#198 - Michael West - How I Built This

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 is our first episode of a series called How I Built this.

Luke.

This is one of our favorite time of year. It's some of our favorite episodes and our listeners favorite episodes for sure.

It's awesome to be able to talk to other dealers around the country that have struggled like we did and had successes where some of us didn't. And just to hear their stories and to see how they're doing business really I think enlightens all of us out here. I learned a lot. I know you do as well, Jeff. Who do we got? Who do we got today to start with?

Yeah. So when we talk about dealers helping dealers and we talk about being inspired by other people's stories, we love to hear how they got through it. And Michael west is a great example. We got a couple minutes of his time. Michael, introduce yourself to the community and give us kind of your 0 to 60. What's your business model? What kind of cars do you sell? Where are you at? Give us kind of the rundown on you.

All right, guys. My name's Michael West. Been in business for about 16 years. The dealership actually started with my stepdad about 20 years ago. We currently have about 150 to 200 cars in inventory, just depending on the day or the week. We focus on subprime financing, helping customers find financing. And we sell between 100 and 120amonth on average. And our typical inventory price range is from 15 to probably $25,000. Family vehicles, I mean, mostly.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's my bread and butter, man. It's just focusing on the largest section of the market that and my focus is focusing on the largest population in the market and finding niches in that market to sell cars to.

You're going to sell the best darn town and country possible within 500 miles?

Well, yes, I'm going to sell. Yeah. We don't compromise quality and we don't negotiate price. That's just the way it should work.

Who are your big lenders? Can I ask? Who do you typically find to buy the subprime paper?

We do a lot with Capital One, we do a lot with Ally, we do a lot with Westlake. Surprisingly here lately, we do a lot with regional acceptance. I got about 15, 20 banks that we use and. Go ahead.

Well, I was just gonna say that that's an Interesting. Take that, because the people that. The lenders that you're talking about, it's taken years for you to secure those lenders. So let's back up in time. So 16 years ago, I would assume you're fresh out of high school, fresh out of college, raring to go. How did that look? How'd you get into. I know you said your stepfather started it. What got you into it?

My stepdad got me into it, actually. He was dating my mom at the time. They had previously been dating before, but they were dating at this point as well. And I was in the construction business right out of high school, and I worked as a boilermaker and a welder. And my stepdad and his partner had parted ways. His partner went to work with his brother, owns a large independent dealership on the coast. And now it's probably got five or six locations. And my stepdad asked me if I wanted to come work and own the business or take part of the business. And I said, yeah, that would be great. Go ahead.

At that point, was it as large operation is it now, or same business model, or what was going on back then?

It was the d' Iberville location that we have. Of the two locations, it was there. It's a little. The building is probably about 200 square feet, and we had probably about 10 cars on the ground. And the ACV of those cars, between 15, 1500 to 2000 to $2500.

That's probably a way a majority of all dealers start, I think, Michael, that type of breakup. And I assume back then, it was strictly cash, no outside financing. Were y' all doing any buy here, pay here then, or what was the.

It was actually probably 90% buy here, pay here. First vehicle I sold was a 1997 Mercury Sable, silver in color. The lady. I mean, we're in a casino town, so. Lady won $3,000 at the casino, and I sold it to her for 20,000 bucks.

Yeah, I've been through Biloxi a couple times. The Boravage, I think, is the hotel I remember going to.

Sure, sure. Beaurevage is due south, probably about two miles from our original location.

So, 2005, I guess, about the time you.

You started June 18, 2005.

So you had about two or three years of really good business, and then all hell broke loose. What did your business model do during the time of the Great Recession?

Well, I'm going to back you up a little bit. And I had two months of learning, and then Hurricane Katrina hit.

Oh, I didn't think about that.

Yeah. That was a devastating blow that I really didn't expect, because, I mean, I lived. I mean, I grew up probably a town probably 50 miles north. And you didn't really have the floods and things like that up there from hurricanes. You just had a lot of wind, maybe some tornadoes. Hurricane Katrina come through. We're about a half mile off the bay. We had 12 foot of water at our dealership. We had 5 water in our house. Had about 75 cars on the books that were paying. All but three of them never paid again, and the other three paid very slowly, and that was okay. Right. We had no insurance, no flood insurance, no home insurance. Customers had no insurance because we were selling $5,000 cars, and we would rather them pay the. The car note than the insurance. Right. We're selling to. I even had, like, five customers that died that had cars with me that were paying.

So that's. I mean, that's devastating, Michael. I mean, how do you. How do you recover from losing 99% of your portfolio?

A lot of hard work. A lot of hard work and a lot of no pay. I went from the construction industry making 10 to $12,000 a month, working a lot of hours, but to making nothing for a solid year. Like, nothing. And it wasn't even my business at that point. You know, I just wanted. I wanted to help, and that's what we did. It was. It was definitely tough.

How long did it take y' all to recover, to get back on your feet?

It took about. About five years for a full recovery. And I'll say this. We were receiving almost 75 accounts, somewhere probably between 20 and $25,000 a month. Everything was my stepdad's at the point. I was around 20 years old. Everything at that point was my stepdad's that his and his partner had built, which was not a huge thing, you know, but at the end of the day, we lost all that income, and we struggled because we only had a $25,000 line of credit with. With maths at the time to go buy cars. And it took us about two months to get back established to where we could start selling cars again and getting some inventory when everybody else was selling cars like crazy because they lost 400,000 cars in the area.

Yeah, yeah. That's sad when you see you get devastated by a natural disaster. But then to not even be in the position to take advantage of the upside, you know, two weeks later, when all those insurance checks get cut for everyone else, that's got to be a really Hard thing to just sit back and watch everyone else rebuild so quickly, and you're kind of stuck with your hands tied.

And Jeff, you don't, you know, you may. Were you in the car business in, oh, five. Jeff?

Yeah. Not. Not quite.

Well, I mean, I remember this vividly, the, the car market. I mean, you know how prices are high right now? Well, Katrina happened, what, August of 01, I guess. I mean, oh, five. And so when it happened, prices just went crazy. I mean, for like six months. I mean, there were no. There was no inventory. All those guys in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama were coming up here buying cars. I mean, it was incredible. Michael, I can't. I mean, so you were two months, no cars, and then were you able to just start adding them back on, you know, a little bit at a time?

Yeah, we had to go through the process of getting some lenders, some line of credits. We took out some very high interest loans with, with friends, you know, 25 to 28%. And that's not very friendly. Well, I tell you this, and I'll tell everybody, it's probably the reason why we're in business today. So I would have paid 50%, and I'm grateful for that. Those people. And even though I know some people, like, well, they're loan sharks. Well, that's the only time a shark's ever saved my life, I guess. So. Not saved my life, but saved the business. We just hustled. And my stepdad only knew, actually, he'd been in 30 years in the casino business, and it originally started out as Casino Motors. Him and his partner kind of got together because his partner's brother had been doing well in the car business. And so they got in the buy here, pay here business. And I had to kind of fight my way out of that mentality. So I started signing up with banks. And my first lender that I signed up was a company called Western Funding. They're still in business today. We don't do that much business with them anymore. And we'll kind of get to that. So we started. I started trying to figure out, because there's the real secret to this whole business, or any business is who's. Who's got. Who has my income, right? And I knew real quick that I didn't have the money to. Or we didn't have the money to support our business because we, we were paying 28% on a line of credit, or not a line of credit, just a loan. And we had to turn around and give that out. Right? We could do 50,000 in a month. We had no income coming back in after that, and we had to pay that back. So I found that if we could turn cars faster and make a smaller profit up front, and we could do that more times in a year over the span, then we could make more money than we could make and buy here, pay here, and have cash flow. Cash flow was the big. The big part of the business at that point. So I started working with a company called Western Funding. I didn't know anything about the car business. Nobody taught me anything about the car business. Matter of fact, my stepdad's partner come in one day and to pick up his portion of. I mean, he was getting bought out. He picked up his check, one of his checks, and he was like, what are you doing? I said, I don't know. So he showed me how to read credit one day. And from that point was kind of history. I learned the best of it myself, the hard way.

That's interesting. I mean, you get through those really tough times, you start working your way out of the buy here, pay industry out of necessity, it sounds like. And you got those lenders set up. What happened during the Great Recession? Was that bad for y' all or good for y'?

All? What.

What was going on then?

We were doing so bad, it really didn't matter. So dear. I mean, I would say I'm gonna start out with Western Funding and trying to figure out how to do point of sale or bank financing. I stayed with them, and they were paying me 55 cents on the dollar and doing a payment share after that, which is not incredible. We couldn't really buy expensive cars because our line of credit at this point, I don't think we probably had $100,000 in a line of credit. So I was selling with Western Funding and doing okay because it was me, my stepdad, and our office manager. I bought cars, sold cars, fixed cars as much as I could, and done all the financing and all our advertisement. And I was selling probably about 15amonth at that point. And so probably about two years passed by. And I'll tell you, the whole time, this whole time, we're struggling, still in business, to pay back the loans, to make sure that we were on top of a. On top of that, making sure we were good payees. But I was starting to do Western funding, and about two years went by every week about bouncing a check, and Western Funding started paying out that residual money like CAC somewhat does, right? We started seeing those advances, getting paid, and I received my first check was about 300 bucks. And I was like, well, this is what we kind of waited for. The next month, I received a check, $900. And I was like, well, it's building up. You know, the next check was about $3,000. And I could assume that they were going up in increments of about 300% every month. And the next check was $9,000. And I said, well, we've made it. You know, we got enough money to pay ourselves now and move forward with the business. Well, the next. The next package I got in from Western funding was, you know, a 10 by 11. Just a. I was like, dang, this is a big check. This is a real big check. I could ass be $27,000. They're telling me, congratulations. It was a bankruptcy filing, and they filed bankruptcy on the 343 cars that I had sold to them. And they were telling me they wouldn't pay me anything anymore.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. So I had to. I know it's. It's blow after blow, but I started having to reinvent the wheel. So.

What year was that, Michael?

I think that was 2007 or 8, probably. And then the recession comes through and we're starting. There's not really anybody that big in Mississippi because Mississippi has the highest collections rate in the country. Probably maybe outside of West Virginia, I'm not sure. So not a lot of subprime banks were coming into Mississippi. And like I said, I still didn't know anything about it. I really didn't know much about customers at that point. I was just a friendly person and always had outgoing personality and I'll talk to anybody. But that really doesn't relate to car sales very much. So I had to learn more about the customers themselves before I could learn more about financing. So I went and took one little class with Joe Verde, and I learned something about the car business, and I started getting more. I started getting better with customers, and I started selling about 30amonth as I signed on two or three more lenders. So I was buying cars, selling cars, fixing cars, and selling 30amonth and making about $3,000 a month. And I know that probably is not my.

It was a lot of work.

Yeah, I was making. I was probably that guy at my car dealership right now selling 30 cars a month. Not do it. Not buying, not doing any of the financing. Probably makes about 20,000. Yeah, maybe a little more. So anyways, so it was very tough. We finally got some more banks, started getting more income, and I started hiring a second person and as anything, whenever you are growing, you're going to have growing pain. So when I step back a little bit from the selling process and started training, we've dropped back a little bit and then we hired a second person for sales. The first person didn't think we needed a second person. So anyways, that's my first encounter with what's called a split deal. I know nothing about the car business. I still don't. Right. I don't know any of the lingo. I've learned everything myself. I did all my own financing. I learned that. So I was going to step back as a. I mean, as a finance manager and just help train and sales manager. So we did that. The first month we sold about 20% more cars because we had another person. Well, the first paycheck that come out, the salesman had went to the other salesman. And because they were showing them some things in the CRM or the DMS system, they wanted half their deal. And I was like, what the hell is a split deal? You know, and why would you even. Why would you even ask why should. You should just be helping each other. Right. And I had let him go that day because he couldn't get beyond. He said we'd never make it. We don't have enough customers. Well, the following week, the other girl quit as well because she was so upset with the scenario. So here I am back at it again. But luckily I hired somebody and it started going. I just helped them through the process and we grew from there.

Hey, guys, sorry to interrupt the podcast. Just real quick talk to you about Buckeye dealership consulting. If you listen to our episode from a couple weeks, weeks ago, you heard Chuck talking about some of the great things that these guys have got going on. They're really stepping in, looking to help buy here, pay here, retail, subprime, pretty.

Much all dealers, you know, And I really think we talk about reinsurance so much about Buckeye, but one of the things really talk about is their, their consulting part of their name because they're going all in dealer performance groups. The next one's in January. Then they're having this. It sounds like a dealer specific convention. That's going to be great. So Buckeye dealership consulting is not just reinsurance, it's consulting as well. And reinsurance. Jeff, you and I can't say enough great things about reinsurance. It's the only way to build wealth. And they're a good company to go with.

Yeah. So if you have any questions or if you want to pick their brain or get involved in some of these things. Reach out to them, you know, Jason, Chuck, David, Brotherton, all the guys over there. Ask them some questions and tell them the podcast sent you over. Back to the episode.

So what, at what point, I mean, when you hit 30 cars, that's a lot for so many independent dealers. You know, that 30 average. At 30 average, what, at what point did it just take off and go from, you know, from 30 to 80 to 100 to 120? What was the special sauce? What, what happened that made it or what? You know, what point in time made that happen?

Like I said, we had a real small location, so I didn't have the space. I mean, the lot's only about a quarter acre, so I didn't have the space to sell more than 30 cars. So I opened up a second location in my hometown and it was a, it's. It's about the same size. So that got us to probably doing 40 to 50 cars a month. And I opened up, I didn't really have the space I needed. I had a warehouse that I was doing all my mechanic work in and I'd done everything in house. And finally in 2014, and I was doing really, really well with those two locations because I only had. In those two locations I had three salespeople and I'd done all the financing for both of them and I bought all the cars. So I guess keeping my overhead was super important to me. I didn't have to go hire other salesmen and other, I mean, other salesmen because I could help sell. I didn't have to hire a sales manager because I could do that. And I didn't have to hire finance managers because I could manage that all myself. So one of the most important things that I've done for myself is built a system where I could manage everything from one location. And I've been building on that for the past probably six years. And my, I really started growing. I opened up another, a third location, but it was more or less just for my mechanic shop. And it was in a little small town. It was actually affordable. You know, it only cost me $1,500 a month for a seven day shop and a couple, you know, I could hold some cars and just use it as a distribution point for all the rest. So I shut that down in one year and I'm at my. And I moved into my newest location, which was an old gas station that was previously a tire shop before that. And I fixed it up and it's right on the interstate and we Started pumping out of there, started hiring more salespeople. Go ahead.

So, yeah, I'd love to know as it sits now, you know, two locations doing about 100 to 120amonth. What does that look like from a staffing standpoint? Can you kind of explain to us, you know, maybe do you have your own repair shop? I mean, I imagine, I don't know. You gotta have 20 employees. I mean, that's no small feat.

Yeah, we have about 40 employees. I have a six bay mechanic shop. We do it, it's on site. I have about five detail guys. I have eight salespeople. One is kind of part time. I have probably about five or six more in administration. I have three finance managers that work a dual role as a sales manager. And we got several drivers. We might have probably close to 50 if we haven't. I mean, with drivers and everything. And that's pretty much majority.

What do you do anymore? Because it sounds like you got everybody covered.

I buy car. I was doing all the car buying and I hired an inventory manager to take care of my position. So I buy about half the cars. I have about. I have all kinds of stuff going on. I focus a lot on my software. I train my guys every day. I'm very, very involved in every aspect of the business.

Sounds like you're working on it, not in it.

He's doing it the right way, Jeff.

No. It took me a long way to a long time to figure that out. It's not hard for me to let go, but I'm a very controlling person. So until I know that it's being taken care of like it's supposed to be, it's hard for me to step back because I would be letting. I don't like a mediocre process. I like a perfected process that we do the same way every single time. And we were. I mean, I was training this morning before I came here. I went in, I'm there every. I mean, and one, one thing that's really different than Everybody else in 16 years, I've never missed a day. Wow. I've never missed a day. I've been sick, I've been, you know, motorcycle wreck, whatever, you know, I've never missed a day. And I think that's the most important part of my success and taking care of my customer and taking care of my people the whole way. I would rather, I'd rather starve to death so they could eat.

But you have taken a vacation, right?

I do take a vacation. I mean, I didn't before it sounds.

Like it if you were doing all the buying and all the selling and running the whole operation. So, Michael, that might lead me into my next question for you. But what do you feel is the best decision that you've made as a.

Dealer signing on banks?

Okay. Going out, because I know getting Cap One an Ally was tough then, and I think it's even harder now. That's no small deal.

Capital One is the first one I got. And I got. What I'd done was I got really, really good at signing up banks. So if a bank contacted me or I contacted a bank, I could have my financials to them immediately. Within 15 minutes, I could have my financials and all the bank paperwork filled out. I memorized all of it. So I just started, started filling out paperwork, send it to the banks, tell them we could help them. And now I'm. You know, we do a lot of business with a lot of different banks. We're number one in our area with Capital One. We're probably number two in our area with Ally, number one with probably four or five other different banks. We kind of spread it. I mean, we want to go with the person who's going to maximize the profit for us. We do things a little bit different. I don't get in the rat race of dropping my price down to the lowest to make it on the back end. We make everything on the front end. We maximize. And it just, it took me to get Capital One 104 phone calls, and he stopped answering my phone. And then I started texting him twice a day. And then I asked everybody, my friends on Facebook, should I go to three times a day? Everybody said yes. And by the time I went to three times a day, about five days of that, he finally sent me the packet.

Wow, that's persistent. I mean, you know, some of us just don't have that gene. I don't have that gene. I'll give up way too easy. But the resilience that you have and the fortitude that you have is just crazy. Let's talk more about your training that you do every day. Jeff and I both are big on training. Um, every time I slack off training, my business suffers. Can you break down your weekly schedule and who you train with and what you're, what you're doing during that time?

Um, we train Monday through Monday through Sunday. We're open seven days a week. Monday is, is our big training day. That's where our, that's kind of our meeting day. So Monday morning, 8, 8 o', clock, we bring everybody into one area and we talk about what happened the week before and trying to figure out pain points. I keep a spreadsheet of all the, all our meeting notes and training throughout the week. I get people to figure out what we're not doing right and put it in that spreadsheet. That way we can talk about it Monday. And we iron out a couple things and we just have a. Everybody's got to be open minded and understanding that our jobs are to be critiqued every single day until, you know, we're at a level of running a fine, I mean a, a train, a locomotive. Right. A fine tuned machine. So Tuesday through Sunday is all sales training. Spend 30 minutes every single morning. Everybody comes over because our dealerships are only five minutes apart. So everybody stops in, we open up an hour later at the other one at our second location or which is our original location now. And we train, we role play. We have a training schedule and we put on that training schedule. We're going to train on that day. And this morning we done role playing with, just with customers and pricing.

And you have a service facility. Is that, do you do customer pay as well? Is it just internal based on.

It's internal only.

Okay. Do you train your, your service techs or do you let the service manager handle that? How do you do?

I have a great service manager. He's been with, I mean he has been with the company probably about 10 to 12 years. We've worked together. He's worked with my stepdad before I got there. And he's, he's a great guy and he's super knowledgeable about vehicles and you know the process. We're kind of at a pain point, right, because our property is about the one we're in now. We're trying. I bought three acres across the street to, to expand and I think I just. Some other things come up this right down the street from me that might be. That's got a 42,000 square foot building. So I'm thinking about buying that. But we have about a little less than an acre and we keep about our, our buildings on it, which is 1600 square feet, our shops on it, which is 2700 square feet. And we keep about 130 vehicles, 140 vehicles there that's going through the shop and being sold at the same time.

And Michael, how many cars can you get ready a month and how long does that take you on average per.

Car we get, we complete about 100 and like I said, 110 to 115, 120amonth. And I would say that's probably the hardest part. It's probably been about 15 to 18 days of getting a car from start to finish.

Hey, real quick, if you have not signed up for Tax Max yet, now is the time to get signed up. We are going full speed into the fourth quarter program right now, which means my guys are taking people's pay stubs, estimating what their upcoming tax return is going to be, and selling them a car now with a deferred down. So.

Yeah.

And get your hands on that money, guys.

Yeah. And Tax Max is great. Even for the first of the year. It's not too late to sign up. You still have time. Tax money is coming this year. Jeff, if you go back and listen to Tax Max episode, you're going to hear naysayers out there talking about there's not going to be money. There's going to be a tax season. It's going to be a big tax season, and you need to be prepared to get it done.

Yep. Yeah. I have all my guys focusing on people with kids and people that paid for daycare. Those are going to be some. Two large, large pots of money. So go back, look into that, listen to that episode, reach out to Tax Max, get signed up. Back to episode.

I guess we really hadn't talked about COVID and what it did. I know you're in. You're in a state that doesn't believe in Covid. Kind of the whole southeast that way, so. So you probably. You probably didn't shut down any. But what did that look like? And how are you finding now? How are you finding 120 cars a month at this point? Kind of walk us through that.

We attend probably seven or eight auctions a week. We buy some online. The day that Covid hit, I kind of set everybody down and said, and everybody was. They were freaking out, thinking they were going to die. I said, I want y' all to watch me, right? Just like your third. I mean, if you ever played baseball before, your third base coach, if he's wheeling his hand to run to home, I want you all to run to home. If I'm telling you to stop, I want you to stop. Right? Do you trust me? They said, yes. I said, I want you to follow my lead, then I want you all to work together. And if something happens, I'm never going to put you all in jeopardy of losing your life, losing a loved one. I'm never going to do that. We're going to do things. We're going to stay open we're not going to close down if they make us. They try to make us stay off the road. I was looking at buying helicopters, you know, I really was. So. But we stayed open the whole time. Then they tried to shut us down. We worked, we kept the doors closed, we sold to people. We'd done electronic contract and we talked the banks into doing electronic contracting on a lot of stuff and we stayed open, man, and everybody was happy ever. I never missed a paycheck. I wanted to make sure they got paid. And obviously, like a lot of others, we got the ppe. But man, we went. Something happened prior to, prior to Covid that really put me in a pickle and I want to talk about that. And when we talk about pain points with dealers, dealer floor planning is a, is kind of a. It can be a nightmare. I had one of the largest floor plan companies for independent dealers stop by and say we were, you know, you're one of our best dealers, we want you to go exclusive with us. And I said, no chance, you know, because it's important that dealers have enough money to. That way if they have to move some money because cash flow problems, they can. So. Well, they said, what would it take? I told them, well, if you increase my line by 250% or it was at this point it would be 150% and you reduce my fees probably by 30%, then we'll talk. Well, they came back and said, hey, we can't do that. And I said, well, there's no point in us even talking any further. And then they came back again. They beat what we originally said. So yeah, we'll, we'll go with you. And that was in December. We signed everything at the end of January. We had 60 days to migrate all our inventory over. I had two. I mean, I had three floor plans and I owned about a half a million dollars, my own cars at that point and had three floor plans. I had to cancel UCC on two of them because of COVID They never sent anybody out to audit the cars. And I called him and said, hey, what's the deal? We got 60 days to do this. We're on day 30 and I haven't seen anybody because generally you see the auditor, when he comes out, he comes and asks questions. He said, well, he came out there. Well, no he didn't. So can you please send him again or do I need to pay off these cars so we can proceed forward and keep our line of credit? He said, no, you don't need to pay them Off. So he said he was going to send somebody. They never did. This was around March, March 20, and our deadline's coming up. And, you know, Covid fully hit probably around the 25th of March. So I called him and said, hey, you're not sending these auditors out here. I'm going to go ahead and pay off my other floor plans. Which is about. It was right around $600,000. I said, if I do that and I cancel this ucc, are we still moving forward? Resounding, yes. So I paid them off. Cancel my UCC. One of my UCC took seven days to cancel, and the seventh day was the 60th day. And on the. They kept, I mean, reassuring me that that would happen. Well, Covid come and they shut all the floor planning down across the country and canceled my contract. And I just paid off all my cars with two of my. Two of my floor planners. And I was locked out of my other one, and I had probably 50% more. I had another 800,000 to spend on that line. So I had paid off 600,000. I'd owned about $500,000 in my own cars. I had to buy cars, right? And so luckily we sold 106 cars in March, and the money that we had in CITs were close to a million dollars. So we just started hustling, hustling, hustling. And we sold 73 cars that April, and I made about $4,000 a car on those because I was buying cars when nobody else was.

Yeah, I was too.

Yeah, I was me and another guy was the only people buying at every auction. So I was buying cars at a 30% discount and selling them for full retail plus. So we made a ton of money that. That may come around. And we made enough money that we didn't need those floor plans, but I needed them to grow even more, right? So finally, around June, a small floor plan company, or not small, they're a floor plan company. I called and said, hey, and I've been working with the floor plan companies, trying to get them back on board. The whole time, a floor plan company come in and said, they usually take 10% down, you know, and give you a line of credit of, I mean, whatever, 100% would that be? You know, like, if you gave them 50, they give you 500. Well, I told. I said, hey, would you sign up? Say, mike, we're not signing up anybody. I said, well, I'll give you 50,000 for 250. And they said, we'll do it. So I said, just Increase it whenever y' all get back going. So they did. They did exactly that. And once I signed back up, I got four. I had four floor plan companies, and it's been going great, man.

Well, Michael, I'll tell you. I mean, a leader for sure. And it's awesome to hear your story. Jeff, you got anything else?

Yeah, I want to. Michael, One question I like to ask all dealers is if everything fell apart tomorrow, you woke up, everything was gone, and you started over as a dealer, what would you do differently? What would change from day one? What would you. You know, is there a certain business model? Is there a certain thing that you would. You would go down the road? Like, what would you do differently if you just had a complete blank canvas tomorrow morning?

I don't know if I'd do anything differently. I'd continue to do the same thing that I already know to do. If I had to restart, I would immediately figure out how I could sign up banks. That's. I mean, it is. If I. Like I said, I learned a long time ago, if I didn't have the money to finance them and the customer didn't have the money to buy it, if the customer has the money, I'm subject to whatever they're willing to pay, right. And every bank is responsible for my income. If I sign up banks, right? So if I sign up a bank that only finances 100%, then I can only get 100% of wholesale. If a bank will do 140%, then I get 140% of wholesale. So I look for the banks that loan the most money on the right customer.

Well, Jeff, it sounds like he's doing exactly what he would do if he had to start all over again, I think.

Yeah, but. And I think it's so interesting to say any dealers that are trying to grow or trying to get there. You know, two things that I really pull from, Michael, is a. You're right. What. Where is this money coming from? Who's got my money? The customer's got my money. And I'm just doing cash sales. That's limiting. But if I have multiple banks, and I know I can place any type of credit customer in any one of these banks, depending on my car and their credit worthiness, now, that opens up a whole nother avenue for me to be a little more aggressive, sell a few more cars. But also, Michael's at the point where he's learned to work on his business and not in his business. And that's something we talk about all the time. Sure. I can grow to 30 cars. Doing it all myself. But you're not going to get to 50, you're not going to get to 60, and you sure aren't going to get to 100. And if that's your goal, you've got to learn to let go, and you've.

Got to learn to train and train.

It's so true, Michael. Like training, sales training daily and playing daily. I mean, who. How many of us do that? Very few. Very few. Oh, we should.

Yeah.

Yeah. Just to add one thing, you know, when I got started in the training, I said I'm going to have a meeting every Monday. My stepdad, my partner said, that's just going to be too much. And now here we are training seven days a week. Right. And it keeps people fresh. Right. And I think if. And I work with people, man, I really don't fire people. I very rarely. Unless they do something crazy, lie, make up a fake paycheck stub or something like that, which is never going to happen. But they'd have to do something crazy for me to let them go. Their problems become my problems, and I help them fix those problems. And it just. It's worked out wonderful. Me, we have a. I mean, probably we rarely have anybody quit at all. I mean, most of my people have been there for years.

That's. That's a testament, I think, to you, Michael, especially during this time.

Your.

Your commitment to training, your commitment to be a leader in your dealership. I tell you, Jeff, there's been an awesome episode, man.

Yeah. Michael, hey, appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

No, thank you all guys.

Perfect. Cool, man.

Awesome.

No, thank you guys for having me on. I know I was long winded there for a little bit, so.

No, you too. You tell a great story.

Yeah, Yeah, I was like, I was super into it. I wasn't going to jump in at all. That's crazy, man. I mean, again, like, you come down and just think resiliency to get kicked in the teeth that many times. But you're like, not. You're not just, you know, you're not hesitant. You're not going small. You're like, look, I've been to zero. So put me to zero again. I don't care. I'll build back. I think that's so interesting in a lot of dealers that have that mentality of like, yeah, I've started with nothing. I'm not worried about. I'm not trying to just conserve and be conservative and, you know, it's pretty cool.

Yeah. No, so, like, I tell everybody I get it a lot that, you know. Before they know my story, they call me what they call a unicorn in the car business. I got all the banks. We got all the financing. Matter of fact, I'm leaving here right now to go sign a $4 million line of credit with a commercial bank that drops my fees down around 5%. That's great. But they always call me the unicorn. But I had to tell them that I was a jackass that grew a real. A real painful horn out of the middle of my head. Right, yeah.

It's all about your persistence.

That's it.

Yeah. That's great, Michael. It's very inspiring.

So if I can see it in my mind, it can happen.

Cool, man. Well, have a great day. Get that line of credit signed as soon as possible.

Thanks, guys. Have a great day. Bye.

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