Zach Hendrix’s Post

Every. Single. Day. Your dealership can use no-code workflow automation tools like Zapier or Make to connect applications and automate routine tasks. If you're curious about what can or should be automated - think about starting with the 1-3 hour tasks you perform every day/week/month. Here's some thought starters for your consideration: 1. Employee scheduling - You can create an automated scheduler. Take it a step further and include data points like busiest times of day for traffic, seniority of employees, or weighted metrics on which employees/managers work the best together. 2. Employee onboarding - You can automate onboarding new employees, driven by a single simple form. Take it a step further and include an AI powered knowledge base they can chat with to answer employee questions. 3. AI Powered Inventory clerks - It doesnt take long to log a car in your DMS after you buy it at auction but it happens everyday. Offload to automations. 4. Content creation, distribution, and management - Creating automation systems for rapid and organzied distribution and management frees you up to produce more content, reference it in the future, and syndicate it across ALL platforms without spending hours/days with your editing/production team. If you want to learn more about how to set these systems up for your dealership - Drop us a note.

Huntington Beach Cars N’ Copters show gives us an excuse to post a picture. My favorite = Porsche 918 Spyder Madeline Watt favorite - “I just like SUVs”

Can Your Team Play Without You? This weekend, I coached my kiddo’s soccer game as AYSO hosted "Silent Saturday" — a day where parents and coaches stay quiet, and players must rely on their own communication and skills. No one really enjoys Silent Saturday, but it reveals something powerful: how well your team’s systems and training have prepared them for the game. In business, it’s the same: You can only scale as far as the systems and training you've built. We expect results immediately after implementing new systems or training, but we often overlook the crucial steps that lead to those results. A framework I've used in the past comes from the famous Professor Emeritus, Don Kirkpatrick himself. The Kirkpatrick Model of training evaluation: 1️⃣ Reaction – How do participants feel about the training? Did they find it engaging and relevant? 2️⃣ Learning – What knowledge or skills did they gain? Are they better equipped? 3️⃣ Behavior – Are they applying what they learned in their daily tasks? Is there a visible change? 4️⃣ Results – Are these changes producing the business outcomes you expected? Each step is essential for scaling and long-term success. So, how well are your systems and training preparing your team for “game day” or do you just expect results immediately after trainings?

A wise man named Kyle Willis reminds me every Monday that: "It’s Monday…. and I still believe exercise is the single best thing that you can do for your career." Where's my 5am crew at? If you’re a busy Dad like me, Kyle Willis put together 90 Days of (free) Workouts and Health tips for you. You can snag here: https://healthydad.co

“I love filling out spreadsheets and doing endless amounts of copy/pasting” - said no one ever. Jokes aside- Why do I love working in the automation-as-a-service space in automotive? Here’s the breakdown: • Fragmented tech: Automotive retail tech feels like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with mismatched pieces. Most integrations are “true/false” parody logic instead of building integrations that actually solve dealer specific use cases. • “Service-as-a-Software”: Let’s be honest, automotive SaaS often feels more like service-as-a-software. I’m all about flipping the script to make sure the tech actually serves the dealership, not the other way around! (Gotta give credit to Ben Hadley⚡ for coining the term “service as a software”) • Automations = Insights and community: Building automations gives me an intimate view of dealership challenges. It’s exciting to watch our community of dealers and providers incubate new tech ideas to solve future problems before they even arise. It’s the perfect arena for what future tech should be built vs. what no code/low code automations can solve for. You can guarantee we are going to push the limits. • Love for consulting & teaching: Whether it’s coaching my kids soccer teams or brainstorming solutions with C-suites at publically traded dealer groups - I thrive on sharing knowledge, learning, and helping humans overcome obstacles with smarter tech. An yes, the soccer lineups are automated based on player skill sets, availability, and historical fair playing time. You CAN and should do this with your staff too! Every challenge is a new opportunity to innovate, streamline, and yes, sometimes laugh at the solutions we come up with. #Automation #DealershipLife #AlwaysLearning #ServiceAsASoftware

Port Strike Impact: Time to Reimagine Inventory Acquisition? The ongoing port strike on the East and Gulf coasts could have massive ripple effects on the auto industry and beyond. These ports handled $37.8 billion worth of vehicle imports from mid-2023 to mid-2024, and 70% of U.S. parts imports come through the East Coast alone. With new car supply tightening and used car values staying high, dealerships are facing mounting pressure to make smarter inventory decisions. But for used car managers, it’s still a challenge—condition reports can be vague, photos miss the finer details, and market pricing remains volatile. Here's a thought... What if you had an AI-powered inventory clerk that automatically logs every car you purchase, while also analyzing condition reports, photos, and market data? AI can spot every scratch, cross-check against MMR, and pull historical regional or dealer specific reconditioning costs—helping you make smarter, data-driven decisions on which cars to buy. In this uncertain environment, leveraging an AI inventory assistant can give dealerships a much-needed edge in acquiring the right cars at the right price, with greater accuracy and less guesswork. I know a guy with two thumbs that can build this for you. 😏 😜 #aiinventoryassitant #aiinventoryclerk #bolderstream #automationsforauto

Unplanned work can be the death of progress. Automations can help minimize or prevent unplanned work. Here’s an example. I spoke with a large volume Toyota store this week (also part of a large dealer group) who has all of the tech bells and whistles at their disposal yet drowns in routine manual tasks like employee onboarding, training, and scheduling. • Employee onboarding was manual, inconsistent, and often overwhelming for new hires and managers. • There was no centralized knowledge base, so employees constantly had to “figure it out” and search/ask for internal resources.  • Employee scheduling? Random, with no strategy for pairing top performers with the best time slots. Back to unplanned work. In the book, “The Phoenix Project,” (thanks Ryan Moore ) we learn that unplanned work is the silent killer of efficiency and growth. Yet, this truth hits home even harder when you see it unfold in real life, especially in automotive retail. Despite having all the best tech- this dealer manually sends all new hires employee docs and resources, creates weekly schedules manually, and has a poor business manager who has to create an average of 18 logins to every dealership SaaS subscription. (Please come to retail auto Okta 😫 ) Simple low cost no code automations can go a long way here but let’s add some context and analytics. Using a “moneyball” approach—leveraging analytics to schedule the best teams together during the dealership’s busiest times—productivity can soar. A simple employee lineup automation pairing the right managers with the right sales teams, ensures the best players are on the field during the big games and moments. Automations like these are not rocket science—they’re already widely used in other industries. Automotive retail has a massive opportunity to adopt to drive better results and employee satisfaction. Don’t let unplanned and unnecessary work destroy progress. Adopt automations for simple things like employee onboarding, scheduling, and team management. If you want to learn more about unplanned work, call Ryan Moore and grab a copy of the Phoenix project. ;) BolderStream #automations #make #zapier #uipath #scribe #notion

Very cool and rarely open role. For the folks I’ve spoken with recently looking for exactly this… go get it. :)