559 episodios
- Jonathan Kienle's team once sent a salesperson to chase down a customer's canceled check, and he crashed the loaner car doing it, and Kienle says that single moment is exactly why he stopped trusting cash, checks, and credit cards to handle his dealership's biggest transactions.
He walks through how switching the default down payment method saved his group $168,000 in fees so far this year, with $300,000 in sight by year's end, and argues that most dealers are needlessly eating card fees and fraud risk on payments that don't have to carry either.
Jonathan Kienle is the Director of Operations at Walters Automotive Group and Kienle Motorsports in Riverside, California, where he oversees five stores spanning Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and Audi.
A third-generation dealer, he started at the family store at 14 cleaning the parts department, worked nearly every job in the building, and spent two years cold-calling at a Ford store before his father would let him back in. Joining him is Truett Dwyer, Co-Founder and CEO of Clerq, the payments company he credits with turning down payment collection from a source of risk into a documented driver of profit.
Kienle speaks candidly about the moment that convinced him legacy payment methods weren't worth the risk anymore, how he trained his finance team to make the new method the default instead of the fallback, and what surprised him most once the savings started compounding.
This episode of Industry Spotlight is brought to you by Clerq.
Topics:
02:40 Dad Made Him Start At Ford First.
06:50 Canceled Checks Left Dealers Chasing Customers.
07:10 Credit Card Fees Destroy Margins.
08:00 Salesman Crashed Car Chasing A Check.
09:55 Clerk Is Venmo For Dealerships.
11:00 Debit Cards Have Daily Spend Limits.
12:40 Dealer Didn't Believe Solution Existed.
14:30 Clerk Guarantees Every Transaction.
16:30 Checks Expose Customer Bank Info.
18:35 $168K Saved In Credit Card Fees.
23:45 Dealers Need Fast Payouts.
28:20 Focus Drove Way More Savings.
Clerq - Clerq's instant bank payment solution modernizes down payments, deposits and other large transactions - helping leading dealerships drive more sales, cut costs and reduce risk. Visit here to learn more.
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Request to be a podcast guest ➤ http://www.cdgguest.com
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Everything else ➤ dealershipguy.com Fixed Ops Friday w/ Dave Rogers, Pam LeJeune, & William Demaree | Daily Dealer Live
04/09/2026 | 59 minToday's show features:
- Dave Rogers, Fixed Operations Director at Piazza Management Company
- Pam LeJeune, VP at The Moran Group
- William Demaree, Group Director of Fixed Operations at Tom Wood Group
This episode is brought to you by:
Carmax – CarMax Auctions. Access thousands of cars weekly at 50+ locations nationwide through our 100% online auctions. From high-end to high mileage, CarMax Auctions has the inventory you need to source smarter and accelerate sales. Register now for free at carmaxauctions.com/CDG.
Check out Car Dealership Guy’s stuff:
CDG Circles ➤ https://cdgcircles.com/
CDG News ➤ https://news.dealershipguy.com/
CDG Jobs ➤ https://jobs.dealershipguy.com/
CDG Recruiting ➤ https://www.cdgrecruiting.com/
My Socials:
X ➤ https://www.twitter.com/GuyDealership
Instagram ➤ https://www.instagram.com/cardealershipguy/
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Everything else ➤ dealershipguy.com"That's Flushed Money!" What ChatGPT Really Looks for Before Recommending a Dealer (+ How to Fix It) | Zach Billings, CEO at Wikimotive
03/09/2026 | 49 minZach Billings is the CEO of Wikimotive, a search marketing agency he has led for over two decades, building it into a bootstrapped, U.S.-based team of 50 professional writers serving dealers across the country.
Free of outside investors, Wikimotive recently ran an all-staff exercise to rewrite its mission statement around a single measure, dealer outcomes rather than its own bottom line, and it has pruned services, including a legacy organic Facebook management product, once they stopped producing results.
Topics:
01:15 ChatGPT Visibility Is The New Goal.
04:35 Content Beats Technical SEO.
07:55 AI Slop Makes Dealers Identical.
14:10 50 Writers Beat AI Repetition.
21:50 AI Search Is Only 1% Of Pie.
27:10 PMax Campaigns Waste Dealer Money.
38:30 Vendor Consistency Beats Chasing Shiny.
This episode is brought to you by:
1. 800% Elite Auto Club - 800% Elite Auto is a whole-dealership solution. Get started today @ here.
2. CDG Circles - Connect with verified dealers all inside the CDG Platform. Learn more @ here.
3. Wikimotive - Wikimotive delivers organic and paid search solutions to hundreds of dealerships from rural rooftops to multiple top-5 national dealers. Visit @ here for more info.
Check out Car Dealership Guy’s stuff:
For dealers:
CDG Circles ➤ https://cdgcircles.com/
Industry job board ➤ http://jobs.dealershipguy.com
Dealership recruiting ➤ http://www.cdgrecruiting.com
Fix your dealership’s social media ➤ http://www.trynomad.co
Request to be a podcast guest ➤ http://www.cdgguest.com
For industry vendors:
Advertise with Car Dealership Guy ➤ http://www.cdgpartner.com
Industry job board ➤ http://jobs.dealershipguy.com
Request to be a podcast guest ➤ http://www.cdgguest.com
Car Dealership Guy Socials:
X ➤ x.com/GuyDealership
Instagram ➤ instagram.com/cardealershipguy/
TikTok ➤ tiktok.com/@guydealership
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Threads ➤ threads.net/@cardealershipguy
Facebook ➤ facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077402857683
Everything else ➤ dealershipguy.comRuth on Used, Helms on Streaming, Zabawa/Moroz on Digital Retailing | Daily Dealer Live
02/09/2026 | 1 h 1 minToday's show features:
- Rob Ruth, President / Owner at Bob Ruth Ford
- Shane Helms, Founder / CEO at TrueView Media Group
- Matthew Zabawa, Chief Product Officer at WebBuy Digital Retailing
- Steve Moroz, Managing Partner/GSM at EZ Nissan
This episode is brought to you by:
Carmax – CarMax Auctions. Access thousands of cars weekly at 50+ locations nationwide through our 100% online auctions. From high-end to high mileage, CarMax Auctions has the inventory you need to source smarter and accelerate sales. Register now for free at carmaxauctions.com/CDG.
TrueView Media Group – TrueView Media Group — TrueView Media Group is a CTV technology company built for automotive retail. We plan, buy, and measure streaming for individual rooftops on our own platform, continually engineering more effective ways to buy impressions and showing every store exactly where its money went: every app, every impression, every dollar — measured to the outcomes a store actually feels, like site visits, VDP views, and sales. Visit trueviewmediagroup.com/cdg
First up, Rob Ruth, President and Owner of Bob Ruth Ford in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania. Rob made a bet on building his own buying center — and it's reshaping how his store grows. Why is that the move he'd double down on? He'll tell us.
Then, Shane Helms, Founder and CEO of TrueView Media Group. Shane says the entire marketing ecosystem dealers depend on is broken — and get this, he claims Tier 2 has flat-out vanished at brands like Mazda, Subaru, VW, and Mercedes. What changed, and what does it mean for your store? You'll want to hear this one.
Next, Matthew Zabawa, Chief Product Officer at WebBuy Digital Retailing, on where digital retailing is really headed — and what's still missing.
And rounding things out, Steve Moroz, Managing Partner and GSM at EZ Nissan, bringing the dealer's-eye view on digitizing the showroom. Can you actually bring the online experience onto the sales floor without breaking it? Steve's got the battle scars and the answers.
Check out Car Dealership Guy’s stuff:
CDG Circles ➤ https://cdgcircles.com/
CDG News ➤ https://news.dealershipguy.com/
CDG Jobs ➤ https://jobs.dealershipguy.com/
CDG Recruiting ➤ https://www.cdgrecruiting.com/
My Socials:
X ➤ https://www.twitter.com/GuyDealership
Instagram ➤ https://www.instagram.com/cardealershipguy/
TikTok ➤ https://www.tiktok.com/@guydealership
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Threads ➤ https://www.threads.net/@cardealershipguy
Facebook ➤ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077402857683
Everything else ➤ dealershipguy.comFrom $30K Cash Backpacks to a $400 Million Wholesaling Empire (+ How He Built a Better Auction) | Anthony Clavenna, CEO of gateway Car Connection
01/09/2026 | 41 minAnthony Clavenna used to fly across the country with $30,000 in cash stuffed in a backpack just to buy trucks off strangers, and he says that scrappy, no-safety-net approach is exactly what let him outpace giants like Carvana and CarMax at buying cars off the street.
He walks through the moment the business finally graduated from cash runs to wires and a private app, how a single fraud incident gets baked into the process as a new checkpoint instead of a reason to slow down, and argues that speed, not technology or capital, is the real edge in wholesale.
Topics:
04:00 iPhone Was Their Fraud Prevention.
09:35 Wiring Strangers Money And Hoping.
13:45 Auctions Suck Because You Bid Against Others.
18:00 Speed Is The Only Edge That Matters.
24:00 Texting Dealers Until The App Scaled.
37:45 Going Hard Leaves No Room For Fear.
This episode is brought to you by:
1. Podium - If your AI isn’t driving real outcomes, it’s time to take a closer look @ here.
2. Digital Dealer - Join expert-led sessions, hands-on Learning Labs, and live demos to discover ideas that can help improve sales, service, and marketing. Register today @ here and use code CDG25OFF at checkout.
3. CDG Circles - Connect with verified dealers all inside the CDG Platform. Learn more @ here.
Check out Car Dealership Guy’s stuff:
For dealers:
CDG Circles ➤ https://cdgcircles.com/
Industry job board ➤ http://jobs.dealershipguy.com
Dealership recruiting ➤ http://www.cdgrecruiting.com
Fix your dealership’s social media ➤ http://www.trynomad.co
Request to be a podcast guest ➤ http://www.cdgguest.com
For industry vendors:
Advertise with Car Dealership Guy ➤ http://www.cdgpartner.com
Industry job board ➤ http://jobs.dealershipguy.com
Request to be a podcast guest ➤ http://www.cdgguest.com
Car Dealership Guy Socials:
X ➤ x.com/GuyDealership
Instagram ➤ instagram.com/cardealershipguy/
TikTok ➤ tiktok.com/@guydealership
LinkedIn ➤ linkedin.com/company/cardealershipguy
Threads ➤ threads.net/@cardealershipguy
Facebook ➤ facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077402857683
Everything else ➤ dealershipguy.com
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The Car Dealership Guy Podcast Network is your front-row seat to the people, companies, and trends shaping the future of automotive retail—delivered across three focused formats:
The Car Dealership Guy Podcast (Tuesdays & Thursdays)
Hosted by Yossi Levi, these deep-dive interviews feature top dealers, operators, and innovators driving the industry forward.
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Our live-streamed show, also released here in audio format, brings real-time news, sharp takes, and high-impact guests—think CNBC for car dealers.
Industry Spotlight
Hosted by Sam D’Arc, this segment highlights standout dealerships and vendors with tactical insights and stories from the front lines.
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