Bill Cariss: How to Grow Your Dealership Without Hiring More

Podcast
Written By

Bill Cariss of Holman Ventures is helping shape what comes next in automotive technology. With investments spanning AI, robotics, and emerging technologies, he's seeing firsthand which innovations are gaining traction, where investors are placing their bets, and what dealerships need to prepare for before the industry catches up.

What happens when your competitors can grow their service business without adding more employees?

That future is already taking shape. Holman Robotics is putting autonomous robots to work moving parts through dealership service departments, and a major publicly traded dealer group has already selected the company as its robotics supplier.

But robotics is only part of a much bigger shift.

Joining David Spisak at the Presidio Group's Automotive Technology Summit, Bill reveals why the next competitive advantage in automotive may have less to do with adopting more technology and more to do with how intelligently dealers connect their systems, protect their data, and deploy AI.

In this episode:

  • Why robots are already running parts from the back counter to the service bay, and what that means for your fixed ops team

  • How “physical AI” lets a store grow with the people it already has instead of hiring more

  • The one question investors now ask that sinks most tech pitches

  • Why your dealership’s data may be the most valuable asset you’re handing out for free

  • The hard call that turned VinQ into an AI-native company, and why most vendors won’t make it

  • Why dealers are done signing up for a 17th login, and what they want instead

The biggest risk may not be that your dealership is slow to adopt AI. It may be that you're investing in technology without understanding where the real competitive advantage is moving.

And Bill's perspective raises an important question: When the technology becomes available to everyone, what will separate the dealerships that pull ahead from those left trying to catch up?

Connect with David Spisak to Achieve Exponential Growth:

Like this show? Please leave us a rating and review where you're listening right now!

Next

John Ellis: Buying Used Cars Is About to Get Harder for Dealers