#103 - Coming Out Of Crisis with Chris Haus

Hey, guys and gals, welcome to another podcast today, another installment in our Covid series, I guess there, Jeff. But today we have a really good friend of the industry, a good friend of mine, Chris Haas from Haas Auto Sales up in Canfield, Ohio. He's up near Youngstown. I guess a lot of baseball going up there, right?

Yep.

Well, cool. He's gonna talk to us about what's going on during this couple months of coronavirus and how he has been affected and how he's leaned his business down and get it on the right track.

You are listening to the independent dealer podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. Thank you so much for tuning in. Let's do this, Chris.

Jump right into it, man. Tell us a little bit about where you're at, your dealership, how you got into this business.

First of all, I'd like to thank you guys for having me on today. I got. It's been a family business my grandfather started, my dad, and then to me, we've been. We've been doing it for 60 years just in our. In our area here. All used. It's always been used. We're in Canfield, Ohio, just right outside of Cleveland. About an hour outside of Cleveland. We're in between Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

But in Ohio, right?

Yeah, right, in Ohio.

Have you always been in the same location, Chris, or No.

So it's a crazy, crazy story. So my dad had a dealership when I was just graduating high school, and he had actually sold the dealership to a partner that he had. And then we got into the wholesale business and did that for about 10 years. And then we opened up retail again in the location we're at now. In about 2010, I bought everything off my dad and I've been here, same location.

So is it all just retail? No. Buy here, pay here. What's the price cars, y'? All.

So we don't. My dad did buyer payer back in the day. I have not dabbled in it yet. Our price range is typically, you know, we'll sell anything and we'll sell anything from a, you know, typically a $5,000 car would be the cheapest, all the way up to $100,000 car. But we're. Our average run of the mill car is about 17, $18,000. And we're trying to bring that down a little bit, actually.

Very prime customers.

Yeah, we do, yeah. 75% prime, 25% subprime. And we'll use like Santander and Cap One and stuff like that.

So we have a. This is kind of new for us, Jeff, having someone on here with pretty much all prime dealership with some major lenders. So we really need to, to delve into that, I think.

Yeah, yeah, it's so great to see these different business models where Kris is doing such a great job of what he does. And it doesn't have to be cac, it doesn't have to be buy here, pay here. You know, we do cac million ways to freaking. But you're not primary, you're not live or die on credit acceptance and that's.

No, no, we do about, about four or five a month maybe, so, so.

Chris, let's, let's jump into that just for a second before we really get into, to the situation we're dealing with now. How would a dealer if I said, okay, I've been open three years or two years, however long, or maybe I'm just opening and I want to start going after those big time names like Santander and Cap 1. What should a dealer do? How do you get there?

So it's all about relationships. I mean, and you know, some of these banks, you know, I was lucky enough to get grandfathered in like Santander because I don't know if they're signing independents right now. Cap One, we had then they weren't signing Independence and I just, I literally scheduled a phone call on my cell phone to the local rep. So I was at least calling that guy once a month until, till he signed me back up. So it's, it's relationship, it's being persistent and, and just, you know, just, you just keep asking, you know what I mean?

You know, how much does the look and feel of your location matter to whether these national lenders want to talk with you?

So I don't know. So realistically, if you have a nice website, you have nice inventory, they're looking at that. I've had sales reps come in and sales reps have came in before and they've walked in the dealership and they've talked to us for about an hour and they get ready to sign us up and they're like, oh, I didn't realize you were, you're an independent. You know what I mean? So I don't know if it's up to the person that comes in and signed. So I don't know how much they're actually seeing. I mean they do, they do, they will look at your website, online, your inventory and make sure you're in line with what they, they want to finance. Right. But, but yeah, yeah, I think it.

Matters what I mean your actual store, it looks like an. Maybe an old Chrysler Jeep store. Is that right?

It was actually a boat. It was actually a boat dealership at one time.

Okay.

It was Triggs. It was a. Yeah, they did. They sell. They sold boats right out of here.

I didn't even know they had lakes up in Ohio. I thought was too.

Believe it or not. They had like a man made lake right next door. But now it's a Wendy's.

That's so funny.

Yeah, right? Yeah.

What's. So if you're selling cars and actually you and I talk about a week or so ago, if you're selling cars, you know up to $100,000. Give us an example. I mean something is something cool or.

Or I don't know, it's a one off. So I mean I did, I did a Bentley coupe but there was a. It was a locate vehicle for a customer of ours. We do a lot of business with a local grocery store and sell them all their fleets and their regular cars and the one guy wanted a, you know, something a little fancy. But we do classic cars too. Yeah, I mean we dabble in. We dabble in some classic cars and we've always been known for that. We sponsor a lot of local classic car shows and stuff like that. We used to get into even doing some of that mechanically, but it's just not profitable, you know.

Yes, I agree. We do the same thing and it's definitely. I got out of it. My dad has kind of stayed into the.

That's. My dad loves it, but he don't count the hours, you know what I mean?

He's like, I made $10,000 on that car. I said, and you spent 10,000 hours on it. So I don't think that. I don't think that equates. That's fine.

You're better off to buy. Buy a car that's done now than you are to. Than you are to do on yourself.

For sure. For sure. So how many cars you sell them on?

We typically an average. An average month for us would be anywhere from 55 to 60, you know, on average. I mean tax season we could hit 80. Slow months we could do 50, you know.

And that's with about how many salesmen?

Well, we usually run with four sales guys plus my brother in law does our F and I and he also sells as well. And then I'm on the floor too. So it's six guys.

Okay.

You know.

Okay. Yeah. It's always interesting to see the difference in the makeup because Obviously retail takes more manpower than sub sump prime and some, you know what I'm saying? It's always everyone tries to say like oh, how many salesmen do I need to sell X amount of cars? And it's like, well it depends, it depends on what you have them doing. Are they posting pictures? Are they putting up stickers? Are they doing their own F and I. Are you selling to cac? Are you doing in house? Buy here, pay here? Like there's definitely so many factors and what do you have a bdc?

You know, so many percent we use, we use VIN Solutions and we have just a route, you know, for our Internet leads. We don't have like an Internet department. We have two of the more seasoned sales guys and if I need sometimes I'll go into three sales guys. We'll get Internet leads and round robin and then manage them through, you know, through the VIN solutions app. Just make sure everybody's doing what they're supposed to do.

Yeah, we round robin. All of ours like that don't have an in house bdc but you know, it kind of depends on how you're set up. And I think, I think it's pretty typical most, most salespeople where they could say they're gonna decent salesperson, sell 12 to 15amonth and you can't really, you can't really hope that they're gonna sell more than that because that's pretty much the breakdown. How about service department? Do you have a full service apartment?

Yeah, we, we actually have, we have a full service apartment on at this location. And then we recently we. About six, eight months ago we rented a building up the street that has. I did it more for the parking. It's got more frontage right on our main drag here. And I've kind of jumped deeper in. I've always kept commercial vans and stuff like that, but I didn't have a place to put them so I was storing them elsewhere. Now I have them on the main drag. But the building also has a two bay detail shop and a two bay mechanic shop and a nice storage lot in the back. So we got it for a. We got a really good deal on it, so we jumped on that. And then at the location here we have eight racks and we currently have. I'm down because of what's going on. I'm down technicians because of the COVID thing. But we usually run with about five total technicians, you know, between four here and one up the street.

And you do internal recon as well as customer pay work.

So yeah, that's. We do.

We do.

We're a AAA service garage too, so we're certified AAA service garage. We partnered up with AAA about three years ago, and it's been great. I mean, we get, we get, we get tows all the time. And believe it or not, it's really nice. We convert a lot of those to sales. Car sales.

Yeah.

That's interesting.

So, yeah, it's been working out. So we do, we do. We have such a good database with our previous customers. We try to go, we try to kind of market to those people first before spend, you know, advertising dollars to just bring people in off the street.

A lot of repeat referral then.

Yeah.

For service. Yeah. We give two free old. We give two free oil changes with every delivery. And then, you know, about six, seven years ago, they built an O'Reilly's parts store like two doors down from us, which is great because, like, we have our own parts department, but they gave us, we cut a deal with them to where they'll give us. They give us lifetime warranty on brake pads. So we kind of use that as a marketing tool to tell all our customers, you know, you get two free oil changes and you get lifetime on brake pads.

Oh, yeah.

So when you need brake pads or when you need brakes, you're coming back to us. And, and you are. You're essentially selling the labor, which is what you need to do. Right. The brake pads are free, so that's a great deal for retention. It works out really well, you know.

And it's, it's very, very interesting and very. Something people need to understand here that selling, that giving away of the two free oil changes, all that's doing is training your, your customers to shop with you. That's it. And Jeff, I know you're huge on mining that database and doing that. It sounds like Chris really has a handle on that.

Yeah. Get your eyes, get your eyes and hands back on that car and a more frequent basis. Right. It's. The oil change is just a leader because you, you're trying to.

Yeah. Do some repair work once they feel comfortable coming in over and over again for oil changes, it's going to be an automatic.

You're the go to.

Unless you do something to make them mad. Right. You know, and then blow it up.

Yeah.

And within solutions, you're actually able to, you know, my sales guys know when their customers come in for service too. So, you know, I try to tell them to make sure they're. They're talking to them and, you know. Yeah, we don't want them to go anywhere else.

Chris, let's talk a little bit about. You mentioned how this current pandemic has kind of hurt your service department a little bit. Let's get into kind of what, what harm or what damage it's done to your dealership, what you've gone through or what you're going through. And then let's focus a lot on how you plan to kind of springboard out of this thing and what your game plan is for the future so that other dealers can see that and kind of have an idea of, you know, some ideas. So you say you lost a tech or two. I think that may have gone to what he thought was green or past years. But you've also been able to pick up tech, right?

Yeah, yeah, we were, I think, and we talked about this earlier. Unemployment is gonna be higher than it was when this started.

Right?

I mean, that's just a given. You know, some, A lot of companies are realizing they don't need to hire back everybody that they, that they had let go because they're finding ways to do it moving forward. And honestly, with. This is a, it's a week by week thing, right? I mean, everything's changing. I mean, auction prices. We all tune into the governor to listen to what, you know, what he, what change he's gonna make for the day. So, so, you know, so it's, you know, unemployment is gonna, is gonna be a little bit higher, so you should be able to hire back people. And we're just taking a day by day here, really. I mean, it's, it's, you know, we're trying to, you know, I'm thinking that maybe people are going to want a little bit cheaper car. You've got new car incentives coming out, so we're, you know, where we would run with a 17, $18,000 car. I was telling you earlier, I'm trying to buy everything I can buy that I can sell for 14, you know, 13,995. 14. 995. Rates are going to be good. So I can give people an attractive payment, probably even compete with the manufacturer. You know, let's face it, you know, you're going to go buy a new Equinox at 0% for $26,000 when I could sell you an 18 for 16, nine at 3% or 4%. So you got it. You got it. You got to take a look at what you were doing and make sure it's still going to work moving forward. And what we think looking forward is going to be like, you know, because it does change all the time.

That's interesting that new car prices have gotten to be so expensive. I mean even on base cars, I mean it's, you know, I think you'd probably be hard pressed to find a decent car for less than 30 grand. And you really, I mean I think these cars are taking a big haircut here on the, in the last, you know, month and a half, two months you can sell a really good car to someone for 10, $12,000 less and they buy a new one, right?

Yeah, 100%, you know, 100%. That's kind of my take on it moving forward is we're just going to try to try to be most competitive as we can with a lot of the franchises around us and just offer up a good car, you know what I mean and see if they see the value in it, you know. 0%. 0%. But if you're 10 paying 10 grand more for the car, it's not 0%.

Yeah. Do the math. Do you think that as a whole the public will be more price conscious coming out of this? I know coming out of 0809, you take it on the chin. Everybody is, you know, we, everyone was kind of scared. They got smart, you know, they weren't upgrading their car every two years to the what's the newest, nicest thing and do you think this will be similar if it is short lived? Do you think people will be smarter and actually look at that and say you know what, I'm fine, I can buy a one or two year old car with 30,000 miles. I don't need to go get the brand new one.

Absolutely. And this was kind of my concept. So through this whole thing, you know, I don't do, I don't do a lot of subprime. But so what you guys are probably noticing this. Well, you guys are, you do buy your payer. So I'm noticing that some of my subprime banks aren't buying as strong and I don't know if it's because they just don't know where we're going to be in 60 days or if the, or if there's issues with income verification which that's a big issue now obviously. But so they're not buying those people. So what typically happens now is I lose those customers, a percentage of those customers, but then I gain a percentage of customers that would have went and bought a brand new car. So now instead of selling a car to somebody that I may have a large bank fee to and somebody I Can hardly sell back into. I get a customer that is a, you know, 750 credit score that's going to buy a year old car, it's going to buy the warranty, I'm going to get reserved. So I typically pick up a percentage of customers that were better than the ones that maybe I lost, you know, so, so I do agree, I definitely agree through this that you're gonna get, you're gonna get the people that would have went and just bought a brand new car, would have leased a car and they're seeing, you know, you know, I mean, let's face it, I think we're able to buy cars, a couple thousand dollars back, a clean trade now finally, for the first time in what, three years? Yeah, four years.

Well, and that'd be the beauty, the double dip on that is you're also getting that trade in that would have gone to the new car store.

Correct? Correct, Correct, Absolutely.

I think we all saw it back then. We had good people with bad credit. And that's when buy here pay here was really in its heyday, 2010, 2011. Ish for me at least. Good people with bad credit. And the last two or three or four years it's been, you know, kind of the gypsy. So as that whole credit scale kind of shifts down. Exactly to your point. Yeah, we'll lose some subprime banks and some subprime people, but to our benefit, you know, pick up the people on the top end hopefully.

And because even some of those people, that credit's going to get hurt by this, man, they're going to be really good people and you know, and they're going to, you know, hopefully they fall down to mine and Jeff's range just for a little bit.

Yeah. Kris, we'll take all your turn downs.

No, that's true. I mean, that's true. It cycles through.

Hey, Chris, let's talk about, let's talk about what it's. Let's talk about March of 2020 compared to March of 2019. And let's talk about April of 2020 compared to April of 2019. How far off are you? Are you off? What are you doing to, you know, to make it work?

You know, I was way off. You know, March we typically, I think March of March of 19 we did like 75. We did. Now we did like 65 cars and this year we did like 45. April. Last year we did, we had a better April than we did March. It's almost like tax season hit a little bit late. I think we did 60 and we're tracking 45, so we're off. I try not to look. I mean, I look at last year, but I try not to because I'm trying to look at current state. You know, we have a lot less payroll than we did in those two months last year. We furloughed some employees, some. We got rid of that. We're gonna be gone regardless of the COVID and just kind of looking at what I'm spending and what I'm making for the next two months, next three months, just. Just to focus on that, you know. But yeah, we're definitely down. I mean, obviously, I mean, do you.

Feel that net over net, you're going to be the same or better because of the cuts or what do you think?

I don't know yet. I mean, I don't know because May's gonna be that. May is gonna be the, the makeup month because we got the PPP loan. We got it two weeks ago. And April should be okay too. You know, obviously, if I get the paycheck forgiveness and then in May, I have no payroll, essentially, how's me gonna look? You know, we sold. We didn't think I. We. We were trying to hit 25 to 30 cars this month and we're gonna sell 45.

So yeah, I feel.

Got pretty busy. A lot of people, a lot of franchise dealers in my area completely closed down, even though they didn't have to. And then a lot of their third party advertisers were telling me that they went completely dark. You know, so we actually, we didn't go dark. We just negotiated the best deal we could and then we actually spent a little bit more money on social and Google in at the end of March and through April and May. We're going to do it through May too. And our web traffic didn't skip a beat. I mean, our web traffic is actually pacing more than it was year to date last year. Even with what's going on.

That sounds like you. You stole a play out of Jeff's playbook there.

I don't know how long I can ride that joke, Luke. How long can I, how long can I put that, put that against you, Chris, if you know from previous podcasts, Luke cut off all of his advertising.

In April.

And we'll go back and we'll do an episode and we'll have Luke give us a year over year, month over month. Did it change anything for him? Can you shut off your advertising for an entire month and have little to no effect on your web traffic leads?

I can Tell you right now, it didn't have any effect. But we branded for so long. Who knows? Who knows?

So are we wasting our money on advertising? It's probably a whole other episode. But are all of our Facebook ads and everything else?

Tracy Myers told me. Tracy Myers told me this one time, and. And I'll never forget it, he said. This takes some cojones to do, he said. But if you really want to figure out what advertising is working, he said, just start peeling the onion back. Right? So let's say you advertise five different things, peel one thing off and see if it affects. It probably won't. Peel the other one off, see if it affects. It probably won't, he said.

And then if.

If you really got some big ones, just cut it off and see what happens. Nothing might happen. You never know. But it really takes. I mean, you gotta. You gotta be confident to do that. So. So y' all weren't ever close? Ohio was never closed down completely or what?

No, we weren't closed.

Okay, so did you stay open every day?

Yeah, well, yeah, we just cut back to a. Another. To a lower crew.

Okay, that's kind of same in South Carolina, but you've had some decent luck because Pennsylvania closed down completely. Right.

Hey, everybody. Jeff here. Sorry to interrupt the interview, but I wanted to make sure everyone knew about the new and improved theindependentdealer.com website. It is the place to find out what is going on with the podcast. Check out all of our episodes on itunes, our social links. You can also give us your email, and we will add you to our mailing list. So you are the first. First one to know about what is coming up new and exciting here at the podcast. Also, check out our video library. You can also ask us questions, find out more about myself and Luke, and see our calendar of events, places we'll be speaking, where you can catch up with us and meet us in person. So. Theindependentdealer.com and now back to the interview.

Yeah, no, yeah, Pennsylvania did close.

And so that allowed you to sell some cars, probably.

Yeah. Yeah, it did.

Yeah. We had kind of a similar situation here in Utah where Nevada shut down for just a minute or two. And we definitely saw an uptick in leads coming from, you know, other states, which is. Which is a benefit. I mean, if you're on the border.

Of California, you're probably loving it for a little while.

You're on the border too, right, Jeff?

Yeah, yeah. So I was saying Nevada shut down, and so that's where we're only 30 minutes from, you know, hour and a half from Vegas. And we saw quite a, quite an increase in, in some of those.

I didn't know that, that Nevada had shut down all the way.

You know, they didn't show that all.

The way, but I think it was, you know, they all kind of minimized quite a bit.

I got you. Have you seen car. Do you normally sell cars in Nevada?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do it. We'll do just a couple, you know, some subprime people that come up from the little outskirt communities. But, but it definitely an increase. I mean, Chris, I think that's kind of what Luke's driving to. It's a, you know, there are a bunch of winners and losers in this thing and sometimes, you know, you can pick up some of those advantages. You know, there's some silver lining.

Kris, what, what lenders have you seen? Pull back like which ones? Can you name some or you, you want to name any?

I don't. There. It's. There's a mix. You know, there's a mix of them. No, it's, it's not, it's not. I don't think it's any one lender. It's, it's, it's just sometimes it's more per the person, I think. I can't think. I could think of one specifically, but.

In, in general, maybe they've all raised their standards just a hair from right now.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. They're all being cautious, obviously. I mean, you got more people verifying income and, and just making sure that people are, you know, even if they didn't, even if they have better credit, they're still asking them to verify income.

Yeah, I've definitely seen that from cac. They've gotten a lot more particular.

You doing a bunch more CAC there, Jeff?

No, we're still the same amount we try to do, but it seems like our discounts are gotten a little absurd and, you know, they're definitely a lot more particular about income. Just like we are as our buy here pay here. I'm a lot more particular about verifying income and making sure they're at a job where they're still working. For sure.

Yeah.

And that's the beauty of having multiple lenders, Chris. Like you guys have, you know, you got a little cac, you got some Santander, you got some cap one and you know, you can always kind of pivot to whichever one is going to be more active or more aggressive. Right. You know, based on what you got?

What do you see for me? Do you feel that. Well, how are you forecasting? And that's probably something we should talk about. What. How do you forecast during. During this type of crisis?

You know, I think it's a feeling, right? I mean, I think you know what your business should do. And like, like I said, I was way off. We were saying, okay, let's try to do 30 cars in April. We got two people here. And then towards the end of the month it started getting busier, so we brought other, other people in, you know, so I think, you know, we're going to go off of April and say, okay, we were in the middle of COVID in April and now we're going into May. What, you know, can we do 50? You know what I mean? And you take it week by week based on what. What, you know, any what. What your feeling is, you know.

Have you seen your service department fall off a lot?

Yeah, yeah, we did. We did a 50% off labor for the next. For the next two next. Actually all through May, we're gonna do 50 month labor rate. You know, I figure with the PPP loan, I don't have any payroll, so it's.

That's a really good idea, Kris.

We're gonna use it for marketing at the same time and see what we can see, what we can see we can get.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a really interesting idea to use the PPP as an advertising incentive if you're not using it to keep your doors open, which some of us are. But, but yeah, that's. That's killer.

Chris, how do you source your cars?

I use Stockwave. So I go V Auto, stock wave. And I'm always looking at different, you know, just. That's pretty much it. I go, but, you know, years ago we used, I used to go to. A couple years ago, I used to go to every auction. We had a sales manager. And I said, you know what, I'm trying to get the sales manager to do what I want him to do, but he's not listening to me. So, so, and I went through sales managers and, and, and so what I did now is I just kind of, I kind of, you know, I source what I need, I buy. It's really easy. I mean, whatever I sell, I rebuy, you know.

And you, you do that yourself?

Yes.

Okay. And, and you buy, I guess 60 cars a month or so that way?

Yeah, about.

Yeah, about 60.

Are you. Now you said V Auto. Are you a V Auto dealer? Do you buy into the low Price, Quick turn. Is that. Is that your model?

So before the auto, I was. That was always the way I was.

Okay.

I mean, I was always that way, regardless of the V auto part of it. And there's. When you get the auto, you got to be careful because you. You literally. You literally have to be careful because I think the first year we had it, we gave away money, and then you find your sweet spot after that, you know, And. And then once you find your sweet spot and then you seem to make. You can. You can end up making more money for copy that way. That's, you know, so it's. It's. There's. You just got to be very careful.

That's interesting, because you're not the first person I've ever heard that said. At first, you kind of start giving cars away, but it. But I guess it increases your volume enough that you can. If you can hold on long enough, you can make it work. Is that the case?

Yeah, 100%. You need to. You need to. You need to just pay attention to each vehicle. And then realistically, you know, like I said, the first year we lost, we probably lost two, $300 a copy. And then the second year we were up $200 a copy. The biggest thing is you don't have to be the cheapest, especially if you have, like, a good reputation, you know? If you have a good reputation and you're selling yourself as a dealer, you can. You know, you're worth more than that. Right. I mean, I almost think that the way we take care of our customers has to be worth a couple hundred dollars more a copy. Right. So. So don't get sucked into the V auto. Don't get sucked into the V auto. Especially if you've been around for a while and you're a reputable dealer and, you know, you take care of your customers, there's a happy medium, and you gotta find it after a while. I mean, we're on our third year of the auto, and I think we're finally getting it right, you know?

Yeah, but you're. I think you're. I think you're so right. There is that if you have a good reputation, then it may work better than just starting in the business and doing it right.

Right. Yeah, you have to. Yeah, I agree with that 100%.

So you have a big, big F and I department. Y' all do that? Well, it sounds like. Because if you're making small grosses on the front, you've got to be making it up on the back, right?

Yes. Yeah.

That's got to be key, right? That's the whole idea. You're selling the F and I products.

Do you know what your penetration is on. On VSE and Gap?

Yeah. So that's another thing too. We, it's hard like, you know, so that's another thing we struggled with for a while and then finally we figured it out. We changed some pay plans around and we figured it out and we're, we, you know, we're. We got our back end up to about 13 to $1400 a copy, which really helps you in the front end.

Yeah.

Do you mind saying what your front end gross is?

1200.

Okay.

Still respectable. 12 on the front, 5 or 12 on the back. And you're in business, Chris. Actually great idea. I think for future podcasts, Luke, with the YouTube video, we should have the dealers actually take us on a tour of their dealership. So if anyone is watching this on YouTube, Chris did a quick lap around his showroom. And I think that's actually a great idea that we should do moving forward is.

I like that.

Actually take a little tour of the dealership while we're chatting.

You know what I do a lot of times, Jeff, is I pull up their dealership on Google Maps and Google Images and I kind of have. I feel like I'm there. Maybe we should take a little look.

Yeah. So Chris, tell us what is going on. You got a fire there at the dealership. Key us in on that if you can. Everything going okay?

Yeah, everything's pretty good.

Okay.

Right now? Yeah, no, I'm here.

Okay. Literally right now I feel like your dealerships burning down and I just wanted an insight into your management strategy. It's just fun to have an insight into the day to day operations. You know, you got an active shooter situation?

No, I'm good right now.

Okay, good. But you could. It's always fun to. That's the beauty of what we do. I've got the same way. I've got a cell phone in one hand and I'm dealing with a small fire and you do the same thing. And that's the beauty of dealers. The difference in this format and what we do is, I mean we're literally on the front lines. So for you to take 30 minutes out and do this with us is huge because we all got a list of to dos that we got to knock out today.

That is so right. And that's dealers. You know, people don't understand that. Independent dealers, we work in our store.

Right.

And you can see that from how we Know what's going on, right?

Yeah, dude, it's crazy. And that's the thing, like I was telling you earlier before we hopped on, I think, like, you know, through this, bringing people back, I want people to be able to do like we trained one of our lot guys to take photos so that the photo and marketing guy doesn't have to do it all the time. And we talked about, you know, we're a dealership that always has like three lot attendants and three drivers and drivers are kind of standing around. And you know, so I said to myself, I said there's no reason for me not to have a driver that can't wash a car or, you know, because we can't do everything ourself. Right. Or we will be running around.

Yeah.

You know, like the place on fire. Right. And we make bad decisions. Yeah, we make bad decisions when we, when we have to hurry up and make a decision.

So smart. And one thing I realized through this as we lost a salesman, we were already slim and then we got slim. I'm jumping into my CRM, trying to pick up some of the slack and I realized that the whole process is broken. So these things, they expose those cracks and those chinks because you're actually able to step in like you did Chris, you realize that you're not cross training your latex and your porters or your drivers to cover each other's butts. You know, heaven forbid, the virus picks up again and it knocks out half your staff, you know, and you actually physically don't have them there. You know, what are you doing when your service rider is outside? Nobody knows the system, nobody knows what's going on and on text or standards.

Right. I mean, it's a shake up for sure. So, you know, step back and look at your business and you know, through this, I'm sure everybody can, can look at the dealership and say, okay, maybe I wasn't doing that. Right. But it took, it took, you know, it took this to, you know, for me to realize it. Right. So I guess you, I'm not saying question yourself, you know, but you know, moving forward, just make sure that, you know, everybody's got to make sure we're doing what we need to do, you know, because we never thought this was going to happen. Right.

Yeah.

What. So it's, it sounds like you've done pretty well during, during this crisis. Can you give our listeners maybe three things that, that you would recommend they be doing right now?

I, you know, I've kind of always assessed for something like this in my head. So I think like, like listen and, and a lot of things happened that were not all great business decisions for me to be somewhat okay through this. You know what I mean? But just, just, you know, make sure, I don't know, like the, like the, like three things. So three things would be, you know, just, you know, just day to day operations. Hold everybody accountable, you know, and don't get stagnant. You know, make, make sure. You know, I think there's a lot of things in a lot of our businesses that we're okay with, but it's probably not the best thing. Right? That's okay. It's good enough. Or we've all got that employee that yeah, he's good enough, but he's not. You know, it's just, you know, I get. Don't wait. You know what I wait. My dad always told me wait broke the wagon, you know, but you just, you just don't, you just don't wait. You know, make, make decisions, you know, and through this stays lean as you can. But also don't, don't give up on stuff. You know, like, you know, I'm a firm believer spending. Spending money. I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have dropped my advertising because I know that probably wouldn't had an. I would add a. Might had a horrible month. I mean, if I wouldn't have spent a little bit more money on Facebook and Google, I wouldn't have grabbed this pa. You know, there was customers coming in from Pennsylvania and, and just our web traffic was, was excellent just because we didn't turn off, you know, everybody else around us did. That could have been the difference of 20 cars this month, you know, so, so there's a difference between running it tight, running a tight ship and being cheap, right?

Yeah.

You know, you know, don't, don't spend money on advertising if it's not working. So measure what's working and don't be afraid to spend money on what's working, obviously, because that makes no sense to cut that off. Right. Why would you get rid of an ad source if you can prove that it's selling you X amount of cars a month and, and that that X amount of cars is a good number in return, you know, just so many.

Times, and you said it right there that, that dealers don't know what's working because they're not measuring it. You gotta measure it as we always say, Jeff, you gotta measure it to know what's working. And if you're not measuring it, you don't know what's working.

Mm.

Chris, thank you. You're welcome.

Good. Sorry.

No, I was just gonna say thank you so much for your time and, like, the education and the insight into your dealership and how you're running it, the different perspectives in different places in the country. I mean, it's. Seriously, it's been great.

Keep in mind, you know, being in the business as long as I have, I owe it to our. My peers. I mean, guys like you and I listen to the podcast. I talk to you guys on the phone. You know, we all know Dan Real. I talk to Dan Real every other week. Us talking together and things like this podcast bringing us together, the independent Facebook page. This is what makes us what we are. I mean, that's. That's. That's what it is. You know, at the end of the day, you know, that's. There's no better education than being with your peers. You know, having. Having. Getting information from everybody.

Yep. Totally agree.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Chris.

No, no problem. Thank you, guys.

Stay safe.

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