Auto Care ON AIR
"Auto Care ON AIR" is a candid podcast dedicated to exploring the most relevant topics within the auto care industry. Each episode features insightful discussions with leading experts and prominent industry figures. Our content is thoughtfully divided into four distinct shows to cover four different categories of topics, ensuring collective professional growth and a comprehensive understanding of the auto care industry.
The Driver's Seat: Navigating Business and the Journey of Leadership
To understand organizations, you need to understand their operators. Join Behzad Rassuli, as he sits down for in-depth, one-on-one conversations with leaders that are shaping the future. This show is a "must listen" for how top executives navigate growth, success, and setbacks that come with the terrain of business.
Carpool Conversations: Collaborative Reflections on the Road to Success
Hosted by Jacki Lutz, this series invites a vibrant and strategic mix of guests to debate and discuss the power skills that define success today. Each episode is an entertaining, multi-voice view of a professional development topic and a platform for our members to learn about our industry's most promising professionals.
Indicators: Discussing Data that Drives Business
This show explores data relevant to the automotive aftermarket. Join Mike Chung as he engages with thought leaders in identifying data that will help you monitor and forecast industry performance. Whether global economic data, industry indicators, or new data sources, listen in as we push the envelope in identifying and shaping the metrics that matter.
Traction Control: Reacting with Precision to the Road Ahead
Every single day, events happen, technologies are introduced, and the base assumptions to our best laid plans can change. Join Stacey Miller for a show focused on recent news from the global to the local level and what it may mean for auto care industry businesses. Get hot takes on current events, stay in the know with timely discussions and hear from guests on the frontlines of these developments.
Auto Care ON AIR
ACPN Special: Open Mic Sessions
Step behind the curtain of the automotive aftermarket and discover the passionate community that powers the digital backbone of the parts industry. In this revealing episode, Jacki Lutz sits down with leaders and rising stars from the Automotive Content Professionals Network (ACPN) at AutoCare's Connect Conference in Phoenix, Arizona.
These are the data specialists and content professionals who transform complex vehicle information into the standardized formats that make modern parts lookup and e-commerce possible. As one guest candidly shares, "The product isn't the product anymore. The product is the data about the product." It's a profound insight that underscores how critical these often-overlooked professionals are to the industry's success.
You'll hear from content veterans with decades of experience alongside newcomers just discovering this specialized field. They discuss the dramatic evolution from paper catalogs to AI-assisted content creation, the challenges of international data standardization, and the unique camaraderie that defines the ACPN community. Despite working for competing companies, members describe finding "colleagues and friends" at industry events, a refreshing perspective in today's business world.
The episode also spotlights innovative initiatives like the "Give Me 10" program, which addresses the skilled labor shortage by connecting students with industry professionals, and the ACPN Explorer Program, which brings fresh talent into the field. These efforts represent the forward-thinking approach of a community that recognizes both the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Whether you're a seasoned aftermarket professional or curious about the hidden workings of the industry, this conversation offers fascinating insights into the people who ensure that when you search for a part, you find exactly what you are looking for. Connect with the ACPN community through Auto Care Association and discover how you might fit into this vibrant network of data specialists.
Learn more about ACPN at autocare.org/ACPN
Chapters:
00:00:00 - The Evolution of Content Professionals with ACPN Chair, Courtney Pedler and Vice Chair, Ryan Bachman
00:14:22 - AI in Automotive Content with Ryan Bachman and Ryan Henderson
00:39:55 - ACES and PIES Content Excellence with John Johnson and Adam Phillips
00:50:17 - Receiver Chat with Brian Matthias and Jennifer Cothran
01:00:52 - ACPN Pitch Competition with Paul Arena and Susan Dickson
01:17:36 - ACES & PIES in Mexico and LATAM with Chelsea Scally and Evaristo Garcia
01:37:36 - Explorer Scholarship Winners, Eva Iracheta and Jacob Gresham
To learn more about the Auto Care Association visit autocare.org.
To learn more about our show and suggest future topics and guests, visit autocare.org/podcast
Welcome to Auto Care On Air, a candid podcast for a curious industry. I'm Jackie Lutz, Content Director at the Auto Care Association, and this is Carpool Conversations, where we collaborate on today's most relevant power skills. We're all headed in the same direction, so let's get there together. Welcome everybody to our open mic for ACPN at AutoCare's Connect Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. How are you guys doing? How's the heat?
Speaker 3:suiting you. So far, it's Phoenix.
Speaker 1:Have you been inside most of the time?
Speaker 4:sure, just avoiding the outdoors coming in at two o'clock in the morning or whatever. It's still 83 degrees outside. Not used to that, coming from ohio, so I was saying you're ohio didn't know that I'm michigan. I'm sorry, I know I knew that such a fail. You didn't want to mention it no, I had to, though, because I knew it would bring up topic of you know that they teach us at a very young age to just hate on ohio.
Speaker 1:We don't actually know why, no, we just know we don't like you. Same thing, yeah it's a it's.
Speaker 4:It's definitely one of those situations of I have no clue why everyone dislikes each other.
Speaker 1:I can usually sense an ohioan oh, nearly I did not know so why don't you guys um, let me just introduce you Courtney Pedler, ceo, co-founder of Autology. She taught me how to say that correctly Do you want to tell them really quickly about a little bit of what you do?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so co-founded Autology in 2004. We are a do-it-for-me data services provider and the main scope of our expertise is aces and pies okay, and you are the chair of acpn, I am this year so small role there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you guys have two year terms, right?
Speaker 3:yeah, so you're gonna this is your first connect us chair and the next year you're gonna be a pro yep, I made it through this whole first year yeah and brian. Uh, ryan and I did it together and uh, yeah, thriving it's been good. Yeah, so thriving it's been an adventure.
Speaker 1:Yes, I got Ryan Bachman, too, next to me here. He's the vice chair of ACPN, he's the CIO of United Motor Products and the owner of Endless Technologies. Want to tell them a little bit about those companies.
Speaker 4:Thank you for having me. Yeah, so United Motor Products we do ignition and engine components and we sell all over the industry. And then Endless Technologies was something I started back in 2018 when people were having all those tariff increases and all that. So it kind of started as just helping some of my past companies I worked with and then turned into content you know, content management pretty much anything Jack of all trades type business really consulting.
Speaker 1:You still do a lot of tariff kind of stuff, cause that would be thriving right now.
Speaker 4:I've turned it down ever since life changes with marriage and kids. It's slowed down the the workaholic in me to take on family responsibilities, but for the most part, yeah, it's a anything that people need. I tend to just help them with the data front, it's really data driven.
Speaker 1:Okay, very nice, anything and everything. We got two data professionals here with us and talking today a little bit about ACPN and just this role that you guys work with. So tell me a little bit of like. What do you guys consider ACPN's role in the aftermarket?
Speaker 3:Tell me a little bit of like what do you guys consider ACPN's role in the aftermarket? So ACPN stands for Automotive Content Professionals Network, and our mission is to educate, inspire and connect, and I think we do a bang up job of all three of those things for real, and so one of the things we focus on is the Technology Service Committee.
Speaker 3:They do a lot of work around the standards the ACES and PIE standards and then we help to communicate all of that information about the standards to our community. And so we do do a lot of education, and especially here at the conference, but also year round, and we also take the inspire and connect part of our mission very seriously as well.
Speaker 1:We are, and it's. It's a big tent, though, and there is room for everyone.
Speaker 3:It's a big tent, though, and there is room for everyone. I feel like I come to connect and I don't have competitors here. I've just got colleagues and friends and everyone is welcome.
Speaker 1:But you do have competitors here. But it doesn't feel like you have competitors here. I do. But yeah, it's kind of like they're friends first and competitors second it's huge, and I think it's probably especially huge in your guys' field, because I can imagine you guys have to explain to people all the time exactly what you do and that's probably not like an easy thing to do.
Speaker 4:It is difficult. It's difficult to explain to people what we do.
Speaker 3:Do your parents understand what you do, Ryan? Not at all. No, mine don't they're like computers.
Speaker 4:What See I? Computers, what I see? I can see you guys bonding. It's like, yeah, it's, it's. It's interesting to try to explain to people what we do and uh, but I think ultimately that's what makes it such a tight group and such a great community to be part of and hence why, like the first time I know it's kind of cliche, a lot of people say this, but I think we all feel the same.
Speaker 4:I, we found our people, uh, you know they usually keep us in like a dark, dark room in the back and don't let us out other than you know our three squares a day.
Speaker 1:But like nerds in the back. Is that something that I can say, or is it like we can say, oh no, we really leaned into that. There's nothing wrong with it, so tell me a little bit about some content professionals today. What is their role in the aftermarket? Like what? What are these people doing for us?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think it's all over the place. Obviously, the e-commerce and everything's changed that scope a lot, but for the most part it's really the people that are helping you get your products out in front and giving the right view and vision of your product to help sell it, because obviously there's a lot of different brands, a lot of different products. So the over like kind of high level view of it is that's your first interaction, at least from even a counter person or something like that. The first thing they see is your content. It's your content is really King. That's what's you know, throwing the box away and all that. So a normal content person can range anything from doing the you know the fitment information or the original equipment, manufacturer research, um and then turning it into your um, your catalog or your front facing information that gets out there to the customer. So I think that's kind of a really high level you could get really in the weeds with it and we do.
Speaker 4:Every day.
Speaker 3:One thing I heard it was at this conference. I wish I could remember who said it. But the product isn't the product anymore. The product is the data about the product.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. That was well better said than the way I said it. We get into it with sales and marketing because they think they have all the power, but they don't. You don't see any sales and marketing people at these events because they would not enjoy that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, yeah, so.
Speaker 1:You guys hate the marketers. Are they like the popular kids in the school? No, not at all.
Speaker 3:They think they sell the product. That's where they go wrong. It's actually us.
Speaker 1:I feel like we need like a content professionals versus marketers, you know it's funny because it probably used to be a lot of mark like marketing, sold the product, but like this is obviously content professionals in our industry has evolved a lot a lot even in the past handful of years so let's talk a little bit about that. What has that been like so?
Speaker 3:I've been in the industry for 35 years and I start well. My father owned part store, so I went to work there, and so I grew up as a counter person a baby counter person and all of the catalog information was on paper, and then the catalog started to disappear under the counter and we used green screens and you could look up a set of brake pads and an oil filter, and that's about the end of that. And so these everything has just continued to evolve at a lightning pace, and now we're into the era of AI, which I think is going to change things as much, if not more, than the internet. And so, yeah, it's been an extreme evolution over the past several decades, and in fact, I think of the theme of this ACPN our portion of the programming at Connect as the evolution of the content professional, because we are all being forced to adapt and change and change the way we do things and just, we all need to get together on those things and um, so, yeah, lots of change yeah, lots of change.
Speaker 1:How has acpn helped you guys like being a part of acpn. How has that helped you during all this crazy ai changes?
Speaker 4:and it's during the ai. I mean that's still going on, it changes well, yeah, it's not gonna be done.
Speaker 1:Like I'll be giving a presentation on that later.
Speaker 4:Uh, in the in the conference and it's.
Speaker 4:We have to wait up forever I know I'll be giving a presentation on that later in the conference and we have to wait up till the week of basically making our presentation because the changes are so rapid nowadays and they're constantly changing and new tools come out that make the last tool almost extinct or they help make it a lot easier to do the same task. So there's a lot with that and I think AI is going to change. You know the way we do business, but I think the adoption, the thing I like about it is our industry has always been a little slower to adopt newer technology.
Speaker 4:It's just how it's always been, and it comes with good and bad. Good Cause we get to see how it plays out and we're not adopting and changing gears all the time, uh. But obviously bad, because you're a little behind the curve, uh. But I think with this, you know it's. People are still trying to figure out how to use it. So how do you use it in the best way possible? And I wish I had an answer, because I'd probably have a really good business model for that, but I don't have one yet, uh.
Speaker 1:But I think anybody does, I think it is.
Speaker 4:It's going to be something that moving target right, it is moving target, because it's constantly evolving too and there's different ways to use it. And then you know, obviously, some of the more legal talks. I'm not a lawyer by any means. I'll say that a lot, probably this week, but you know the legality of the data you're putting into it um you know, unless you're unless you're self-hosting it yourself. You know the license agreements on on some of the data you're using. You can't load it into a public tool like that.
Speaker 1:So so like all these like this kind of like nuances around, ai seems like a whole new skill set, yeah, for like the next generation. So do you guys focus on that quite a bit?
Speaker 3:that's the gift yeah that's what we're trying is um like we've got ryan bachman here and um, you know another ryan on the council. We call them ryan squared and, uh, they could teach a master and people can take a look at this industry and think I have a career here, like I can stay for the next 30 years, yeah.
Speaker 4:I think the networking part of it, because there's so many people from meeting at ACPN and Connect Week that I could call up and ask very technical questions and get some great answers. I mean, I've called Courtney for stuff before asking her like how would you handle this? And then you know it. Just the networking is the best part about it, I think, and then having that bond of being the content people helps a lot.
Speaker 1:I just think of that song. Like they, not like us.
Speaker 2:You guys are in your own little group, so what?
Speaker 1:kind of like. So someone just starting out in this content professional world in the automotive aftermarket, it's probably overwhelming. So do you have any advice for people just coming in?
Speaker 4:So it's tough with Courtney and I were talking about this the other day and you know, a lot of people that are really good with data tend to be very introverted and, like, I'm very introverted, but I put off this non-introverted.
Speaker 1:I've had to.
Speaker 4:you have to fake it till you make it. But I've always had to have the outgoing. I mean, I was a product person, a buyer and stuff for a long time so I had to adapt. But it's definitely more introverted. Personally, and I think that's the hardest part, when I first came to some of these conferences, it's very overwhelming, Um. So I sat in the back and just listened and watched and kind of mingled social anxiety.
Speaker 4:And as soon as you started talking to people, you realize, wow, this isn't as scary as I thought it was, and these people were just like me. So I think that's that whole. That whole thing is, I think, for new people coming in don't be afraid to ask questions. That whole thing is, I think, for new people coming in. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Questions are welcomed, especially in the content space, because everyone's learning every day and learning how to use the content better and how to use the tools that we have available better.
Speaker 4:So I think it's really about just interacting with people, talking with them, networking and asking the questions. If you're unsure, we had someone last year that was new that was asking tons of questions and it was fantastic.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, yeah, yeah so that would be my main. Do you see a lot of new people entering this field and then sticking around, or is there a lot of turnover?
Speaker 4:It's a mix. There is turnover, because sometimes you don't know what you're getting into.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can imagine.
Speaker 4:You're trying to figure out, especially being younger. I didn't know what I wanted to be in my 20s.
Speaker 1:I'm still not sure if I know what I want to do now. Yeah, when does it?
Speaker 4:click so I feel like I'm in the right place. But yeah, I think it's really, for the most part, you'll know the people when you meet them. Yeah, for the most part you'll. You'll know the people when you meet them. Yeah, Like you're going to be here.
Speaker 1:You're a lifer dude, I can.
Speaker 4:I can tell you click yeah, Like I can see you fit in with our our weird.
Speaker 1:How do we, you know, attract more people to the content? Professional world.
Speaker 3:Like what's the answer there? That's such a hard question. I, you, just I don't know if people love cars as much as they used to.
Speaker 1:Or, if they do, are they in the data?
Speaker 3:world Right and to that point. I did not know that content was for me until I was in my late 20s, and I didn't even know, despite using catalogs every single day for like 10 years. I didn't know that there's a whole content world over here, and so when I got my first job in content, I was like I could not wait to go to work. I'm like this, I was born to do this and I just enjoyed it every day. I always said I would do it for free?
Speaker 4:I won't, but I.
Speaker 3:there was a time but I just love it, I love the work I do, I love coming to work. So, uh, I think maybe getting the word out that you know being in the automotive industry isn't being a mechanic Like it is a whole world of career opportunities.
Speaker 1:You know, I can see kind of a parallel, because you guys are kind of we were joking about marketing and I'm in marketing, so I can say this but we, you know we're very vocal about we're both. It's easy for us to get on social media and like talk about our day jobs.
Speaker 1:We're both. It's easy for us to get on social media and like talk about our day jobs and you know it's. You know you hear a lot about it where you've mentioned you know content professionals. Maybe they tend to be a little bit more introverted and talking about it on any kind of public way is probably kind of tough. So maybe there's something there about training people to be a little bit more vocal. And you know, spread and spread the good word.
Speaker 4:I think that was one of the things as ACPN as a community was to try to get more social media presence, which you guys have.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 4:We've had some very benefits of having some very strong social media, people in our community and in our council that's helped a ton.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So I think that's a big part and then really I'm bad at it. I'm not a big social media person. So even for my own company that does social media stuff, I don't go like the post. So I'm really bad. I need to get better.
Speaker 1:I'm working on it. Marketers hate you.
Speaker 4:I know and like commenting. The feud continues and the funny part is I'm a tech guy.
Speaker 1:I totally understand how all that works. You're, like I know, behind the scenes.
Speaker 4:I'd write code and stuff. So I totally understand what's happening. But it's like me getting in to do. That is where I'm just trying to get better at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's tough, it's not just you I'm just thinking about automating it I'll just write my own code that automates me going in and liking and making comments with ai uh, there you go.
Speaker 4:Problem solved, figured it out.
Speaker 1:Believe it or not, guys, we're kind of at time already.
Speaker 2:That was such a fast but amazing conversation that went really quick.
Speaker 1:Thanks for talking a little bit about.
Speaker 11:Thanks for having us. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Jackie, yeah, we're going to be doing quite a few more of these this week. So we'll have your community, hopefully kind of engage with us a little bit more.
Speaker 3:Yeah absolutely the rest of the open mics. Get all the introverts. Yeah, get them all together Unite.
Speaker 6:Thanks guys Thanks.
Speaker 1:Jackie, all right, welcome. We are on our second open mic session with ACPN and I have Ryan Bachman here again. Welcome back.
Speaker 4:Thank you.
Speaker 1:CIO of United Motor Products and owner of Endless Technologies. He liked his other ones so much he wouldn't get out of his seat.
Speaker 4:I just couldn't help it. I'm going to be here all day. He's just my never-ending guest Coast. We're going to get to coast.
Speaker 5:Sorry, Stacey.
Speaker 1:I got Ryan Henderson here, who's the head of data and catalog for carpartscom.
Speaker 5:Welcome, have you done a podcast before? I've done one, but not this one, so I'm very excited.
Speaker 1:Well, you'll have to tell me how this one matches up to the last one you did so far. It feels more pro.
Speaker 5:I mean not to disparage the other one. Oh, that's so cool to hear.
Speaker 1:This all feels great. Say it again, I want to hear it again. It feels pro. So just to kick things off, explain what sparked your interest in using AI specifically for content professionals here.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think it was more. A lot of people don't, I think, know because it wasn't as mainstream. Ai has been around a really long time. It was just really hard to use. It wasn't as mainstream. Yeah, it's been around a really long time. It was just really hard to use. It required similar, a lot of computing power, but it just wasn't easy to quickly talk to some. It didn't give good results back. There's a great meme of Will Smith eating spaghetti the first time they tried to make video.
Speaker 5:And it is so bad and it's phasing through his head. It doesn't get to where his fingers start.
Speaker 4:The eyeball drips so random. Yeah, it's all over the place. So you know it had some very challenging beginnings and I remember when ChatGPT was 2.0, I think it came out, it wasn't really it was like a private beta.
Speaker 4:Yeah, when ChatGPT came out, that was like they were the ones that like made it like oh, wow, you can actually like interact in like a chat environment and get responses that halfway make sense, uh. So I think that's kind of what triggered it. And then I was like, wow, if that got better. There's so many use cases and then you know rapidly, in like the last two years, it's gone from being where it would give you half-ended kind of right answers to like, wow, that's very impressive. Uh, I don't know how it got that answer so well, so quick.
Speaker 4:So I think the interest just in technology in general and being into coding and stuff and seeing the new technologies come around has always intrigued me. Um, I still don't have like an exact oh, you should use ai for this, because there always needs to be a human in the loop. It's not perfect, um, but I think that, uh, that's kind of what triggered it for me and it it then just opened up a can of worms that I am like in my free time playing with it to try to figure out how I can leverage it more. So, yeah, I think you probably have a similar yeah, I mean, it's almost exactly the same.
Speaker 5:So using AI in different capacities ever since I started programming, but the real interest in like large language models, which is what we're all starting to interact with, right, Is that? Ai, as you said, it's been around for a long time and large language models are just a sector of that. And when ChatGPT came out and it made it easy, because before you could spin it up and you have to have like better hardware and it's like it's very niche.
Speaker 5:And then ChatGPT came out and it's like free or you know, $20 a month. And I remember like sitting down with my wife and looking at her and saying like something changed Overnight, something has changed. And she said you're kind of, you know, maybe over-exaggerated a little bit, but then you know, she started using herself and seeing the changes that I could do. And so, yeah, just like Ryan says that, once ChatGPT became available and you could log on and just use it like a regular user, that's when it really took off for me and it became a part of my everyday life.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And now there's so many different ones, like that's just the one Most people are still talking about ChatGPT. It's going to be like the.
Speaker 1:Kleenex brand of AI right.
Speaker 5:Everyone calls it Kleenex, I always feel bad because I always just recommend that and I'm like I don't get paid by them.
Speaker 1:Maybe I should. I should get referral codes and lots of money. It's kind of like the first mainstream where anyone, even Jackie, could get on an AI platform and use it, you know.
Speaker 5:Other names. You know Google, right it's just another great platform.
Speaker 2:And there's the.
Speaker 5:Bings and all those duck-duck-goes of the world.
Speaker 1:What, yeah, exactly who. So ChatGPT has turned into that. Yeah, what are some practical use cases for people in the content professional world, in the automotive?
Speaker 4:aftermarket. What do we use an AI for? Come to our AI 201 presentation. Yeah, ryan's talking on this a little bit later presentation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ryan's talking on this a little bit later. Yeah, or are you guys talking on it together? Yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 5:And we talk at the same time too.
Speaker 4:It's, it's yeah, in sync In sync with one another.
Speaker 5:We plug in and we, we were both.
Speaker 1:AI powered as well.
Speaker 4:We can tell yes the whole thing is driven by AI. The whole entire thing just speaks for us.
Speaker 2:And we just sit there as puppets.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. That's a great use case.
Speaker 4:That is actually a great use case.
Speaker 1:There you go. Number one what's number two?
Speaker 4:No, really it's. I don't know, brian, you can correct me, but I think right now it's really good with language and text. That's its best. It's getting good with video and images. Obviously, there's some amazing images out there. Obviously, a lot of artists are scared about that, but it's still not as good as is with natural language.
Speaker 1:So like the marketing side of Aces and Pies.
Speaker 4:I think that's its strongest suit, like, for instance, some great examples that people use with Chevrolet. Obviously people refer to Chevy. Well unless you code that into your vehicle lookup or in your search no one knows so that's like a great example, GM. It wasn't exactly how a lot of the databases show it.
Speaker 4:So things like that or keywords or engine codes, like just things that you can give it a data set behind the scenes and it can translate that for you really quickly and help with that whole slang and all the different things behind that. That's one really good use case, obviously. The other one is the marketing, the pie side of the standard. Obviously marketing descriptions and features and benefits can really enhance the wording. Like if you have really basic, it can just help really enhance it. Like I use it a lot for when I want my emails to sound smart.
Speaker 1:Oh, I do too, or a difficult email, an angry email.
Speaker 5:You type what you mean and it says nicely, make it passive, aggressive, make them do what I'm saying.
Speaker 4:Yes, I have a great demo of that one.
Speaker 1:So does marketing hand. Sorry this could be an ignorant question, but does marketing hand you these descriptions and then you enhance them, or does most content professionals create these using AI from scratch?
Speaker 4:Two of us are in an interesting position from Ryan's job and who he works for, and then from mine being a smaller company you know a lot of it's generated from content from the product team. So, like, the product team will give you all this content or information about the product, how it's made, materials, and then you can use that to help generate the descriptions and stuff. Is that a good?
Speaker 5:way to. You know, I'd say it kind of like of like. He says very different businesses that we work in, but we've noticed it's really good at doing a lot of repetitive tasks.
Speaker 5:So, let's say, if you need to do 100 descriptions, that might be better for someone to do over a week or two, and they spend their time but we need to have to do 100,000, 200,000, half a million. Then, having AI in the loop and be able to let it do those pieces, you can do it a lot faster and get content out there.
Speaker 4:I think that's a key word in the loop.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I think that may be something we want to explain a little bit better. Yeah, and it might be one of the questions we may have touched on where the false or misconceptions that users have about where AI is and how you should use it yeah. I think a lot of people think, oh, we can just throw all this in here. It's going to output the greatest thing ever. It's really good. I'm not going to deny that it's really really good, but don't trust it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, still throws curveballs.
Speaker 11:Proof read it.
Speaker 5:The more narrow the task you can give it, the better right. If you give it this wide open thing and say, hey, I want you to rewrite this book for me, it's going to do very bad at that. But if you say, hey, I'd like you to review the sentence that exists, include these pieces I'm looking for and then rewrite just this sentence it's incredible.
Speaker 1:Do you like, say like and optimize it for yeah, so yeah and like, have it. Throw in good keywords for you the prompt generation is the key yeah, like if you're really good at making the prompt.
Speaker 4:That's that would be be what you're asking to just explain for people who don't know what all this stuff is. You know how you describe the way you want to ask the question really guides the model to how good of an answer you're going to get. So if you explain like I don't know what's a good example. Example like if you're creating, like, an advertisement for social media, if you told it you're a you know, high level advertiser, marketing agency or whatever, now it at least fine-tunes itself.
Speaker 4:Okay, we're talking about marketing yeah and then you know whatever the the topic is, you know whatever you're trying to cover and then maybe some features and benefits of it, and then you can actually put the word important, real big, in front of something and it'll let it know like that's really important. So if you want to include like a catchphrase or something about something and letting it know and then giving it like it's not so good at the character count part, no, it's really bad at character count.
Speaker 1:Oh, is it Okay? It's really bad at it.
Speaker 4:But you can fix that with code and having it redo it a few times.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I don't love that. Like ChatGPT at least it's the one I use the most. I hate that you have to click a button for a reason Like of course I want you to reason yeah, like the deeper reasoning models yeah.
Speaker 2:And then a lot of times you forget to click the button and you're like oh, I don't know yeah.
Speaker 1:Why wouldn't you want it? What? Are some cases when you wouldn't want it to reason.
Speaker 5:Well, and that goes back to that whole you know loop thing we're talking about, right? Is that? What it's doing at that point is just talking to itself right.
Speaker 5:So and that's what we're talking about is that when you start letting these models do things recursively over and the recursiveness is if you have a very rigid model, like Ryan showed that you need, I need this, I need this, I need this, I need this. Giving it more context is not great because it starts wandering and and hallucinating, as they call it Right. But if you're looking for something like that, where you're trying to expand with the mold that you already have, then deep thinking or you know, uh, advancement over the that.
Speaker 5:That's a better time to let it be more exploratory.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it reminded me of my iWatch to turn on waterproof. I'm like why can't you just be waterproof.
Speaker 2:Why do I have to tell you to be waterproof? I felt the same way about ChatGPT.
Speaker 1:Why do I have to tell you to use your brain? That's what you are.
Speaker 5:Maybe if you know. The example is if there was humidity inside the watch, you wanted to come out, you wouldn't want the waterproof mode, where if you're going to go swimming, you want the waterproof mode.
Speaker 1:So there are use cases for it to not be waterproof. Yeah, I'm just guessing. Yeah, that's a really good guess. It sounds right, so it's fact to me.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it felt. It felt good, it felt good.
Speaker 1:I liked it. Yeah, do you guys have any examples or like use cases of for companies of when they've used AI and they have like a massive you know measurement to show success or a massive ROI or something like that?
Speaker 5:I mean for us at least, I know that just giving everyone access to it at a basic level and, very importantly, putting guidelines around it. So, as a company, you want to tell people how to use it, where to use it, when not to use it.
Speaker 1:What not to put on it Exactly what?
Speaker 2:not to put on. It is very important.
Speaker 5:We touch, use it when not to use it, what not to put on it exactly what not to put on is very important. We touch on that a lot is uh, don't put anything in there that you don't want on. A billboard is our way of showing, because it's like if you want.
Speaker 5:You don't want something showing up on a billboard, you don't want it in chat, gt or any of those models like that, definitely not. So I think that for us it was huge just getting it in everyone's hands and letting them use it correctly and letting them explore what's good for them, what's not good for them, learning how the systems work, and that was a huge leg up. So I mean there's 10,000 more cases on how to use it in different scenarios, but getting people started was probably our biggest change that we saw.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that's the big part of it is it's different. Not everyone likes change, but I think once they start playing with it and realizing, oh, this can help my day-to-day, you know, or at least improve what I'm doing in a more efficient path, it opens up the conversation to like how could I use this more? And it opens that conversation of because, mind you, going to chat GPT or getting the desktop app is great apps, great um, and it's useful. But it's very limiting to like true automation and true performance, um, because you really need to go down to their apis, which is more computer jargon and and, uh, coder language. But basically that's where you're talking directly and you can write code where you can now ask questions and have more steps in the questions there's some of that with the reasoning models does a little bit touch on that.
Speaker 4:But ultimately, you know, the more people use it, the more they at least opens their ideas and they bring good ideas to the table. That's, I think, more. It just opens that conversation.
Speaker 1:I think that's a kind of a good segue to another question I have, which is what are some of the big misconceptions about AI, specifically in our industry?
Speaker 5:That you can use it on everything is probably number one Is that you know.
Speaker 5:Ryan and I like to advocate for its use and talk about how to use it. And then people are like well, it's not good for this, like yeah, that's totally fine. We don't say it's good for everything. We advocate that you find the good use cases and you only use it in those and it's just another tool in the toolbox. And, like I said to people, it's like a hammer, right? Is that? If you are making pottery, a hammer is probably not for you, but if you're making houses, you probably need a hammer, right? So it's just another tool in the toolbox and you should use it accordingly.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's perfect. I don't think I need to add too much to that, but it definitely is. That's a misconception and that's always right, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that's the misconception. Make sure you proof.
Speaker 4:Definitely got a human in the loop, as I like to call it. Yeah, so.
Speaker 1:Keep the human involved. Where in this whole process with using AI are humans going to still be important in the near future? They will always be, because your job depends on it, or for real I'm the. I'm the orchestra every single profession is worried about this right now. So you're the conductor, I'm the conductor, the orchestrator.
Speaker 4:So yeah I'll be okay for a while. No, uh, like I said, the human in the loop thing until they can make it really have general intelligence, you're not going to be there. It can't solve all the things. It can help leverage or make you more efficient. I think that's more the right way to look at it. So people shouldn't be afraid that it's going to get rid of their job. It's just going to enhance their job so they can be more efficient and, for the company, return more of the investment they can ch out more using these tools, which opens them up, for, you know, all of us have way too many things and tasks on our plate to do, so just opened you to finally get to those that you keep pushing further and further down the list that's how I look at it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I hope I'm not used as like a clip 10 years from now where I'm saying it's I'm not not worried about it, but I'm not directly worried about it for now is that they always say that you know AI won't replace you, but someone who knows how to use it will. Right, I think that's very prevalent, very true. And same way with you know Google or Excel or any of those pieces, right? It's just another new technology that you should understand how it works, Maybe not use it every second of the day or be the best at it, but just understand how it works and know the basics behind it.
Speaker 1:And one could argue like right now you're probably, we're probably in the age where, like if you go into an interview for almost any role and they ask you how do you use AI, and you say I don't. I mean, that's not a good look, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:Some people are anti-AI, so it might be good for some. You know regions, but that's kind of the thing that I think ryan was also touching on is that creativity will almost never be replaced by ai is that human creativity is incredible and super, super, um, important to a lot of different things, and I think ai can be a creative person's tool to help them build things that are also creative. But the pure creativity of humans, I mean. After all, all, this data was trained on humans, right?
Speaker 5:On what we've made and what we've created, so it can only be as original as the data it has, which means that every person who's creative or artist out there, as long as you are more creative than what's been made in the past which is always true, you which is always true, you'll be, fine, it's not going to be replacing those people or those creativities.
Speaker 1:Do you guys say please and thank you when you type stuff into you know I used to, I totally did, I do.
Speaker 4:I don't want. I don't want it coming after me later in life, you know if Terminator is a real thing.
Speaker 5:I saw. I don't want to document what I say to chat GPT. I saw a reel and I really wish.
Speaker 1:I would have like written down the numbers, but, like you know, every time you type something into an AI, it eats up energy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right.
Speaker 5:Don't ask me how any of this works but it's like eating energy and the amount of times people type, please there's costing all this, just for the word, please. I saw that. Yeah, no, it's, it's it right. So it's like these are all just big text blocks that are going into it.
Speaker 1:So if you just extend that by one word, that one word times a billion views is is millions of dollars but I think if you're taught your whole life to be polite, like you're asking yeah, something for something like it just feels wrong and rude to be like type this out for me, you know, whatever it feels a bit manipulative but, you can use it to your advantage.
Speaker 5:It feels weird saying this and this, and this is going to be something that Chet VT will be showing me as as it's saying why it's arresting me. But yeah, like if you want something and you say please and thank you, and your normal interaction with someone is to encourage them to give you the right information, so you can use that because it's trained on the same language that we speak right and the same styles and all that.
Speaker 5:So I do use it sparingly and I use it for like, when I want to do something specifically, I'm like please make sure you do this, or like um I'll say thank you if you do this kind of thing. But for the most time I keep it pretty plain because, like, every word you put in there takes it further away from what you're wanting so if you have less filler words, even less like anything.
Speaker 1:So it's it's ideal prompt is five words long, right, you know do know do this, please, or do this now or something you know, wherever it might be no, please just do this, it actually understands better and will not hang on that additional word to confuse it further. So that's a great tip for our listeners Don't be so polite.
Speaker 4:Bulletize things that you wanted to do. It helps it a lot.
Speaker 1:You got to kind of wonder, though, and then we got to get to our last question and wrap this up. But you got to kind of wonder the generation coming up who's going to be using AI all the time, and they're not saying please and thank you. Like, are they going to interact with humans differently? You know, maybe a little bit more rude.
Speaker 5:That's a good one If you're ever someone who doesn't say it to you, you go. I'm not ChatGPT. You have to say please and thank you to me.
Speaker 4:I'm't understand, like the shorthands and all that.
Speaker 5:I'd say add it in, because you never know what's going to happen in the future. It doesn't hurt anything.
Speaker 1:So add please, and thank you, it just costs a lot of money for some company somewhere.
Speaker 5:Not you.
Speaker 1:Not your problem. So for companies just getting started with AI, or like dipping their toe in the water, what could the next 90 days look like? What should they do first? What should they be thinking about? What's this path? Just like a little small loaded question for the end.
Speaker 8:But yeah, I think it's.
Speaker 4:It's really about setting your governance. I think that's step one you have to. I kind of call it the zero trust rule. That's how we built ours at our places. You kind of close the door completely and then slowly open it. But you have to build those governance rules first. Like Ryan was talking about earlier, you have to really figure out what you want to allow them to use and what not allow to use and what scenarios, and really build the whole structure of what they can and can't do with it before you let them get involved with it. Especially, the real scary thing is when you start opening it up to your content.
Speaker 4:That's where you have to be, careful and I think that's really the starting point and then just letting them use it. I think that's really test the water. The feedback you know, have meetings where you get feedback like what have you used it today, right or wrong, you know um, and then I think it just helps everybody grow yeah throughout the whole trial and error. There's no like turn it on and go. It's really based on your business and your.
Speaker 1:And really the skills of the gaps of the person using it right, Like someone might be really fast at something that somebody else should be using ChatGPT for. Yeah, I can see that, no, I'd agree.
Speaker 5:It's like getting them on the ground floor is very important, and then governance. Before you even let anyone touch it is. You can work with a professional, you can look that there's, you know, templates online, just getting your governance set up, making sure people are using it correctly and then so once you get past that step so 90 days right, so that should be 30 days maybe max to get that running and then looking into apis would be the next step right is that the apis are just a way of allowing programs to do the for loop, the, you know, the recursion kind of stuff.
Speaker 5:That would be the next step right yeah. Because the APIs are just a way of allowing programs to do the for loop, yeah, the recursion kind of stuff. That would be the next step from there, but that, honestly, would be on the 90th day right. Yeah, because there's a lot of learning to have in that 30, 60, 90 days.
Speaker 4:I did go in three months of strategy and a whole business plan.
Speaker 2:It was garbage before we even got to launch. Yeah, I had to start over, cause you learned so much, right.
Speaker 4:All new tools came out and made it more efficient, so that just completely redesigned the whole strategy. Yep, um, but that's where it is right now.
Speaker 1:Thank you, guys. I'm sure this is going to be very useful to a lot of companies trying to dip their toe in the water. Hopefully it's a little comforting in some some direction for them.
Speaker 5:We always say learn by doing right, that's the best way to go is go out there and try it. That's the number one thing, as long as you're doing it safely. Right is that safety first is always very important, but then, second, try it and go and see what's good and what's not good at, and you'll get 50-50 responses back. But just try it. Go do it. We're stopping.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys so much.
Speaker 5:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Jackie, enjoy the rest of the ACPN conference, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Gathering with your fellow nerds.
Speaker 5:Yes, exactly, I'm so excited. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4:Thank you All right.
Speaker 1:Welcome everybody. We have another ACPN open mic session upon us and today we have Adam Phillips, catalog director of Holbrook Auto Parts, and he's also an active ACPN council member. Welcome, Adam.
Speaker 11:Thank you. Thank you, happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, awesome to have you. And then we have a Content Excellence Award winner for ACPN. He won the Off-Highway and Equipment for Aces and Pies Award. Did I get that right?
Speaker 12:That's the right category.
Speaker 1:John Johnson, VP of Catalog Marketing at Omega Holdings.
Speaker 14:Yeah, I know it's a lot. I'm trying to read my own writing right now, and I'm like ooh, that was sketchy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so how do you feel?
Speaker 14:It's pretty cool. We've submitted data for the different awards for many years and to actually get our content to a place to where they could recognize it with an award was pretty cool. I mean team put in a lot of work to get there.
Speaker 11:Yeah, yeah. So I mean, what would? What inspired you to actually you know, submit your data for this award?
Speaker 14:Honestly, this event I mean we get here, you know, you come to the events and you see other people get the awards and you go. You know that's. That's a good piece of marketing material and it's also a nice way to put a checkbox beside your team to say our guys know what we're doing, you know yeah.
Speaker 11:Yeah, it's got to give them a good boost of confidence to know like the work that they're doing, there's an end goal to it and they're going to get rewarded and recognized for it.
Speaker 14:Yeah, exactly Exactly Well, and it's proof on paper, on paper. You can go back to your team and go guys, we got an award, you guys did an awesome job this year. And then you can go to your customers and market it as hey, AutoCare thought we did a pretty good job. You guys should look at the data.
Speaker 11:Yeah, yeah, absolutely so. Just from the idea of doing it to today, like how long was the process specifically for the off-highway equipment? How long would you say it's been from like okay idea and concept to winning the award. How long is that so?
Speaker 14:truthfully, it's 18 months. Um, we've subscribed to the data for a long time, yeah, but you know, we we really made it an internal issue for ourselves. We said, look, we're going to figure this thing out, we want to get this data mapped, we need to get it out there. We have all these flat files. We got nowhere to send them, yeah. So we said, okay, we're going to go through, we're going to pick our category that we really want to concentrate on, which was the turbos, and we said we're going to make it right, we're going to check every box, qdbc, we're going to check all the pies, we're going to make sure the aces for the equipment is fully filled out, nice, and we're going to produce a file and concept to finish was right around 18 months.
Speaker 11:That's awesome.
Speaker 14:Yeah, that's good stuff, yeah.
Speaker 1:Sounds like a huge initiative yeah, does your company realize, like people outside of the content professional world in your company do? They realize Probably not how big of a deal that is.
Speaker 14:Probably not. You know you can kind of sit in meetings and everything else and you can tell them what you're working on and you know salespeople and they can go out there and give it to a customer and say, yeah, we're doing this or whatever. But it's a big initiative internally and it's a lot of just man hours. I mean, there's no other way to do it. We talked about AI this week. Right, ai is not going to do this for you. You got to have people that know what they're doing and willingness to do that and go through the work.
Speaker 1:That's got to make you feel good that AI can't do it.
Speaker 11:That's one of the neat things with AI, I mean it's a useful, useful tool, but it's not going to replace content specialists, correct, right it's an important message right now yeah, I'll segue into that then. So if you don't mind my asking, how big is your catalog team? And feel free to give shout outs here.
Speaker 14:Yeah yeah, so, um, not including me, we're six, uh, six people that are dedicated to nothing but catalog, um, and then we have on top of that, an in-house photographer. So, um, cassandra door is going to get the biggest shout out for this. Um, she goes by frizz, she um, her and I really went through the first probably I don't know 50 applications together and really made sure that we understood exactly what we were looking at, and then she took it from there. Yeah, so she gets the biggest shout out, but everybody really pulled on the rope here helping us find attributes and and all the back-end data that we had to do yeah, and frizz is a former scholarship winner she is yes um 2019, I believe yeah yeah, well, when she's done doing the mom life, she needs to come back.
Speaker 14:Uh, yeah, I'm trying to get her back she's name. She's having fun doing this.
Speaker 1:She's got a great nickname. Is it really Frizz yeah?
Speaker 14:Frizz. Her maiden name was Frizzell.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, that's where it comes from, yep.
Speaker 2:I was thinking like.
Speaker 14:Frizzy hair yeah exactly. That's what most people think yeah.
Speaker 11:So is there anything that you would say or suggest to others that might be on the fence about submitting their data for the award?
Speaker 14:No, there's no reason not to do it. If nothing else, you get great feedback from the team at AutoCare when they go through and review it. They're going to tell you where you're short. They're going to tell you what you need to improve on. At least you got something for the following year to work on. And then that's where we started as well.
Speaker 14:We submitted for the regular ACES and PIE several years and we figured out pretty quick we had holes. All right, we need to go. We got to be better at this and you know our company. We're at a million records plus. So to be able to go in in the ACES and PIEs the regular ACES and PIEs with that many was a little daunting, but it's getting you tighter and tighter and better and better. So that's why we went to the equipment side and said let's, let's make sure that we go through here and and submit the equipment and and I think this is a line that we can make absolutely perfect- and be able to submit and hopefully, with you submitting, it'll inspire others, be like okay, well, I've thought about it, well, somebody's it and they've won.
Speaker 14:Maybe it'll get that ball rolling and moving forward and we'll have some more submissions and kind of grow this, yeah, and the equipment stuff. I mean I keep saying it, people that aren't doing it. Today the customer base is out there selling it off these flat files and you know it's okay, but it's not a standard.
Speaker 11:Yeah.
Speaker 14:Right, flat files and, and you know it's okay, but it's not a standard. Yeah right, so they're getting 20 different people sending 20 different files in different formats and until we get to where this the equipment data is truly standardized with our customer bases, it's going to continue to be really hard products to sell yeah, so uh well, with the folks that you brought here around drinks, you're buying them, right I don't know, I kind of feel like you should, but you know.
Speaker 1:if I need to, I will. I got you the winner. What kind of award is that?
Speaker 11:Yeah, this isn't a hole in one golf. I handed you the award earlier.
Speaker 14:I appreciate it. It was a good handoff by the way, yeah, thanks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then. So what do?
Speaker 14:you, what do you? What are you hoping that this award does.
Speaker 1:When you take it home, um, are you hoping like there's? I mean, there's gotta. I always just think, like when I was working for a manufacturer and we brought home like a Marcom award. I wanted, like the leaders, to see that this team is being recognized for excellence. Yes, yeah, yeah. That means a lot to people.
Speaker 14:Yeah, for excellence, yes, yeah, yeah, that means a lot to people. Yeah, I want I mean I, I want to bring it to the management team and just be able to say look, guys, we got recognized for this and you guys have to understand how important this is in the industry. And then you know, I mentioned it earlier as a marketing tool it's. I want to be able to put this in our sales guys hands and say, look, when you're in front of somebody that is selling equipment, make sure this is brought up yeah make sure that they understand that.
Speaker 14:You know, we went out, we submitted, we were vetted and auto care said you know what? It's pretty good, we're going to give you an award for it. So it's it really. It's kudos to the team. They did a really great job, but it's also to help drive that piece of the industry forward.
Speaker 1:Have you seen any direct correlation to some ROI or revenue? Tied to just having better data, better titer data.
Speaker 14:Yeah, I mean as a whole, not the equipment data, but as a whole. Absolutely yeah, I mean as a whole not the equipment data but as a whole, absolutely when you go and you give it to a receiver and they don't have to touch it.
Speaker 11:Yeah, it's a good feeling.
Speaker 14:Yeah, when you don't get all the kickbacks and everything and you got a brand new product line that you're introducing and they say, ok, I don't have any questions for you, we're going to put it on our website next week, it's like, okay, well, there's a potential for sale right away, so you're selling quicker. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 14:Now the equipment data. There's a lot of receivers that can't take it yet, so they're still vetting it. They're still trying to figure out how to get it on their catalogs. But it's um, everybody's excited about it, but they're still trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's very exciting, yeah. So, adam, if there's people listening who have never, you know, put in for this award, do you want to give them a little bit of information about the process and how to do it?
Speaker 11:Yeah. So every year leading up to Connect as part of the ACPM program, anyone that has ACEs and PIs data or website can submit. And you can submit your ACEs and PIs for three categories of large, medium and small, based upon application count. It's all on the AutoCare website. So yeah, you've got the three ACEs and PIs segments. You've got the web awards. So if you've got a website that you feel is fantastic and awesome and you want to stack it up against our good friends at Dorman they've won three years in a row so somebody's got to beat them so yeah. So somebody's got to beat them. So yeah, step up. And now we've got the off-highway equipment. So if you've got somebody else and you think your data, you know, can stack up, or if you just want to, you know, join the competition for the recognition, absolutely get submitted.
Speaker 11:So obviously we're here at Connect this year and right now. So for next year, things will be preparing for next year, next month. So always keep an eye on the emails, don't let them slide your spam box. Read them, check them out there's going to be information there about it and just be prepared to submit. And you've got time now. Think of it with where we're at right now. You have almost a year's worth of time to get your data and information and your fares in order. Run your reports, run your assessments, read what you can on it, any of the assessment reports, get it, load it, clean it and go for it.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Well, thank you, guys, yeah.
Speaker 11:Appreciate the time, enjoy it, thank you. Thanks for having us Thanks.
Speaker 1:Hello again. Welcome to another ACPN Open Mic Session at AutoCare Connect in wonderful Phoenix Arizona. I have Brian Mathias, Senior Content Syndication Manager of Dorman Products, Welcome.
Speaker 10:Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're also an active council member for ACPN and you're the program lead, so you're kind of responsible for some of the content that we're getting this week at Connect.
Speaker 10:Absolutely. It's exciting. It's kind of terrifying a little bit, but I hope everybody just says it's great.
Speaker 1:I've heard nothing but good things so far.
Speaker 10:It's going good so far. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:And then Jen Catherine, our Director of Content for Pronto Network, welcome.
Speaker 8:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Happy to have you both here, so let's kind of get into a little bit of help me with the subject.
Speaker 10:Receivers. Yeah, most of the relationship in kind of this content professional world is manufacturer or supplier and the receiver side, whether it be retail, wd, it's kind of that give take relationship and a scenario where partnerships matter.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. What's one of the challenges that's really front and center for you guys right now?
Speaker 12:It works perfectly with this week being here, because standards are a big piece of that and one of the things that we appreciate is getting the data and get it standardized content and stuff like that. So we really appreciate that and some timeliness of the content with that. So I know that's huge for us.
Speaker 10:Yeah, I think you would agree, jen. The data never gets smaller. It never gets easier. We went from okay, everything was nice, you had one image per part, maybe you had four images per part. Now you have a 360 image. That's almost mandatory. A couple years ago there wasn't really a demand for that, now it's almost mandatory, so all systems have to scale. Just another thing to make sure it gets delivered and downstream at the right time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so like I know that your guys' profession has really changed a lot, I mean in the past probably 10 years, and probably accelerating change. Just like technology like the curve is rather steep. So what are the big changes recently?
Speaker 12:Yeah, so kind of like what Brian was mentioning. The data is not getting any smaller. So before we were just looking for your make model, maybe an engine and a part number and some fitment information. Now we're asking for images and descriptions. We're asking for pricing information as well.
Speaker 1:360 degree images.
Speaker 12:Yes, I'm sorry, yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 12:We're asking for pricing, and that's rapidly changing too.
Speaker 2:And what?
Speaker 12:kind of pricing levels, that's a whole science in and of itself. But being able to dissect the data and making sure that we have the data and enough of it to kind of slice it the way we want it to be sliced and push that out to our membership and the people downstream who are actually purchasing the part, making buying decisions based on that product information and making those kind of buying choices where previously they didn't have all that information. But if we have it, we need to share that out.
Speaker 10:Yeah, it's a world of kind of. Everybody wants to request information from us. We want to make sure that we're the most efficient in providing that, so making sure that our receivers have all of their needs covered, but also making sure that we're not touching the same thing multiple times. That's been a challenge, because that happens. New regulations come out. They need to provide information to the government. They need it from us. We need to figure out how to find it, send it and get it over.
Speaker 12:Yeah, prop 65 and ERP, I mean all of that stuff continues to make things challenging with the data and how do we communicate that out?
Speaker 1:Do you guys feel like our industry's content professionals are getting better at these things, like, is this a skill that's evolving or is this still, like some lacking there? Oh god, I'll let you talk to that first, I think I think there is.
Speaker 10:We are getting better at that. I think we are understanding the kind of this fire drills, and I'll use prop 65. I think we were blindsided a little bit by prop 65. I think everybody knew it was coming, but when it came to the data world it was like, okay, well, what do we do? But now, um, the, the pr stuff, it's hey, make sure that you understand what the downstream is. We went through prop 65, let's see what we can do for this yeah, and I think it's improving as well.
Speaker 12:I just think it's been more complicated than what it used to be. So all you had to do is worry about application data, and now you're worried about images and product information and marketing. And how do you blend all of these things together that make it much more complicated, instead of being in a silo of, hey, this is just automotive data that we're sending out. Now I need a team of people to be able to do that, and then how do I, on a cadence, be able to consistently communicate that out as things change or get updated or get added or removed, even so, with all of that, what is something that a content professional could really do right now to make a huge difference for their receivers?
Speaker 12:Oh, I would say partnership is huge. We kind of talked a little bit about that earlier. Engage in your trading partners. They want to hear from you If something's not moving well. There's questions. I know our team is really excited when folks engage with us. Yes, how do we make that better? And it's just a different way to get things out. So just engagement, it's not necessarily technical. Just how do we get the data that we're looking for and what do you have that we don't know about that? Maybe we could all benefit from to make that happen yeah, definitely 100%.
Speaker 10:The communication is key in our industry. I think that uh, it joked around that the data and content people are always like in in the back closet or at the home office. Connect Week and ACPN is the one event they get to talk to each other and everyone. The reason why it's so impactful is because you actually get to understand the problems and really where they are, rather than just a list of demands or an email. You get to connect with the humans, understand where their priorities are. That don't always come across digitally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Jen, you have a unique perspective because you have been on both the receiving side. Yes, and I'm kind of like this.
Speaker 12:And creating the data.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so is there anything you wish people knew you know You're not as bad as you think you are. Is there anything you?
Speaker 12:wish people knew You're not as bad as you think you are. Really, you're probably like, oh my gosh, I didn't get the scorecard right, I didn't get the web award or whatever it is, but the fact that you're engaged in those processes will make you better, continuing to network and come to these events. You find out so much and again, just the engagement. That is huge. I know on the supplier side. Every time I engaged with a trading partner it was amazing. They're like oh, thank you for reaching out.
Speaker 12:We didn't know that we could do X, y, z, and then we would go back and we would implement it, and then not necessarily correlating with sales, but there was a benefit that they go. Okay, I understand your process and you understand mine. So there's that partnership that was formed and locked in. That makes a huge difference with how that goes. So, yeah, I would. All of those things are important that they can do right away and as soon as you get home, or even here at the trade show and throughout the conference.
Speaker 1:And Brian being dormant. I assume you have. You're sending a lot of data to a lot of receivers, so do you have any words of wisdom?
Speaker 10:I would say that there's kind of words of wisdom internally of I get this as a supplier receiver session. But I think educating the inside of your own company on the value of content goes a long way with getting that support. Because even our receivers they like to know that we have the support behind us and if there's a change coming it's not just they're not bombarding the content professional. They know that I can go and lean on team and resources that we have and are supported.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's probably good advice. So maybe for both of you as we wrap up here, what has being a part of ACPN really done for you guys in your profession? Gosh, do you want to take?
Speaker 12:that first.
Speaker 10:It's made me first off lifelong friends definitely people that have motivated me, pushed me to do new things, get involved. It's a reason why I'm here today and joined ACPN. I looked up to many people on the council and everyone was always so supportive. You really you take the name off of your shirt. You are a content professional here. You're not just Brian from Dorman, that type of thing.
Speaker 12:Yeah and gosh. My first NCMA was 2006. So I've been in here and lifelong friends learned so much through the networking piece the networking I can't speak enough of for being able to be able to do that, because that's amazing. They open doors, you have communications, we can call each other up being involved. I was on the ACBN committee as well. It's amazing how you give in and it gets back to you ten times fold. So it's just, yeah, it's an amazing thing. But networking is huge. The sessions are great and the program that gets put on. But yeah, the trade show just partnering with everybody and doing the best you can with the time you have is amazing, the whole who you're going to call piece of it Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I mean, that can be such a huge part of any role, so the fact that they're all here.
Speaker 10:Absolutely. I think it's big. You have a support system and there's many people that I've met here, maybe met one year. The next year I got to know them a little bit better, maybe wound up kind of at another event with them and they've become lifelong friends. A support system, I mean we do have some very like brand agnostic issues that they can help with. Hey, have you gotten these requests too?
Speaker 14:yeah, some of them do.
Speaker 10:Some of them have answers. Some of them say I don't worry about it, that type of stuff, but it's a community and it's a awesome community yeah, well said well, thank you guys.
Speaker 1:It's kind of our time. Thank you Appreciate it. Of course, appreciate you guys being here, absolutely.
Speaker 10:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Hello and welcome back. We are at another ACPN open mic session at AutoCare OnAir in Phoenix, Arizona and I have with me this year's ACPN pitch competition winner, Sue Dixon, who's the founder of Give Me 10 and also a member of on our I'm sorry, sitting on our auto care CCPN committee.
Speaker 7:So welcome. Good morning.
Speaker 1:It's awesome to have you on the show. Very excited to be here. Yeah, and you just literally found out that you won this competition probably 30 minutes ago, yep, so you're probably still shaking, exactly.
Speaker 7:I can't believe it. I can't believe it.
Speaker 1:So did you find out just now that you were going to be on this podcast too?
Speaker 7:Yeah, shortly after that, paul shared that with me.
Speaker 9:I think we mentioned it in an email, but then she's probably in her shock of winning. Then I run up two minutes later and I'm like, okay, are you like 30 minutes? Like let's go.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Yeah, that other voice you're hearing is Paul Arena. He is the catalog manager for ETE Reman and he is on the ACPN council and kind of responsible in the lead for this pitch competition that ACPN does every year. And we're going to hear from Sue a little bit about your idea, but first I want to learn a little bit more about this competition. You know why did ACPN want to create this? How did it come about?
Speaker 9:Yeah, absolutely so. This is the second annual pitch competition, so I was really excited to continue that after last year because we thought it was pretty successful. This all started with Lauren McCullough as you might have heard from one of our previous colleagues talked to the ACPN council members and said hey, I think this would be a really good idea to bring people's ideas to life and elevate it a little bit. She has such an entrepreneurial spirit, um, so we loved that kind of addition to this catalog data world. Um, and we were able to have a success last year with uh. I think we had four finalists last year, so we wanted to get about four this year, which is exactly what we hit. Um, so that was great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so like, what's the biggest challenge for you guys when it comes to this competition?
Speaker 9:Yeah, so this was the first year that I was tasked with running it, and so my biggest challenge, I think, was enticing people that may have really great ideas, who might be Nervous about public speaking Maybe they don't think their idea is good enough to get in. Some of these what I would call celebrities of this kind of community get in front of them and think their idea is good enough to get in. Some of these what I would call celebrities of this kind of community get in front of them and pitch their idea. Maybe, if you like if you're like me, sometimes there's a bit of imposter syndrome, so it's really bringing people out of their shell and making them feel comfortable and safe and elevated in the space to say that, no, you're a rock star.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like throw your idea yeah For yeah, like throw your idea yeah for sure.
Speaker 9:I think that would be maybe what I thought maybe was the hardest Just just convincing people that like there's no losing here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's no way to lose. Yeah, that's amazing, and you know, speaking of good ideas, sue, I mean first I guess I would love to have a visual. So how is it? Is it? Is it? Are you pitching this in front of the entire ACPN community that is here, or is it just in front of a panel of judges?
Speaker 7:It was in front of an entire audience and some judges, so we had some questions after. It was a little nerve wracking for sure, because three minutes isn't very long yeah.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, so it was an experience that I think anybody that has an idea should go out there and try it. Yeah, and I heard I was sitting in there taking some video in the back and I heard somebody mention that two of the ideas from last year are actually have turned into projects.
Speaker 9:Yeah, absolutely so. Two of the ideas have been submitted to the TSE, the Technology Standards Committee, and that is the goal with this. The winner. We really want kind of you think maybe you're just winning a competition and really it's kind of the first step, because we really do want the winner to create a project with the TSC to get it moving, because we don't want to be just about lip service. We don't want to say congrats, you won. That was really fun for your three minute pitch.
Speaker 9:And then forget about it. We want to develop and evolve and get these ideas out there, because that's the whole point of this.
Speaker 1:It just sounds like such a cool opportunity for those people who have an idea burning in their brain and they just don't know what to do with it, don't know what to start, and it's not something that they can just do themselves. So to be able to have this opportunity to bring it to people with similar minds and who can actually help this idea, you know, kind of blossom. It seems like an amazing opportunity that you guys give people.
Speaker 9:Absolutely, and even though Lauren McCullough is not directly on the ACPN committee, she does check-ins with the panelists for their pitch, she helps you revise it. She says shorten it here, expand it here. I think usually the input is shorten it but it is a short pitch, but she kind of works as a mentor other than just the emcee of the event. So it's not even just the direct counsel. You're getting resources from all these different people with all these different experiences.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and even just access to Lauren, like that Cause you know she's got some experience in that area. That's amazing.
Speaker 9:It's one of those things that I think sometimes, if you get in your own head, you forget how many people are in your corner, and we like to really show that in this community that you've got people rooting for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm so glad you said that, so true. So, sue, let's hear a little bit about your idea.
Speaker 7:Well, the Give Me Ton started as a grassroots type of program we were looking in our community to look at like what can we do to support education and actually create a bridge between education and industry? And it kind of looks like when you think about partnering with education, there's a lot of different rules and when I think about the simplicity of what we created as a group, it can work with any career path, it can work with any industry and it can work with any size business is what really is the wonderful thing about Give Me 10. This program and bridge the gap between education and employment and I think it's really really important right now because work-based learning is on the rise, career and technical ed is back and it's going to stay and we as an industry need to participate and look at that bridge as a way to hire and bring in future employment in our industry. There are so many open positions that we can all look at, like content catalog manager, service advisor, parts houses, warehouses. We are not talking about that in industry. When we look at what the public thinks about automotive careers, they think it's just turning wrenches and it really is not. There's a lot of really great careers out there and we're not speaking about those careers.
Speaker 7:Yeah, so when you say, give me 10, what's the 10? Well, you donate 10 hours to a local student to show them a career path in your business. How cool is that? A career path in your business? How cool is that? I just want you to bring them in and show them what you do, and all I'm asking you to do is donate 10 hours, but along with that 10 hours, you're also going to engage with the schools. So I want people to think we need to go back to the advisory meetings, we need to help curriculum and we need to look at work-based learning as a way to bridge that gap.
Speaker 1:And it sounds like this program has already been successful. Yes so what made you want to apply for this pitch competition? What's your goal?
Speaker 7:Well, my goal is to get it out there and let people know that we can all participate, and everyone that brings 10 hours to the table. If we multiply it by our industry, we can make a huge impact in what we are all suffering, and that is skilled labor shortage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so much of it, like you kind of mentioned, is awareness, right. Like you know, at least my generation, when I was in high school you really got pushed towards that four-year degree. You know that was the only way to be successful in life. And now everyone's kind of pulling back and being like wait a second, we have no trade workers, you know like this was a mistake, so everybody's pulling back.
Speaker 1:But you know that awareness that when you're a kid and people are like, want to be an astronaut or they want to be, you know, a doctor, you know for to maybe feed the passion of those people who want to work with their hands and want, you know, expose them a little bit to this world. That might not be what you know. The media or you know another generation might have painted it back in the day, right?
Speaker 7:No, I mean, if you really look at our industry and the opportunities that we all have wonderful lives we all live we're not talking about it. You know I would love to share. You know what is a content catalog manager? What does a service advisor really do? You know? How much education do you really need to have that? What's the background of that? I think if we bring that exposure more to the table and students and parents understand that, the career path will become clearer, that the career path will become clearer, and I think that's what we need to do as an industry is start talking about these really important career paths that are hidden in our industry.
Speaker 9:Yeah, yeah. I think she's had such a success with the origination of Give Me 10. Bringing this to the catalog and the data content management side was really the pitch, and I think I don't know if I can say this on air, but I will. Her idea was my favorite. I was so excited.
Speaker 1:I was so excited when I found out she won. Oh shut up, no, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 9:It was no, definitely not. We had so many amazing finalists, but I was. I was just so excited about her idea because I don't think anyone in this industry, in cataloging, was like I can't wait to be a cataloger when I grow up.
Speaker 9:Like you you find a mentor, you find a boss, you find a job opening, you like kind of fall into it. So the idea that she's looking to reach out to young people that have an interest and can grow that education naturally and be so much more successful in this role because they know what they're getting into and they have those tools Um, I, that's what it just it got me so lit up.
Speaker 1:I was so excited about her idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can imagine so, because I we were on an open mic earlier this week and I want to say it was with Brian Mathias, uh, and we were talking about you know what problems we need to solve, you know, for this. You know the ACPN community and one of them was, you know, we need more people to enter this field and to even know about it, and I was kind of joking about like how you it feels like this ACPN community is kind of really tight, like you guys found your people, you know people with the same kind of like brains, work the same way. They're kind of like all walking in the same direction in their career, and that's the kind of community that can really rise, rise up the whole industry. Exactly If we can support you guys to do what you do and do it well and very, very good and best in class, imagine the effect that that would have on the industry and bringing in the right people.
Speaker 9:Yeah, I think you hit on it. I think the ACPN community represents collaboration and innovation and I think that's what the pitch competition did. Let's collaborate. Let's find these people that maybe their star doesn't shine the brightest because they're not on LinkedIn showing a brand or showing like whoever that person is in there, and take that great idea, workshop it with them, fine tune it and then bring it to the TSC and spark innovation. I think the pitch competition totally encapsulates what the ACPN community is all about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it solves the problem because actually something we mentioned was, like you know, like I kind of started in marketing and, believe it or not, marketers are really good at talking and like expressing like how cool marketing is. Or you know how we like our job and we get on Instagram and we share. You know, our day in the life where you know somebody who does content, it might not be so easy for them to like explain what they do, to like somebody else or like be that outgoing or be that, I don't know expressive about what they do, but it doesn't make it any less important.
Speaker 1:It doesn't mean we don't need that awareness and giving this opportunity and kind of opening the window to people. This is a. This is huge.
Speaker 9:I'm sorry. Are you saying that my 400,000 spreadsheets that I work every day isn't exciting? It is exciting to people.
Speaker 1:I don't think you guys want to share it, cause you don't think anyone wants to see it, but would somebody else walking around ACPN want to see it?
Speaker 9:Yeah, absolutely it is a, it is fun. I think most of my friends just think I'm a mechanic after however many years of trying to explain what I do, so you're exactly right. But yeah, again, bringing people in, educating them in it and growing this community and this role Like there's. You know, everybody wants to be the next Amazon, but they don't know what it takes to get digital assets to get that information and then selling parts is not like selling a T-shirt.
Speaker 9:You know you need to know more than just the color and the size. So that formal education, that training, that passion, um, it's, it's what we need and a direct route to say if there was, like you know, a college major that said, hey, this is automotive data management, that would be like, could be maybe the goal one day there's a thought northwood, yeah, yeah, yeah and when you look at you know like kind of I I love automotive, but I don't think I want to turn a wrench.
Speaker 7:This would be a great job, right Content catalog manager, to come into the industry, but we're not talking about that. So you have these students that are out there who are in automotive classes, who have a great background in. You know digital marketing and all that. Why aren't we talking about this? You know digital marketing and all that. Why aren't we talking about this?
Speaker 9:Especially the technical side. You can maybe have a kid that is amazing at coding or something and he's just doing it on the side and he has no idea. Well, obviously you know you can turn that into money. But if he has a love for cars and a love for technology, maybe those two things.
Speaker 1:unless you're going to be an engineer, you don't think that that can work together, and it just shows you that you can take two passions and really do something you love. So what would you guys say to somebody who might be listening, who's had an idea for a while and hasn't known what to do with it, or just it's just still sitting in their brain?
Speaker 9:What would you tell them? What would you tell the next, the next year's finalists?
Speaker 7:I would say dig down deep and just just do, because you know you never know what will come of it. You know, I always look at the experiences that I have been afforded in this industry. I would not be here today if I didn't go to Leadership 2.0, if I didn't go to the conferences, if I didn't network with education. The opportunities for anyone in this industry is wide open. We open our arms to any kind of great ideas to actually make us all better. I mean, this is what life is about, and our industry is really a great industry. It's not a dirty job anymore, and so I think we need to take that dirty thought out and kind of shine it up, because we we have a great industry here.
Speaker 9:So I think we talked about it before we went on air, but um, she told you and I that she thought yesterday was the worst pitch she ever gave and here she is sitting away.
Speaker 9:So just if you think that you have a great idea, or you think that you have the basis of a great idea and would love to speak to industry experts to help fine tune it, and even if you think that you're not great at public speaking and you're going to butcher it, you, it doesn't matter, you could be a winner, because at the pitch competition we're not critiquing the pitch skill, we're critiquing the idea and we're falling in love with your passion for the idea, not your ability to public speak, even though we hope that in doing this, you that is something you can also improve on.
Speaker 7:Yeah, yes, improvement, improvement, improvement, nowhere but up Right, exactly.
Speaker 1:Well, that's amazing. So um where can they reach you, sue, about Give Me 10?.
Speaker 7:I have a website. It's called givemetentenorg. If you check it out you know there's a lot of great information. I also have a 501c3. We gave our first scholarship out. I'm really trying to support skilled labor. I'm really trying to bridge that gap between education and industry and grow the next future workforce for this industry. It's a passion of mine, it's a passion of my education partner, Jack Wilson. We travel around, we talk a lot about it and we believe in our message and we're very clear about that. Okay.
Speaker 1:And then Paul, if somebody wants to get into the competition next year, when do you guys open up applications?
Speaker 9:So the fun thing about the ACPN committee is we start planning the next one in like three weeks.
Speaker 7:Okay.
Speaker 9:So, uh, keep an eye on LinkedIn, uh, keep an eye on the ACPN uh monthly newsletter. Um, as soon as things open, you'll see it. And again, my name is Paul Arena. Look out for me, reach out to me and, um, I'll get you the information as it comes as soon as possible.
Speaker 1:All right, believe it or not, guys, we're at 15 minutes Awesome.
Speaker 7:I could have kept going.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys so much for being on. Thank you, jackie. Okay, welcome everybody. We are at another ACPN open mic at AutoCare Connect in Phoenix, arizona, and I have with me ACPN past chair Chelsea Scali. She is the sales director for SMP and she's also a past impact award winner. Welcome, chelsea. Hey, jackie, how are you? I'm good, it's nice to have you on the show. Yes, finally, it was time, for sure. And then we also have Evaristo Garcia, ceo of IDF, who does a lot of research on behalf of the Auto Care Association when it comes to our data, so it's very nice to have you on.
Speaker 13:Thank you, Jackie. Very happy to be here with you and Chelsea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is your second time on Auto Care On Air.
Speaker 13:Yes.
Speaker 1:You did a traction control episode about the Latin America market with Stacey Miller.
Speaker 13:Yes.
Speaker 1:So this is cool. This is going to be kind of an expansion of that, and we're going to be talking about aces and pies in Mexico and Latin America. So why don't you just start off telling the audience a little bit about what it is you do?
Speaker 13:Well, at IDF, we've been researching Latin America for the last 15 years. When we started in 2010, there was a gigantic gap, a lack of data for Latin America that we need desperately in the automotive aftermarket. 15 years later, I'm very happy because we've been working a lot, for example, with the Auto Care Association to research the BCDB you know, the Vehicle Dictionary for the standards and that has helped a lot. We also research VIO Vehicles in Operation Statistics for Mexico and pretty much every market in Latin America, so that keeps us busy.
Speaker 2:So well, every so, and I go way back my first week on the job sat there and watched him actually build out, develop the VIO coverage that he was working on in Mexico at the time. So in working through all of this coverage and the vehicles that you've added to that, I would love you to share kind of with everyone else that work and how your team does that, what it takes to get all of this information that we can then see the output that you guys bring to us in the associations and then maybe talk a little bit about. You know what you do with AutoCare and how you partner with them. But also I would love to know a little bit about the relationships and associations and what that looks like in Mexico as well and Latin America.
Speaker 13:Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Yeah, that's a long question. That's a long question. So VIO I mean VIO here in the US, everybody's used to companies you know, such as Chelsea and S&P Global, that researches VIO by having absolutely every VIN number from the registration authorities. That's exactly how it does not work in Latin America.
Speaker 13:Okay, there are no VIN registrations available, for example, in Mexico, so you have to use multiple data sources. You just need to be comfortable that it's a different methodology. It's a different process. So, for example, in Mexico we analyze new vehicle sales data that has been available in Mexico for over 50 years. There's great archives that you can look at. We also check used cars, see what's going on, the trends of the used cars. We have been building a VIN library on our own, which does not come from the Mexican government, so pretty much it's you know how, when you're repairing a vehicle, you have the do it for me or do it myself. Mexico is a do it myself when it comes to data research. You have to prepare a bunch of libraries so that then you can build the VIO file, and it's just a much longer process than what you are normally used in the US, for example. You were asking a lot of other questions.
Speaker 2:Chelsea. I know I got really excited, just kind of thinking back to like how I've watched this evolve over time. Yes, my other question was kind of really related to the relationships that you have to build down there and other associations. And then what do you bring to the table with AutoCare right, because you partner with them and provide a lot of data. What, if any, fun adventures have you been on lately and kind of walk us through what it is you do for the AutoCare Association?
Speaker 13:Okay. So with the AutoCare Association, you know, about 15 years ago, autocare started expanding the standard beyond Canada and the US. They realized that having the data for Canada, for example, was important for the standard for North America, and Mexico, of course, was part of the NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement that now has changed names. But US, canada, mexico have been working together for many decades and it was very important that there was a standard for Mexico. So the auto care needed to research the vehicle dictionary in Mexico. So one of the questions is well, are the vehicles in Mexico different than the vehicles in the US and Canada? Yeah, I mean in Mexico, for example, mexico different than the vehicles in the US and Canada? Yeah, I mean in Mexico, for example, there's Renault, peugeot, fiat, but there's also 26 Chinese makes, for example. So, yeah, the vehicles in Mexico are different. You have to research the vehicle dictionary for Mexico so that you can communicate which spark plug goes with this Peugeot or what is the shock absorber that feeds this. You know, set or any other brand that we don't even have here. And the same goes for models, right? So we research the BCDB for Mexico and another 27 countries in Latin America, including Central America, the Caribbean and South America.
Speaker 13:And we also translate. We have the AutoCare has about 500,000 words that are the standards databases, the dictionaries that support databases, and translating half a million words from English into Spanish or translating half a million words from English into Portuguese, it's a very, very interesting job because it's not only translating like a book, you are translating a relational database. In some cases it has like dynamic blanks where you know you are going to insert there a part number, you're going to insert there a color or whatever, or a date. So when you're translating it's a very interesting challenge because you know there are words that are not even there. They're just blanks left by AutoCare on that. So we do a lot of translations. So we do a lot of translations.
Speaker 13:And regarding the adventure, well, I think the latest adventure was going to the Automech event in Brazil. That's similar, say, to the Apex show right in Las Vegas. Yeah, and it's a lot of people in Brazil. They go, you know, way overboard. They have beautiful displays. A lot of people in Brazil they go, you know, way overboard, they have beautiful displays, a lot of people. And just speaking with the industry in Brazil was very, very that was a great adventure.
Speaker 1:And you went there with us, right, bill Hamby?
Speaker 13:Bill Hamby was there, jonathan Larson was there, frank from Jonathan's team was there, carolina was there, michael Barrett was there.
Speaker 1:Oh, you had a whole.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was an entourage, it was a party.
Speaker 13:Angela was there. Actually. It was awesome because at some point we have meetings right, like to share with the industry what's Aces and Pies, what are we doing in Brazil, things like that, what's the status of the translations? And, yes, the team that we had there I mean together AutoCare and IDF was a large team and it was awesome because a couple of times we had last minute changes of appointments that were conflicting and we were able to pivot just like that, because the team is very, very capable, of course, very professional, but it was also very numerous. So, yeah, no problem, you want to change the appointment from, you know, this time to that time. It conflicts because we already have another appointment, but you know three people are going to go to that one and four people are going to go to that one Divide and conquer a little bit yeah.
Speaker 13:You know, in the meantime, bill Hamby is like speaking on stage or something like that, so I think it was great. It worked very well.
Speaker 2:So you were talking a little bit about the translation aspect. Yeah, when we were kind of getting set up, I thought it was really just a fun way to kind of explain it. But you're essentially talking about being trilingual in the sense that it's not just translation from Spanish or Portuguese, it's really having the ability to speak aces and pies in that. Talk a little bit about, maybe, the team that you have. I've met Miguel and others on your team. How do they fare with that? Like, are they the aces and pies master that you are as well, or is it really for them? They just know the industry?
Speaker 13:That is a great question. 15 years ago when I started IDF, I live in Michigan. I've been living in Michigan for 20 plus years.
Speaker 2:He's my neighbor. We have three Michiganders. We go to the same coffee shops and grocery stores and all the fun things.
Speaker 13:Chelsea and I live like two miles away from each other in Michigan, so when I started IDF 15 years ago, I was in Michigan and I needed to hire people in Mexico, for example, and obviously nobody wanted to work at IDF Like ID who. Like who and what yeah like you know, we don't know you. It could be a trap, you know.
Speaker 13:You sound suspicious, exactly you know you're going to pay me in dollars from Michigan. No, no, no, this is a trap. So Miguel is, for example you mentioned him, he's my colleague. We used to work together, like 30 years ago. We were analysts at Ford Motor Company in Mexico City. So I've known Miguel, for example, for 30 plus years. We used to have lunch at the Ford Motor Company cafeteria in Mexico City.
Speaker 2:I did not know this, so this is really fun yeah.
Speaker 13:So Miguel and I we would go to the cafeteria every two days and have lunch together, right, he was in marketing and I was in product planning. So Miguel was the first guy that joined the company, like 15 years ago, right. And then, you know, miguel knows everybody in Mexico, I mean, he's so well connected. So I said, miguel, you know we need another person. And then he said, oh, I know the guy, I know Sergio. And I'm like I don't know Sergio. Yeah, he used to work at Ford Credit. And I'm like, oh okay.
Speaker 2:I don't remember.
Speaker 13:So Sergio joined from Ford Credit IDF, I think 12 years ago or 14 years ago. And then, you know, his wife was working at the tax authority in Mexico and she stopped working there after like 20 years, but previous to that she was also at Ford Credit. That's how she met her husband, sergio right. So when she lost her job at the tax authority in Mexico, I asked Sergio, we're going to hire somebody else, sergio, do you know anybody that would be available, that knows anything about the auto industry? He's like oh how about Angelica?
Speaker 1:So all these people knew you weren't a trap. So everybody knew me. It's still a trap.
Speaker 13:Everybody knew me from like 30 years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 13:But what happened is that we started doing this in Brazil, where I was not working at Ford Motor Company in Brazil. Nobody knew me. I literally went into LinkedIn one day and looked for somebody that was a mechanical engineer from Brazil, that had experience, etc. We found my colleague, romeo. Romeo is 60 plus years old. He has worked in General Motors, ford, volkswagen. I mean, he has so much knowledge of the industry and, even though he didn't know me, I sent him a LinkedIn note. He said yeah, I'll work with you and I'm like excellent.
Speaker 1:You must have a good LinkedIn profile. Yes, this is'm like excellent. You must have a good LinkedIn profile. Yes, oh, really Must be premium.
Speaker 13:This is like incredible, right, but what happened is that over the years, we built a team that had like an average age. You know about the average age of the vehicles yes, I'm very familiar. But then there's the staff average age. So at one point we had an average age on the team that was like 57 years old, because everybody we knew was kind of super experienced, right. So lately we have made an effort to hire young people, so now we have like.
Speaker 1:What do you consider young? I'm just curious.
Speaker 2:And we're not going to do an average age on this. Call yeah.
Speaker 13:Okay, again, very simple. The average age of the people in the team was 57 about five years ago, so if you were under 57.
Speaker 1:Okay, if you bring down our average In our company.
Speaker 13:You're considered young, Okay Okay. So that is the kind of company to work for right there you can be 56 and be in Yang yeah, so accidentally.
Speaker 13:You know, we built a team of very overqualified people, yeah, but we have now seriously made an effort. We have now one guy that is like 27 years old. We have one guy I think it's like 33. So we now have a few people that are 20s, 30s, 40s, because now people know about the company, now we have some reputation, et cetera. But it was a period. So, to answer your question, most of the people in the team are super overqualified and they've been in the industry for like 20 years, 30 years, 40 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well qualified for the role.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just don't think I ever realized you were at an OEM world job as well before you got to the aftermarket. I actually knew that one. I did not All the times we've talked.
Speaker 13:Yeah, I actually knew that one. I did not All the times we've talked. Yeah, I worked at Ford for three plus years.
Speaker 1:And then I worked for a market research company from England for about 14 years and nine months. So, believe it or not, guys, we kind of hit our 15 minutes, yeah, wow.
Speaker 13:But before we wrap up, I would love to know from both like what do we?
Speaker 13:hope the key takeaway is for the people listening who want to enter these markets. I think we have had so much fun talking about so many other things that we forgot to talk about aces and pies. Some people ask me, aristo, is there aces in Mexico, is there aces in Brazil? And the answer is yes. I mean aces in Mexico has been alive now for like 15 years. It has become really robust over the last say, seven years or 10 years. So in Mexico now, aces is the standard that everybody uses Down there. The adoption is really really high.
Speaker 13:In Brazil, the ACES is now available at like 97% completeness, so it's like really really close to being perfect and the adoption has started. In Brazil. And in other markets, like you know, colombia or Chile, guatemala the standard is, you know, also working very well. So I think the key takeaway is yeah, there is ACEs in Latin America, there is SPICE. It all has been translated and there is people on the ground promoting these, like you mentioned, miguel in Mexico or Leopoldo in Brazil, in the local language, in the local time zone. And you know you can go have a coffee, like we do in Michigan, but you can have a coffee with Leopoldo in Sao Paulo, for example.
Speaker 1:Somewhere warmer. Yes much warmer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the key takeaways for me and coming into this event, helping build out presentations with Evaristo like we as a council member and a previous chair, like program, is everything to us and who we bring in and how we educate everyone attending the conference. And so we haven't had a year that I've been on the committee, at least that we haven't had him presenting, because it's really crucial for our industry and the attendees at these events to understand that there are resources in those regions. It's not going away. It's going to expand, grow and become essentially a necessary market for you to participate in in order to keep growing your business. So what we would love everyone to know is there are amazing resources like Evaristo and other service providers, that we can walk you through that and have those conversations so that you're feeling really prepared and ready to get into that space and you're not walking into some new market blindly. So we love sharing all the information we can and just helping people get educated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just like one of the many benefits of ACPN. So if anybody wants to learn more or get a hold of you, where do you suggest that they do that?
Speaker 13:I mean, if somebody wants to send me an email, I think that's the easier thing, right, and we already established as well that I use LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, LinkedIn.
Speaker 13:He's premium. Clearly, obviously, I'm not premium.
Speaker 1:You're not. How did you message somebody who you're not connected? Well, you can always send a message. Yeah, if they're private.
Speaker 13:I sent him first an invite to see if he would agree to connect with me and you can send like a short message.
Speaker 2:This isn't a trap. Yeah, exactly, just to say.
Speaker 1:That's how spam starts.
Speaker 13:Exactly. Well, but he didn't decline, which was awesome. So, yeah, you can look for me at LinkedIn and Evaristo Garcia, and if you want to send me an email, the easiest thing is just evaristo at idfactscom. But the other is you can send. For example, if you want to know more about ACEs and PIEs, you go into the website from AutoCare and you can send messages to the technology standards area from AutoCare and if it's for Latin America, they normally resend it to me. If there's like questions, we field questions for AutoCare, like through the. They have something called SendDesk and we respond there in Spanish and in Portuguese, and for detailed questions about Latin America, we also respond through SendDesk from the Outcare Association.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you guys, yes thank you for having us.
Speaker 2:Jackie, chelsea, your voice made it, it's coming back.
Speaker 1:It's kind of coming back as you do this, now that you're getting warmed up. We decided maybe for ACPNers it might make sense to do these at the front end of the Connecting Week.
Speaker 2:Three or four days of conference chatting and I am about ready for a lozenge again after this call is over.
Speaker 1:Everybody's voices are slowly tapering off. Yeah, yeah, thank you guys.
Speaker 13:Yes, Thank you. Thank you so much, Aki. Thank you Chelsea.
Speaker 1:Yes, thanks, okay, welcome back. We have one more ACPN open mic session here at AutoCare Connect in Phoenix, arizona, and I am here with two ACPN Explorer Program scholarship winners. Ava, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try this. Ada Chetas, ada Cheta. I put an F Ada Cheta, ada Cheta. Hola, yeah, I should just have you introduce yourself. She is coming to us from Mexico, so welcome. She is the supplier. Support for Epicor yes, and then Jacob Gresham, our product data specialist for Elite Truck.
Speaker 14:Glad to be here. Yeah, thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 1:It's so cool that you guys won this. I think this is such a cool effort on ACPN's part to kind of bring more people you know to this event and seeing what it's all about. So have you guys heard of Connect before you guys came?
Speaker 6:No clue.
Speaker 8:Yeah, not at all. But I mean we do use AutoCare just because I mean that's the standards that you know that are aligned with a lot of the data I use day to day. So I've heard of auto care but I didn't know there was a whole conference regarding, like all around with um auto care yeah, for acpn specifically.
Speaker 1:Did you know about the conference? Oh, did you know about acpn?
Speaker 6:not at all really well, yes, not necessarily what each session did and all the learning side of it. I did hear a lot of uh. People that send like oh, are you going to ACPN? I'm like what is that? Like no, but they talk about it like it's Disneyland and I think I understand why. Now yeah.
Speaker 8:Yeah, my manager. He actually went to AutoCare Connect back in 2019 and then briefly mentioned ACPN, but I didn't realize, like, how big this thing is. Yeah, it's insane.
Speaker 1:I'm sure it's kind of shocking With all of these open mics. It always seems to come up with the ACPN ones about how passionate they are about the network that they create and you kind of find your people and everybody loves being here. They have a blast this whole week. Really take advantage of the networking yeah.
Speaker 6:I found out about it more in Women of Auto Care.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 6:So I recently I started my connection through that group and in it I ran into Courtney. And she told me what are your pains? And out comes my pains and she goes stop, you need to be going to ACPN. What is that? And so there I saw her almost crying telling me about that how Disneyland is, and I was like well then, give me a bath.
Speaker 1:So I started working towards applying yeah, what was the application, product or process like?
Speaker 8:so it was essentially the biggest application. Like I mean, biggest part of the application was definitely the submission video it was like I think it was like two to five minutes, but that was like the big thing that I had to prep for, just because I've never really done anything like that. Plus also, too, I had one of my coworkers professionally shoot it too. It took two days to shoot it as well.
Speaker 8:And it's kind of saying like why you want to come and what you think it'd do for you, something like that, absolutely kind of saying like why you want to come and what you think could do for you something like that absolutely, and also into like intertwining, like um, just because of like we, because elite trucks we're not a manufacturer, but we're an online retailer. So like we have a pretty unique system uh, what's it called perspective on like data in general too.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I like that they require a video, because it just takes a little bit more effort and it makes sure that the people that really want this are the people getting it and who are going to take advantage of it. Did you do a video?
Speaker 6:no, that's why I'm looking at you, I I totally took it the other way. I'm I. I said let's take the the bull by the horns and my process in right and getting my my recommendation letter and stuff. It was like in a one week span and I and then I saw that connection with the community already I asked um Evaristo from IDF, like can you help me out. I need a recommendation letter. You know expected a paragraph of yeah, bullet points or something like that. This guy wrote a book on eva you know, like oh my god that's amazing and uh, uh.
Speaker 6:So I saw that in it immediately. I, you know, check, check. I have this list, I have the rest of the requirements and I've been recording a lot of videos for school, for school projects, and I was like, oh, I don't want to do that because I constantly do it every week for school. And when I talked to Courtney it was me one-on-one, so I'd rather do a meeting.
Speaker 1:So you could choose if you wanted to do a meeting or a video as.
Speaker 8:I recall I think that was like you could choose either to have like an open discussion with a rep or submit a video.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, yeah, so.
Speaker 6:I went that way and I think I made a good choice for me for the way I work.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's good.
Speaker 6:So what was your favorite part so far?
Speaker 1:I can't this is the hardest question. I swear you can have more than one favorite thing. I'll allow it. I'm feeling really graceful.
Speaker 6:That's good because I connected with so many people that we received data from, and being able to talk to them, get to know them, invoice my concern you know, emails are fun, but one-on-one interactions, I don't know.
Speaker 6:I think I get my point across better one-on-one. That's why I picked that meeting right. But really connecting with them and putting a face to the email address that I've seen for so long, I think that was socially the best part. And out of the conferences, I don't know I feel really inspired by the keynote speakers and the push towards AI. I'm an AI user and advocate. I poke at it. I ask random questions and where do you get this from and how? You know I like to. They say, try to break the system, but no, I'm trying to improve it by playing with it. So the AI sessions and the last discussion and the workshops where you see the actual content creators and all the catalog people talking to the receivers and you know saying why ACEs, why PIs and maybe PACEs Is this a good idea? And actually see how the community is actually maintaining the standards.
Speaker 6:So that was the best part. Kind of eye-opening, yeah, how about you.
Speaker 8:That's good, so really just connecting with folks that work with data day-to-day, because then we can essentially talk about our ups and downs in this world and also they understand what I'm saying. But also too, yeah, the keynotes were really really good. The astronaut one was great yesterday we sent a picture to our work crew back home like we met an astronaut yesterday so um, but that was really cool and just um as well as the use of ai.
Speaker 8:It's just like it's crazy how much that is being used in um in the automotive industry too, plus also, too, is that, um that, since elite truck is an online retailer, um, just how well there's perspective on, obviously, the knowledge I do know using, you know, auto care stand like abiding by the auto care standards, but also seeing how many like thinking in my head Okay, so we have a lot of good manufacturers that are like actually aligned, when some of them are don't, but it's totally fine, cause then we can help. We can actually help them to actually get in line with it.
Speaker 8:But also, too, is looking, I mean learning about the different. Um, let's see, let's see learning about.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to think that's okay uh, we can cut out the thinking. Humans don't think. We don't want people to think. Humans, that's right.
Speaker 8:Take time to think um yeah, getting the manufacturer's point of view on, like how actually manufacturers are supposed to map to different, um, like aces.
Speaker 8:Like the aces one that courtney did was actually really stood out to me because it's like, because I have this thing with with one vehicle manufacturer, I'm like this is such a pain in the rear end trying to like do all this. But then the one that she um, the example that she used in her presentation, I'm like, wow, they're like what the heck are they doing? It's and I understand. I mean I can definitely see the hardships and whatnot too.
Speaker 8:Um, I go through, go through that too and and yeah, just like I said, shaking hands with folks, I mean that's just a big thing for um, for me and also, too, um the um learning session about the e-commerce stuff yesterday. That one was really, really good. Um, just to see, uh, another perspective on another e-commerce company.
Speaker 1:So was it like what you guys expected, or did anything surprise you when you were here?
Speaker 6:I think it went beyond the description and I understand maybe that in your website you can't put everything you know, but the description of the event and then coming to the event, it is by far, very, very different. It's a complete experience.
Speaker 6:It's definitely the show that you want your content creator to come, and I wish like somebody, I was talking to the Mexican content providers that need experience and bring them to something like this where they can put them in a room and they all can voice out their concerns, their pains and work through them, Because I think that in every event in the Mexican market is sales focus and the data people are kind of like in the background and not really there in this event is for those people so definitely we need to nurture their their struggles and help them.
Speaker 6:Let them know that they're not alone in the in the void, in an Island, like, like Joe said, so definitely that his session was wonderful. Joe, um, seeing joe who, joe thomas he, he was kind of got assigned to babysit me.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that they give you a babysitter too. That's nice.
Speaker 6:Yes, yes, do they feed you and um, that was his main job make sure they eat. Make sure they eat. I need one of those. I don't need these things. No, and he did reach out to me like, like you know, these are all events, look through them. What calls out? I'm kind of a geek and research extra on some of them and you know I would have given him like every second of the day.
Speaker 1:But, he also said relax, I haven't heard the word geek much thrown around this week. I hear nerd a lot.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I've heard nerd a lot.
Speaker 1:Is there a difference? It's the same thing, I'm just trying to be nice, but you know, I'm always afraid to say I feel like there's the nerds walking around that like, take pride in it and then there's like am I allowed to say it or is it you can say it?
Speaker 6:and I can't say it.
Speaker 1:Courtney like she's like flies the flag. She's like yeah, we're nerds.
Speaker 4:Let me put up my pants my pants all the way to my waist.
Speaker 6:Yeah, what did that do that, steve Urkel look?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6:I can totally rock that look, but yeah, I think that, uh, I don't know. I have my US side and all of the support that I give to my US providers and they've been speaking the language you know. Walk in, the walk for all this time. So that's great. And now I'm thinking like oh, one day I want to make sure all my Mexican side does that day. I want to make sure all my Mexican side does that, because we feed off each other and most of the manufacturers have a.
Speaker 6:Mexican side to them already and they have a catalog person already. Now just go bring them to coach them to and well, my acquisitions job has a lot to do with that and coaching them and kind of feeding that Lex's collaborate culture into the mexican market so definitely epicur is focusing a lot in that and pushing that, that train of thought, with the mexican manufacturer yeah, this, uh, this conference was definitely bigger than that.
Speaker 8:What I expected, um, to let me really, it's just, you know, being able to collaborate with folks like I said that, um, you know, work with data every day, and actually I was just talking to my co-worker, um, his name is nathan willard, so expect nathan yeah nathan expect to come here next year um well, I was just telling him like because he's um, well, him and I are actually still relatively new.
Speaker 8:Actually, four years on, actually this Saturday, we'll mark four years for me for Elite Truck. Yeah, happy birthday, appreciate it. But the thing is is that we're still relatively new, and so is he, and so this conference is really really good to just learn about you. You know data within the automotive industry, even though we care cater more toward medium duty, heavy duty um applications, but the thing is, is that um learning about all different aspects?
Speaker 9:of the automotive industry.
Speaker 8:Um, I think it's important, because then you get a bird's eye view on everything too, and also um being able to, you know, collaborate with certain folks, and uh, yeah, just learn, learn, learn um it's just it's this. Yeah, it was definitely bigger than I expected, so it's really, really, really cool.
Speaker 1:Well, what are you hoping? If there's anyone listening, uh to this who maybe is thinking about applying, do you guys have any advice?
Speaker 8:for I just I just say do it, because it's just a good opportunity to um like if, like what I just said, I mean I didn't know this was going on, I didn't know how much actually goes into the automotive industry and now I have a pretty good bird's eye view of what's going on, because it's just it's very important to know these and also, too, like um we put like, since this is actually my first auto care connect and our plan at um is to obviously return um in due time but also just get more involved too and as well as, like I encourage even even though we're an e-commerce site, at least you know some. If my vendors are listening, at least they get involved too, because it's a good way to you know, for their data folks to actually collaborate and also learn these. I mean, if needed, learn these standards or even get more involved and get on top of these standards too.
Speaker 8:It's definitely a good thing. Good advice.
Speaker 6:Yeah Well, I would say, take the like I said earlier, take the bullet bite it, don't be shy, good advice. Mind to see what is this data guy talking about.
Speaker 1:Why is he not giving? What do they do all day? Why don't they?
Speaker 6:just send me this XML that I'm asking for in two seconds.
Speaker 6:It's physically. No, they need to be aware of all the struggles and communicate better with their data teams. And don't think, if you think I don't want to apply. And don't think if you think I don't want to apply, I mean I've been in the auto care or in the aftermarket working catalogs for about a year. I'm new, or I've been 10 years. I can't believe I just learned about this. I mean, I've been eight years at Epicor. He's been four, right. So there is no like you're too old in the market, like no, there's always chance for learning. So I will assure you that if you come, even if it's not through a scholarship, you're going to learn. There's so much to learn. Take notes Please take notes.
Speaker 6:I have all these videos I'm going to rewatch because I did not take notes, so learn from my mistake.
Speaker 8:My notebook is filled. I took so many notes and also pictures.
Speaker 6:Oh good, yeah, I have an astronaut picture too, bragging forever. So I don't think I'm a shy person, but I did say like I need some help. Someone needs to take me to this astronaut and ask for a picture because I can't quite do that on myself.
Speaker 1:Tell me an astronaut that's kind of a that would intimidate me too. Yeah right, he's been off of the earth yeah, that's crazy to me. Or out of the earth.
Speaker 6:He probably saw you from above.
Speaker 8:Yeah, he probably was looking down. Oh, there's. Jackie, oh yeah.
Speaker 6:But for the application process. Well, yeah, don't, don't be shy.
Speaker 8:Yeah, don't be shy, jump in it was actually like, I think, part of the application process. It was like, um, you have to submit your resume. And I looked at it I'm like, oh, I haven't done this since I submitted mine when I applied at elite truck.
Speaker 6:So oh yeah, I had to update and circle back and I'm like, what am I doing now?
Speaker 1:like oh okay, yeah, well, it sounds like it was worth it and it was worth the effort and I'm so glad that this was such a good experience for you guys and hopefully we'll see you both next year oh, we'll be back.
Speaker 8:Yes, elite truck will definitely be back awesome and with more people oh good, that's exactly.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure that's exactly what acpn is hoping for when they select people for these things, so it sounds like they selected the right ones, yeah yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:thanks for tuning in to another episode of Auto Care On Air. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast so that you never miss an episode, and don't forget to leave us a rating and review. It helps others discover our show. Auto Care On Air is proud to be a production of the Auto Care Association, dedicated to advancing the auto care industry and supporting professionals like you. To learn more about the association and its initiatives, visit autocareorg.
