Digital Dealer recently had the pleasure of interviewing Ryan Maher, CEO and Founder of BizzyCar. Maher is a third-generation dealer who briefly left the automotive sector entirely before founding BizzyCar in 2018. He did so to build a solution to a problem he saw every day: the antiquated process of notifying and scheduling warranty recalls on vehicles.
Seventy million vehicles on American roads currently have an open recall and Maher wants “BizzyCar to be the reason that number comes down significantly. Not incrementally. Significantly.”
Maher shared why he’s so passionate about recall management, how serving in the Marines has shaped his life and career, and where he sees the world of automotive and fixed operations going in 2026.
Digital Dealer: Can you provide an overview of who you are and what you do?
Ryan Maher: I’m a third-generation car dealer, born and raised in the Midwest. I studied in New England, and after 9/11 I was commissioned as an infantry officer in the Marine Corps, serving across Haiti, Afghanistan, and the Horn of Africa. That experience shaped everything about how I lead and how I think about problems worth solving.
After completing my service, I earned my MBA and moved into media. But the moment that changed my trajectory was watching my wife try to navigate a recall notice for a vehicle she hadn’t owned in five years. The process was broken, confusing, friction-filled, and completely disconnected from the customer. I grew up in this industry. I understood both sides of that equation. And if I couldn’t navigate it easily, most people would have no chance.
BizzyCar was built to close that gap, giving dealers the tools to proactively reach vehicle owners with open recalls, drive them back into the service lane, and turn a compliance obligation into a revenue and retention engine.
Digital Dealer: How did growing up in and around a dealership shape you personally and professionally? Did it influence how you initially approached being a tech startup?
Maher: I started washing cars when I was 12 years old. It wasn’t a romantic entrepreneurial origin story, it was just what you did in our family. You showed up, you worked, and you figured things out. My grandfather built the business, my father carried it forward, and I grew up watching both of them solve problems with whatever they had in front of them. There were no weekly strategy sessions, it was — the lot needs to move, the customer is standing right there, what are we going to do about it?
That instinct to just solve the problem in front of you is honestly the most important thing growing up in that environment gave me. And it shaped BizzyCar in a very real way. I think where it gets interesting is how that background collided with building a tech company. Because the startup world has its own culture — and a lot of it is pretty foreign to a car dealer. There’s a lot of storytelling, a lot of vision decks, and I have enormous respect for that. But I kept anchoring back to asking does this actually work on a dealership floor? Does a service advisor with twelve cars in the lane and a phone ringing off the hook benefit from this? If the answer is no, we’re building the wrong thing.
So in a way, my dealership DNA was both my biggest asset and something I had to be self-aware about. I think dealers trusted us early because they could tell we weren’t outsiders trying to sell them something. We’d lived their problems. And that’s still the foundation everything is built on.
Gaining Experience Outside of Automotive
Digital Dealer: How did your time in the Marines prepare you for where you are today? What are some things you learned there that you still rely on?
Maher: The Marines shaped everything about how I operate. It’s not something I can separate from who I am as a leader and founder.
As an infantry officer, you’re put in situations where the stakes are real, the information is incomplete, and people are counting on you to make the right call anyway.
In the Marines, I learned discipline, focus under pressure, and how to adapt quickly when circumstances change. These are skills that translate directly into business leadership.
Digital Dealer: What initially drew you away from the family business and then what led you back to automotive to found BizzyCar?
Maher: When you grow up inside something, not just adjacent to it, there’s a natural pull to go prove yourself somewhere else. And for me, that pull manifested in two very distinct ways.
The first was the Marine Corps. After 9/11, there was really no question in my mind. That experience didn’t just shape me professionally; it rewired how I see the world. How I see leadership, sacrifice and purpose. You come back from that kind of service and your threshold for what constitutes a real problem shifts considerably.
After the Marine Corps, I got my MBA and worked in media. But the moment that changed everything was when my wife received a recall notice for a vehicle she hadn’t owned in five years. And I watched her try to navigate that process. The confusion. The friction. The complete lack of any system that made sense for a normal person trying to do the right thing and get their car fixed. I know this industry. I grew up in it, I understand the dealer side of this equation and even I found this process maddening. That was the moment. Just seeing an outright broken system that was failing dealers and failing consumers at the same time.
Strong Leadership at BizzyCar
Digital Dealer: What has been the most rewarding part of being at BizzyCar?
Maher: It’s the moment when a dealer calls me to say they just had their best fixed ops month ever. Because that call isn’t really about software or automation or AI. That call is about a person who took a chance, trusted us, and watched it pay off in a way that genuinely changed how they think about their service department. It’s also knowing each recall we are part of helps keep our roads safer.
Digital Dealer: How would you describe your leadership style, and how has it contributed to your team’s success?
Maher: I’d describe it as high expectations and trust. My job is to put the right people in the right seats, make sure they understand where we’re going and why it matters, and then get out of their way. The founders who struggle to scale are often the ones who can’t make that transition. Watching people on this team step up, own their domain, and deliver at the highest level is one of the most rewarding parts of where we are right now.
Digital Dealer: What values and principles drive your organization, and how do you ensure they are reflected in the day-to-day operations and interactions within the company?
Maher: BizzyCar has a set of core values that if you look closely, resemble the Marine Corps. This isn’t an accident. Most high functioning companies have borrowed from the Marines and other elite military units because these institutions have refined their values across 250 years of extreme conditions and have come out on top.
I particularly like the “70% solution”. There are so many times in corporate America where analysis paralysis sets in, and a decision should have been made months ago. At BizzyCar we say a good plan today, aggressively executed, is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
The Future of Automotive
Digital Dealer: Looking at the current trends, where do you see the biggest opportunities for growth in the automotive sector in 2026 and beyond?
Maher: There are a few places I think the opportunity is undeniable. The first is fixed operations broadly. New vehicle margins have been compressing for years and dealers have known for a long time that the front end alone can’t carry the whole business. But I think what’s changed recently is the urgency. Tariffs, inventory volatility, affordability pressures. All of it is pushing dealers to look much harder at service revenue as a strategic priority rather than just a supporting cast. The dealers who have already made that mental shift are pulling away from the ones who haven’t. And the average age of vehicles on American roads keeps climbing, which means the service opportunity only gets larger.
The second is automation that actually reduces workload rather than creates new ones. I sat on a panel at NADA 2026 and the theme that came up over and over again was that dealers are done with technology that requires a dedicated person to manage it. They need solutions that integrate cleanly into what they already have and just work quietly in the background driving outcomes. That’s exactly where we’re focused. Keeping the same hands-off execution model dealers have come to expect from us.
And then mobile service. The consumer expectation around convenience has shifted permanently. People want their vehicle serviced where they are, not where the dealership is. Dealers who figure out how to integrate mobile service intelligently into their operations, not as a gimmick, but as a genuine capacity and retention strategy are going to have a significant competitive advantage. We’re investing heavily there because we think it’s where customer expectations and dealer profitability are going to intersect in a really meaningful way over the next several years.
Digital Dealer: What are some of the technologies or innovations in automotive that excite you the most right now? Are you utilizing any AI tools?
Maher: Honestly, what excites me most is AI that actually disappears into the background and just makes things work better. We’re using it internally to eliminate manual processes and accelerate how fast we move. Things that used to take hours are taking minutes. That’s real.
On the dealer side, what I’m most encouraged by is watching fixed ops finally get serious about technology. For a long time, the service drive was the last place innovation showed up. That’s changing. Dealers are starting to adopt tools that improve the customer experience in ways that feel effortless, automated communication, smarter scheduling, better follow-through. And when you pair that with AI working quietly in the background, you stop losing customers to the cracks.
The Value of Recall Management
Digital Dealer: If a dealer was hesitant to invest in recall management software, how would you ensure that they understand its value?
Maher: If it’s a dealer who simply hasn’t connected the dots yet, I’d get specific to their store. We can look at their DMS and quickly show them how many of their own customers have open recalls sitting unaddressed, how many vehicles came through their service drive in the last 90 days where a recall existed and nobody caught it, and how many lost customers could be walking back through their door today. When a dealer sees their own numbers, the conversation shifts pretty quickly. I’d make sure they understand that recall customers aren’t just recall ROs. They’re reengagement opportunities. They’re people who bought from that store, trusted them once, and drifted. When that visit is handled well, they schedule their next oil change, they ask about tires. Our top performing stores are generating well over six figures monthly from the downstream revenue that recall appointments unlock. I’d say talk to our dealers to see the evidence.
Digital Dealer: What is one thing you wish more people knew about the current state of recalls and fixed operations?
Maher: The state of recalls is a safety issue hiding in plain sight. Seventy million vehicles on American roads right now have open recalls. That number doesn’t get the attention it deserves because the consequences show up quietly, in accidents and failures and tragedies that often never get connected back to an unrepaired recall. That disconnect between the scale of the problem and the public urgency around it is something I think about constantly.
And on the fixed ops side I want to highlight just how much uncaptured revenue is sitting right inside a dealer’s existing customer base. Dealers are spending significant money on marketing, trying to pull in new customers, when some of their best service revenue opportunities are people who already bought from them and simply drifted away. Recalls are the single best reason to re-engage those customers authentically. That’s a fundamentally different interaction than most marketing touchpoints. Customers respond to it differently. And dealers who truly understand that stop thinking about recall management as a compliance obligation and start treating it as one of the most powerful retention tools they have. Those are the dealers winning right now.
Looking Towards the Future
Digital Dealer: What is the most valuable business lesson you’ve learned? Advice or experiences that have stuck with you?
Maher: The most valuable lesson I’ve learned is that the customer always shows you what you need to build.
Early on we learned quickly that it wasn’t enough to solve the dealer’s problem. We had to solve the vehicle owner’s problem at the same time. Those two things have to work together or the whole system falls apart. That meant adapting fast, listening harder, and being willing to throw out assumptions we walked in with.
The dealers who win long term understand this too. They don’t just think about the transaction in front of them, they think about the person behind the wheel and whether that person feels taken care of. That’s what drives retention, trust, and ultimately revenue.
“The moment you stop adapting to the people you serve, you stop being relevant to them. In this business, standing still isn’t a strategy”
Digital Dealer: What are some of your future plans or aspirations, both personally and professionally?
Maher: Personally, I want to look back and know that the work we did here actually mattered beyond the bottom line. That’s not something I take lightly. Seventy million vehicles on American roads right now have open recalls. People are driving around in cars with known safety defects and most of them have no idea. That number should alarm everyone, and frankly it doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
So professionally, the mission is simple even if the execution is hard — I want BizzyCar to be the reason that number comes down significantly. Not incrementally. Significantly. We have the technology, we have the dealer relationships, and we have a model that makes it easy for dealers to act on this at scale. The next chapter is about expanding that reach so that more vehicles get fixed, more families stay safe, and dealers are rewarded for being the ones who made it happen.
The thing I keep coming back to is that dealers are uniquely positioned to solve this problem. They have the relationships, the service bays, and the trust. They just need the right tools and the right partner. Building that at scale — that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.
On the personal front – I don’t want to miss any of my kid’s games or events. It’s so fun watching them get better and grow with sports and activities and I’d rather work a lot of late nights and early mornings to sneak out during the way and see them!
Digital Dealer: Is there anything else you’d like to add or discuss that we haven’t already covered?
Maher: Just that I’m genuinely optimistic about where this industry is headed. Dealers are more serious about fixed ops, more open to technology, and more focused on the customer experience than at any point I can remember. That shift is real and it’s accelerating.
But I’d leave people with this — seventy million vehicles on American roads have open recalls right now. That’s not a statistic I throw around for effect. That’s families driving to school, to work, to the grocery store in vehicles with known safety defects. Dealers have the relationships and the infrastructure to fix that. They just need to treat it like the opportunity it actually is rather than a compliance checkbox.
That’s the work. And we’re not close to done.
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