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Automotive spent years patching old systems together and now AI is forcing the industry to confront what should have been rebuilt a long time ago.

Misty Tippets of Podium joins the show with a perspective the industry badly needs: one foot in modern SaaS, the other in the reality of retail automotive. With a background in agency work, Salesforce implementations, and enterprise tech, she brings an outsider’s clarity to one of the biggest questions dealers are facing right now: why does adopting new technology still feel so messy, expensive, and fragmented?

This conversation quickly moves past the usual AI hype and gets to the deeper issue underneath it: infrastructure. Misty breaks down why bolt-on AI tools are already falling behind, why month-to-month vendor culture may be doing more harm than good, and why fixed ops could be the biggest overlooked opportunity in the market right now. It’s a sharp conversation about contracts, data, operational discipline, and the narrow window dealers still have to leap back to the front of the pack.

Timestamped Takeaways

0:00 AI Moved Fast Dealers Went From “Maybe” to “We Have No Choice”

2:22 Why Misty’s Tech Background Made Automotive’s Systems Gap Impossible to Ignore

4:24 What Salesforce Implementations Reveal About How Underbuilt Auto Tech Really Is

6:01 Dealers Don’t Actually Want Salesforce, They Want Modern Systems That Finally Fit 2026

7:35 Automotive May Be Years Behind on the Data Foundation It Needs

9:47 The Bolt-On AI Era Is Ending Faster Than Most Vendors Want to Admit

12:04 COVID Gave Other Industries a Reason to Rebuild Automotive Mostly Kept Selling Cars

13:49 Fast Onboarding Sounds Great But Some Tools Should Take 90 Days to Get Right

14:39 Month-to-Month Contracts Might Feel Safe But They Can Quietly Kill Real Partnership

18:46 The Vendors Winning Trust Aren’t Selling from a Distance They’re Sitting Inside Dealerships

20:20 This Isn’t Really an AI Conversation It’s a Technology Reckoning the Industry Delayed Too Long

21:23 The Biggest AI Opportunity in Auto May Be Fixed Ops Not the Sales Floor

Connect with Misty Tippets at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mistytippets/

Learn more about Podium at https://www.podium.com/

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