#193 - Good To Great - Part 3

Foreign.

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

Hello and welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. This week we are doing part three of our final installment of the book review of Good to Great.

Yes, sir. It's book. I love a book I'm trying to get you to love. And I think that this, this is a good for everybody. Every once in a while you need to go back and read a book that really inspires you and this is one of them, right, Jeff?

Yeah, it's definitely a classic. The principles in it apply to all businesses and we've tried to take a real car dealer slant to it to help you guys out. So if you haven't listened to episode 176 and one, episode 187, that's parts one and parts two, where we go over the first, you know, six chapters of the book. So definitely read the book, listen to the book, and then come back and kind of listen to some of our commentary. We're going to get into chapter seven here through the end of the book and give you guys a summary of kind of the entire book and our main takeaways. But Luke, to jump right into it, this is a topic that we started out in chapter seven that's super fond to our hearts. If you guys listen to us at all, you know that we are both a big advocate and a big critic of technology in the dealer, independent dealer space, right? We always talk about how we love to be sold. Man. Dealers love a new little trinket or a new little plug in or a new little this or that. And we're okay spending $500 or $1,000 a month on this one. New software that's going to solve all our problems.

Yeah, we are. And, and I guess it's just the nature of being an entrepreneur and a car salesman. I know some people don't like when they call us used car salesman, but that's what I am, right, Jeff?

Just don't say derogatory.

So anyway, we love shiny objects and we like to be sold. And so we'll go to the expo floor or, you know, someone will come in and be like, this is going to change your business. This is the way forward is what everybody's doing. You're going to sell more cars and then we sign up and it's $1,000 a month or whatever it is. And next thing you know, you're not even using the product. Right, Jeff? And then. Then you got problems.

Yeah. Or you realize that, and this is what we talked about for me the last couple of weeks, is you realize that you already have a product that actually solves that problem. You just don't even know that it has that feature, or you haven't asked them, or you're not utilizing it, or you haven't turned on the feature.

And that happens so much. And I'm glad you bring that up, because I've seen it so often. You're like, well, I got this new thing that allows me to text and somebody be like, well, wouldn't your phone text? You're like, well, yeah, my phone. So why'd I get this? Right.

Yeah, well, it's not tied into this thing or that thing or. And then you don't know that your vendors, they're continually innovating. A lot of them are going kind of, you know, horizontal and perpendicular and integrating these new technologies. So reaching out to them and finding out if they already have that service or how you can make your current service utilize it. Here's the problem I have, Luke. I've gone too much the opposite direction. I get. I get. I get angry at everything. I don't want to. I don't want to add a new service. I don't want someone hitting me up to do this new bell or whistle or plug in. And that can be a hindrance. And. Well, right. Like, I feel like maybe I'm missing.

Some stuff for sure. Innovation. Technology comes from innovation, typically. Right. And the innovation moves us forward as dealers. But it gets so frustrating sometimes because you're. You feel like we're always trying to learn something new, and someone comes to you with a technology that really might be perfect for your dealership, and you just shut them down and don't listen. Right. And that's really not the way to be too, because we might be missing something that could make us a lot of money.

Yeah. Yeah, you could. So, so what you're saying, and the takeaways we have from the book are the phrases, carefully selected technologies.

That's it.

How do we do that?

So it's carefully selected and then carefully implemented is what I would tell you. So, you know, it's it all. It's all about the hedgehog effect. You know, what is my business about? Does this. Does this technology fit in the same parallel that my business is? And can I see that this is going to actually further my current business model and not take me down a path of, you know, that's a doom loop that really Gets us into something that we're not necessarily good at doing. Couple things from me, you know, I decided that, you know, years back, I've told the story before, that we would get into selling a little higher end car and doing outside financing and things like that. And it's not necessarily, I guess you use a little bit of technology to go down that path compared to a buyer, pay your store. But it didn't work for me and it took me out of my core business this way and it cost me money. Right. Did I learn some things? Of course I did some things that I've done, you know, bad over the years. Was the first time I decided to get a CRM, I was at an expo. Yeah, I need a CRM. This is going to help. Well, I didn't learn how to use the CRM myself and so I was unable to train my staff, my salespeople to use it properly. And so I was paying $500 a month for 24 months. Right. Or whatever it was. And it's, you know, I look back, it wasn't the product, it wasn't my salespeople, it was me. It was me not training me, not showing them how to use the technology properly. So it was the right technology. I should have been using one, but I didn't implement it right. And so that, and that's on me.

Oh, we get it all the time. We sign up for a new product and the second they hand us our logins, we're like, oh, here you go guys, here are your logins. And we never learned how to use it. They never learned how to use it. And so they're barely plugging through the thing, just kind of going through the motions because you told them they had to and they're not utilizing it. They don't like it. A couple of tips or my thoughts on that is I always want to make sure that any technology I'm adding is somehow integrated into my other current technologies. I always look for partners and companies that are working with each other. I hate double and triple entry. I don't want to have a technology product that just works in a little silo where my guys have to take all the data off of a credit app, dump it into this thing and then get a number back and then take that and dump it into another thing or, you know, you know, my shop management needs to talk to my DMS and my CRM needs to talk to it and my DMS needs to talk to my QuickBooks and that needs to talk to my GPS and my Underwriting scoring model. I don't like to create extra steps in the process. I dread having additional logins, things like that. Just I always try to vet everything through that lens of like, is this creating a whole nother step in the process that's just going to be more confusing for my salesman or my collector or my mechanics? Or is this minimally invasive and exponentially payoff?

What's funny is you have that thought process and I don't think it's wrong, but it's not the way I think. I don't ever discount technology because it doesn't integrate with something. I already use it. I think double entry, unfortunately is a standard in our business and it really stinks. But sometimes I notice that if I silo things, it's easier for me to figure it out. And if there's a problem somewhere, it doesn't hold me back. Like if for some reason this technology is not talking. This technology, exactly right. Well, I can figure it out. I can, I can problem solve faster that way. I don't think there's a right or wrong. I think it's just some things are easier than others. You know, a new software that I'm using to, to buy cars from the public and to inventory management. The way I'm rolling this out and something I, you know, I probably recommend in the future is I'm using it myself before I roll it out to my staff. I do have a little bit of time. It's not super time dependent. I go in, I'm trying to learn everything about the product that I'm using. And as soon as I feel like I've got a good handle on it, I will train my buyer to do it. And I believe that this is the right way. If you do have a new product, you as the dealer, as the owner, you need to figure it out before everybody else does. Because if you don't, you don't know what you don't know.

Yeah. You don't know how to teach them and you also don't know if they're using it right.

Yeah.

All of a sudden they're going to come in here and they're going to tell you it's junk and it's no good and you wasted your time and money. But that's just because they're too lazy to figure it out or. Yeah, they're missing some feature that you knew was crucial and the whole reason you bought it. So yeah, if you don't know it enough to inspect what you expect, then it's an absolute waste of time, which I would argue that certain product that you are using to buy cars from the public would be a little bit of a diversion. You know, I would argue that that might be outside your three core circles of I am world class at buy here, pay here and delivering a quality car. You know, whatever your core competency is, that's a, that's a whole business model in itself right there. I mean that's a pretty robust for me to buy 50, 60 cars from the public every month or 20 or 30 or whatever it is to justify the cost of a product like that. It's a pretty serious.

I think it just about the cost pretty quickly because if you look at what it costs to buy a car just fee wise online, I mean I bought a couple of cars that just the fees alone for those two cars would have covered my cost for the month for the product. That's neither here nor there. But you're right, it could be. And so I think one of the big takeaways from this is technology can be an accelerator for good and for bad. Jeff. You need to make sure that the technology you select is good for your core business. And you know, one of my core businesses is buying cars. So that's the reason I can justify that to me now. I may find out 12 months from now it's not. But currently in our environment of buying cars at auctions, I think this can help.

I agree with that. And if you say to me, if you say Jeff, look, my entire business model starts out with a good purchase. I cannot run a buy here, pay here. I cannot run a dealership, I cannot sell cars unless I'm buying the best cars there are out there at the right price. So what I need to find is the one owners, the low mileage, the unique one offs that aren't showing up at the auction. I need to buy those private party from the public and get my hands on them before the new car guy does or before they sell it to someone down the street, then I would completely agree with you. If you say this is core to my business model, getting a better car at the right price just.

I mean this is a. Besides on the cars we bought we have a recon of less than $300 so far. Yeah, well, I mean that's, that's crazy, right?

For sure. But that's relative to what you paid for it. I don't know if you overpaid for a frigging frontline ready little cream tough then I could all my recon could be a dollar if I really wanted to, but it all depends on how I'm buying and what I'm buying. But. But you're right, overall, you say, okay, I'm keeping my grosses when I sell those cars and I'm reconning them less. Now that's. You got my attention there because you're buying a better car and you're still able to make money on it. So when we talk about technologies, obviously you guys, you listen to our episode the last couple of weeks, tax Max for us. They're a sponsor of the podcast. I think they're a great technology. We're going to get Luke to use them full speed this tax time because he wants to get his hands on the tax money. This is an example for me of a technology that's going to help accelerate your business because it's getting that tax money in your hands sooner and more reliable than just expecting your customer to run down an HR block and then bring you their debit card when they get that money on the one weekend in April when all the money hits.

This is a product that you should be using because it is to our core business. So many buy here pay here stores rely on tax time really for probably 30 to 40% of their business. So this is a technology that will help you and further your business. Right, Jeff?

Yeah, I'm a huge fan. Used them for many, many years. So if in, in the show notes, you'll see the ad, the link to their website, We've got a 20% off coupon code there as well. So when you go to sign up, use our 20% off coupon. That'll all be linked in the show notes. But yeah, tax Mex, great technology to help accelerate your business. Luke, let's talk about Chapter 8, the Flywheel and the doom loop. When they talk about a flywheel, explain that concept to us.

So, you know, it's all about doing the same thing over and over and over again and that accelerates your business, right? If all of a sudden you get outside of your core competency and you know, and it starts to drag on that flywheel, that flywheel doesn't spin as easily, Right? And so, you know, you need to make sure that you're doing the same thing with great consistency. And it might be slow at first, but as you know, the revolutions begin, it gets faster and faster. And so I think he talks about, you know, build up to breakthrough. And as a buy your pay here store, I'll relate this buy here, pay here and retail. But as a buyer pay here store, what you'll find is that if you take that core model and you start, and let's say it's a $3,000 ACV and you just do that over and over and over again, that you're going to, you know, you're going to finally break through and get to a point where you're starting to cash flow, right. And then you do it a little bit better and you go up in price, then you're going to slow down a little bit more, but then you're going to break through again. And all of a sudden the cash flow starts coming in and that flywheel spins faster and faster. And as a retail, you know, as a retail dealer, if you get in a niche, you're selling the car, you know, you can buy this car, you can sell it, you know the gross. You found your niche. Just keep working that cycle. Work it and work it and work it. And the more customers you get as a, as a dealer, the more cars you can sell, the more cars you can get out there, the more referrals you get. And that flywheel just gets faster and faster and faster. And never get outside of that flywheel because when you do it slows that flywheel down.

Yeah, I think you, you know, it really comes back to us staying in that core competency. Right. It's all about those three circles of like so many times as dealers, we kind of look around and we see other dealers doing stuff and we're like, oh, those guys are selling, you know, lifted, jacked up four wheel drive trucks. I should get some of those and I should start selling those because they're killing it over there. And then you look over and someone's selling, you know, imports or high end race cars, you know, and you're like, oh, I should be doing that instead of just saying, no, no, no, here's my core competency. This is what I do well and I'm going to slow growth. I'm not going to go chase the shiny new money making object. And all of a sudden I've got ATVs on my lot or side by sides or something, you know, like that's really, I'm sticking with that core model and maybe I'm accelerating a little bit. Like Luke said, if you're a buy here, pay here store, maybe you've decided that part of your core model and your strategy is to take on a little bit of debt. Hey, I'm not going to go from selling 20 cars a month to selling 60amonth. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to 30, and then a couple months later, I'm going to go to 40. I'm not trying to take these drastic, crazy steps that could sink my ship. I mean, that's just not. It's even smart in a buy here, pay here standpoint. But you're going to do it.

Incremental changes over time, small changes to your business, and it's just like you just tweak it, right? And the only way you can do this is to hire the right people and to train those people. If you don't, it's just you're going to be all over the place. Right? So make sure that you don't go from a buy here, pay here store. That's ACV is $3,500. You get that, you get that loan right on your books, and next thing you know, you think you're going to be able to sell $10,000 ACD cars. That's not the way it works. It's, you know, incremental changes over time keeps that flywheel accelerated and keeps you in business, honestly.

Yeah. And it's not that you couldn't change your business model. I think you could. But what happens is, like you said, you're basically, you're kind of throwing everything out the window, and a lot of people get thrown off by that. And like you said, you talk about people, even when you think you have everything put together and you're making these incremental changes, all of a sudden you lose a key service person or you leave it, lose a key, you know, salesman or sales manager. And then all of a sudden, it kind of throws everything to disarray for a while, and your little flywheel stops spinning a little bit. It just kind of goes on cruise control or maybe even slows down until you can replace that person, get them trained and up to speed, and then you can kind of get things going again.

You know, we've had a really tough year this year, Jeff. And, you know, I've talked about it, I've talked to other dealers, and my biggest problem this this year is we lost some key people. And some we let go, some left on their own. And we were glad to see some go, not glad to see others go. And it has slowed our flywheel way down. And because it's hard to right now, it's just hard to hire. I believe that I can train them if I get them hired, but right now, we can't even get someone in the door to start a job. So, you know, make sure you're training, make sure you're keeping people satisfied. Because if not, that is a quick way to get into a doom loop or to slow that flywheel down.

Yeah. And when you. And when you talk about having the right people in the right seats. Right. I mean, that's. That's kind of a key takeaway from the first part. If you guys want to go Back to episode 176 and listen to part one, we talk about having the right people in the right seat of the bus, and that is so crucial. And it's hard, Luke, when you say, I don't have enough people. And some people might be thinking that it's really hard to let kick someone off your bus that's the wrong person when your bus is already, you know, barely full. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's. But it's the right thing to do. And it's so hard. It's so hard. But if you've got someone who doesn't, you know, doesn't abide by your principles, you know, I think you actually talked about that. You know, if someone's not doing it the Goblin Motors way. Had a discussion with that this morning. If. If you're not doing things the way you taught them to do and you teach them again and they still don't do it, you got. They got to get off the bus. If not. If not, you got problems.

Yeah, yeah, we had that conversation the other day, and I said, hey, I get it. This. This is the way you want to do it because I've taught you, we've trained you, and you continue to do it this way. You need to go start your own dealership. Let me help you get your dealer license. Let me help you find a piece of land. Let me help you buy inventory. Because if you want to keep doing it this way, then you need to go start your own dealership. And that's a tough conversation to have with these guys, but it really hopefully drives home the fact of, like, I get it. You know, I get it. You think you know better. I get it. You think you. You've got this thing figured out, but this is the way we operate. And if you have a problem with that, let's sit down and let's reevaluate our processes and our procedures, and I'll listen to you, and we'll take that into consideration. But I can't just have you going wild, cowboy, and starting some new process or procedure because you felt like it.

I had. I had a service meeting this morning, and, you know, I said, this is the process Right. We are trained on this process. If we don't follow this process, there's chaos. And my service manager said, you know what? I believe we have people who understand how to follow the process now. And we can't say we had that two months ago. And so the more we train on the process, the more we do the process properly, the flywheel gets faster, we will get to our goals, and, you know, it's just going to take a little while. I thought I was on cruise control this time last year. I am. I was not. Well, I was, I was, but now, currently I'm not. And you know, you were talking earlier, just a minute ago about how high your payroll was last month and mine's high. And I was thinking the same thing the other day when I was doing some reconciliation of last month. And I said, dang, that's really high. And I started looking back at last year, we got less employees, but my freaking payroll is about the same. And I'm like, what's going on? But then you think about it, well, everybody's gotten about a 15 to 20% payroll this year. So that really, you know, it adds up. And you get nervous and you go, oh my gosh, my payroll's gone up. Business is down. What am I doing? Well, if you keep in the right people, it really doesn't matter because before you know it, you're going to accelerate again and you're going to be where you're supposed to be. And you already had the people trained.

Yeah, you know, I think that's definitely something that's good for me to hear right now because you do start to get a little panicked. Uh, you know, payroll, you look at the amount of people and you're like, I shouldn't have as many people on the payroll as I am selling cars like that. That should not be a one to one, like employees to car sales. You're definitely, you're definitely doing something wrong if that's where you're at.

But, but it's going to happen every once in a while.

But it's. But in that moment, it's hard to not just jettison a bunch of people off the bus and be like, well, fine, you know, if we're only going to sell 20 cars a month, then I guess we only need five people here. So the rest of you are out. I don't think that's, you know, you have to have patience to know that, yes, you know, we had a bad month or we had a bad couple of months, but we're going to get back to it. And we're going to. And we're going to get back to where we need to be.

You and I have talked on a sidebar several times about this, and maybe we brought it up on the podcast, but, you know, we've complained that our businesses are not quite big enough to have enough employees to take some of the load off of all the employees. Right. And what comes first, the employee or the sales? You know, or the profit? And I'm beginning to think, Jeff, that you can only get so far with sales without enough staff. And you kind of do this number, then you get too much staff, but then all of a sudden you pop again, and then you get too much staff. And so, you know, it's, it's, it's that, it's that flywheel cycle. The flywheel starts to slow down until you get the right amount of people on the bus again. Then it speeds up again. And I think that's just where we are.

Yeah, yeah. The key is not to panic and consistency. And that makes me think again, you know, for another plug for one of our great sponsors, the podcast Buckeye. That's where a lot of consistency happens. Right. If you're putting money away in your reinsurance company, month after month after month after month, consistently upselling products, upselling your service contracts, putting your gap, your waiver, you know, just the little incremental $100 here, 200 on this deal, 300 on this deal, that adds up to 5,000amonth, which adds up to 60,000 a year. You know, that really starts to. And then all of a sudden, five, ten years from now, you got a couple million dollars in your reinsurance company.

Yeah, for sure. You know, I've just, I rave about reinsurance and Buckeye dealership consultant. It's just a great company. And it's. If you don't have, you know, we're getting into fourth quarter now. If you don't have your reinsurance set up, you have time. Call Buckeye, get it set up, start January 1st, put those processes in place. They'll help you train to learn how to do. To sell CPI to sell VSC to maybe add on a warranty on a car instead of selling your cars as is. Let's stick that warranty on there, get that process going. And it's going to hurt. You know, it's going to. The cash flow is going to hurt to start with, but you just keep at it, keep plugging along. Next thing you know, you're going to have a million dollars in your account. And you're going to, holy cow, this is the best thing I ever did. And you're going to come up and you're going to. You're going to buy me a drink at convention and you're going to. You're going to buy Jeff a Sprite or something. So, you know, anyway. But Buckeye dealership consultant, January, they've got their big convention. Not convention, but next performance groups. So get signed up now. So you come to the thing in January, Jeff?

Yeah, yeah. I guess you'll have to give me a broadcast from there in January if I'm, If I don't get the invite. Chapter nine. So kind of wrapping up the book. Jim talks about going from good to great to his. I guess it's his previous book or his book before that or after that. The Built to Last.

Yeah. That's a prequel, I think, to this book.

Okay.

And I've actually not read the book, but I will at some point here. But it's all about slow growth. And some of us get so, you know, so fascinated with growing as fast as possible. And don't get me wrong, there's, you know, Facebook, I think Mark Zuckerberg said, go fast and break things. I think, I think that was maybe his, you know, and look where he is. But he's getting blasted a little bit. But, but slow growth is the way to go when you're, when you're a small, independent entrepreneur. Walmart took seven years to get their second store. Right. And we see so many dealers open a second store within one year. Right. Oh, I know what I'm doing. I'm open another store. And then they didn't get to 20. It was 25 years where they had 38 stores. We're talking about Walmart, you know, the second biggest retailer in the world now and was number one for so long. But it really, it takes the right people. If you've got a surplus of the right people, you're in a good position. So HP did, you know, doing it the HP way, Doing it the Galva Motors way, doing it the Four Seasons way. We have to make sure we have the right people on the bus. Slow grow, turn that flywheel. Don't look in every direction. Have big goals. Right.

Yeah. What was interesting to me, when they used the example of Hewlett Packer. Right. And I don't remember the specifics, but something was going on in the economy where maybe it was IBM.

I think it was.

Yeah. Texas Instruments went under. Well, one of these companies went bankrupt and HP snagged up a bunch of their key employees and they didn't really have any need for them. You know, they didn't have any place for them. And everyone's like, well, what are you doing? Our payroll? This is crazy. And he's like, no, these are the right people. If we get the right people on the bus, we will be successful. And that's, that's probably a lesson for us. You know, we talk about, you know, always be hiring. We need to always be hiring. We need to always be looking for that next a player that can come in and, and, and administer our processes. Not someone that's going to come in with their own agenda and their own nonsense. But, but they've got the qualities to deliver on our processes to the top and not to be content. And also look at the business cycle. You know, HP took advantage of a business environment where maybe their competitors were going under. We don't have that right now. I mean, funding right now is really hard. We're not finding. But maybe we need to look at the business cycle and say, okay, how are we keeping our employees, the ones that we really like and the ones that we know bring a lot of value to our organization? What are we doing to keep them here and not let them get headhunted from another company or not let them become complacent or upset or frustrated and quit on us? Maybe we're in that cycle where we're, we're fine tuning our culture and our processes.

And it's just as, it's just as important to retain those great employees as it is to be hiring. So always be hiring, always be training the people you have to train because it's, you know, you got to have the right people. And the way to keep the right people is train them, pay them properly. Because sometimes you get into an environment like this where you can't hire new people. So you gotta have, you gotta have those things in place.

And I think part of that too is having that vision and making sure that you're, you know, making sure they know they're a part of something bigger. And sometimes that's hard in the used car industry. I mean, we're not out here digging wells and building houses and saving the whales. So having someone buy into our vision and see the importance of us providing reliable transportation to people is a little bit hard to kind of get the troops to rally behind and cheerlead for. But we can do that as long as we believe that we're providing a good product and a good service and then also having a Vision and what Jim calls the bhags, which is the big, hairy, audacious goals. Right. That creates and inspires people.

It does. And it's, it's the goal within your, in your boundaries. Right. And it gives the whole staff something to look forward to. And hey, we're going to do this. This is the process is how we're going to get there. It's, it's our core, core competency. We're not doing this because we're bragging that we're the best. This isn't about my ego. This is about, hey, this is our goal. We got the right people on the bus to do it. I need everybody pulling in the right direction. We're going to turn that fly. We're going to get to the end. We're going to get to this big, hairy, audacious goal because I believe in my staff and we can do it.

Yeah. Do you think that these maybe just to dig into the goals a little bit more and in your dealership or advice for other dealers, do you think that these can be, um, you know, do they not have to be so big and hairy? Like, I think for us as dealers, we can have big hairy ones, right? Like, oh, I want to, I want to get to, you know, 10 million in sales or I want to have a 10 million portfolio or whatever. Our big hairy goal is that maybe we don't share with the staff because it's personal and it's maybe financial, but maybe we have smaller goals within the dealership where it's like, hey guys, you know, we want to get to a thousand Google reviews or hey, hey, shop, you know, we want to have a 36 hour turnaround or a seven day turnaround on, on get ready or sales guys, you know, of course we have our sales goal, but maybe we have a, a goal for, you know, appointment setting. And do we, do we attach.

I think, I think this. Jeff, I think you got to have a big, hairy, audacious goal, right? But the way to get there is about all those little smaller goals along the way. This is our big goal. It's a thousand accounts. That's our goal. We're going to achieve that by collecting better, having less charge offs, by reselling people who total their cars by selling 40 cars a month, which breaks down to 10 cars a week. We're going to do that by buying 40 cars a month or 50 cars a month and getting them ready within five days. Every goal, that big goal has to be supported by all these other goals. That's all you do. But you got to have that big goal. You got to shoot for the stars within your, within your, your Milky Way. Yeah.

And making sure that everyone there has a buy in to what their small goals are. Right. Hey, this is how we're going to get there. And that's some big weird, heady type thing. But here's the steps to get there. So this week let's focus on getting to a 90% show rate on our appointments or, you know, getting our recon time down or whatever it is and break those little goals down and, and maybe gamification a little bit, you know, create some fun games behind those things to make it happen.

Yeah, the last, you know, the last point was, you know, it's no harder to build, to build a great business than it is just to build a good business. And probably less, I think he said less over time to build something great and something just good. Good's good for a lot of people.

Great.

Great should be good for us. And that's the reason you listen to the podcast that's reasonably read books, that's the reason you're at convention, is because you're trying to get great. Right?

Yeah. And one thing that dawns to me is great. It does not equal big.

No.

Right, right. And so I think that's probably something to caveat this entire conversation is when I, when you say that, I think to myself, well, you know, I mean, it's not any harder to have a one man or a two man dealership, you know, as it is to have a hundred person dealership. Right. Like, I mean, are those equally. They could both be great. They could both be great places, they could both hit their goals, they could both be fulfilling and achieve what your life goals are. So either one of those is a good situation, one's not better than the other for sure.

I think great is what you perceive as great no matter the size of your company. That's about it.

And yeah, and I think there's a lot of people that probably have a lot less stress with a two man operation than some of these guys do with a hundred person operation guarantee. And we'll probably take home the same amount at the end of the month.

There's probably some people making more money selling 20 cars a month than some people selling 100 cars a month. I've seen it. I've seen it.

Yeah. So, Luke, let's wrap it up real quick to end the episode, give us the key kind of takeaways. I think we probably touched on most of them in this episode. We did.

If you read this book and you take anything away, and most people take the biggest thing away is first who? It's all about the right people on the bus, trained properly. If you get somebody that really fits your, you know, your core group of people and really has the same beliefs you do, you can train them, hire them today, right? And then the hedgehog concept, which I think is the next big thing to take away, slow and steady wins the race. Keep doing the same thing and you'll get there. And then it's effect, it just goes straight from that. If you learn how to do the hedgehog concept and then you start just over and over doing that, that momentum builds. And the faster that momentum builds, the better you're going to get. Don't rush it.

Don't rush it. Consistent. Stay consistent. Keep learning. Keep listening to the podcast. Of course.

Exactly.

And leave us a review. We appreciate it, Luke. Great information. Have a good week, buddy. Put some of it to work in your dealership and we'll talk to you next Thursday.

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.

Sam.