#155 - What Happens to Your Dealership If You Die w Mark Burkholder

Hello.

Welcome to this episode of the independent dealer podcast. First off, Luke, we definitely want to thank everyone who's been listening to the podcast and the growth. You know, our downloads just keep going up and up and up. We appreciate the reviews and everything else. It's really been fun. Luke and I, we're on our third year and we're going to keep going. Today we have Mr. Mark Burkholder of Peachtree planning. We talk about a lot of great stuff. We're going to talk about kind of like the three Achilles heels of your dealership. What happens if you die, what happens if you get sued, and what happens if you just get old and want to be done. And we're going to talk about all the estate and secession planning and all those things dealers are not smart enough to think about. We don't look ahead. We're just dealing with how many sales today and how many sales this month and how many sales this quarter. Mark, introduce yourself to the dealer community.

Yes. Mark Burkholder and I help independent autodealers.com. we've helped about 14 to 1500 dealers kind of work through those items that Jeff just talked about.

That's great. I tell you one thing that Mark said early on that is just such a great nugget, Jeff. He said planning is efficient. Reacting is expensive. So just keep that in mind when you listen to what Mark says. And this is a great one, guys.

Welcome to the independent dealer podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson, A podcast by dealers for dealers. Here we go.

Yeah. You know, most dealers, they get into this business and what they really want to do, they never really see their exit plan. Their. Their job is pretty much operates in a microscope. They buy as many cars as they can in the day, they sell as many cars as they can in a day, and they wake up and they rinse and repeat it as often as they can six or seven days a week. What they rarely do is look inside of a telescope. And most people, you know, planning is pretty efficient. Reactions are very expensive. And so if you can set up a plan to go, hey, I want to get out of here in x amount of days, whenever your wife says, hey, let's get out of here, whether that's traveling the country or the beach or just leaving the industry, ideally, you got two ways to get out. Either you're going to die, die at your desk, you know that's going to.

Happen, or you're going to.

That's what you do in the car.

That's right. And I got people who Say that where you succession plan, you know, and you can succession plan internally, which is, you know, inheritance, son, daughter, niece, nephew, stuff of that nature, or gm. And ultimately the third way, maybe the least profitable and the most difficult way or the way to get through it is selling your book of business. You know, how do we take our buy here, pay here, book, or our wholesale, whatever that is, sell that, and then capture the most money what we can, and exit the business.

That's so interesting.

Those are the three phases, and you said it.

Yeah, there's basically like the three exits, or what we call like the three Achilles heels of your dealership are you're either gonna get hit by a truck today or catch COVID and croak. You're either going to get sued into oblivion because you did something wrong, or someday you're just going to want to be done right, or you're old and you die, or you want to go hit the beach and drink margaritas. But we don't really think about those, do we? That's a perfect, perfect problem. So what do we got to do? Like, how do we. I guess you'd want to address those in kind of those three phases, right? Mark, help us out. What's the first thing you typically advise a dealer?

Well, when we walk in, the first thing we want to do always, always, always is look at what's the worst case scenario that could happen to you. What's the worst thing that could happen to you and your family?

Probably the worst thing that could happen that's possible.

You know, you have two families, and that's what I tell people all the time. You have a Monday to a Saturday family at your dealership. Those are your family. You spend more time with them than you do your actual family. Then you have your Sunday family. And so what we want to do is protect both of those entities. The first thing we walk in and do goes, we ask them the question, what would happen to these two groups of people if something happened to you? Now there's an answer there. Some people say, mama would get it. Mama would take, we'll sell the assets. I got a buddy who's going to come in and sell stuff. And they're taken care of. Some people say, I don't know, I've never thought about it. And when we ask that question, what would happen to the business if something happened to you? We kind of go in there in the second phase going, do you have the legal documents to help your family mitigate through that? How do we mitigate through it? A lot of people, I mean, I'd say the vast majority of people say, oh, I don't have a will, I don't have ancillary documents. My wife will just get everything. Well, that's not necessarily true. There's many phases to that before she actually gets a dime. So we make sure without. Without ever being in the room. We try to protect the spouse and the children without ever really talking to them. That's our first primary goal, is to protect the family.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, I think, all of us. I mean, that's kind of our number one goal. Right. And I think what makes me think about is the little things. If I were to croak, granted, I have a business partner which would step in and hopefully. So if we're not on the same plane at the same time, then this place would survive. But what happens is it would be crippled for a very long time because they don't know the passwords, they don't know where things are kept, they don't know the codes to things. So does that play into it too? I mean, actually having kind of a go to spot where you have all your information?

You know, it does, Jeff. And that's what we tell people. Listen, they start this business. Let's say you got a guy who started this business 20 years ago and the LLC is under his name, the checking accounts under his name, wife's not on either one. What does that look like? Well, they don't realize that the wife can't just come in and let's get the money out of the checking account and survive. And I tell people the worst thing you can be is sad and broke at the same time. You don't want to be sad and broke at the same time because that facilitates very, very bad decision making. And sometimes the wife or the children go in desperation mode. We need money. And if they don't have life insurance, if they don't have certain parameters set up around their dealership and or their estate, they are sad and broke at the same time. And then panic sets in. What I see a lot of dealers, I know this sounds archaic, but hey, I'm the only one on the llc. I'm the only one on the checking account. I currently have some older guys. They're the only ones on the checking account. Now, there's a lot of money in that checking account. But what they don't realize is if something happens to them, well, now you got to have a bond set up. You got to go to probate. That's got to be probated through in order to get your family the money. And probably the most dangerous stipulation about that, and people just don't understand is in certain states, the wife doesn't necessarily always get everything. There's certain laws in there that the kid may get 25% of that estate, the wife doesn't get all of it if there's no will. And so you may have a child who's addicted to drugs, you may have a child who's not really in the business or who knows, there's, you know, I know everyone's family gets along. We all get along perfectly. Right. But there are those cases that the kids just don't get along with the parents, and all of a sudden they're entitled to 25% of an estate. Well, maybe the, maybe the estate doesn't close because they start fighting mama and mama starts fighting them. I go back to the first thing I said is manning. Planning is pretty efficient. A reaction is pretty catastrophic or expensive.

You know, what's interesting that you brought up here was about the two family. And some of us have a lot of employees that have been with us for a long time. And to make sure you're looking out for them is so important. And, you know, you may say, well, it doesn't matter their employees, but it really does, Mark, and I'm glad you brought that up. So if we were planning to get out of the business and, or if worst case scenario happens, what can we do to ensure that our employees, I mean, we can't say that they're set, but that they, they have a job to make sure they supply for their family for a certain amount of time. What are the steps we can do to protect our work family?

You know, the most efficient thing to do is to set up a succession plan. That's the most efficient thing to do either through buy sell agreements, you know, legal documents that you say you have a partner or someone that you can do, buy sell agreements and they're on your checking account, stuff of that nature. Outside of having a succession plan that's actually documented, it can't just be, hey, I'm going to take this over. That has to be worked through with the family, the lineal family, your wife or your kids. If you want to name a general manager or someone in the business that says, if something happens to me, I want you to take over. When you take over, you're going to pay my family X amount of dollars to remove them from the business. Typically that's set up with a, you know, A key man, A key man life insurance contract, something like that, to give that employee a lump sum of money. You also typically what I found out, working with all the dealers, if you have someone who's really that important, you start to integrate them on your quarterly or yearly meetings with the bank. They're not signing anything, they're not doing anything, but you bring them along just to have the courtship going between them and the bank. So if something ever does happen, the bank's not unfamiliar with who is in place now they're kind of coming in going, hey, you remember me? We've had this relationship for the last year and a half. If the life insurance or if the key man policy is not enough, if the business valuation was a couple million bucks and the life insurance is a million, he may have to go borrow a million dollars. And to have that established relationship is priceless. It really is.

Yeah. And you know, in the buy here, pay here business, it's such a cash intensive business. If you do have someone that's been your general manager for a while, understands the business, it's going to be almost impossible for them to buy your family out and take care of debt. And all this is the key man policy, the only way to do it. And you know, they can be kind of expensive. So what, what's a recommendation there on how you kind of work through that.

You can do different things. You know, another way I've seen is as the book about the book of buy here, pay here as that starts to come in, okay, from the date that that other person, the GM has taken over, basically a line is drawn. Everything that comes in from the past book of business, as it comes in, in the maturation of it gets paid out to the family over time. From this alpha beginning point, now that new dealer starts his per se book of business and everything that comes in off that book of business is paid to the dealer. So you basically have two companies operating inside of one. The new guy opens up, you know, a new ein number or a new, you know, LLC and he starts running that business. But still receiving income from the old book of business, feeding it to the company, feeding it to the family.

I've heard that talked about before and that sounds, it sounds great. Have you seen it in action? Does it really work that well?

Yes, sir. I've actually implemented it. Yeah, With a gentleman in Texas, pretty substantial dealership. I've got that going.

That's wonderful. That's always been in the back of my mind what to do. And that can work well for family Dynamic too. Right. And I come from a third generation car dealer and my grandfather was not in the business we currently have and my dad and I are partners in this business. And I've had people, you know, talk to me about what we do now. We have something in place now, but you know, someone says, well, what you could do is, you know, put all the accounts into a basket and each one of you draw it out, you know, accordingly. And you know, there's all kinds of different ways about it, but I think it all involves having a delinage. I mean, you know, a line in the sand. Is that what we're really looking for, is the line in the sand here?

Well, that's weird because everybody's situation is very unique. And let's say your, your situation, like you, you own a business with your father, so you look at net worth, you know, what is his net worth? What's the estate tax right now? Well, 11.6 million in 2025, that's going to sunset down to, they say 5 million. Okay, so now that comes into play when it comes to estate planning. If you're going to look to receive part of your dealership as a gift, what is the dealership valued at? What is that gift coming from the patriarch down to you, what is it worth? Now the new plan kind of, it's not a political commentary, but it's just a matter of fact, they're looking at losing the step up basis. So are you going to have to pay taxes on what you're going to inherit? At an actual basis, you're going to lose that step up. So whenever we work with somebody, we really look at, okay, if you're going to receive a gift, how much is it worth when you pass it down? What are the tax implications that you and your family are going to have to receive? How are we going to allot for that? You know, in 2025 it's sunset to change. Most people, most car dealers are worth over $5 million. Now the one thing we recommend doing is, hey, listen, be sure you have portability. Portability is you and your wife having a will you now get $5 million per person, $10 million as a cumulative couple. This is in 2026. So what most people don't understand and know and have never thought about, if you own life insurance that actually gets taxed on top of your estate. So life insurance, you know, is supposed to protect families, it's supposed to help families, it's supposed to pass tax free. But if it's not done in the Correct manner, it becomes a taxable event. And so you gotta be really careful. And that's what everybody's kind of an individual market. When you look at that stuff going, look at, you know, your mom and dad, what are you gonna receive? Look at you. What do you want to do to your grandkids? Is gifting strategies a good idea? You know, that's a long answer to a very short question. I hope that helps.

Mark, are there any other clauses or ideas or things that dealers need to know about to make sure they have in there? Some of these would go in their operating agreement with their partner or their spouse or the dealership, and some would go in a will. But any other ideas, like you did mention, like a buy sell agreement, those are probably crucial in these situations and other type of triggers. Anything that you think we need to.

Be aware of, you know. Yeah, Jeff, the biggest thing that I see, and it's. It could be catastrophic.

Hey, guys, sorry to interrupt the podcast real quick. Our sponsor this week is independent dealer podcast guys. So be sure you are, A, sharing this with a friend and B, leaving us a review on Spotify or the Apple Store. Right, Luke?

Yeah. And just. Jeff, it is so important that we. That we get out there right. Dealers need education. So we're not doing this for us. We're doing this to try to help. So if you ever need us, to reach out to us, if you ever need us for anything, we probably know somebody that can help or we can help. So we're here to help, y'.

All.

Huge. And Our email is infoheindependentdealer.com it's in all the show notes. You guys know that we are not vendors. We're not here to sell you anything. We're not trying to pitch a product or some CRM or DMS or marketing strategy or something that's going to fix it all. We are literally just dealers helping dealers. We wanted the education, so we asked the pros, and you guys get to listen in on the conversation. So we're always open to new ideas. If you have anything you specifically want us to cover, recover, go in deeper, just send us a quick email and say, guys, talk to so and so, or, hey, get this dealer on. They're doing this great. And if you are a dealer who is doing something great and you just want to get on and chitchat, we would love to have you on the podcast. We don't want to have to talk to vendors all the time. We would love to talk to other dealers and share their experience. With the world.

And Jeff, we do a Clubhouse thing every once in a while too, right?

Yeah.

This is going to date the episode because Clubhouse probably won't be a thing in another six months. But as of February 2nd, this recording. Yeah. If you have an iOS phone at this point and you're on Clubhouse, we're going to try to do some follow up chats and conversations which is just a fun little 20 group. It's like a miniature 20 group that we can do live weekly. And we've had a couple great get togethers with dealers and we just talk about whatever topic anyone wants to bring up. It's been great motivational stuff. So Luke, should we get back to the episode?

Let's do it.

Yeah. Jeff, the biggest thing that I see and it's, it could be catastrophic, you know, is I would say the majority of business owners, especially car dealers, they love to own other things. Either rental properties, other businesses, lake houses, beach houses. There's other forms of revenue that they're owned. What I see is almost a catastrophic mistake is they own some of those other assets inside of an LLC that owns their business. Now it's very easy that. It's called piercing the corporate veil. It's very easy to pierce that veil. If someone, here's a good example or a dealer owns something just personally. They personally hold a rental property worth 100 grand and they have someone in there paying rent, they slip, fall. Google's a powerful thing. They realize, oh, this guy owns a car dealership, oh, it's worth millions of dollars, I'm going to sue him. And so most dealers, or what I see is they own these rental properties, they own all these other things. They're not set up for litigation and creditor proof as efficiently as they should be. There should be layers of protection. There should be corporate bail set up to where you can't come get the cash cow as easily as most people have it set up. Currently I have a gentleman right now. He owns 250 rental houses, but his car lot produces most of the money. We are now working on a thing, it's called a series LLC where we drop those houses into different LLCs, you know, mitigating the, you know, the creditor protection, basically dropping those in LLCs. That way they can't only sue for what's inside of that specific LLC and not as full 250 allotment or his dealership and stuff of that nature. Yeah, that's probably the biggest thing I.

See that is so important.

Yeah, I think I know Luke Harps on this all the time in the forums and we could talk to this some more because, you know, you discussed like, hey, if you get Covid or if you get hit by a car and you die, what's going on? But now let's talk about, like, you're holding that rental company, all these dealers that are like, oh, I'm going to start renting out cars and I'll just shoot them out there on a tag or I'll just license it in my own name and I'll rent these things out. And it's like, oh, my gosh. Like, I know he comes unglued every time he comments on one of those posts. Speak to us about that, that liability standpoint. Obviously, you mentioned make sure you're holding different entities in separate llc. Don't hold anything in your personal name to the degree that you can. Right. What about like, like limited liabilities? Like, I know as new dealers, you have to personally sign a lot of stuff. Your land, your line of credit, your flooring, and you're vouching. I mean, you're putting out. They can come after your home, they can come after your marital assets. Everything's got to be signed by your wife. Like, any tips for that?

Consult a very good attorney. That's what I would tell you. There's attorneys out there. And I say that almost jokingly. There's a lot of people, oh, my buddy did it. He's an attorney. Well, he may be in a divorce attorney setting up your estate plan. That's. That's not good. That's like asking a football player to throw a pitch in a baseball game because he's an athlete. They're both athletes, but they specialize in something very different. Be very target specific when you go to seek out advice and that nature because you can have a, you know, a family partnership up here that has holdings in it. And then I refer to them as sprinkles almost. They're series LLC that are isolated. And the one thing that we do, it's. It's very efficient when it comes to family dynamics. Let's say you own multiple properties, different entities. What we do set it up in life. So at passing, series one gets to son one, series two goes to daughter one, series three. It's a triggering effect upon your passing or second passing of your spouse. The LLCs are already set up. It makes streamlining of succession planning extremely easy. The entities fall down into these series LLCs. I would say the biggest problem that I see a lot of dealers fall into and it really hurts their heart. And if more so, it hurts mama's heart. It's called a state equalization. If you have a son or a daughter who's running this multimillion dollar business, and then you have a son or daughter who's not, well, how do you leave this multimillion dollar business to this one child? How do you estate equalize the other child? What do they get? How does that look? And pretty much, you know, I've seen people go in and fight over a $25 Walmart lamp like it was, you know, a Ferrari. Death and money do a lot of different things to people. So what we try to do is set up with the patriarch or who's ever leaving the asset in life, have open communications and set those parameters up while they're still living and be able to have discussions. So upon death, it just goes tremendously easier.

And you know, Mark, I've been, and I've been in that situation, just family dynamic. And you know, I feel, and people, I want everybody to understand this. I feel like I built, I built the wagon, right. I'm the one that hauls the money back to the bank. I feel like I built it. But I've got a stepmother, I've got two half sisters. I got all these things that go into this, into this equation that you're talking about. That is one of the hardest things I've ever had to deal with in my life because I had to make people understand that, you know, I understand what's going on here, but I'm the one that kind of, you know, I build the mousetrap.

So.

It'S hard. And I just want everybody out there to understand that that is a really hard thing to deal with, especially when you throw step parents and all this into the mix.

So it is.

Yeah. Make sure that you, that you have somebody like Mark, you know, that that can, can explain it to people. Cause sometimes people don't understand and people don't understand it coming from the person who stands to win the most in this. And so you've got to have somebody else explain it to them. Not. You can't explain it to them because they're not going to. They're not going to listen. They're not going to like it.

And it seems like one thing with that.

Go ahead, Mark.

No, go ahead, Jeff.

It seems like the rudest thing to do is to not have a plan. Right. If you're a dealer and you just think that when you pass, you're going to be like, oh, we'll Just divide everything three ways amongst all the kids. Like you're just setting them up for a fight, right? So have that plan and be like, you know what, guys, things aren't going to be equal when I pass. I'm not going to divide this thing out five ways amongst you. Like this is going to go here. Like you said, this LLC will go to you. You get this LLC and you get this one that has two cars in it. And whatever. The other thing that I always tell my parents and my in laws and I tell my kids is I say don't leave us anything. Spend it all before you die. Your last day out of this earth, unless it's a tragedy and untimed, you need to be spending that last dollar when you pass. Don't leave your kids a dang thing, man. That's my philosophy. Help them start a business when they're young. Help them, like fund them.

Luke, I don't know if I agree.

With that, but my kids are. My kids are going to get a kindly worded note when I pass.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, well, just being straight, one thing that goes into that though is if you can tell me when you're going to pass, I can execute your plan.

Yes, exactly. And the caveat is the untimely death. Sure, if I go out, but yeah, when I get old. And that's what we tell our parents. Live your life. Stop thinking you're going to pass down some money, like go spend it while you're mobile, you know, and you're out and about and do those things.

But one, one council I give to people and this goes to. It's pretty deep and I get that, but it's. We look at the genealogy of your family, okay, Whenever you have today and today they're keeping people alive longer. There's better medicine, there's. There's home care facilities, there's people in your home, nurses. So you look at the genealogy of your family going, how long could you possibly live? Do you have the assets or the allocation of assets to sustain the style of living that you want to live? If not, let's say parents who weren't in the business, parents who have just, they worked at, you know, GE and they have a good, good pension, but it may not be enough. Are you now the son, the daughter, the niece, the nephew, Are you going to have to allocate some of your financial means to help take care of either in laws or parents? And what does that look like? I got some people, hey, my parents are still alive at 100 you know, some people, hey, that I have, you know, my genealogy says I should be gone by 78. So when you, when you have that discussion, hey, I want you to spend your money, I want you to do this. Be sure that, you know, you're kind of looking again in the telescope. What's the genealogy of your tree? What could it be? And how could it negatively impact your children having to take care of you if you haven't saved properly or set up the proper vehicles to take care of yourself?

That's interesting. I think you do have to look at the average age of your ancestors because it does give a perspective. I know. So we've talked about worst case scenario, Mark, best case scenario. How does it differ? What is it? What does it look like? What's the best course of action on that?

Probably the most fun I've had dealing with the best case scenario. I had a patriarch who their third generation in a car dealership. His dad was late 80s. He was essentially writing his dad a check for a lot of money every month. That was kind of his built in annuity buyout plan for his dad. And it was, it was running him. Stressful. He said, you know what if I don't do enough to make this happen? And his children, his couple boys, and he's like, hey, listen, I want them to take over, but I don't want them to live like this. How can we set up vehicles to where I can receive money in my retirement, but they don't have to live this stressful? And this sounds funny. I said, listen, you're going to fund it yourself and here's why. Do you trust that they're going to work as hard as you did in your life? Is their work ethic the same as yours? Unequivocally, the answer is no. Always it always. With the rare exception, whether it is or not, I said, here's right, that's right. I'm gonna get you to fund this retirement plan for yourself and you're gonna execute it in 20 years whenever you're ready to go. And he's like, man, that's fantastic. It takes away the biggest thing I think that people like and enjoy. It takes away the variable. No one likes a variable when it comes to their future, especially financial future. You don't want variable, you want fixed. Whatever that deals with, you want to fix whatever it is. That's probably the best plan that we've executed over and over and over. When you have a lineal descendant who is involved in the business and they want to do it they, hey, man, I love this business I want to do. They've come up washing cars and now they're, they're the manager or, you know, they're the top salesman. Hey, man, in 15 to 18 to 20 years, we're gonna get you to take over this business. And what you're gonna do, Dad's just gonna ride off into the sunset with stuff we're already setting up. And I had one guy go, well, I don't want to have to pay for my own retirement. I said, what do you think 99% of America does? They do.

That makes a lot of sense. Mark, why are you thinking that right now you've got a dealership and you're living on the cash flow of it. And then when you retire, you want to continue to live on the cash flow of it, like, and you want to burden your boy or your successor to continue to milk that cow. Like, if you're not setting aside that money either in a, whatever, whole life, term life, whatever kind of life insurance policy, or even better yet, Luke, a reinsurance that you own, why not be setting that aside now so that when you do exit, you've got that parachute built in that's you're not just expecting.

I just wanted to touch base with Mark on this whole thing is most car dealers don't think like what you just talked about. They think that I'm just gonna, you know, I don't need to fund my dealership. I'm just gonna do it. How hard is it to get someone to understand they need to fund their retirement? How is that a really difficult thing? Because it shouldn't be. But I know car dealers. It's going to be.

Well, I use an analogy going, every other person outside of this dealership use 401ks. That's their own money that's going in there. That's funding their retirement. 403Bs IRAs, they use different financial vehicles to put money aside today to turn the faucet on later in life. That's what everyone does. You're going to do the exact same thing. What we're going to try to get you to do is do it with maybe less restrictions or more financial freedom in order to access those funds. I'm not a huge believer in allocating money to vehicles that I can't go touch again without penalty and taxation of two times. I'm not a huge fan of 401ks just because if you get somebody who's in their 40s or 50s or whatever, and they run into an Emergency, they're taxed twice and they're penalized once. I don't think that's fair. So I like to set up stuff that's kind of more advantageous to the person than the entity is what I kind of have guidelines for.

What are those vehicles that you Recommend Other than 401ks, you know.

Right. You can do a couple things. I mean one, the biggest thing that I like to do it's. And it's, it's not taboo but the way it's structured, I use a modified endowment contract which is a life insurance contract. But it's over funded to the max which means you can flood this thing full of cash with no taxation. You can pull it out with no taxation. The one that's what you know the best things of be your own bank or the rich man's raw. Those are entities that very wealthy people have learned to operate around the tax code in order to remove the variable of the tax in their later years. What I try to do is emulate very wealthy people and I teach dealers how to do that as well. Using that vehicle succession plan is very easy I think. You know, just like Jeff said, is that a whole life policies of different types of policies. Reinsurance company. Fantastic. Nothing wrong with that. Love the reinsurance company. I think what people need to evaluate when you do the reinsurance company is are they going to change the tax rates on how that's pulled out. You know, where is it domiciled? You know, is it in Turks and Caicos? Is it stateside? Is there be sure whenever you're doing it, you're not setting up a red flag. I don't like to, you know, no one likes to deal with the irs. And I want to be sure whenever you set up those things that you do it through the right branches and the right avenues. So you're not a red flag if you ever get called on. Government doesn't like money leaving the country and then coming back at a different tax rate.

So Mark, any other information or advice you can give us in closing here, little tidbits of wisdom for the dealers and then also tell us how we can get a hold of you if dealers want to get more information.

Sure. You know, the biggest tidbit of advice is you have one shot at retirement. That's what most people don't understand. You have one opportunity at retirement. Please don't do this by yourself. There's no way you ever do something the first time and get it right. Seek someone out. I don't care who it is a good estate planner or someone who's got experience. Specifically, I would hire someone experience in the car world because it is such a unique animal and follow the advice of that person who's maybe done it 13, 14, 1500 times because there are landmines that you don't know that's coming. That person knows that it's coming. They've done it. They've done it over and over again. They've failed and scraped their knees so you don't have to. That's the biggest counsel that I would get. You know, I tell people when I speak on stage, I get this comment all the time, I'm gonna spend less money in retirement. I don't need as much money in retirement. And I always laugh at that. I asked my wife, when is the day that you spend the most money? And she's like, Saturday. She goes, we go to Lowe's. We go to Walmart. We go, sure, because you're not working. Retirement is seven. Retirement is seven days of Saturdays. So if you think you're going to spend less money in retirement, you need to plan better. That's the biggest tidbit I would give you.

Hey, and Mark, when dealers share with us how we can get a hold of you, but also it made me think, like, at what size of a dealership? Like, who are we talking about? Maybe help me, because I don't know if I'm big enough to talk to someone like you. Do I have enough assets selling enough cars? Like, do I have enough things going on? Like, help dealers know, like, at what point in our business growth bringing someone.

Like you in, I would do it. If you sell five cars a month, it is your life. It is your retirement. This is your baby. Take care of it. 100%, man. This is. This is my mission field. I love to help people. I don't care if you're a multimillionaire. I don't care if you make 500 bucks a week. I want to help you that way. Everything that you make, you can keep. There's nothing wrong with having a plan because even if you're small, you may one day grow large. And if you have preset some plans up, man, you're going to grow so much more efficiently. I think the why the wise person with wise counsel seeks them out at the beginning, middle, and end phases of your dealership.

I'm just going to piggyback on what Mark just said. My dad did not plan ahead when he was smaller. And luckily when I came in, I was able to join the associations and listen to other dealers who had done some pre planning. So I kind of jumped in, let's say, a little before the middle of our existence, and we were still small enough where I started putting these things in place. And what I discovered was if my dad would have had the time and took the initiative to do that earlier, we would have been so much further ahead. Because as soon as I started putting these things in places to save us taxes, to grow more efficiently, we took off. So Mark is so right. Do it early, get it done right by a professional. With that Mark, how can we reach out to you?

Yes, sir. Two ways. I mean, always by telephone, which is always easy. 205-965-3437 or I go to a website, I help independent autodealers.com I like that website.

That's a great name.

Yeah. So yeah, that's, that's easy. That's the easiest way you can get on there. You can sign up for a meeting. You can see my team, we're in nine different states right now that we go and help dealers at. They're all over the place. But like, again, the website is ihelpindependentautodealealers.com Just one line. Oops, I lost you. That's what you get talking with your hands. Right? Well, thank you, Martin.

Really appreciate you being here today.

Thank you, Luke. Thanks, Jeff. I appreciate it.

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