Building Car Dealership Guy with Yossi Levi

The Peel with Turner Novak

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Yossi Levy is the visionary behind the Twitter account Car Dealership Guy and media company.

Yossi shares his incredible story: transforming a small family car lot into a $28 million dollar powerhouse, founding venture-backed Gettacar and growing it to $90 million in revenue before returning the capital to investors, and then pivoting to build a thriving B2B automotive media empire. Yossi shares the innovative marketing strategies, the hard lessons learned from chasing product-market fit, and the playbook to building a lean, scalable B2B media machine.

Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(07:26) Helping at his dad’s used car lot

(11:22) How car dealerships make money

(14:32) $28m revenue with Facebook ads

(17:48) Putting gifts in customer trunks and filming it

(22:58) Starting Gettacar to sell cars online

(25:04) When VC pulled his first term sheet

(31:08) Recruiting full-time hires with part-time consulting gigs

(34:45) Personally guaranteeing the debt used to finance vehicles

(36:50) Helping subprime consumers buy cars online

(39:24) How 2021 tricked them into thinking they had a sustainable business

(41:57) Why you can’t rush Product Market Fit

(42:23) Pivoting Gettacar to a profitable, PE-backed business before ultimately winding it down

(47:22) Starting an anonymous Twitter to share insights from his day-to-day

(50:08) Turning Car Dealership Guy into a media business

(53:38) Doxing himself with a 13-minute documentary

(58:29) Why you have to consume to be a good creator

(1:00:04) Screensharing CDGs content schedule

(1:02:59) Why every employee needs to generate content or revenue

(1:06:53) How he built the #1 automotive podcast

(1:09:27) Creating a car / auto influencer agency

(1:11:34) Building a B2B automotive ad network

(1:14:50) Evolving into a holding company

(1:20:27) Importance of moving fast

(1:23:34) Why people actually like sponsored content

(1:28:08) Wishing he pivoted to B2B faster

More on Car Dealership Guy

https://www.dealershipguy.com/

Referenced:

• Who the F*ck is Car Dealership Guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wTsAez_nMs

• Russ Flips Whips: https://russ.dealershipguy.com/

• Freight Waves’ Craig Fuller on The Peel: https://youtu.be/oPPqO8eBq2M

• Epic Gardening’s Kevin Espiritu on The Peel: https://youtu.be/FefGL-qPzDo

Where to find Yossi:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GuyDealership

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CarDealershipGuy

Where to find Turner:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/

Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/