How can I prevent AI from taking over my job?

AI can accomplish much more than humans, and often at a much faster pace. But can it truly replace dealership staff, or is that just fearmongering?

In this episode of Dealer Confidential, host Ilana Shabtay speaks with Zak Branham, Director of Marketing at Harry Brown’s Automotive Group, about how to effectively integrate AI into dealership operations. They explore the importance of training staff to effectively use AI tools, the potential efficiencies AI can bring, and practical strategies for implementing AI in daily tasks. Zach shares his experiences with various AI tools, including ChatGPT, and emphasizes the need for a hands-on approach to AI adoption within organizations.

Here’s what one anonymous dealer had to say:

Dear Ilana,

AI is everywhere in the industry and it’s about time I started seeing what it can do for my dealership. I know I need to train my staff on how to use it in a way that it doesn’t replace them but actually helps them, but where do I start? 

Sincerely,

A Lost Dealer

Ilana and Zak dive into:

• If AI is really here to replace dealership jobs.
• Different ways AI can enhance efficiency. 
• Approaches to helping dealership staff embrace AI for successful implementation. 

As Director of Marketing at Harry Brown’s Automotive Group, Zak Branham focuses on leveraging cutting-edge AI solutions to enhance marketing and brand strategy. Zak is dedicated to improving the car-buying experience for shoppers via market research and innovative digital strategies. 

Resources mentioned:

• Ilana Shabtay
• Zak Branham
• Harry Brown’s
• NotebookLM
• ChatGPT
• Perplexity
• Grok
• Gemini
• VO3
• Fullpath
• Claude

Episode Transcript:

Ilana Shabtay (00:00)

Ilana Shabtay here with Dealer Confidential Podcast where we take hot takes, anonymous hot takes from the industry and talk about them with industry experts. Today we have Zak Branham on with us. Zak, how are you?

Zak Branham (00:12)

I’m doing just fine, it’s early in the morning here and I am waking up.

Ilana Shabtay (00:15)

I know, so he’s waking up, I’m closing out my day. Zak here is Director of Marketing at Harry Brown’s two rooftop GM and Stellantis dealership in Minnesota. He’s really lucky he gets 70 degree weather today. Meanwhile, here in Tel Aviv, we’ve been sweating through 90 degree weather since March. But we have a topic today that I’m excited about because the anonymous hot take is really relevant to some of Zak’s work and some of the stuff that Zak does for fun

on the side just to keep his dealership super efficient. So the anonymous hot take today is that I know I need to train, we got this from a dealer in the south, I know I need to train my staff on how to use AI so it doesn’t replace them, where do I start?

I’ll give the backstory here real quick, Zak, just because since your podcast went viral, Zak made a podcast about one of Fullpath’s solutions through AI, through Notebook, right?

Zak Branham (00:58)

Okay, go for it.

Yeah, NotebookLM. Yeah.

Ilana Shabtay (01:07)

NotebookLM. I played around with it a bit too. I hope it doesn’t replace me one day. No, I’m just kidding. But it sparked a lot of conversation obviously here at Fullpath. We loved it. We thought it was really creative, funny. It was awesome to see that type of stuff. So I reached out to Zak to come on because I feel like you must be playing around with AI. You must be figuring out how your staff can be using it. So where do we start?

Zak Branham (01:27)

Yeah, yeah,

mean, think AI obviously we all know is here, is happening. And so in my role as Director of Marketing, there’s a million use cases for how, you know, what we’re gonna do next. And it seems like every day there’s like a new thing. And so it’s kind of this game of trying to figure out which tools are gonna work, which tools aren’t gonna work and which ones are

just for fun and which ones are actually gonna bring some value to the company. So in my role, I use a lot of different AI tools throughout the day. The main one, I’m a ChatGPT guy, I really do like ChatGPT, I think it does a good job. But Notebook LM has been a huge help to me, mixing it up with Perplexity or Grok or Gemini. I’ve been playing in the

The VO3 just came out this like recently, ⁓ which is unhinged. It’s bizarre. Yeah. So I played around in there a little bit, but only, you know, only it’s more strange right now than it is actually helpful. ⁓ So.

Ilana Shabtay (02:12)

Yeah, wow. Totally unhinged.

Yeah. Yeah,

but like, don’t you find that the conversation…

I guess like the AI wave five, six years ago was all about like, is AI gonna replace me? Is AI gonna replace me? Now it really feels like AI is not gonna replace you, but you’ve gotta know how to use it. Like learn how to prompt ChatGPT so that you can actually use it efficiently. Figure out like what are you doing in your day-to-day operations that’s like so manual that ChatGPT can do for you. Do you feel like you’re having those conversations and thinking about it like that? I know obviously we all use it for fun as well.

Zak Branham (02:33)

Yes.

I would say in my role, I’ve added at least a half FTE to my job, right? Just in using solutions, right? And so I see it as this thing of like, yeah, we have to, we have to have it. Like it has to be a part of the equation going forward. And it’s tough to figure out where to start. You know, we’ve got a hundred employees here and it’s like, you know, hey, everybody just do it. You know, just go for it. I think of it kind of like driving. If I told you tomorrow that,

Ilana Shabtay (03:00)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Zak Branham (03:19)

that in the next 24 months, all the cars are go to stick shift, right? And now they’re all gonna be stick shift cars going forward. And then we said in a meeting, we’re like, hey, a topic in this meeting is just gonna be talking about stick shift cars. I don’t think it’s enough, right? I don’t think it’s enough to just say, hey, it’s just a topic, it’s something we should just discuss. What really needs to happen is that we need to engage it, right? We need to actually do something about it. And especially if I said in the next 24 months, stick shift cars are going to

be able to cut your commute time in half, right? If you could cut my commute time in half on a personal level, I’d be like, yeah, sign me up, right? And so in a lot of ways right now with some of these tools, we’re able to create efficiencies that are crazy, crazy great and helpful. And there are other people that are choosing to just not use it at all or just haven’t adopted it yet. And in that scenario, then we’re gonna leave some people behind.

And it’s not a matter of it’s gonna replace my job, it’s just a matter of I’m just gonna be so much more efficient and as an employer, why wouldn’t I want to employ people that are twice as efficient as other people, right? Why wouldn’t I want people that are thinking that way versus, hey, I’m gonna do it the old way or the old school way, if you will, and then not be as efficient, substantially less efficient.

Ilana Shabtay (04:21)

Right.

Yeah. Okay, so talk to me a little bit about what’s the marketing team structure at Harry Brown’s? Is it a big team, small team?

Zak Branham (04:37)

Yeah, the marketing

team structure is me. I’m the Director of Marketing, right? Yes. And so I sit on our executive team. We’ve got close to 100 employees. so it’s me when it comes to like, what are we doing out in the wild? Yeah. Yes.

Ilana Shabtay (04:49)

That’s great, because you can test.

try

everything without being necessarily dependent on other people. So our marketing team at Fullpath is super mighty but also quite small. It’s not one person but it is definitely smaller than I think the standard. And now things got way more interesting because I’m having these conversations with the team about, how can we basically employ AI? Pick one project or one area where you can implement AI somehow, an AI agent

whatever, however you want to refer to it to make your job more efficient so that you can then focus on something else. So like, I mean, it could be the smallest thing like transcribing this podcast literally, or it could be like mocking up design that we then just brand, which I’m sure I wonder, you know, as a one-man marketing show, do you use AI for design at all?

Zak Branham (05:38)

I have dabbled in it. So what I’ll do, like we have, ⁓ we have, I’ve got like a graphic designer that we will, that we contract out. And so what I’ll do is I’ll use AI and say, Hey, this is what I want to see. ⁓ And then, and then I create a mockup and then I send it over. And it just brings us a little bit closer to the actual thing without creating it. Right. So I do usually. Yeah. So.

Ilana Shabtay (05:41)

I won’t.

Yeah.

Cool.

100%. Do you use ChatGPT for that or a different? ⁓ have you

used Claude?

Zak Branham (06:04)

I haven’t spent a lot of time in Claude and I know everybody

talks about it. I know there’s a lot of different ones out there. It seems like we’re kind of grasping at, know, there’s like a million options. It’s like, ⁓

Ilana Shabtay (06:12)

I know. I

don’t really know. But I’ve heard for design specifically, Claude is really good. I don’t know. I also haven’t used it, but I’ve seen my coworkers use it in the mock-up. And I’ve been really impressed. So it’s potentially good. Yeah, yeah. That’s great. Then do you, especially since you sit on the executive team, does this come up in conversations on the management level and are other departments thinking about how to integrate AI on the dealership level?

Zak Branham (06:22)

Sure. Cool. Cool, I should check that out. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it comes up all the time. ⁓ Traditionally, like I’ve been tasked with in my rock this quarter is to really think about AI and how we can integrate it into our dealership. I’m bringing it up, right? I’m bringing it up traditionally. And so as far as like deployment and what we talked about with this podcast, saying like, hey, what do we do? What’s the first step?

Ilana Shabtay (06:40)

Yeah.

Zak Branham (06:59)

I think the real struggle is we sit in meetings and we go, like, this is really important to us. We should do something about it or we should all learn it. And, and I’ve been in meetings where we talk about AI and we say it’s really, really important. Look at all these different use cases. But the reality is just like a stick shift, right? Like you have to actually get behind the wheel and do it before you can actually realize how it’s valuable to you. And so, what I’ve been doing lately is I’ve been identifying different, different

leaders within our organization sitting with them for 30 minutes, 45 minutes. And, and instead of just saying, Hey, this is really great. say, okay, like I’m sitting next to you. Log into, let’s start with ChatGPT, log into ChatGPT. Okay. I’m just going to sit here while you’re logging in. Okay. Good. All right. You’re in. Right. And then like, okay, all right. Add it to your phone. Okay. Good. It’s on your phone. Okay. Now here’s a couple of use cases for what I do with it. And then, you know, think about it in your role and what, what you, how you could use it. And then right there, normally live, I will say something like,

Ilana Shabtay (07:38)

Yeah.

Zak Branham (07:52)

I’ll ask GPT like, hey, how could, like I’m sitting here with this person. How could this person use ChatGPT. And then it will give a couple of prompts, which is great. Yeah. And it works. It works.

Ilana Shabtay (08:00)

That’s honestly a great place to start. Because then they see how

you’re using it with a prompt, and it’s giving them their next prompt, basically. Genius.

Zak Branham (08:08)

Yes, yes.

So it’s like, I believe that like that one-on-one is really the way that we’re gonna get this thing to the next level as far as a company goes because it’s a little bit overwhelming, to be honest. I mean, it’s not a little bit, it’s a lotta bit overwhelming, you know? And so it’s like, what are we gonna do in order to make this actually consumable? Just in the same in marketing, we talk about, how are we gonna make things consumable for the customer? Like, we gotta think that way for our employees. How are we gonna make things consumable for them?

Ilana Shabtay (08:14)

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Zak Branham (08:32)

that they aren’t overwhelmed with this task of, know this thing’s important, I know it could change my job, I know it’s going to change my job. And all that feeling that comes with it, and like, let’s just talk about how to use it. Let’s just talk about really simply how to use it, and that just looks like just getting behind the wheel and trying it.

Ilana Shabtay (08:48)

Yeah, yeah, I think that’s a great place to start. you think about cost efficiencies, either for marketing or outside marketing, do you already see that it’s making your department more cost efficient, the dealership more cost efficient, or you’re still in the beginning phases and you can’t necessarily quantify that?

Zak Branham (09:04)

Well, it’s sometimes it’s tricky to quantify when you make when you make choices and changes right and ⁓ and then you go well It could have been more expensive or you know or fill in the blank but but I will say that I’m using GPT a lot for for reporting and trying to better understand our just where we’re at as far as dealership goes where we’re at as far as our inventory say that again

Ilana Shabtay (09:09)

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can upload.

Like you’ll upload the reports and have it analyzed, for example. Okay.

Zak Branham (09:31)

Correct, correct, yeah. And

I’ll create an executive summary based off of data that I have, all sorts of different data, right? And in that, then I can get some, I’ll ask for, I’ll prompt for some insights and also some opportunities for us in order to make more money. And so, there have been, I’ll put in a report and it’ll say, change this thing and that thing and increase gross profit by

Ilana Shabtay (09:37)

Great use case. Yeah.

Zak Branham (09:57)

you know, $30,000 this next month, right? And it’s just a matter of just tweaking, you know, hey, the price on these, this type of model needs to increase by $200 and this needs to decrease because we’re looking at, how fast have you turned in the last, you know, little bit of time and it’s analyzing, you know, multiple years worth of data and it’s saying, hey, you know, change 200 bucks and you’ll make an extra $30,000. So stuff.

Ilana Shabtay (10:20)

It’s actually

crazy because in that case you have basically an in-house data analyst that’s able to optimize all your inventory management. I mean, it’s like a dealership’s dream to be able to work GPT like that. Have you tested any of its recommendations? And they work.

Zak Branham (10:25)

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I won’t

give you like the proprietary blend, but I will tell you that, ⁓ yeah, right, yeah. But I’ll tell you that the stuff that I’ve been working on works and it’s been kind of cool to see, yeah.

Ilana Shabtay (10:41)

No, no, no, no, we have to give you a prompt.

That’s awesome.

That’s really cool. That’s really cool to see. So that’s also a great place to start because that’s easy. Dealers are already looking at those reports. Upload them, ask for advice, try to figure out how to optimize wherever it is. Are you using that for marketing reports too? I know that’s inventory management sort of, but are you using it for, I don’t know, performance marketing or PPC?

Zak Branham (11:12)

In part, so we work with different vendors, all sorts of different vendors and partners that have AI and reporting built into them. ⁓ And so oftentimes with like third parties, if I’m working with a specific third party, they’re gonna have their own dashboard already. Now, I can take all those dashboards and put them all together and then create my own proprietary blend of dashboard, if you will. But for right now, what’s offered out there has been pretty…

Ilana Shabtay (11:19)

Right.

Zak Branham (11:36)

pretty decent as far as being able to digest data. So yeah, I haven’t had to pull all that in and make a marketing, I guess, report, if you will.

Ilana Shabtay (11:39)

Yeah.

Yeah,

no, it’s good to hear exactly how you’re doing in your day to day. Last question here, and then I think there’s a lot that people can take away with where to start. Content, content strategy. Again, especially as someone who runs a marketing department with little to no human resources, has it changed the way you’ve looked at and or strategized content?

Zak Branham (12:06)

Definitely. Yeah. So, so one thing that’s really helpful about using any type of AI is that it really understands, it’s, it’s really starting to understand different market segments, right? It understands this type of buyer, that type of buyer, their, their mindset. And so when I’m thinking, critically about, Hey, this is the, this is the ad that I’m going to run. I can then query, ChatGPT or another,

group like that and ask, hey, does this match up with this market segment of people that I’m trying to reach out to? And when I do, yeah, it works really well. Like, it works really well. Hey, I know our target market is this specific person. You make a persona. This is the type of person. And how does that resonate with that persona? Sometimes I’ll say, hey, this is the ad that I created. Now,

Ilana Shabtay (12:34)

Yeah, that’s cool. I haven’t tried it.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Zak Branham (12:53)

take the role of a critic and either a critic or I’ll say like 10 different customers and what’s their sentiment, positive or negative. And it’ll say eight of them are positive, two of them are negative. And then I’ll say, OK, well, what do need to do to change the ad copy in order for it to be positive? And it’ll change it and update it.

Ilana Shabtay (13:12)

Wow, that is smart.

That is so smart. And that was a good tip, like an underlying tip for prompts is always telling ChatGPT like you are now taking on the role of X and then that’s like a really good way to set up a prompt. Interesting, we’re gonna try that. Try it out.

Zak Branham (13:24)

you

Try it out, try it out. The other thing that I

do, that I do every day, which might make me sound crazy is I will, as I put, I use advanced speech on ChatGPT. Have you played around with that before? Okay, so what I’ll do is I’ll turn it on, I’ll leave my headphones on and throughout the day and I’ll start the day by telling AI, hey, these are the things I have to get done for the day. So this is not marketing related, this is just.

Ilana Shabtay (13:34)

Okay.

⁓ Yeah.

Thanks.

Zak Branham (13:52)

life related, right? I’ll say these are the 10, 15 things I gotta get done for the day. I’ll just rattle them off. And then I’ll say something like, tell me which one I should start with. And then it’ll be like, okay, you should start with this one, Zak. I’m like, all right, great, that’s awesome. Yeah, and then I’ll say, okay, I’m gonna go get this done. I’ll be right back. And I pause the speech and then I’ll go get it done and I’ll come back, press the button again and she’ll say, she’ll say, hey, how was getting done? You know, I need to call GM corporate. Hey, how was calling GM corporate? And I’ll say, oh, I got distracted. I actually waited on hold for 20 minutes and I hung up.

Ilana Shabtay (13:52)

Yeah.

You should start with this one, Zak.

Zak Branham (14:20)

Okay, I’ll add it on to later in the day, So she adds it on to later in the day, queries later in the day. By having it on live in the day, sometimes I’ll get distracted throughout the day. But by having it live during the day, it allows me to, if I see an email pop up and it’s something that I need to respond to, but I don’t want to respond at that moment, right? I just say it out loud. say, I just got an email from this person. I need to respond. She said, okay, I’ll add that on. So, so yeah, it’s just kind of essentially an assistant that sits all day long, just waiting, waiting for me to ask.

Ilana Shabtay (14:22)

Thank you.

And then it just, wow, wow.

Zak Branham (14:47)

You know, and, and if it’s something with an email, then it’s really easy because I’ve trained it on like my tone. And so I’ll say, it’s like, you got to email this person. I’ll say, perfect. Draft the email, drafts the email, copy and paste, make sure it looks like me read, read it through, you know, and then I’ll, and then I’ll send it off. And so I can crush 15, 20 tasks really fast because I’ve got this person that’s working with me all day long to make sure I’m doing the best thing.

Ilana Shabtay (15:10)

Yeah, and

you mentioned something else that’s really important, which is training it on your tone. So it makes everything so much easier because it’s already trained on your tone. And then when it does create an email for you, you know, it’s already pretty much close to what you would write yourself. Insane. I would say that I would teach this to my husband, but I’m not going to because I already laugh at him that he’s like in a separate relationship with ChatGPT So, so like if you were talking to ChatGPT all day, I would be like, my God, forget it.

Zak Branham (15:23)

Right, exactly. Yeah.

That’s funny.

My wife does

the same thing. She’s like, hey, this is…

Ilana Shabtay (15:38)

just

sent him it reels all day long of these men falling in love with ChatGPT and walking. They’re so funny and it’s really true. It’s great. And ChatGPT is also really good at giving actual affirmations and being nice. So probably better than most of what we do.

Zak Branham (15:43)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I early on I

said hey like every time you give me any feedback also give me a compliment and that has worked out really well

Ilana Shabtay (16:00)

Exactly.

Of course he’s going to pick ChatGPT over me. Anyway, no, but it’s, I’ll save that one for a little bit later. But anyway, this is awesome. Thank you so much, Zak. And for dealers that are looking for ways to start, I feel like there’s tons of really good, good tips here from Zak specifically on, first of all, how he just runs his life, personal or professional, but also for dealership operations, which is awesome. So thank you, Zak, for joining. And for those who liked this episode, tune in Dealer Confidential Podcast. You can find us in all your favorite streaming

channels, Apple, Spotify, you can go to fullpath.com and find us there. So thanks again, Zak.

Zak Branham (16:35)

Thank you. Take care.