Today's show features:
- Roger Hendon Jr., General Manager & Operating Partner at Bridgewater Chevrolet
- Michael Cirillo, CEO & Co-founder at ÆTHR
- Dan Collingridge, CTO at ÆTHR
- Italo De Souza, General Manager at Carfive
This episode is brought to you by:
The Presidio Group – Today's episode is brought to you by The Presidio Group, one of the automotive industry's leading buy-sell advisors. In the last few weeks, Presidio released its Q3 2026 M&A report, which includes Presidio's blue sky multiples, and the latest Q3 benchmark data from NCM Associates. Find both, along with dealer sentiment and analysis of the trends shaping automotive retail, in Presidio's new Research & Reports portal at https://thepresidiogroup.com/
ÆTHR – ÆTHR checks, standardizes and enriches every inventory record. Then it streams the same trusted vehicle to every website, platform and AI agent that depends on it. See how the engine works or sign up for a free trial (no credit card required) at https://www.theaethr.ai/
First up, one of those honorable men: Roger Hendon Jr., General Manager and Operating Partner at Bridgewater Chevrolet in New Jersey. He served as an Army Military Police soldier before working his way into dealership leadership, and he wrote the book on that climb, The 1% Seat. He has some strong views on where dealers and their data are headed, too. Stick around.
Then Michael Cirillo and Dan Collingridge, CEO and CTO of ÆTHR, the inventory data company they launched on November 2nd. Their claim: by the time your vehicle record reaches a website, an ad catalog or an AI shopping tool, it has been through so many hand-offs that it's lost accuracy four or five times over. One dealer had only about half his cars showing up on Google and Meta. How many of yours are actually live right now? Stick around.
And to close the show, we're kicking off something new. Every Wednesday, AI Corner: dealers who are building their own tools. Our first is Italo De Souza, owner of CarFive in New Hampshire. An engineer who left ExxonMobil, he spent the last year building software that buys cars at auction on its own. He says it has bought around 240 cars in 75 days and raised his front-end gross by $1,900 a car. So what does it know that his buyer didn't? He'll tell us.
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