#249 - Words Of Wisdom -BHPH Super Forum

Hey everybody, before we start the podcast.

This week, we got to make sure you are planning on getting your safeguards training. And Luke, good news.

Good news is good news. Announced by the federal government yesterday that they are delaying the implementation for six months. But let me tell you, this is something that you need to go ahead and get done. We, we actually set a, a requirement our dealership to have every everything done before December 1st. It's time to go ahead and get it done. Don't delay. Hook up with Tiada. Get it done. It's dealer education portal dot com. Right, Jeff?

Yep.

Yep.

You know how much I love procrastination. So this time it paid off. But I'm going to get mine done anyways before the 9th of December and I'll wait till May 9th but get signed up. Great program through Tiada. And here's the episode.

You are listening to the Independent Dealer podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff.

Watson every single day. Cause I love my occupation. Hey I'm on vacation. If you don't like your life then you should go and change it. Hey, I'm on vacation every single day. Cause I love my occupation. I'm on vacation every single day. Every, every single day. All right, guys, is my mind going too?

All right.

Okay.

Hey everyone gather around. We are going to go through and build you guys up. If you were at my session and you heard my first one, I was doom and gloom and I made you all want to quit the buy here pay here industry. We are going to wrap this up with 30 minutes of inspirational quotes. That song right there. Who loves their occupation? Can I get a yeehaw? Bill, do you love your occupation? Who loves being a guy here pay hair dealer who thinks we are in the best industry to be in. All right, guys, for those of you that don't know me, my name is Jeff Watson. I'm a buy here pay here dealer. I've been doing it for about 18 years. I also host a podcast called the Independent Dealer Podcast. I've had the unique experience to be the reporter. I'm not an expert. I don't know at all. I might know the guy that knows it all and I like to get him on the podcast and interview him. So I've had that unique experience to be able to talk to some of the best operators, the best vendors, the guys that really live this thing full time and try to extract the best information out of them and pass it on to other dealers in kind of a concise area. It's a fun hobby. I really enjoy Doing it. So we were able to compile a handful of the best interviews. This is by no means an all inclusive list of some of the best interviews we've had. So if we did interview you and we didn't put you on the podcast or on this breakdown, I apologize. I do see a couple of faces here. This is that might not be happy they didn't make it, but so what we're going to do is I'm going to play a handful of clips from the podcast, some 60 and 182 minute, 3 minute type spots of some of these guys sharing with us some of the best advice that we've had over the hundreds of interviews, hundreds of hours of conversations that we've done. And then we've got these two experts that need no introduction to kind of a pine and tell us a little bit about how that applies to us. Our goal here is, is to leave you guys flying high. Right. We learned a lot of great stuff these last couple days. We're going to take it with us back into our dealerships going full speed. So anyways, plug the podcast, reason I'm here, download it, subscribe, blah, blah, blah.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Ok. Joel Escoda, legend in the industry. If you know Joe, the second thing.

Was no one anticipated that those that didn't drive couldn't take it anymore amongst their own families. They want to get out.

Yeah.

But they got rid of the cars.

Ubered.

Uber was really the big thing. And then they realized I don't want.

To sit in the car with a.

Stranger, so I don't want to Uber anymore.

I want my own car.

Yeah.

It's very interesting. All the things that happened we didn't think would happen.

And as quickly as it happened.

Right.

Oh, I mean, it wasn't. I mean it's instantaneous.

It feels like a blink, right?

Oh, it was a blink.

Yeah.

So, you know, I, I think I've said this in podcast before, but I heard another guy on the podcast say that technology advanced five years in the matter of like several months. I mean, have you seen that also.

In the car business?

Well, technology, the way we do business.

That has been that' implemented technology.

We've implemented technology. The fact of the matter is I had tried to get dealers for years to start looking at that, worrying about how we should be addressing. And those dealers who got a jump start five years ago, actually, listen to me, they did much better. They fared much better. And ironically said dealers who are banking on Ford traffic, still banking on their local market not looking at the entire country and quite frankly, other countries.

You know, that's interesting because I remember sitting in 20 grid with you five, six years ago and you did make us look ahead.

Really.

Why are we thinking about this right now? Well, we didn't realize the things we took from that, you know, getting back leads quicker. Thinking about delivering cars at home, thinking about the appointment being different than the ups because the ups were going away back then. But you really got us to look forward. And that's, I mean that's one of the great reasons you're such a great educator.

Well, that was the reason that actually when I was asked to conduct the session here, I asked, what do you think the topic should be? I always ask my clients, what do you think the topic should be? What are those asking for? And it kind of stumbled a little bit now. I guess it was a typical answer. And I thought, you know what I really want to talk to viewers about preparing for what is going to happen, not what might happen, what's going to happen financially. The market always corrects it, always, always, always corrects. Those guys who made a ton of Money on the AMC Theater.

Yeah.

GameStop, they're gonna give it back somewhere.

Yeah.

Well, a lot of these guys forgot get paid taxes.

Yeah.

So all these young people who were brilliant and jumped in, made a lot of money, but they forgot those are short term gains and they're taxed a much higher rate long term gain. And some people didn't know you had to pay taxes. So I thought what I wanted to do was share with dealers and remind them that this is really good money right now. Nurse. Selling cars like crazy. But you gotta remember tax structures are changing and most importantly, this ride will end and you better be ready for it financially.

So how do we, how does that look? What can a dealer do Best to prepare for the downturn that's coming because we, we. That's coming.

Right.

So how can we best position ourselves financially to weather those type storms?

We had at 08 become better business people and less of car dealers, in my opinion.

Sure.

You know, car dealers are tired. Again, the business of I like cars.

That I could sell them.

Yeah.

And I thought I could sell them.

Yeah.

And you heard that a lot of those guys are now doing something else.

Okay, guys, Joe Lascoda, two great takeaways from that clip. First off, being prepared for what's coming and adapting to change. And then what I want to talk to these guys about is how can we be a better business owner and not just a car guy.

Yeah. You know, it's a great question and Guy, I love Joe. So you think about, all of you guys, think about, I just had a 20 group a couple months ago and one of the sessions in the 20 group was what was your technology? What did your business look like five years ago or three years ago compared to where it is today? Has it changed a little bit in your dealerships? Right. So I, to me, that's what I think being a business, better business owner is, is anticipating, planning and anticipating what's coming down the pipe, being at the forefront of it, really thinking through, you know, all the changes that are coming. And I love the adaptive change thing. Every once in a while in our business there's a fundamental shift in the business model and we've gone through that over the last year just with acv. Right. So ac, you know, actual cash value of your cars, fundamental shift in the business model. How are we going to plan for that and how do you be a better business owner in order to plan for that and be prepared for the future? So to me, that's what the message is. Yeah.

And Bill, let me ask you for the follow up question. How are dealers supposed to know if this is a permanent change or just a passing fad? You know, we all digital retailing and remote delivery and that whole thing was huge during COVID and we all believed it and we were 100% on it. Is that still the future? Were we bumped up? Is that back to business as usual?

I think there's a little bit of both. You know, I think there's definitely gonna be some opportunities for us to continue on that digital path. But I think at the end of the day we've also found that, you know, it's the conversations that we have with people in person, it's the phone calls, it's the in person discussions, it's coming to these things. You know, at the end of the day, you know, this all could have been on video and with how many of you would have actually attended and still been here at the end of the day at 2 o' clock in the afternoon, not very many and not, you know, most of you would have cut out already said, ah, I got something else to do. But I think what we've learned is that at the end of the day there's still going to be a portion of that that's going to be important for us to continue to follow through on. But it's that in person conversation that makes us so much different and builds.

That relationship with our customers. Jeff, I could Add to that. So, you know, I think it's, I think this is what's important. Technology is changing. You know, you guys all remember the first time a customer came into your dealership with a smartphone and your salesman was like, oh my God, they're blue booking us. Right? Everybody remembers that conversation. I'm sure technology is changing. It's going to continue changing and it's, it's a benefit to our customer. It's a benefit for the customer experience. However, we are a relationship business. We always have been a relationship business and we have to remain a relationship business with our customers, period. End of story. So if you're going to, if you're going to make the experience better, because we're going digital, we're going online, and we're trying to get a little more sophisticated in things. Don't forget, if you're losing contact with your customer, you got to put it somewhere else in the process. Right. So don't lose the contest contact, just shift it so you still have that relationship that you're building with your customer.

Yeah, good point.

Those national dealers that are doing a lot of remote delivery and buy online, how are they doing right now?

Yeah, they've lost a lot of stock.

If they don't have a personal relationship, they either got to spend a ton of money to stay in front of your face. We don't have to do that. That's the unique advantage we have is local buyer payers. Right. Okay.

Hey everybody, real quick. Hope you're enjoying this podcast. We want to make sure you guys know it is tax time. Tax time is coming and our partners at Tax Max want to get you that money a little bit quicker than the guy down the street.

Yep, Tax Max is the way to go. If you're not currently using a good tax provider to help you get things done. These are the people that do it. They understand the car business. They know what it takes to get deals done and to get some side notes paid and to get those payments called up. Right, Jeff?

Yep, yep.

So we're starting our fourth quarter program right now. We're sending mailers out to all of our customers saying, hey, file your tax return early. Use that deferred down to get into a car now and, or get caught up on your car payment, you know, do some repairs, whatever it is. Everyone is struggling for money right now. A lot of people are upside down, negative equity. They need that extra down payment to do a trade in, to upgrade, get into something newer and nicer. So capture it way before tax time when they're going to have that money in their pocket and it's going to go to someone else. So get with the guys. Tax max.com. use the code that's on the screen or in the descriptions to get your discount. Tell them we sent you.

I'm going to move on. Jason March, president of fia.

Let'S see.

What he has to say.

What's the hardest part of being a dealer?

I think the hardest part is keeping a good attitude and being the guide that people look for, the direction. I think when you come in and you're not having a good morning or your day is not going to what you planned it to be. I feel like having that. Being able to have a good attitude, a lot of enthusiasm, and keeping a positive spin on. On what's going on. It's sometimes difficult, especially in the buy here pay year.

A lot of.

A lot of wrenches get thrown, a lot of customers, reasonable. So just being rock there for your people, I think can be the most.

Amen to that. You guys saw my eyeballs in that session. It was like they're in the headlights. Because I realized that sometimes I come in to the office, I'm not. I'm not the cheerleader. I'm not the one on top of my game. I'm not the one giving up everyone an attaboy and building up the team.

Right?

How important is that, guys, to have a good attitude as the dealer, principal, or as the key employee, and to be kind of that emotional rock for your team?

You know, I always talk about you got to leave everything at the door. When you come into your business. You've got to have the attitude because you're, you're the. You're the person everybody's following, whether you're the manager of that particular store or you're the owner or you're just the only person there. Whatever it's going to be, if your attitude is not where it needs to be, it won't get any better. And you won't have the opportunity to be able to evaluate and understand something that someone else is going through because you're only thinking about what's going on in your own life. So you've got to put all that other stuff aside. You got to forget about it, and you got to say, hey, I'm here and I'm in it to win it.

All right?

So at the end of the day, my biggest thing, Jeff, is I've got to have a great attitude each and every time, and I'm always going to be the person people are going to come to. To ask me questions. Because if they don't want to ask me questions, business isn't going to get done the way that it should be getting done.

Give us a whoop.

Whoa.

This is coming from the guy that gets like three hours of sleep and is up at the break of dawn being chased by people through a city.

That's all I can tell from this page.

Or he's swimming with sharks or something.

But. So I can't remember the name of the book. I've read this about 100 years ago, and it's about this fish market in Boston. And maybe some of you guys have read this book, and these guys come in this fish market every single day, and they have a.

They.

They have a really kind of a. Well, it's a fishy job, right? I mean, it's smelly. It's hard. They're picking up these fish and they're. They're. They're moving them down the line and they're selling the fish all day long. You would think that coming into that every day you would have a really bad attitude. Right. But they don't. They have a line out the door in this fish market, and they actually, they're such. They're so famous for it. They have this book written, so they, they're tossing fish and they're yelling back at customers and. And they're yelling at the employees. And it's all very positive and lots of positive momentum in the, in the market. Right. It's just a phenomenal story. And I guess the moral to that is you get to choose what your attitude is. So choose to have a good attitude when you come in in the morning. Doesn't get worse in that fish market.

Yeah.

And do you look forward to going in on Monday morning?

You bet I do.

Every.

Every time. Yeah.

There's no, there's no reason for me not to think that that's a brand new week. That's a brand new day. It doesn't matter. Monday, Saturday, I don't care. Hey, if I'm going to walk into that office, it's always, hey, I'm going to be there. I want people to come to me and ask me questions because at the end of the day, I'm the person that's going to be. They're going to rely on me to be that cheerleader. If that's the case that you want to look at it that way.

It's very true. And it's probably a horrible tangent or side note, but I'm guilty of that exact opposite thing. I'm pretty sure Adrian can vouch for that. That when I'm in the office, I have so many fires and so many post it notes and so many emails to go through that I'm. Yeah, yeah, what do you want?

What do you want?

Okay, yeah, like, like leave me alone. Like, I got a lot to do. You know, I don't care that the friggin water filter ran out or you like don't like the way Susan's perfume smells today. Like not inviting as an owner, dealer.

Right.

Like if I'm not excited to be there and engage with my customer, my employees, and say, hey, yeah, yeah, tell me what's going on back there. Tell me how I can help you as a boss.

Yeah.

And everyone, I just, Every single table just had someone point at someone. All right? So you know, you know exactly what's going on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Luckily I have Adrian and everyone likes him at my dealership. So if I lost him, I'd lose it all.

But. And we have Bill.

And we have Bill.

There you go.

That's exactly right.

Everyone needs a build.

All right, everyone, past time. Great way to protect your assets on your lot and your assets on your balance sheet. We use it. Jeff uses it. And I tell you, Jeff, that's the way I sleep at night on those big units is to have two of those bad boys on there. I know not everybody thinks you should do that, but I'm telling you, it makes me sleep at night, buddy.

Yeah, it's so funny. I recently had a 20 group and we talked about GPS systems and everyone was kind of talking about, you know, I don't use the ignition interrupt anymore. And I'm like, yeah, well, you probably shouldn't be shutting off their ignition and leaving the car there. It's just, just, you're just asking for tampering. But with the wireless gps, there's no tampering. No one's ever going to find it. Like, you would literally have to tear the thing down to pieces to figure out where that wireless GPS is at. And that's the beauty of it is just you don't, you don't worry about tampering and you don't worry about after hours installs. You know, like if, if my mechanics aren't here, my tech's not here to put a GPS in. Right. My, you know, anybody can do it.

Yeah. And, and as a retail dealer, it's just a really easy way to protect your asset if you put it the same place every time and you know that next thing you know, you come in and three or four your cars got stolen overnight. You can go recover them pretty quickly and it really will help on your insurance costs. And these, these devices aren't, aren't expensive and they actually have a deal for us, Jeff. So yeah.

Yeah.

Pastime user buy 5, get 1 free. So take advantage of that. Give those guys a call.

Dan Grosvenor, great dealer. Illinois?

No. Yeah, no, Missouri.

Missouri.

Yep.

St. Charles.

So here's the thing. So if you were like me and still to a degree, it's always there is I had to have my hands in everything.

Right.

I, you know, all the big decisions I had to have and what really did it for me is we, we, we bought the facility that we're in right now. We were renting for four years and years, bought the facility we're in right now about seven years ago. And it was a very laboring was. I was buying out of foreclosure. It was a time when the government shut down. I mean I had just a lot.

Of work to do.

So I had to let go of the reins, I had to let go of the buy and I had to, I had to turn it over to the management staff. I had their time, who are still with me today. And you know, what I discovered is they do it better than me. They do certain things better than me. So, you know, it's about, I guess, figuring out what the data points are that you need to watch the key performance indicators that you need to keep an eye on and figure out what the real critical conversations are and the real critical things you need to watch and have them manage the day to day. That's easier said than done. It's easier said than done.

It's when you become the difference between what an operator and an owner, you.

Know, and I'm still self employed, you.

Know, don't you own a job, you don't own a business, but you're getting better at owning a system. Yeah. And a business instead of. You're the guy that makes all the decisions on whether the engine goes in.

Or doesn't go in.

And you're the guy that makes a decision on whether we're going to do tires for that customer or whether or not. Right. Yeah. You've got to step away from those. Right. That's a hard thing to do is.

Don'T even want to have those conversations. And they know that they do a better job than I do.

Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's hard.

As you rise up and Say, okay.

I am the best at closing a deal or I am the best at making sure the paperwork's accurate, but it is not the best use of my time. Right, right. I can do it. I'm capable and more capable than maybe anyone in some things. Right. Maybe not others. But I've got to let it go in order to not be the bottleneck.

And if you're out there, if you're out there selling cars, well then basically.

Essentially you're, you're, you're, you're a salesman.

Income as a sales, as a salesperson. Right. So what's the salesperson make? Well, that's if you're out there sweeping a lot. Well, your, your, your time is being utilized at $12 an hour. I mean that.

Okay, so Dan talks to us about, and he subscribes to the EOS system Entrepreneur operating system by Gino Wickman or someone. And most of the very, very high level dealers I know subscribe to that system are similar. But he talks about the delegate and elevate. Right. What is our time worth? Do we think about that as dealers often? I mean, we all own jobs. I don't know if a lot of us here own a business with a handful of, a few of the guys in the room that I know could leave their dealership for 3, 4, 5, 6 months, 12 months and have it still operate or be better when they got back. I think for a lot of us, we leave for three, four, five days. Right now we're panicking, we're chomping at the bit to get back in our dealerships and fix all the problems that happened while we were gone. We just own a job or take.

Everything you just learned for the last couple of days and say, man, I got some great insight. Let me tell you what we're going to do now. And you got a laundry list. No, but at the end of the day, the most important thing, and I think what everybody should be taken from Dan and, or this conversation is you've got to be able to allow someone to get that job done. And if they don't do it right, you're trusting with verifying, you're verifying the information, you're looking at it, you're talking to them, you're having a discussion that, hey, let me tell you what we could do to make this a little bit better. But you want to give them that chance because you hired them for that. If you try to do everything yourself, and that's the only thing you're going to do all day long is the other job instead of the job that you should be doing. Looking at sometimes the bigger picture, trying to understand what is the value of what you need to do in the day and, and be that positive person. Because once you get a little upset when you're having to clean out a car of a repossession that they just took and there was only three or four days and it looks terrible. Yeah, you'd be frustrated. So give that chance to somebody else to be able to say, hey, let me tell you what we can do to make sure that this gets done great and properly. And at the end of the day, that's what you, that's how you delegate. You give that opportunity because you hired them and you're paying them. If you're going to pay them, give them the chance to do the job, teach them, show them how, and that's what you do.

Ben? Yeah. So, you know, I think what you said in the clip actually, Jeff, you know, are you owner or operator? And look, you're spot on. So who in the room, just raise your hand. Is your phone getting blown up the last couple of days from the dealership? Come on. I know, I know people are blowing you up, right? Can you leave for two or three days and, and not have to worry about everything blowing up? And that's the difference between being an owner.

All those guys already left in an opera. Yeah, these are the guys that could actually be going.

They're the ones that are good. So you guys are the good ones at delegate. No, but seriously, it's the difference between running a single point operation where you are either direct authority. Right. And you can control everything that's going on. And why is it hard to transition to a multi point operation? Well, it's hard because now you're not in front of everybody all the time. You get to change your management style. You have to actually coach people and train people and teach them how to do the jobs, you know, on their own and give them and empower them for that. So spot on. I just, you know, delegate and that's, that's the way you've got to do it. Hire people that are smarter than you and that'll make your lives so much easier.

And a great exercise for this is go through your week, your month, write down every task that you do, get on a little Google sheet, write down every single task that you do, put them in some order of importance or label an importance to them, and then decide, can I delegate this? Can I automate it or do what? Can I just get Rid of it altogether. Can I hire someone out and go through that and then just every quarter, every year do that until you're focused on the most high level things that are going to move your dealership forward. Right? Get rid of that. I'm still opening the mail.

Well, why am I still opening the mail? But Jeff, here's something we do think about this. When we promote people into management roles, we promote people in the management roles because they are fantastic individual contributors, right? We put them in a sales manager role because they're a great salesman. Put them into a collection manager role because they're a great collector. But how much time do we spend developing their leadership? We just throw them in. A lot of times we throw them into that role and hope that, you know, hope that they're going to do well. But give them some training, weekly one on ones daily coaching, help them be good leaders.

And I think that that's a perfect point. Ben, you've got to continue to train. Who here has a training. Who trains on a weekly basis with all your people? Raise your hand. You need to train on a weekly basis with all your people. And that's not just talking about numbers, that's actually talking about their specific job set, of what they're doing, going out, doing some role plays, discussing with them. If you're not having that opportunity to do that with them, how are they going to get better? Why are you here today? Why are you here for the last few days? To get an education, to be able to learn, to be able to get taught by people that maybe have done it, been there, learn those things. That's going to be the difference of where you're going to be at. If you're not teaching and training the people that need to, that you hired to do the job, you're not doing enough delegation.

Bill, I don't have the time to train.

If you don't have the time to.

Train, you don't have the train.

You don't have the time to elevate, Right?

Delegate and elevate.

You guys have a.

If you could do every job in the dealership, you'd be ultimately successful, right? So you need to take everything that's in your brain and put it in those employees of yours.

That's exactly right.

Hey everybody. Buckeye Dealership Consulting. Great sponsor of the podcast. They have been for months and months and months. Great guys. Obviously we all tell you every single week to get your reinsurance program going. One thing that really dawned on me was my CPI game is horrible. I am not good at getting my guys to sign my customers up for my CPI program. If you don't know what that is, go back and listen to some of the other episodes on reinsurance. But cpi, it's, it's basically, I mean it's, it's money that my customers are giving to other businesses that they should be giving to me.

And that's what, I mean, that's what reinsurance is, is you're taking back the money you're giving to everyone else. Jeff, and it's doing it in a tax deferred way. CPI I tell you, I was a naysayer for years, Jeff, and I think I shared some information with you via text about how much money I think I left on the table. It's millions of dollars, people. And so I would hate for you to leave millions of dollars on the table because you're not using a reinsurance company. Buckeye is the place to go. And Jeff, we also got the, the big DPG event coming up in January. So yeah, come on, let's do it.

Yeah, get talk to the guys at Buckeye, check out their website, click the link in the show notes and get signed up and we'll see you in Florida.

Brandon, Interesting story. I'll give some more background. Second so you had a, you had a handful of dealerships. You split your attention to chase to bun some horses. Both of them kind of faltered. What was the crux or what was.

Kind of the linchpin that collapsed it?

Was it being too leveraged? Was it slowing sales? Was it not seeing the writing on the wall? Like, what are the lessons you can point that you're looking for next time around? I guess that's what's super interesting to me right now. We're all doing the same thing.

All the dealers are making a bunch of money.

Everybody's selling cars, everybody's invested in this, that and the other thing. But you know, what's the lesson from that?

The biggest lesson that I took from this, and it's a lesson that I'm happy to have been able to be there and learn from, was you can't just assume that everything is going to keep moving forward.

You can't.

You have to have some kind of contention plans in place in case things go backwards. Do you have some money sitting around that you can live on if these car lots stop selling cars? Do you have another business or another vehicle of investment that you can make some money on if we stop selling cars? Because, you know, any of you guys that went through the credit crunch, you know that happened pretty well over a six month period of time. We went from selling cars to not selling cars in six months, you know, and it was extremely difficult.

Oh yeah, I have tons of friends that were selling 80, 90 cars a month. The next thing you know, I mean, overnight, Jeff, they, they went to selling 10 cars a month. And you know, the first month you go, it'll be all right. And you keep that staff next month. Oh, it's going to bounce back. It doesn't. You keep that staff. The next thing you know, everybody's out of business.

Right.

So I don't want to spend too much on time. If you saw my first session, I was very doom and gloom at that point. But what about being prepared through rough times?

You know, go ahead.

Well, I just had it, you know, I just had an interesting several conversations actually over the last couple of days, you know, about, about leverage in, in your, in your dealerships, you know, should. What's too much leverage, what's not enough leverage, you know, what's your covenants with your bank? And, you know, I think it's an interesting conversation because I have some large dealers in some of my groups. Bill does as well. I have a group that's average portfolio size, about $46 million. So very, very large dealerships. And I'll tell you what I think is interesting with those folks is that they're all leveraged at about 40%. Okay, that's a lot of capital. And I'm like, well, you could pay this off. You could pay this off, you know, 10 times over. Why do you, why do you stay leveraged? Well, because they'd rather use that capital from the bank at a low, at a low cost to, you know, to finance their other investments and other things that they have going on in, in smaller dealerships, I have the, I say I have the same conversations. And in smaller dealerships, it's, you know, there's a lot of stress. You've got that you're staying up late at night, you know, you've got a lot of stress on you. So how do you, you know, is it better to pay off that, that line or is it better to have a line? And I think each, each dealer has to kind of think about that themselves and what your appetite for that level of stress is. But man, I think you prepare, you just start making the right financial decisions. I think you use other people's capital. There's nothing wrong with it right when you can. And that's how you divest a little bit.

And I don't Disagree. And here's what I'll say. A lot of my conversations have been, I don't have employees. I'm looking for people. How do I find people, where do I get them? And I think, you know, the biggest thing is I always tell people, you need to have somebody in reserve. You need to always be talking to somebody. You know, what is it? Always be selling that if you're not developing somebody consistently to be able to put into a position that you know or don't know that's going to be open, then you're not helping yourself to continue to possibly grow. And that's going to bog you down. That's going to have that negative attitude at that point in time because it's going to put a lot of stress on you. So not. There's no disagreement. I agree. You know that you've got to have that nest egg. And from, you know, as far as money goes. Sure, absolutely. You need to have other opportunities. But the most important thing sometimes is if I don't have people to help me out, how am I going to be able to get this job done? If I'm trying to sell 40 cars and run my business at the same time, it's not going to make any sense. So that sometimes becomes a tougher situation.

Your intellectual capital.

Yeah, you have.

As well as your cash.

Exactly. And look, I'm preaching to the choir here, but running a buy here, pay here dealership is not a part time job. So. So you have to be focused on what's in front of you until, until you have the right personnel in place. And then if you, I think if I caught this, this interview, he, he, he had kind of split his focus between his dealership and another business. Right. That's really, that's a recipe for disaster. Unless you have the personnel in place where you can step away from your business. Right. And we're not all there.

Yep.

I would think that'd probably be if you got into the conversations with the old timers that have been in the industry for a long time. The guys that have crashed and burned.

Yep.

Were the ones that got distracted, took their eye off the prize, got distracted from their dealership, started chasing some other shiny penny.

Yeah.

And this crumbled. Their, their little cash cow, their golden goose got executed.

Absolutely, Jeff.

Because they have the ball.

Well, it's. At some point, at some point, you know, you might not want to have to work 80 hours a week in your business. Okay. And at some point that's going to be the case for you. But until you. Until you've reached that point, you have to be laser focused on the business in front of you and try not to. Try not to divest.

Yeah, we're in the interest of time, I think trying. We're going to skip Bill's audio, but there is a question, and the piece that he gave us, I feel like is very important. He said it costs a lot to have a good reputation. Talk to us about that.

It costs, you know, it's always going to cost a lot of money to do a lot of different things. But at the end of the day, your reputation is built off of what you've actually put in place for every person that walks through your business. You've actually developed that person from the very beginning that they walked onto your dealership. So the best that you can do is that you can offer and discuss with them and give them opportunities that is going to make them feel comfortable enough to be able to speak to you and have a conversation. At the end of the day, it does cost some money to be able to have a great reputation, but it costs even more money if you don't give them the time of day. And you think that something else is going to make it better because. Because you're going to give them something.

No.

At the end of the day, they want to have a relationship with you. They're trying to figure out a way. Most customers that walk into your dealership will go exactly where you want them to go. You guide them, and they're going to walk through the door. You guide them, and they're going to be able to make payments as you try to discuss with them as an opportunity. But the most, the one thing that doesn't happen is sometimes you think, oh, you know what? That text message got through.

Okay.

It's going to be fine. I sent a little smiley emoji that doesn't always work.

Right.

So you've got to have a good conversation with them, and it's going to cost a little bit of money, Jeff. But I think in the bigger aspect of this, it costs you more money if you're not actually trying to pay attention to what's actually happening in your business.

And I think, I think, Jeff, you know, when I think about what it costs to have a good reputation, you know, outside of the positive reviews that you can give me online, Mr. And Mrs. Customer, I'm thinking about, why do we recondition a vehicle? Why don't you just, you know, throw, you know, do an oil change, wash the car and throw it on your front Lot. Well, you do that because it's the right thing to do. That's a cost. That's a cost for you to have a good reputation, that you sell a decent product. Right. When you have a warranty or let's talk about goodwill money. Post sale. Well, customer comes in and they need an AC unit and it's, you know, a thousand degrees out. Right. And. And they don't have the money for that. Well, that's why we have goodwill money. That's why we set that type of money aside. That's a cost. What you're doing there is you're providing a good service for a consumer who really, really can't, you know, can't get it themselves right now. And that to me, that's when I start thinking about what's the cost. I'm thinking about real dollars. Right. That's. That's money well spent in order to be a good partner to your consumers. And that money will come back to you because you're going to get referrals and you're going to have lifelong customers. Right. And you're going to have a great reputation, not because you got good reviews only, but because you're doing the right thing by your customer.

Yep.

That's.

What do you think would happen to your reputation and your culture if you took all your outside ad spend everything you spend through Google, Facebook, and put it towards Goodwill and said, instead of sending over here to these guys, I'm going to stick it all into Goodwill. I'm going to fix everything. I'm going to do everything. I'm going to be everything for these customers to that dollar amount. I mean, talk about repeat referral.

Yeah, I mean, we talk about referral business that, you know, at every point in our business.

Right.

And every time that we have discussions, how do we get more repeat customers? Yes. A lot of that goodwill will go to exactly what you want it to. It'll be that referral. Because most of our customers we know running the same service, so they're going to be discussing, they're going to be talking, they're going to have those conversations with each other. That's going to spread that word and spread that message.

Don't go back to your stores and say, ben, Bill and Jeff said to give everything away. That's not the message. Right. Ben, Bill. But sometimes, sometimes it makes sense. Right. Understand when it is and do the right thing.

Yep.

I say give everything away.

No, don't do that.

Don't do that.

With a few seconds we have left, this the last One, this is Brittany Hibbed in the late, Great Brittany, for those of you that know her, know she was an icon and just the best of the best when it comes to car dealers. That's what she had to share.

I was gonna say. I also think just kind of making the conscious decision probably about five, six years ago that you have to spend money to make money, which was a really kind of tough call for me as a pretty frugal person, to realize that, you know, just existing here is not going to draw people to us. But, you know, you got to have a calculated marketing plan. And we've had a lot of success over the years doing a lot of radio. As Facebook's become a thing, we're kind of shifting from mass media more to the social world. Social media, but just always kind of putting our name out there and. And me getting over myself and, you know, not caring anymore to be on the radio, put my face over Facebook and that kind of thing.

Yeah, you mentioned that, I think, in a conversation we've had previously where you said, it's a little weird at first when the person recognizes you in the grocery store as the lady that wears the pickle costume on the ads or the lady on the radio. Hey, you're that really annoying voice on the radio that comes on all the time, every 10 minutes.

Yeah.

So that.

Yes.

Yeah, that.

That is pretty funny. And kind of had to get to the point because I'm. I'm really in. In person, a pretty reserved, conservative person. And so having to realize that, you know, we can get out of our. Get outside of our own blocks.

So you need to spend money to make money. I think that's. You guys know what that means. We got to advertise. We got to use goodwill. We got to do what we got to do to get those cars in. But one thing that she really said that I really want to drive home with the last 60 seconds we have is, are we afraid to be known as buy here, pay here dealers? Do we get caught up in our own ego, you know, or think that that's, like, somehow negative? You know, I talked about that in my last session. Guys, we are the scrappiest of scrappy entrepreneurs, right? Nobody else wants to do this. No other industry wants to loan to our customer base. No bank, no credit union, no hedge fund, whatever. Nonsense. No government entity. They'll give you free cell phones and free rent and free health care, but they won't give you a free car. Oh, no, no, no. But we will, right? We'll go out there and we'll dig through the pile and we'll find a little turd and we'll bring it home and we'll polish it and we'll get it all shiny. We'll slap somebody in it, and then we'll be married to them. We will marry them for 36 to 48 months, right? And then we'll make little teeny turd babies with them, and they'll come in and buy more cars from us, Right? And we'll take care of our grandchildren.

Little people.

And then we'll take care of their grandchildren, right? Grand turds.

Grand turds.

Hold on, hold on, hold on. They're.

They're.

They're low lumps of coal, okay? Consider them the lumps of coal. And they're going to turn into a diamond.

Yes.

And to that point. And I don't mean that to be negative at all, guys, here's the thing. We live really good lives because of it.

Right.

Did anyone in this room have to choose between making their car payment and going on a family vacation this summer?

No.

None of us did.

Right.

So we make a really good living doing this. Our customers sometimes make that choice. Stupid.

Well, dude, so well said. Well said.

But what I'm saying is those other guys won't do what we do. The retail dealers. Oh, I don't want to carry that paper. I'm going to sell it off to CAC or Westlake. I don't want to see that customer after I sold it to them. We do that. We're buy here, pay here dealers. Right. We stand behind them.

Absolutely. You see it on. You see people on. Oh, I never do buy here, pay here.

No way. Really?

Why not? This is one of the best businesses. I've been doing this and so has been for over 30 years. We love it. At least. I know I love it. I love talking to people. I love being around these people. I love being in that dealership and being able to say, wow, look at the success that this person has had because of what I've done and giving them an opportunity to. Do you know that in 12 months.

They'Re all going to be asking us.

How do you do that?

Buy here, pay your thing.

Yeah, that's right. They're going to be wanting to know exactly how we do this business, because 23. They're going to look at us.

Yeah, listen, I. I sleep really well at night knowing that I. I'm in. I'm in a great industry, buy here, pay here. And I've, you know, retail is fine. I don't specialize in retail. I specialize in buy here, pay. The reason why I do that is because I understand the service that we provide for our customers. And that's how I sleep well at night. Our customers can't go other places. They need help and they need someone who's going to be reputable. They don't need someone who's going to take advantage of them. And that's the perception that we have sometimes is we're used car dealers and we're buy here, pay here, and we're taking advantage of our customers. But you're not. You're doing a great job for your customers, doing a great service for your customers who can't otherwise get into a vehicle. They need us. They need us. And I'm proud to be a part of that.

Yep, absolutely. And you wouldn't be here if you weren't proud to be what you are right now.

Give a whoop, Bill. Huh? Give me a whoop.

Whoa.

Great job. Thank you. Dealers helping dealers.

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