Careful and particular are some of the words that can describe Ryan Hartigan’s approach to business.

The 27-year-old Dartmouth native founded his company Ordermotive, an automotive marketing company, while working as a market consultant at a local dealership. It was there that he saw flaws in the automotive industry, particularly with how dealerships generate customer leads.

In the automotive industry, car dealerships often generate clients and sales through third-party lead generators. This process, according to Hartigan, does not have the customer's best financial interest at heart, so four months ago Hartigan started offering market training for car dealerships.

“I wanted to change the process of car sales by basically cutting out the lead providers, who are wreaking havoc on this space,” said Hartigan during an interview. “They tell the consumer that they can avoid the dealership, but customer information is just randomly sold. I think they’re destroying the economy and creating another housing bubble in the automotive space.”

He says because so much of the leads are automated and marketing information is sold to the highest bidder, customers don't receive best deal, and dealerships sign on to riskier payback agreements.

“A finance manager can work the system and find approval for someone who should not be approved.”

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Hartigan, whose family is also in the automotive industry, says this can be avoided by bringing marketing back in-house and using the digital marketing space. With Ordermotive, Hartigan gives the dealerships back the ability to generate leads and eliminates the need for third party providers.

Like many in the startup community, this is not Hartigan’s first business venture. His past venture, BackDrop, was a software platform for DJs. After that company sank, Hartigan began doing business in a way that goes against some of the conventions in the startup community.

He sought no external funding and is generating profit from his service, all on his own. Of course, Hartigan has plans to grow his team but for now, Ordermotive is a one-man show.

“I’m in a good position to scale,” said Hartigan. “I’ve been very strategic about this.”

Hartigan’s journey through the startup world has left him critical of some aspects of the community. He says the mentality around pitching can create business ideas that often lead nowhere.

“There’s something wrong with pitching culture,” said Hartigan. “A lot of companies build a product before they can actually sell it.”

Since offering Ordermotive’s marketing service to dealerships across Canada, Hartigan says he has taken on around two clients a month.

Hartigan plans to hire a developer for a software component of the company but for now, he is focused on ensuring the satisfaction of his clients and maintaining sales. Currently, Ordermotive serves dealerships in Halifax, Calgary and Toronto.

“The dealer partners I have right now are having great results. One client generated 100 leads last month because they took Facebook leads in-house.”