’t make this stuff up.
Timestamped Takeaways:
0:00 Intro with Paul J Daly, Kyle Mountsier and Michael Cirillo
2:24 Glenn introduces his newest baby—number nine—and how family fuels his hustle
4:01 The ASOTU CON robot dog story: how a cyber-dog turned heads and taught lessons in grabbing attention
6:30 Burger King's moldy Whopper ad and the shift from traditional ads to organic, bold creative
11:18 Glenn and Paul dive deep into the tension between creativity and substance in a noisy digital world
19:02 Why many dealership owners say they want to grow—but secretly don’t
21:36 The dealership mindset trap: silos, financial statements, and being “number one” in tiny ponds
Learn more about Glenn Lundy:
⭐️ Love the podcast? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your LinkedIn or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally!
We have a daily email!
✉️ Sign up for our free and fun-to-read daily email for a quick shot of relevant news in automotive retail, media, and pop culture.
🎧 Like and follow our other podcasts:
I'm really excited for today's guest.
Unknown:This is Auto Collabs for
Paul J Daly:a few reasons. Number one, he doesn't have
Kyle Mountsier:a halo on his head like Michael Cirillo, right? No, don't make
Paul J Daly:fun of Michael's camera. His lighting went out. There was a brown out in Texas, and I don't think he looks that bad.
Unknown:It's pretty nasty. Okay, you guys have
Paul J Daly:listened to the audio version. If you're listening to the audio version, just listen the audio right there. It'll be better. Don't go anywhere. No, but, but, but. Glenn Lundy, today's guest is a professional podcaster in every sense of the word. He's got 1000s of episodes under his belt, he is always
Michael Cirillo:only, like, four generations away from repopulating the entire state of Kentucky. I don't
Paul J Daly:think so. He just, he's got a couple of kids. He's got a couple kids. He actually had had three of them at ASOTU CON, which was super cool.
Kyle Mountsier:He didn't have three of them. He brought three of words are tricky, you know, we're maybe
Paul J Daly:we should back off that. No, but, but he's always been somebody who has been committed to moving forward in every sense of how I've known him, whether that's in repopulating the earth or, you know, just helping people kind of get unstuck, I guess, has been my experience with them. Yep, you know, I thought you guys would have something else to say there.
Unknown:How about let's dive in and get unstuck from sticking the intro. I know I took too long with that. I didn't give you guys any talk. Hey guys, we hope you enjoyed this episode with Glenn Lundy,
Paul J Daly:Mr. Glenn Lundy, it is good to have you on the show. The four of us have never been on a piece of content together. I will say this is true,
Glenn Lundy:and I did together. Guys were all coming at me like this. I didn't know, like, one on one. All of a sudden I come around the corner, there's three you guys. I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is actually
Kyle Mountsier:an intervention. Michael's
Paul J Daly:like, okay, hold everybody, get your little note out, right? And the big question,
Kyle Mountsier:you, Glen Lenny, yes, and yeah,
Paul J Daly:see you, Glenn, let me and we see that you just had another baby. What I
Unknown:did,
Kyle Mountsier:how do you even function in this world with all these babies? He
Paul J Daly:looks awake. He's bright eyed and bushy tailed. Tell us your secrets. Glenn, oh
Glenn Lundy:my gosh. Uh, marry a saint. Mary, a saint. That is the that is the key, for sure, for sure, maybe number nine. Man, he's eight weeks old. He's doing great. Wow. How's the rest? He's legit, a raider. Because, I mean, I named him Hutch Raider. His middle name is
Unknown:Raider. Was that a mutual decision? Did Leslie he slipped in while she still had the epidemic? Are you talking about our intimacy here? Michael, if that was a mutual decision or not. I mean, come on, buddy. Who do you think
Kyle Mountsier:I am moving on for that conversation
Paul J Daly:and other news.
Kyle Mountsier:Did you guys know that that Glenn, I think was like podcast number three or four for me ever, really? Yeah, wow. I don't even think do that. I number like three or four or something like that. If you go back on your contagious conversations, contagious conversations, way back when it was like someone in the office Erica and an old employee of mine, and Glenn and Ben were, like, the first four, wow, yeah, back in
Paul J Daly:that, was I ever on that show? By what was, I think you were on that show? No, go back and run it back, just so I can say I was on, yeah, Paul, Paul and Michael were never on that show, but Glenn was on that show. Glenn, let's talk about that now.
Unknown:Yeah, I love No. Okay,
Kyle Mountsier:so I have a real question, where, where did this my question, dog thing at ASOTU CON that you had, that was you right, running around with that little automated thing that was the robot he stole that
Glenn Lundy:he jacked that I still wasn't his, but no, it's so car tool, right, my buddy. So we have an 800% club member one of our dealers that also has software called car tool. Got it. Oh, I told him he could hang out at our booth there at a so do if he brought his little cyber dog so that we can try to draw attention to the booth. So he brought his little AI power, whatever you want to call that thing. And dude, Kyle does that thing. Not insane, bro.
Kyle Mountsier:It was wild. That blew my mind. So what's the whole point of it? What's the reason for that thing? If you don't, I mean, I know it's a little bit
Paul J Daly:I don't get attention. I mean, just like everything else in this world, how can we slap a machine gun to the top of it? I mean, I
Glenn Lundy:don't know. Dude, you have 36 scarfs behind you right now. Kyle, do we need 36 scarfs? Kyle, no, that's amazing. Super cool. It was really cool. No, they do have some. Them, if you dig into it, you know, like they have them strong enough where they can pull somebody in a wheelchair, they can carry groceries for disabled folks, I think things like that. So think of like helper dogs, but they're not real. They're They're robots, dude,
Michael Cirillo:I'm thinking of like some 83 year old up on the top floor of an apartment building who had this thing bring her groceries up, filing a
Unknown:yeah ticket.
Michael Cirillo:My eggs are always broken when they get to my apartment.
Unknown:Dude, it's pretty cool. I'm getting one. I'm gonna
Paul J Daly:get that. I'm gonna, I think miles, my son was telling me they're not that expensive.
Glenn Lundy:Yeah, that one, the one that was there, was right at three green, right.
Paul J Daly:So expensive enough, but not what you would expect it to come, not what you would expect for it, yeah, if you didn't
Unknown:see it, okay. But this ties into a question I have because you know, one of the things you've taught in your 800%
Michael Cirillo:club for a long time is the power of getting attention, yeah, man. And this, obviously, I mean, we saw everybody hanging out at the booth at at ASOTU CON, and this thing became a mechanism that got you attention. So, so my question is, for people that are out there and they're like, Man, I just don't know what I should do to maybe take my business to the next level, or my dealership to the next level, and maybe they're all, they all kind of like dabble in social and they dabble in this. What do you say to that? What can, what can people do to actually Garner better attention?
Glenn Lundy:Do you guys see the new Burger King Whopper commercial? No, no, no. So Burger King put a camera on a whopper for 34 days. The video starts by them building a whopper on a stand with a camera looking at it, and then they just time lapse it for 34 days as it turns into a moldy mess. And then at the end, it says, The Power of no preservatives. Awesome. Whoa. Beautiful ad. 33 million views. Overnight burgers. Burger King sales, instant spike because they use actual natural ingredients, right? And they didn't even have to go as far as show the McDonald's burger. That would not have deteriorated. It would have just stayed in one like a Twinkie, right? They didn't even have to go there. They just showed the Burger King burger. What about the laxative? My lacks, my, my, there's a there's a laxative. Relax. MiraLAX. Michael's got them all. Michael, so MiraLAX makes a video. They've got people on a whiteboard tracking their poops, and people are celebrating. These are adults. They're tracking their poop. Yeah, just got my third poop
Paul J Daly:today. I do that with my toddlers, right,
Glenn Lundy:right? Millions and millions of views. MiraLAX sales spike. We are now in the land of attention, man. So what do I say to everybody out there? I've been in this game a while. Used to be TV commercials, radio, all that stuff, right? And then you were like you were, you were the newest thing. If you were doing Facebook ads or tick tock ads or whatever, right? That was the newest thing. Well, now that's the old thing, and now the key to paid marketing is to invest in organic content that'll get you intention, right? This is what Mr. Beast does. Mr. Beast spends millions to drop a Lamborghini from a crane and have some guy try to catch it. So he's paying for the eyeballs, but he's not paying the platform for the eyeballs, right? He's not saying, hey, Facebook, I'm gonna pay you to put this in front of people. He's paying for a Lamborghini to get dropped from a crane. So it's still paid marketing, but it's organic attention grabbing.
Paul J Daly:I've had this, I've had this mentality for a long time, and it's actually coming it feels like it's coming back around, just like baggy pants are back in Did you guys know this?
Glenn Lundy:I wore some the other day. My wife was not a fan, dude. I was
Paul J Daly:a fan when I was in high school, because that's what I wore. And now my 18 year old son, I'm like, What do you mean? You're wearing painter's jeans, like I had those things. But I digress. True, it's bad. I digress. Okay, those shorts, I had those pants. But either way, when I would think about ad dollars being a tax on your brand, on the strength of your brand, and when you're paying for eyeballs, in the old way of thinking about paying for eyeballs, right? You pay for an ad or a placement or whatever, and people see that little message. Everyone knows it's sponsored. You try your best, but everyone knows you're positioning your brand, and you pay to get in front of them. However, when you invest in organic content and making great content, that gets you maybe the same amount of eyeballs. Let's just say it's even you've actually been intentionally, uh. Um, creative around your brand, your messaging, understanding your consumer, and you build that in the bank, like brand equity, as opposed to just a sponsored post. So I'm a huge fan of that direction and that that trend. I also think it gives you an opportunity to to flex the creative muscles, right? The people who are more creative with their deployment, right? Because, well, our own story too, right? How much does it cost to time lapse? A Whopper? It's probably one of the lowest budget pieces of creative that they've ever made. No doubt, right? Time lapse, camera, Whopper lights the end. No celebrities, no soundtrack, none of this. However, it was the creative concept that made the differentiator, and I think we're still in that world. So when you say, you know this, I think about dealerships and their ability and desire to do this. A lot of them, it's learning how to flex a new muscle, because it's automotive grew up on, like, oh yeah, paid, paid things, payment for to be in newspapers and on billboards and for sure. So I like to shift personally,
Michael Cirillo:you know, the end of the world though McDonald's is gonna retort the
Paul J Daly:only still edible, right? Yeah, like
Michael Cirillo:you'll make it the next 100 years, and you
Paul J Daly:won't throw that burger in a ziploc. It'll be good 100 years. And even skip this
Kyle Mountsier:is just gonna tweet, Sup, bro, yeah, right, like that, right?
Paul J Daly:I let you two fight this one out. But tagging off that question, I do have a follow up question to that comment. How do you feel about because you're someone who cares a lot about substance, you care a lot about the deeper issues and how things that are going on affect the person. It's a lot about what you do with 800% club, you're teaching and coaching people how to think a lot more than like what to do. Exactly. How do you feel that this velocity of creative and social media and this fight for attention is, do you feel like it's at odds with like substance and getting deep?
Glenn Lundy:Well, I mean, I think that this has been a, you know, this is humanity in a nutshell, right? Like there's always a battle for attention. There always has been, right? You can watch nature shows and you see birds running around, spreading their feathers. You know, attention is a thing, right? The Romans, the coliseums, you know, the type of entertainment, bringing people in, so on and so forth. So they collect the taxes, so on and so forth. Like, attention is part of the game, and it just, it just always has been. I think what's interesting now, though, is we're starting to put the ability to create attention back in the hands of individuals. When I was early in the car business, bro, if we wanted a TV commercial, oh my gosh, you had to call the company schedule it three weeks out, they'd come in shoot, you know, they'd film for the day, and then you'd wait six weeks to get this piece of content, right? So we're shooting commercials for something that's going to happen three months down the road, right? And now it's like, you know, whip out your phone and do the thing. So now that it's going back, going into the hands, I think of more people, it's a more competitive set, and so you really do have to become a student of not the algorithm, but a student of humanity. Right? What will grab someone's attention in today's day and age, right? And I think we've shown like, if you look at the AI stuff, like, I just read this article, you guys probably saw it too, but Google searches down massively in the last quarter, for the first time in like forever, right? Google search is going down, and it's because people are going to chat GPT and they're using AI now for their search because it gives you a better answer. And there's no stinking ads. If I go to Google and I search right, I know what's going to come up. Top sponsored ad, sponsored ads, sponsored ads, sponsored ad, the first four listings are going to be sponsored ads, which is that business toting themselves as number one, whereas with chat GBT, no sponsored ads, it's going to take the information and it's going to give me a freaking result right out the gate, right? And that'll
Paul J Daly:probably change soon enough, right? Yeah, especially the free version, but
Unknown:for now, changing so you so we have to get, we have to get better at the attention game, not the advertising game, the attention game. So got me thinking, Yeah,
Glenn Lundy:I see, oh yeah. I mean, like, the quietest I've ever seen this crew,
Kyle Mountsier:no. I mean, this is, like, this is a lot of what we're doing at ASOTU More than cars, is like we've barely ever spent any money on ads, because it is. It's about building brand equity, like Paul was saying, building brand equity. And I think this is where dealers that struggle with retention should look at their advertising. Advertising, like time and and money, budget, where is it going? Right? Because if you're getting great at the attention, content, brand build, brand equity, engine, retention and building raving fans is a lot easier than like, flash in the pan, find the next subject, find the next person to come by the thing, because it creates this flywheel effect of someone coming close to you and staying close for good reasons, right? As opposed to just like, oh, it just happened upon them with a good Facebook ad or a good newspaper thing, and I don't even remember where I bought my last car, right? And that's a that's a total, that's an algorithm Buster when it comes to paid advertising, 234, years down, down the page. And it's hard, you know, as an organization that's judged on these 30 day cycles, to think in that manner, but for for business owners that want to thrive long into the future, and not for just next month. You have to be thinking about that. Yeah,
Glenn Lundy:no doubt. And it's just gotten ridiculously expensive nowadays, right? Like, we used to be able to generate good, strong leads through paid ads for super cheap. It's not cheap anymore, right? Like, you got to spend some big money. And so I think now, you know, like, my head, here's where it goes. Just being a creative, you know, okay, I've got a $20,000 advertising budget, right? So for that $20,000 I could go generate X amount of, you know, paid leads. Or what would it look like? Look like if a helicopter dropped 20,000 donuts all over the
Unknown:city, right, right, like inside of
Paul J Daly:a jail cell.
Kyle Mountsier:Yeah, I mean, but that's, that's, you know, that's earned media, because it goes it spreads so much further, because now all of a sudden, you got news organizations talking talking about it. You got other people posting on social about it. You've got community organized around what you're doing, instead of, like, shooting a thing that hopefully someone sees.
Glenn Lundy:Think about wholesale units. What do guys do with wholesale units? Right? I buy a car from a customer for $1 you guys all remember the dollar cars, right? You want you put $1 in it, or 100 bucks, and then it goes and sits on the back of the lot and takes up space for however long, right? And then maybe I sell it off to a wholesaler, or gets towed away or whatever. It's a piece of junk, right? So that's what we currently do with wholesale units. What if? What if you took that $100 car and you went out into the woods and you brought your video camera and an AK 47 and then you made a video that said, Toyota, Tercel versus ak 47 that's all you'd have to say in the headline of the video, Twitter versus ak 47 and you shoot it, and you blow it up, and you get 2 million views because you blew up a car with an AK 47 is that a better investment of that 100 bucks than giving it to wholesaler? But
Kyle Mountsier:not if you're in New York. Paul is sad right now. He needs to move to Kentucky or Tennessee. World like, hey, if
Paul J Daly:I was in New York and I made that video, there'd be police involved. There'd be a docu series. The conversation
Kyle Mountsier:real quick. I want to pivot the conversation, because we don't get to have you on content a lot, but you've been away from the like doing retail at a franchise level for what, a little over five years now. Is that, right? We're going on seven. Yep. Going on seven. Okay, seven. What have been like, one or two of the biggest learnings that you've learned, that have maybe been hard learnings or different learnings or things that you didn't expect to learn having not been in the franchise ecosystem, not being in a store, but rather serving people that are in stores every single day and leading them. What are like? One or two of the things that you're like, I didn't expect to grab that, or to be hit with that, or, yeah, you know, what what are those things?
Glenn Lundy:So there's lots of little crazies, but I will say the biggest ones overall. One. Everyone says they want to grow, but most of them don't. I hate to like I hate to say that, but it's just real life, like the in their 20 groups are in front of their people, they'll say, we want to grow. We want to grow. We want to do more, we want to sell more, so on and so forth. But then behind the scenes, and I'll get into conversations with these guys. Behind the scenes, most of them don't do
Paul J Daly:well, top indicator where you're like, you don't want to grow?
Glenn Lundy:Well, no, they'll tell me, behind the scenes, like a lot of them are third and fourth generation owners that we're dealing with, right? Like,
Paul J Daly:they'll tell you behind the scenes that they don't like, they're like, dude, to be honest, I'd rather
Glenn Lundy:be out golfing, right? Like, lifestyle, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's very interesting, because we're in that third and fourth generation car dealers. That's where we're at right now. Daddy did it. Daddy's daddy did. It, right? I think the number is 76% of car dealerships the United States of America right now are owned by a third or a fourth generation. That many, that many. It's, it's tremendous, right? Because all these small stores in all these little towns all over the United States of America, and so it's very interesting. On surface, yeah, we want to grow. We want to grow. We want to grow. But then behind the scenes, they're like, We really don't, man, we really don't like we, we inherited daddy's business, but this wasn't really my dream. We inherited grandpa's franchise, but, and I didn't want to miss the opportunity, but ultimately, this isn't really where I want to be, so I was surprised by that, right? Usually you think people deal with this crap in auto because we want to be here,
Unknown:because there's a lot to deal with, but some people are just kind of stuck. So I found that interesting. I think what I also find interesting is the brainwashing that has happened in this industry is so deep, bro, the silos of city, state, market region, the silos of 30 days at a time, how they operate and those financial statements, it's just crazy, man. So getting, getting people to understand that, like being number one in your district or your your region, or whatever, when you're in Wyoming and there's like, I'm number one, we sold 63 cars, yeah, like the
Glenn Lundy:tallest kid on the short bus is not necessarily something to aspire to.
Unknown:Get personal,
Glenn Lundy:and breaking dealers out of that is really challenging, and getting them to understand that you are not your market, you are not your zone, you are not your region. You have potential, in today's day and age, to sell 850 cars a month out of a town of 9600 people. But it's hard, it's hard to break
Kyle Mountsier:that's a that's a human thing, right? I, Paul and I have talked about this a lot. Like, the minute you make$20,000 you're like, $20,000 someone says to you, like, I think I can help you make 100,000 you're like, There's no way. There's not enough money in the world for me to make$100,000 you make 100 dollars. You make $100,000 and you're like, there's no way I could make a million. It seems crazy, right? And there's, there's no matter where you go, and that's just a money example. But if, whether it be profitability or cars sold, or or knowledge gained, or whatever it is, we seem to have these like, limiting beliefs about ourselves or about the people around us that give us glass ceilings, that we would that we tend to force ourselves to not be able to break through, instead of like, just saying, No, there's no ceiling right? There's no ceiling right? And that, that shifting, that mindset, that's a big deal. Yeah,
Glenn Lundy:it's very challenging, especially when they're getting a report every day, showing where they are based on the other 12 dealers. And
Kyle Mountsier:they're like, Oh, that's my glass ceiling, right there. Yeah, yeah. Well, Glenn, always we I feel like we went 13 different ways. Maybe I feel like we could go another three hours. We could go another three hours, maybe at some point, one of these clips will become that that attention that we needed to get at some point, because we hit enough items to try. You know, so Glenn, thank you so much for hanging out with us. On behalf of the three of us, thanks for joining us on Auto Collabs.
Unknown:Hey, thanks for having me. It's always great to see you guys. You it guys, you know, I was, like, super active and like, part of the conversation. And then you probably noticed, hey, Cirillo hasn't said something in a while. What did notice there is a mosquito in the studio
Michael Cirillo:that has eaten half of my body. Oh, no, wow. And it's all
Unknown:like, you know, like the princess, the
Kyle Mountsier:princess, that's the bumps on your head are no no.
Unknown:Like, just in the time Glenn started talking, 1230,
Paul J Daly:that's so four. And sure, it's only one. It's
Unknown:that one little thing that you're it's just enough of a nuisance that you're like, can't think about it. So that's probably
Kyle Mountsier:going to be the attention grabbing content that you need to
Paul J Daly:share. That's a good point. Oh, that is a very good point. Like, oh, that arm.
Kyle Mountsier:Hey, just do a time lapse of your of your arm bubbling up. Yeah,
Paul J Daly:actually, probably, oh my gosh,
Unknown:you can see it. Is
Paul J Daly:that really funny? What
Kyle Mountsier:that if you're watching the audio podcast, go back to the video. But I think it's literally
Paul J Daly:getting bigger.
Unknown:It's getting literally not scratched as
Kyle Mountsier:we speak. Is that mosquito?
Unknown:Another one on my thumb
Paul J Daly:looks like a hummingbird? Got you do?
Unknown:It's doubled in size just since I pointed it out. That's wild. All
Paul J Daly:right, we need to get Michael Cirillo some Benadryl as soon as possible, because he's just doing these publicity stunts to get more attention. I think, I think that the concept of thinking about attention is not a new concept, but it is a more pressing con concept that our dealers and our industry partners need to pay attention to. You see it happening. And I mean, my it's always like a start today mentality with this stuff, because no one likes things changing. I mean, very few. Some people really like when things are changing and they run toward it, but most people don't right. The majority of the world doesn't like the way it has to be. The reality is, with AI, with all this technology, with this new kind of attention, getting metric that we all are faced to deal with. The best thing that any of our audience can do right now is, like something. It could be a little thing, could be a big thing, but unless you start putting in the reps, you're just gonna continually get
Michael Cirillo:left behind. Well. And the reality is, yeah, it becomes abundant. I think a lot of people get afraid of this idea of like, oh, it's now, it's accessible, it's in everyone's hands. No, that actually creates the perfect opportunity, because the one who is now slightly more creative is the one who's going to stand out in the sea of crap. It's like anybody can go to Google's vo now and but it's just going to perpetuate how much crap is out there. And so the one creative it, and, I mean, that's the thing about his Burger King example that stood out to me. It's like, yeah, that was so simple, but it was so creative and and it stuck the landing right through to
Kyle Mountsier:people will be able to see and recognize humanity when it exists. And that will be,
Paul J Daly:that will be those who win. For sure, I have a really great idea for piece of pod content. Based on that thought that I'm not going to share right
Kyle Mountsier:now, I'm going to make it instead. Let's do it. Hey. On behalf of Paul Jay Daly, Michael Cirillo, his mosquitoes and my and his
Paul J Daly:mosquito bump that now has its own social security number. Thanks for joining us here on Auto Collabs.
Unknown:Sign up for our free and fun to read daily email for a free shot of relevant news and automotive retail media and pop culture. You can get it now@asotu.com that's asotu.com if you love this podcast, please leave us a review and share it with a friend. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time. Welcome to recording. You.
