#161 - Rant: Gimmie Your Stimi, Work-Life Balance & Jeffs Suprise

Foreign.

Welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. A podcast by dealers for dealers. Here we go.

Hello guys and gals. Welcome to this episode of the Independent Dealer Podcast. Luke, we are knee deep in March, just trudging forward. Tax time on top of stimulus time on top of you wearing a green.

Bowler hat and a tax on the tax time leprechaun. Yeah, bring it. Part of the goal at the end of March.

So thinking that you're covered over there, what's going on, man? Let's, let me, let me bounce a couple ideas off you. I've got some stuff on my mind, some stuff that's been in the post and the forums. You seeing the stimulus money?

Seen something? There's the collections yesterday out of this world. I'm sure it's a mixture of tax money and stimulus and everything that's in the economy. I just feel like inflation's right behind us though. Oh gosh, there's so much cash out there. Cars are hard to get data, everything.

You said so many things there that interest me. So if you're a buy here, pay here dealer and you have a portfolio of car notes, inflation is good for us. Right. In that note in that situation because the values of those cars are going to stay inflated for a long time. Well, the value of all assets are going up.

So it's, I think inflation is good for our current portfolio. Right.

It all sense to me.

Right. Because those cars in theory go up in value. Right.

And, or they hold their value longer, let's say.

Sure, sure. And people, people's money should go further. Right. During inflation if they already locked in, listen to me. If they're currently locked into a payment. So for the next 48 months or 36 months, if they still have this payment and inflation goes up their payments actually less than what it would be if they bought a new car. So I think for our current, so for our current portfolio. Yes, for adding cars to the portfolio, I think there's, I think there's an issue there. It's going to be more cash out of our pocket. There's going to be higher payment, you know, across the board. And we've already seen that in the last eight months. We've seen that jump.

Absolutely. I mean my, I remember back in the day I used to have a $220 payment, know, monthly, you know, on my $5,000 A to B starter car. And now, I mean my starter car is $7,000 and it's a $300 a month minimum payment. And I mean, that's only in the last two or three years that I just. There just is not. There is not a cheap car payment anymore.

Jeff. I remember when I started this, our highest price, Carl, was 89.95, and we may have had two, and that was like very rare. And it was a Suburban. And, you know, I got $2,500 down. Well, now if I have a car from 10,000 or less, that car sells the day it's put on the lot because it's such a need for that lower end car, lower, not in car, and say that lower dollar, lower dollar amount car. So it's. It's weird how that's just really adjusted. So, yeah, inflation's here. It's already happened in our side, I believe.

And so the other thing you said was collections. So those of you with the buy here, pay here, lease here, pay your portfolios. I mean, I know that I'm looking at my payoff stack from just the last couple of days, and I've got five or six payoffs in the last two days, you know, and luckily we sold five or six in the last two days also. But, man, I got people coming in, you know, all day long they're calling, hey, I want to pay off my car. I got $3,000. I got this. I got this. Like, are people wanting to get out of debt or is that just. Do you think I'm going to add just as many as I pay off?

So we've had 11 payoffs already this month, and we're through 17 days, which is very, very high. I mean, not extremely high, but we've seen the last two days payoffs come in, and we've already had calls this morning or more payoffs. I'm a little different position than somebody here. Pay your source. Because a lot of times what will happen with us is people go get refinanced at a better rate. And we see that a small percentage of our portfolio do that each month, which is great. I mean, people getting better credit. That's what I want. It makes for good customers in the long run because every once in a while they have another snafu and they're back with us. But I've seen that. We've seen that a lot this month, and that's a good thing. But I do think people want to get out of debt, Jeff, because the one thing I have been reading is during this pandemic, people's savings have gone way up. And for our customers with poor credit, to get out of debt and to get Better credit and to have savings, I think does everybody good, honestly.

Yeah, yeah, you've definitely noticed that. And I mean, yesterday, our tax max stuff, you guys know, I've been doing it. It's been great. I printed off seven more checks yesterday. A couple of them were stimulus checks where I guess for a couple of days, the government sent stimulus checks to tax max instead of straight to the customers. And that's been fixed. But I had one customer come in. They had their federal, their state, and their stimulus. I cut them three checks totaling about 11 grand.

Wow.

To one family with, I think they maybe had four or five kids. Right. But I'm just like, hey, you guys want a second car? Do you want a third car? Like you want to pay some payments.

Ahead, but you just don't pay off to pay off your.

But it's crazy, man. It is absolutely crazy. So you're seeing the money on the ground. I think everyone's seeing it. You know, we're going to record some spots today for some, you know, try to be tactful and letting people know. We're going to kind of stimulate their trade in is what I'm calling it. We're stimulating their trade in. I'm doing $1,400 over appraised value for your. For your car, you know, trying to play off the stimulus number. And I also want. I want your trade in. I need. I need the 2 to $3,000 trade ins because I'm just not finding them anywhere else.

That's interesting. You know, I heard you say that yesterday on Clubhouse.

And.

At first I didn't think about why you were doing it. I was like, what in the world? Are you trying to get more customers through your lot? Because we don't have a problem with getting the customers here. But then when you said, hey, then when I said that and you said, well, I really want their trades. Well, that makes sense. I think it's probably a good time to try to get people out of their older cars and. Because if you can't find inventory and you can play on the $1,400, I.

Think sell a car, get their trade. And here's the bottom line. We're paying $1,400 over MMR. Anyways, guys, you know, if you're going to the auction, it's the same argument we've had over and over and over. Step up on the private party, because my mechanics can actually put it on the rack and look at it. They know exactly what it needs and doesn't need. So, sure, I can Kind of undervalue the trade in, kick it up by $1,400 and still be in a great position.

And just make sure you're not undervaluing trades, because that will lead to at least several things. Jeff and I said this, I think last week. Maybe I'll go over it again. But if you do that, you're hurting your customer, you're probably hurting your sales staff because you're missing trades, and you may get a bad reputation for doing that. So make sure out there people don't try to steal trades. Trades should be calculated by mmr, or book value, however you do it. And make sure you're paying the right amount, because if you get the reputation of not, then you're not going to get the cars in the future.

Yeah, and that's. That's the number one thing. Those are the cars that, guess what, when they do trade them in at the other dealership, they ain't showing up at the auction, you know, saying, I think we all know those are the ones we try to get at. Do you think book values are going to adjust ever? Or is this a blip that we are buying cars deeper and have just got to deal with it?

So, J.D. power. Is that J.D. power values? Is that what we're supposed to say now, Jim?

I think so. I don't know.

Whatever. Okay, so J.D. power values are based off of sold used car units at franchise stores. Did you know that?

No. And they don't bring in auction numbers.

No, sir.

I thought we had them at the podcast a year ago and they'd mentioned something about that.

I don't think so.

Okay.

They may use that for maybe their trade day, but I don't think so. I don't think anymore gives them that number. I don't think Manheim gives them that number. I don't think Black book. I think there's a. I think there's a clear definition. Definition.

What does that mean?

So book values are always going to be behind. I think they update their book values monthly, maybe every two weeks, you know, quickest. So what's going to happen is you're going to. There's going to be a delay. But also what happens is, what are the. What's the one thing that new car stores are not doing with front end gross? Right. On used cars, Nothing. They're not making it. Okay. So you got to take all this into account. So if they're paying essentially retail at the auction, they're getting retail at their dealership, and all they're making is back End profit. Well, that book value is never going to, that book value is never going to adjust. So the only way to, for it to adjust is to make franchise stores make front end gross. Well, we don't, we don't have the ability to do that. And they're not smart enough, we're not, we're not smart enough to figure out how to make that happen. So are they going to adjust? Well, they got to adjust a little bit. But to see that big, big jump where you can get that $3,000 spread, those days may be gone until something happens to that back end profit source that so many new car stores have.

And that's because you think that not only does the increased demand put the extra squeeze on it, but just basically the overall philosophy of new car and the V auto type mentality of I don't, I want to make a couple hundred bucks on the front end and then I'm going to make a thousand or two thousand on the back end.

So let's, let's think about because I.

Want to be the lowest price within 500 miles.

That's right. It's all VI Auto. It's all Cargurus. They've destroyed the front end gross. And honestly, franchise stores have done it too. They don't make any money on new, on new cars either. So as long as they still have that mentality, it's going to be hard.

Well, they might make it through the addendum, right?

That's it. Yeah, they're gonna make it through the addendum. They're gonna have boss leaders and they're gonna, they have opportunity to make so much back in profit. Well, for one, if, if they're not paying, if they're not having to pay a salesperson 25% of gross. Cause the gross is zero. They're playing flats and then they're making back end money where you got probably a bunch of F and I people making some money. But you're making, you know, your salespeople poor. So it's, it's advantageous in my opinion for them not to make front end gross.

Yeah. Lower.

And they're so used, and they're so used to it on the, the franchise side because all they're doing, the franchise sides is hitting rebates. They've got to sell a certain amount of cars, hit rebates because that's where they're making their money.

Interesting. Where you have the advantage as the independent, especially the buy here, pay here, lease here, pay here. You know, any detail is really irrelevant for the Most part, if you're providing a good quality car, you know, an interesting thing, too. Let me transition to this. There was such an interesting post a couple weeks ago. I think it was Brad. I won't say his last name, but he had mentioned something about, you know, the early days of his dealership. He's got a wife, fiance that doesn't quite understand his dedication to the car lot. And when he's, you know, consumed for a couple extra hours a lot or doesn't come home or come homes late, that she's not quite understanding that. And getting the input of some more seasoned dealers as to how do you handle that work, life balance, mystery equation that we all, you know, and as car dealers, we live this, you know, it's who we are. We eat, sleep, drink it. And I know I've fallen victim to this. I mean, my first marriage was a, was a, you know, partially a factor, you know, was my dedication to my car lot. Where do you sit on that, Luke? I mean, I know you work with your wife Alexis, probably on the other.

Side of that camera just right over there.

So be careful what you say.

No, this is, There is no. So there's no easy solution to this, Jeff. Okay? There's no, you know, there's no right way or wrong way because some, some men treat their wife differently. Some, some wives have a different opinion on, on what's more important. So, you know, I think communication, like you said when we were off air talking about this communication is so key to making it work. Your spouse, wife or husband does have to understand that you being at work is vital to the success of the family. Because if you, you know, I think one of the statistics is the main reason most marriages break up is because of finance. Right? Financial, number one. Yeah, number one. And number two is probably bad communication or work life balance, right? So you got to juggle it, you know, how much money do you need, how many hours you got to work to make it, to make it all work. But also, you know, and I fell victim to this plenty of times. I put, you know, my, my desire to have fun sometimes and get to my goals over the value of what my family should have been. I trained for an ironman when my daughter was, was a, you know, a year old. Well, if I could go back, I wouldn't do that again, right? I would go back and say I really should have spent that time with my daughter and with, you know, my wife, who was a brand new mother at that point. I wasn't there doing the job. I should have been doing because I was out there making myself happy. So I think there's. You've got to make. When you have a family in a dealership, you've got a ton of people to make happy. You got your wife to make happy. You got your children to make happy. You have your employees you need to make happy. And somewhere in that list, you got to make yourself happy. If not, everybody's going to be unhappy, it's a juggling act. Yeah.

I mean, I would say, Luke, you do have to prioritize that. And I want to go on the record. And everyone needs to understand that that order of priority, of happiness is you, yourself. Number one, I think you have to make yourself happy. If you're not doing what makes you happy, nothing else matters. Number two, it's your family. And far down the list is number three, your business. You know, I think it's important. I think we wear our dealerships like a badge of honor. But, man, I mean, you know, the amount of dealers that have just had crappy family lives and multiple marriages because they're more committed to their work and getting to the auction and being at the dealership and working on a Saturday and staying late and all this hustle stuff to make a couple extra bucks.

So it's not worth it.

Indian. I mean, my opinion. Yeah. I mean, Luke, I saw my dad first marriage, so you're doing well. But, you know, well, I've got a.

I've got a great wife that puts up with my crap, you know.

Work every day. So she's got to deal with you there. When you get home, she doesn't want to deal with you.

Yeah. At this point, when you're married 16 years, she really doesn't really care to see me, so it's. It's okay.

My problem is, I come to the dealership and it's like a time warp. I don't check in with my wife the whole time I'm here because it's just, go, go, go. And I get home and she's like, well, you didn't think about me today. Well, no, I thought about you. I just literally didn't think to text you or say hi or call you because I'm in this time warp that is my dealership. And all of a sudden I come home and it's like, everything's supposed to be great, but I've neglected her for eight or nine hours, and it's not great.

But, you know, we're a little. We're a little older. You know, we're not from this new generation that has to send a text every once in a while and call your wife every 10 minutes. I, it's just not a guy. I am. Right. I'm just not going to be that guy. But I was going to go back. My dad, you know, my dad's an old school car guy and he would go to work at 7, 7:30 in the morning. He would not get home till 8 o' clock at night. And you know, part, part of it was he didn't want to be at home. You know, he wanted to build his business. And part of it was he wanted to build his business. Yeah. And part of it was, you know, he had two young girls at home that, you know, they were young girls. Right. So. But his marriage lasts. His marriage is, is good. So, you know, there's a lot of, you know, it's a lot of yin and yang. It's a lot of give and take. But the last thing you should do is give up on your family.

Yeah.

And give up on your, you know, on your wife. That's, that's the last thing you should do.

And that would be my advice. Leave some money on the table. Don't try to take everything off the table. Don't try to do everything yourself. Outsource, hire other people. You might have to slow grow your dealership more than you would, but it's going to be at the benefit of your family life. Take the time off, go on family vacation, be at your kid's soccer tournament, take your wife out to lunch, do date night, do those things. Because if you're just so caught up in your dealership, you're going to wake up one day and be like, oh shit, all my kids are grown, they don't know me. I've got to deal with what's the point.

Yeah, and your dealership's going to be gone.

Yeah. Family first, heaven forbid you get divorced and then she takes half of it. Then what?

Then what's your one anyways, bro, Then what you were.

Luke, I want to bounce an idea off you transition one more time. So I signed a lease on a second car lot. Hey guys, sorry to interrupt the podcast for just two seconds, but we want to make sure you guys know about a friend of the podcast. Luke.

Yeah, dealer re. I've had my reinsurance company since 2011 and as I always say, it is the one thing, the one thing you can do in our auto industry, whether you're buy here, pay here, retail, high end, no matter what, to build wealth. It's all about Building wealth and reinsurance is the best way. And honestly, without being a buyer, pay dealer maybe the only way to build continual wealth over time. So I can't recommend the Taylor's any higher. Great people. Great.

Yes, great. Guys, tax rates are going up. I think that was announced yesterday. Biden, they're going to increase the tax rates. So you need to find ways to have tax deductible expenses at your dealership. And the best way to do that is to pay yourself those tax deductible expenses. Don't give it to the third party vendors. They don't care about your cars. Give it to yourself. That's right. Okay, guys, anyways, contact dealer re. You know where to find them. Notes are in the show. Notes here on the episode. And we will get back to the episode.

What did you do that?

I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. So I'm going to present to you the idea, the theory, the reason I did this, because I think every other dealer should go through this same process of asking these questions and they should bounce it off a trusted partner, a dealer friend, to criticize the crap out of it. At this point, it's too late. What's done is done. So, yeah, you need me out of it.

You didn't even tell me. You just, you kind of threw that on me in the middle of. I can't wait to. I can't wait till 20 group because this is going to be great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait for 20 group a year from now and then you can really slide me. So anyways, you know, we foreshadowed this about a year ago when we did our podcast with Nick. Nick's a northern Utah dealer. And there's this little town right in between the two of us that we've both kind of been drooling over for a while. Super underserved community. Small. But what I found over tracking this through the last two years is this little community is just super underserved. Right. They register twice as many cars in the state or in the county as the county sales. Does that make sense? So the dealerships inside the county are only servicing half of the purchases that are happening. Right. So I think there's a huge opportunity there. We found a car lot that came up. It's a lease with an option to buy. It's about an acre and a half of land with a small, small old dealership and a couple little crummy buildings. Right next door to the Ford store. Right. Literally next door to the Ford store. Main drag So a great opportunity to get the new car store turn downs. A great opportunity to someday knock this thing down and make a real legitimate dealership out of it. I've got a lease with an option to buy. So I hit the property play. Right? That's the number one reason. Is it a land play? Can you get a piece of land, buy it and have an asset? So if I execute on the land purchase, I've got that bucket checked. B, I'm not maxed out on my current footprint, but we do service a lot of people from this county. Right. We probably have five to six sales a month. I would say a quarter of my portfolio is from this county. So we've got a pretty large built in customer base. Obviously, I'm going to be taking from my current location sales because those five sales are now going to go up there for the most part. So I'm kind of splitting the pie a little bit. Thirdly, I've got a guy who's ready to take it and run it. He's been with us a year. He's an awesome salesman. He's great at F and I. He's ready to run a car dealership.

Adrian.

No, no, no, no. So this is Ignacio. He's been our top salesman for the last 12 months. He's willing to commute up there, open this dealership, run it, make it his own. I'm going to put together a comp plan for him that benefits him to grow this. So I'm not driving 35 minutes every day to run this place. He'll be doing it, obviously there's no guarantee there, but what do you think?

First question. Are you selling as many cars as you think you should at your current location?

No.

Okay. You should have. You should have done it.

Okay.

You're gonna cannibalize some of your sales, right, at your current location.

Now, I know that.

So where are you gonna. Where are you gonna bring those other sales in from?

Hopefully anywhere. I don't know.

So just my thought process is you just cannibalize. You said a quarter of your portfolio. So you're taking out. It's not a quarter of your sales there, right? How much?

No, no, I'd say yeah, 20% maybe. I mean, I think we're three to five a month, right?

So. So that's going to go to that store. But you've just doubled your. Well, you probably hadn't doubled your overhead, but you've probably taken your overhead up by 70%, right.

New.

Well, you say no. You say no right now. But I'm just going to tell you.

What'S going to happen.

But it's 50% at least. So.

Yeah.

Jeff, you know, I want you to do well, but I think the one key before you ever open a second store is to maximize your current location. And that is always. That wasn't always my philosophy. But a wise woman, my wife, said that to me one day when I was hell bent, hell bent on opening a new store. I got to do it. I got to do it. And that's what we kept coming back to. Well, how many cars should your current location sell? And I said we should sell. Let's say 45.50. I think that's where we can land. Are you doing it? No, we're not doing it. So why, why do it?

Yeah. So you're basing what your core, what your store should do based off your footprint.

Yeah. How many cars I can carry, how.

Many salesmen you have. You're not basing that at all off your demographic and your geographic.

No, not at all.

Customer base.

And I may be looking at that wrong, but. No, I mean, I've got, you know, if you drew up, if you do a 20 mile radius around Columbia, you're probably at almost half a million people.

Okay.

Probably 400, 400,000. So, no, I mean, there's no limit on that. And I'm the oldest buy here. Pay your store around. So, you know, we, you're not capped.

You're an issue with market share. You need to take from other dealers.

Market share, better, better processes. I mean, honestly. Honestly, the limiting factor at my store right, right now is staff and making the processes work properly every time.

You're the bottleneck.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I mean, it's not necessarily me. It's the people around us, you know, I mean, just, just today, just today. I mean, you've got a salesperson doesn't show up today. You've got your service manager who stepped into the sales role that just had to leave because his daughter's, you know, he's got a baby that's on the way right this second. Yeah. So, you know, that's the reason I was kind of looking that way a second ago. So, you know, and technicians, you can't get cars very fast enough, so the processes are not, are not, well, old enough to sell 50 cars a month. And that sounds crazy, but it's understood. It is me. It is me. I mean, let's get down to it. It is me.

Well, we say it every time. Yeah. If your dealership has a flaw, it comes from you. You either can't let things go, you can't hire, you can't inspire, you can't retain talent. It's you and your top management. And for most of us that are mom and pop operations, it's us. Right, Us. Our general manager, you know, the sales manager, the shop manager who's flunking mechanics out of the shop constantly. So, yeah, for me, my Achilles heel is going to be recon. I don't have enough cars on the front line now. I've got more cars in the back than I do up front and I can't keep a mechanic to save my. So that is going to be the Achilles heel.

How are you going to fix it?

If I can't fix that puzzle, then I'm sol.

You're going to. What's going to happen is you're going to have less cars in your lot.

Yep.

Current location and here, half up there. And I tell you, that is so Clint Wagner, who we had on how I built this, it's somebody I really, really. I just. He does it the right way and I just. He's one of those guys. He's in my town. He's my direct competition. Anyway, he texted me the other day, how long does it take you to get your cars ready? And I, and I just text back the age old problem in the car business that is the hardest thing to do.

Yeah.

And I mean, shoot. I wrote a, I wrote a PowerPoint on. I've presented it before and I, and I can, we can follow the process and then there's always a breakdown. I don't know.

Yeah, yeah. You're bringing in a lot of different factors from the quality of the car, the purchase, the timing, the mechanics have parts available. I got a lot of cars that are waiting. Just because I can't get the part that it needs.

I think, I think that's going to work its way out the next couple months.

Yeah. So my argument is this. In my small town, we got about 150,000 people. The other buy here, pay here, that's my number one competition, is all but dead. They're pretty much gotten out of it from all the word on the street. They're really just struggling and we're still not doing it. There's just not a lot of subprime buy here, pay here customers in my town. That's a weird thing to say, but I don't know where they're going. I don't know where they're buying. Anyways. So I'm hoping to capture some of the people in this neighboring town that might be going to the cash lots and buying the $3,000 crap ride that might put $3,000 down with me and finance a couple of payments. It's a growing community, it's got a lot of industry, it's got a lot of college first time buyers, my subprime first time buyer program. So anyways, that's the presentation, Luke. I'll let you know how it goes.

Well, I wish you the best and of course I'll be here if you need me.

It's going to be a fun experiment and I thought, if nothing else, now I know I will do it. I think all in my calculations with rent, utilities, the build, you know, some of the little things I need to do to get the thing up and running. As long as my salesman can sell enough to pay his own salary, I'm going to be into this thing like maybe 50 grand for a year. I get a year lease if I don't execute on the purchase. So it's a $50,000 lesson. Worst case scenario, completely worth it in my opinion.

So good luck.

We'll see how that goes, man. Luke, let's wrap it up. You got anything else on your mind?

One last thing. I went over to Birmingham last week and I had a chance to stop by and see Jack Carter. On the way we had lunch with him and if you're in the Atlanta area, always stop by and see Jack. Good, good dude. And just looking at his. What he's got going on and man, I tell you, he's got a lot going on. And it's always nice to visit Dudos and also had a chance to visit with Pokey Breimer over in Oxford, Alabama. Oh yeah. And I guess what I'm. And his Poggy's been in business I think probably as long as we have. And to see other dealers and to see what he's got, I mean he's got his big location, nothing what I. Nothing at all what I thought I would see when I got there. So I was very surprised. Not surprised, but just I was like, wow, this is great. But I think what I'm trying to tell people, if you're driving somewhere and you know, Google and see who's around there, see if you know anybody, just to see what other dealers are doing because you will get inspiration from them and figure, you know, it's always, always good to do. We don't, none of us do it the right way, 100% right. And other Dealers do things differently that you may not think is right until you see it. And all of a sudden you go, wow, I could incorporate that.

Do you have any concrete examples? Anything you really feel like you took back from either of those guys?

Pokey was Pokeo Nut and Blades were talking about some parts ordering things that they were doing compared to what we were doing. And I found that very interesting. Jack. I looked at Jack's detailing facility and what he did I kind of, I really like. He split it off a little bit from his current location. He's got a different way of getting cars ready that I find interesting. I don't think I'm going to incorporate.

He just kind of lines them up and like it's one car at a time. Is that how it works?

It does. He has a use of four post lifts that I, I found interesting. It's just, I tell you, Jack's got such a big building, big facility. I really like when you walk into his. When you first walk into Jack's door, it's very open and the way he's got everything, it just looks really nice when you walk in.

And.

Yeah, and I just. We're doing some things here at the office. Construction wise, I was happy to see what he did and I kind of had that back of my head. That's what we wanted to do.

Give you some design influence.

Yeah.

I think one thing that hits home for me is I think a lot of dealers listen to the podcast or they look at stuff on the Facebook page or kind of key in on other dealers. And maybe it's just me, but I think a lot of dealers think that either they either they can't do what someone else is doing or they're not smart enough to do it, or that they are doing something great. And then when they go visit somebody like that, they're like, wait a minute, this guy is just like me. We're up here in these groups and yet look at the scale of the operation he's running. Look at what he's grown this to and taken these risks and it's almost like inspiring to be like, hey, if that guy can do it, I can do it. You know, if this guy that's chiming in and I've got all the answers he's got, or I've got all the access to education that he's got her. He's dealing with the same struggles and insecurities I'm dealing with. And yet look how he's like, you know, he's really doubled down and gone all into it. That should inspire us as dealers to do the same thing, if that's our aspiration. Yeah.

You know, and I guess one thing I just thought about that Pokey told me was that he. We all think that if we're going through a struggle that it's. It's really just us. We're the only people that have problems.

Right.

And Hoagie has this big salvage yard of parts and things that he uses with used cars. Well, he had a huge fire there like the Sunday before I got there and it burned like 50 cars. And you're like, oh my gosh. You know, I'm not only one that's struggling with. And this was somebody. It was arson. Right. And I'm not the only person that struggles with. With bad things that happen. It was just. It was unique to see it and talk to him about it because you're exactly right. You know, who do you. Everybody's going through something, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Everyone's dealing with different. And you just had a flood, you know.

Yeah. So it was just. It was good to just. I mean, I hate bad things happen to anybody, but it was reassuring that I'm not the only person going through something. Yeah.

We had an eighth of an inch of snow yesterday. I mean, it's mid March. We shut everything down. National guard was here. I was pulling out every four wheel drive. I had it all melted by 11am but thank goodness we averted that tragedy, you know, so we've all got stuff we're dealing with. Luke, get to see you Monday, right? 20 group?

Yeah, buddy.

20 group.

Yeah.

Guys, I think more and more does 20 group cut us back a check? Do we get commission or royalties on the amount of 20 group members we've got to sign up?

I wish we did. I don't think this administration is going to say.

They would never tell us they should. We say it all the time. Guys, join a 20 group. Get involved. Get involved on the Facebook page. Get involved in the clubhouse chats, whatever it is, you know, it's just so much fun to talk to dealers and bounce ideas off of everybody. With that being said, thank you for the listenership. Thank you for supporting the podcast, the itunes reviews and the Spotify reviews and give us your feedback, please. We're going to do better. We're going to get the monthly newsletter coming out so that we can get some feedback from you guys and. And make sure we're steering this podcast in the direction you guys want it to go in.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I just really wish people could see me on the podcast and this crazy outfit I have on. Watch this on YouTube. That's how you do it, right?

He looks like a big old Christmas tree.

No, it's St. Patty's tree. Come on, leprechaun.

All right, guys, see you next week.

So glad you joined us. Please take a minute to leave us a review and share this podcast with a friend, the independent dealer. Podcast dealers, helping dealers.