#265 - How I Built This w/ Hubert Keller

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

Hello and welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. Luke, we are going to have another installment of our How I Built this series this week. This is some of my favorite episodes, some of the best episodes we ever get feedback on. We all love to hear other people in pain, other people suffering, other people been down the road that we've been down and did it better, did it worse?

It is great. Go, go ahead. Sorry.

Introduce our guest.

So Hubert Keller from Keller's Auto Sales in Savannah, Georgia. And you know, I met Hubert at DPG meeting in January and he's like, hey, I'm a big fan of yours or a big fan of y'. Alls. I'm like, really? People listen, Jeff.

Yeah.

And, and of course, what'd they ask me? What's the first thing Hubert asked me? Where's Jeff?

Really? Are you really that good looking a person? Oh, yeah, Yeah. I love that. I love that. Guys, keep it up, please. Keep it up.

But what's great is these episodes really teach us a lot, Jeff. You know, we're, we're out here trying to help other dealers and you know, the byproduct is, is we learn a lot ourselves. And Hubert is a retail dealer down in Savannah, just crushing it, selling a ton of cars and really hadn't been at it all that long. He's quality dealer of the year for Georgia back in 2017. So it just really runs a great operation. I don't get to Savannah much. That might seem crazy, it's only two hours from here, but, but in South Carolina, we consider Savannah a cheap man, a poor man's Charleston. So we just don't go there. We go to Charleston anyway. All right, let's, let's get going here. Thanks for being with us.

Thanks for having me. Appreciate.

Hey, so start me from the beginning. I want to know how you got into it. You know, I'm seeing your website, I look through your cars like you've sell some good cars. You've got a ton of cars on your website. And you mentioned before the podcast, you guys are already at 40 this month and we're recording this like on the 10th of March. So you are. Guys are just cranking like killing. But take us, take me back to the beginning. Tell us how you got into it, how you got started.

Okay, I'll do it as quick as I can. So I started with, I had a golf driving range of all things to start with. And Then that the golf course opened up right by me, started doing the same thing. So I said, well, what am I going to do? And I answered an ad in a paper back when we had papers before the Internet, 2000, anyway, and went to work for Volvo, local Volvo dealer, and became general manager in, like, one year. It was just being in the right place at the right time. Did that for 10 years. And my parents kept saying, you need to do your own thing. You need to do your own thing. My grandmother was on it, too. So she had some property in a really good spot in Savannah that used to be a mobile home dealership. And they had left, and she couldn't rent it out. So she said, look, I'll give you free rent for a year. Do you want to do this thing? And I said, yeah, yeah, I'll do it. And in Georgia, it takes six months once you get started to get your license. You have to do the board. It's pretty complicated. So I was still involved. I was doing all the stuff, you know, to get ready. And then when I finally had to put the sign up for the people to take the picture, to take the picture and send it to the board, I said, well, I need to tell this guy that I'm going to do my own thing. And he's like, yeah, you could stay. And then a week later, he said, no, you got to go. So it started out small, like, finally got it, got the approval and started out with, like, five cars right before. And these were cheap cars, like we all start with. I mean, these were like 2,000, $4,000 cars. And, you know, before I got started, I got a home equity loan to give me the money so I didn't have to do the floor plan route. And so it was just me and my wife. She would come up on Wednesdays because that's where my local auction is. And then I would go buy a few cars and kind of get it going, like, every. Just started small. Very, very small.

What year Was that, Hubert?

2006, so.

Oh, wow. Okay.

So 16 years, right? Around 16 years, yeah.

I mean, I said you hadn't been in business that long. Sorry about that. I. You know, it's so funny when you get as old as we are in 2006. You think it was yesterday, right?

Yeah, that's right.

But that was right before the. I mean, before the financial situation, so. And actually, I guess when you were selling Volvos, they were still pretty good, right?

Yeah, yeah, they weren't as bad. Well, they're not terrible now, but they Weren't as bad, but we thought we were in Hilton Head. So that's a, you know, you know, that market, that was a strong market we had, you know. And so I think that's what influenced me so much. Not to go and buy here, pay here. Not there's anything wrong with it. It's just I was retail. We were complete retail. We put the prices like there 278, the main road to Hilton Head. And we would put the prices, you know, what does this car? Put it on the, on the windshield. And I, that's basically how I do my business now. Since we're not buy here, pay here and I can advertise a decent price, we put the price on everything. It goes on the windshields up front, do it that way. And we were getting. The Internet was pretty new when I started and actually built my own website. This is before you did, you know, the, you know, you paid people to do it. And we did a WordPress, I think it was, and did a website. And I would manually put them up there. Yeah. So we started out that first. First went like five cars and then maybe six the next. And then like, I don't know, I might have to pull the kids out of private school. But then I like the third month it hit and we sold 15 and I was like, okay, let's go. And we, we just started off very slow and it started to kind of go.

Do you feel like over the last, you know, what is that, 17 years or something? Do you feel like it's been kind of like just a natural organic growth and you've just been, you know, 5 to 15 to 30 to 40 to 50? Or was there something along that line that kind of shot your trajectory? Or can you point to any one thing where you're like, this is when we went from being a 5 to 15 car a month dealership to a 50 to 80 month dealership.

I would say, you know, the first thing I did was I got on autotrader. The guy was begging me to get on Auto Trader. I never did it. And again, this is in the Internet with Bill. You know, wasn't, wasn't as big. And that kind of got us some momentum. We noticed that what, what it is is we just learned we could sell different cars. You know, when you start out, you just kind of sell a certain car. Once you can, once you learn you can sell another car, then you start buying that car. You know, that's what we find. It's just. And then that kind of, okay, we can sell Alexis or we can sell a little bit more expensive car. And yeah, I think the Internet was getting on Autotrader first and then since we got on pretty much all of them. But yeah, if I point to something I'd say that.

So go ahead, Luke.

Okay. I was gonna say would you say that that's still one of your highest lead sources auto trader or do you participate in like CarGurus and Cars.com and all these other ones?

Yeah, Autotraders Pipe Cars.com is good. We, we got with them real early too. And Cargurus. We got the Cargurus. They did like did me like they did everybody else. It just got priced up and we just said no. So we're not on Cargurus. I'm trying to think true cars is really good for us because we get a lot of the. And it's not expensive. 750amonth or something like that compared to some of the other ones. And we get a lot of differently. It's just been good. And again, I'm not up front. I'm in the back most of the time. I got some decent managers. So the one questions I don't know a lot about are some of the. You know, I know most of them but yeah, I work on the cars. Like I'll buy the cars and then I'll go in the back. I've got, I'm up to like 3techs right now but. And I finally got one that's good with electrical. But I'm pretty decent with electrical so I help them diagnose so much.

So how many employees do you have now?

Probably 12. I think I've got four. You only break it down? Yeah, yeah, four salesmen. I got a tag title lady. She answers the phone and then I have. And one of the salesman is my manager. He's my gm. He's my brother in law too. He's been with me a good bit. So he's the general manager. And then I have currently I have two detailers. One slash detailer does our tires and then I have two techs. And then I have one guy who's been with me for a long time and I'm trying to train him to buy and when he's not buying he helps order in parts diagnosing and he's salary, you know and then on my text I just. Salary, you know.

So when did you hire your first person? How long in.

First person was probably three months in and that was just. And he was. And it was a retired guy and he'd work on Saturdays because. Because when we opened up the dealership we had really low goals. I mean we didn't really set them set the bar too high. Our goal was to have engines off because you know when you're a new partner, you're working, I mean just eventually have something to work, to take batteries off and then to have a pool. It was never to actually own the cars in a lot or any of that type of thing. It was very low goal. And so we did get a guy, he was a retired guy and he worked Saturdays so I could kind of spend Saturdays with the family. That was my first guy. And I hired a girl and then she started. She would work 40 hours a week and then it just kind of grew from there. And we've been at Ford salesman for a very long time. I would say I've been at Ford salesmen for the back. Maybe not as strong because the cars used to not be as bad as they are now. So I was able, with me and another guy, I buy them and we could make it work. It's totally, as y' all know, totally different now. There's a lot more problem cars out there. But I had, I've had four, I'd say for at least 10 years. I've had four sales.

And how many cars do you average in a month?

So we did 92 in December, we're in 80 something in January and 76, I would kind of say. So we're, we really started. We've had some big months, like 120 car months, but average 80, 80 probably for the last few years.

So let's, I mean let's think, let's think about this. Jeff, this is, this is super interesting. He is selling on average around 20 to 20 plus cars. Because you said one of your sales guys a manager per salesperson.

I mean I paid him a good, good salary. But he also, he's such a good salesman. Good people came from Best Buy. I got two people from Best Buy that just really. And again, he's my brother in law. He's not a partner or anything. He worked, he's an employee. But yeah, he sells too. So sorry.

But getting that, getting that much production out of salespeople, how do you go about doing that?

Herbert Hubert we have. And again I stole the pay from Volvo. We pay an hourly wage and then a per car basis and then they get paid for the trading. Just a bunch of back end stuff. But they make my top guy, he's. I mean, I hate to say. Cause I know they're going to watch this, but I would say none of the salesmen. I'll just say it this way. None of the salesmen make under probably 75,000 a year. You know, and some make. The better ones make a little bit more, but. Yeah. And then my manager, of course, makes more than that.

Hey, y'.

All.

Sorry to break in. Buckeye Dealership Consulting, obviously the title sponsor of this podcast and a vendor of Mr. Hubert's, right? He has or has had his Buckeye. He says he's trying to get it going. You guys are going to hear that here in a minute. But he's trying to get his Buckeye.

Program up and running.

Yeah. You know, it's funny, Jeff, you just said y' all there. I like that we're talking to a Southern dealer and you say and y', all.

But Utah. I say y'. All.

Reinsurance is not just for buyer pay your stores. It's for retail stores as well. There's so many different ways to make money using your reinsurance company. I just made the full switch to Buckeye. I've been using some of their products for a while. We just finally moved all our warranty and everything over there. I tell you, the staff, they have super helpful. Walk me through the whole process. And I've been with. You know, part of mine has been with another company for. For 12 years, and we had a lot going on. So to kind of move everything was a big deal. But Buckeye, the people there made it seamless, made it easy, so it can be done. Just because you're with another reinsurance company doesn't mean you have to stay there.

All right, back to the episode.

That's great production, though.

Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, to think that they're selling a car a day, you know, on average, that's. That's, I think, so much of us. I know for me, we kind of get stuck in this paradigm or this, like, thing. Like, oh, well, you know, if they get 10 cars, that's pretty good, because, like, that's what we've gotten to. And other people are like, no, no. You know, my buy here, pay here guys are selling 30 to 40 cars a month. If they're not getting one to two a day, they're not doing their job. And it's like, oh, man, that is, like, such an interesting, like, mentality switch. Like, for your guys, it's like, dude, 20amonth is the standard. If you're not doing that, you're not here any longer. So, yeah, so interesting.

I think a lot of it's pricing them. Right. I had a guy who I worked with at Volvo one time, I needed a fill and salesman. He came there on Saturday, sold a bunch of cars. Selling cars out here is like cheap and fish in a barrel. I mean, and I was like, yeah, I mean, okay, that makes a little sense. But we price them, right? And I think that that makes difference. And I will buy. And I will buy anything. I'll buy a salvage title. I'll buy structural. I love structural. I mean, whatever, you know, I mean, yeah, if I can get a decent car. But you know how hard it is right now. All we got find this kind of car. And now they're buying structural, too. They know, but I'll try to look at that car really quick.

And you. You physically go to the. To the auction?

Yeah, I'm at. I'm at. I probably at. I'd say average four a week. Sometimes we go, you know, to Orlando to that big sale.

Yeah, I mean, there's not that many auctions around you. How are you?

Charleston, we got Charleston, two hours. That's Friday. Savannah is right down the road. It's a decent sale. America's Auto auction bought that. And then Jacksonville, good for me. There's actually two that run on the same day, Mannheim and Odessa. And I like those sales. So Thursday, Thursday, I'm going to be down there, if I can make it. So. Yeah. Are you going.

Are you not. Are you not buying any online or virtual?

I did it a little bit, and there's nothing wrong with it. I mean, I see people do it all the time, but. And I do. There was a Volkswagen sale that used to. There's little niches I can get on, and I'll do that, do that as good as I can. And I'd love to, but I did hire a guy. Like I said, he was a salesman, and he's. He's learning. He's struggling, but he's learning. He's been trying to do it for about seven or eight months. He's bought a few, and he bought some. So I'm trying to train somebody to do it so I don't have to do it so much. But it's kind of a fun part to get away from the office.

I think everybody.

I think.

I think that is the one thing every car dealer likes to do, is buy cars.

And it's.

It's fun, but to keep up with the volume. Yeah, you're doing just seems like a really hard task, especially just for you. I. I don't know how you do it alone. Essentially, actually going to the auction. I mean, you're buying. I mean, you're buying 20 to 25 cars a week.

Yeah.

For auctions. I mean, that's.

Yeah, that's doing it. And I try to pack it in. If I can go to one auction and buy it. Just depends, but I'll try. I just know I have to buy them. Yeah, the prices are insane, but I know I need to buy them now. I. Totally stupid, but yeah, it's got to be done. And. And, you know, a lot of guys got scared a few years ago, and I just. And I did, too.

I did. I did.

I got really scared. I didn't buy some for a while, and I started buying them, and then it just, you know, sorry.

I got. I got scared in 21. I did not get scared. When the pandemic started, our business never really. It never cut off at all. But when prices skyrocketed, that's when I got scared. But Jeff and I were just having this conversation before we came on air with you about. About MMR and. And Jeff not wanting to pay over MMR and. And I. And I. My argument was MMR doesn't matter. I mean, what do you think? What. To me, it's about what you can sell it for, what you want your gross to be and how much you want. How much is your recon.

Right.

That's right. So, yeah, you're going to get some deals, and then you're not going to get some deals, but then it'll average out. Like I said, if you can. And I don't do those deals. I know people that do them. But if you could, worst case scenario, make a thousand bucks, you know, why not? I mean, that's a good return. Now, our average is, you know, like I said, two to three thousand somewhere in there. But, yeah, you're gonna have some deals that aren't so good, but you're gonna have some deals that are good, and. But it's getting harder. Like, y' all know, it's getting harder and harder. The last few weeks have been just really, really tough. I was doing really good buying cards in December, in January. But, like, we know taxes. But the funny thing is, it's the expensive cars that have gone up, too, which is really, you know, I don't know. And then everybody I talk to, like, man, we're not seeing a lot of tax money, and I can't say those 40 cars were. I talked to my guy yesterday or yesterday and said, it's really not a lot of tax money. So I don't know.

Yeah. In my defense, it's. It's that if I buy it mmr, I know I can get it here, recon it, and still have some room to make money. If I'm like Luke and I'm looking for a reason to pay more for cars, then, yeah, I could run it through my Vincue system and look at the, you know, the market radius and see what real market value is for it as an excuse to step up.

And.

And I get it. If I was. If I really, really needed to get more cars, then, yeah, I'd probably try to find those little gems that might have a, you know, a suppressed MMR for some reason, but are actually worth more and I could step up on them. But, man, I feel like it's so hard for me to make money on any kind of gross right now after recon that. It's like, man, I don't want an excuse to pay more for these cars. I gotta get them at MMR at least. And there's a few gems. There's some exceptions I know about. Like, yeah, MMR is completely off on this one. I can step up, but not on the. Not for everything.

Yeah, yeah, it's a headache. And there's. Yeah, there's times if I could just shut it down for a few months and come back when things get better.

Feel a little better. And maybe for me, it's the mentality of, like, I shut it down and then MMR catches up. So now it looks like I'm getting a deal on everything. That's only because MMR adjusted. But right now, as far as the last 14 days go, it's.

They're out of whack.

It's insane what people are asking and what the MMR says and even what I know, I can sell this thing for like, I'm sorry, sir, you're 2010 Ford Focus. I cannot pay you 12 grand for that thing because people.

Do people even buy Ford Focuses anymore?

I buy them.

I buy them.

I buy them, I buy them.

You know, and I want to mention.

That you have a lot of Volkswagens.

So many Volkswagens on your Volkswagens are a little mitch. I mean, how to work on them.

And not with a 10 foot pole.

Yeah, yeah. Well, the 1.8 T is kind of hard to deal with, but we still know them. We just. If you do enough of them, we got the software and all that, and it's just one of those things. It's a niche and you have totally those little nicks and they're.

Let me ask you about that.

Yeah.

Because I've got the Mannheim rep here right now, and he's photographing and listing all of my junk cars. He's putting all of these scrap units, instead of me sending them to the salvage yard, he's putting them on Mannheim to sell them to people who are paying a grand, two grand, three grand for a car that's literally sitting on blocks. There is a niche out there for everything, right? There's some little dealer out there that knows if he can find a totaled out, you know, hybrid Altima, he can strip the battery, the transmission and the engine out of that thing and it's worth ten grand to him. Right? Because it's some little thing that he knows how to fix or he knows has some crazy value. I think it's scrap. I'm going to send it to my scrapyard for a hundred bucks because I don't know what to do with this thing. Is that kind of what you're doing with those Volkswagens? Like you're providing those undesirables, but you figured out how to make them desirable and you're not scared of them. Hey, one more break in, guys. We're talking about how I built this and networking with dealers and learning their stories. The best way to do that is to come out to convention like Buy here, Pay here, United.

There's no better place to, to learn how you build it better, bigger and better than to do it at convention. And for us, Buy here, Pay here dealers, this very specific Buy here, Pay here, United summit last year was amazing. This year is going to be even better. Hopefully you listened to two weeks ago or last week when we had the lady from Big Lots on who just crushed it, told us how to hire, how to retain. She's going to be the keynote speaker. It's cheap, Jeff. You're at the Bellagio. It's going to be a lot of fun. Hopefully you'll, you'll stay at the Bellagio. You may drive home. Who knows with you?

If you need a room, you come stay at my place. It's going to be great. We will see you there. Jump on now. Buy here payherunited.com get signed up.

Well, before the pandemic, nobody bought Volkswagens anyway. Everybody was scared of them and I was buying them. So we got to where we knew them, and now if they got decent miles, you can watch a Volkswagen do crazy, crazy running. But if it's not over a hundred thousand miles, most people don't want it. And like I said, we. There's. There's so many little things. I mean, just figured them out and we do get them. They do get it sometimes. But never buy a hybrid Volkswagen. That's. No, I bought one of those, but.

A hybrid, you say?

Yeah, they make a hybrid Volkswagen Archetta. And it was. It was a disaster.

Yeah, I bought a. I bought an E Golf once.

Yeah, I've seen those. I've seen this. I've seen this. But we just. We used it for. Oh, and a TDI got us one time. The fuel pump exploded and ruined the engine, believe it or not. Yeah, So I used to sell.

I used to sell a bunch of tds.

You might buy that. Yes, that was a good few years when you could buy those. Some of them, they would sell them for, like, four grand. They bought over four grand. Yes, yours. And now it's a $12,000 car problem.

Yeah, yeah, I think I got on the last, like, three months of that. Wait on those tdi. I was going to say. Huber, tell me this. What do you think over the course of your, like, career? What. What has made some of the biggest difference or what advice do you have for dealers that really move the needle for you guys? Your operation?

You know, I've come to my faith on this one. I went on a mission trip and just saw how poor it was in Guatemala, Church or whatever, and saw how these people needed some money, basically because this one organization was building houses and they had this stock on the street. And I said, well, you know what? God put it on my heart to whatever car I sell, I'll give you all a certain amount of money. And I'm telling y', all, that changed. That was a game changer, too. Going back to what was a game changer. That was a game changer. And we. And, you know, we put it on a little in our office. We have a. Or in the sales, and we have a little wallpaper thing we did of it on there. Basically said, did you know. Did you know a first part of your purchase goes to help the kids in Guatemala? And so, yeah, that's something that they tell y' all about that. But that's a good thing that we started doing. We haven't thought it. We've been doing that for, like, 10 years.

Jeff, weren't you down in Guatemala?

Yeah, I literally got back from Guatemala about a week ago, building houses and bunk beds and swing sets for a place. And yeah, it's. It's insane when you go down there and see the conditions that these people live In. So this really kind of goes to our last week's podcast about having a mission at your dealership. Right. Like you have this calling this, this, you know, whatever you want to call it that your, your employees can buy into, but also your customers. Right. And if you're sincere and authentic about it, that's a, it's a, it's a great motivator all the way around to kind of get people to take to the next level.

What. And that's.

How did you just judge who you went with and what percentage.

I met this guy named Brock. He was a. Anyway, he was an ex NFL. It's a crazy story, but it was through the church and he started this. He. He was. Long story short, Brock Johnson. He was. Had it all. He was referenced some of the biggest NFL stars and he was cheating on his wife. You know, taking people to. Long story short, he said, you know what, I got to get out of America. And he didn't speak Spanish and he ended up moving to Guatemala and starting this. First thing was doing this thing called the 1212 Project and they build these homes for people. And I met up with him and with him ever since and just a neat guy with a neat story. Church we fel. And originally through the church that we go to. So yeah, that's.

I mean that's an awesome story that something changed your business trajectory. That has nothing to do with training or nothing to do with business. It has to do with your faith and, and, and service. That's. That's really freaking cool. What is the one thing that's happened that's. That's really hurt, you know, hurt your business, something that you wish you wouldn't have done?

That's a good question. What hurt my face? I probably don't. I probably try to do too. I probably don't do too much. Like I, I don't delegate as well as I should. I'm always, you know, in the back or micromanaging. So maybe if I wasn't so much like that, it would be less stressful me because I will say the stress is a killer. It about killed me twice. I woke up one morning, I had vertigo and I was like, what the heck's going on? And went to the doctor and then I thought I was having a heart attack and it was vertigo. Then. Then recently, two years ago, I had Bell's palsy, if you know what that is. And that's the stress related disease. I look up in this space paralyzed and I'm still dealing with some after effects of that. So, yeah, to do differently is to not let the thing get you so much and you know, because you can't solve every problem. But, you know, a lot of times we try. We gotta let our employees do more. And sometimes I tell you off of it.

Yeah, I tell you that's, that's some really sage advice. Stress. I watched my dad deal with stress for years and, and he has a mechanism that I've never seen from anybody else. He just doesn't give a shit. And, and it's just amazing that he just lets it all bounce off of him. And, and, and to me, I was just stressed out all the time and I was like. And he's like, what, you know what, what are you worried about is, yeah, we'll figure it out. It's not a big deal, sir, but hiring the right people to help you and, and honestly, I don't see how you do what you do with 12 people. I, I don't get. I, I cannot understand that you need to hire more people.

I don't think they do enough sometimes. And I'm like, dude, I hear something feeling like, okay, I'm doing pretty good for our little operation and we're just one store. We never really thought about going a different direction. I did, I did buy a piece of property. I was going to do a brand new dealership like, like, like y' all probably have. I've got a hodgepodge that's just kind of grown, you know, and. But in the end, we ended up selling the property because we were going to start to rent our own lot because somebody was gonna go in there and get our good will. So, yeah, just one spot. And I don't want anymore. I don't want anyone.

It looks great. Do you worry about being that close to the high power pressure, power line?

Yeah, it's a little nuts. We were doing something, some electrical stuff, and this thing started arcing on us and we're like, oh gosh.

You guys, look at.

It was like a foggy day. And this, what? You could basically see the power jumping out like crap.

Yeah, look at, look at, look up. Killer autos. Go there. Leave him a, leave him a good review. Tell him how much you liked his interview on the podcast. And, and then look at the photos. And he's got this huge substation directly.

Behind his car lot that's about getting cancer and stuff. I don't know.

Hey everybody, one more interruption. Primaland. When you're looking for capital to grow, you don't have to take out a home equity line. Like Hubert did. You can go to some of these banks and find institutional private money. These guys will get you funded. They can help out with purchase of your property or you know, lines of credit, things like that.

You know, Hubert said that the one thing that he said made it possible for him to get all these banks was having his financials in order. And we can talk about this so much. What's great about primaland is that they understand our business and they can show you how to get your financials in order. Even if you do business with them or not, they're going to show you the right way in the end to do business with other banks. And that's what it's all about.

Yep, yep. Look them up. Primal end. Back to the episode, what you know.

We were talking about, you know, back end profit. You, you have your warranty company, your reinsurance company or what you got?

Yeah, we, this is the thing I would. And Brett, great dude. So what we're doing and we're just still getting into this because I've only been with them for about four months. What we're doing now is we're giving. Originally we were given a warranty away and now we're getting so much work coming in. So now what we're doing is we're actually charging the customer for a. We're doing 299 for a three month, 3,000 mile warranty just to get some of the work out. We just can't handle the work. But I'm planning on going back with Brett. I still have my reinsurance company and you know, getting it where I do it in house. But right now we're just, we're trying to. And then don't upgrade. Upgrade market. We do. So we are very blessed. We got with Wells Fargo real early before. And once we got with Wells Fargo and that was really tough. Everybody said how'd you get Wells Fargo? Well, they came to me and I don't know if you saw the cars. This is super nice job. Then they. And once we got Wells, we got out Ally bank and Capital One, but we're still doing mostly through Wells and then Wells, you know, equipment independent dealers and then we just. So it's, it's all outside financing besides, you know, if somebody pays cash so there is some market up. So I do something weird. I actually, I split whatever they make with the salesman so they have an incentive. So if they sell a warranty, if they mark a warranty up, they get half the money and it's, you know, hey, I wanted to Buy a warranty and you know, like I said, they're happy with it. But once you start something like that, that's why it's been hard for me to transition to Buckeye to do my own reassurance because they've got a really, it's a long story. It's been a headache. But they got a good deal and it's hard to get them off that good deal.

It, it is. But I, I think you could say my friends at Premium Motor Company, it took me years to talk to them into doing a reinsurance company and, and that was the exact reason they didn't want to get off of it, because of what you're talking about. But Marshall was able to come up with a pay plan that made sense, that made their reinsurance a lot of money and kept their salespeople happy with or their finance people happy with that. We didn't go down this rabbit hole, but I think we need to. When you first open, of course you didn't have, you didn't have prime banks and you probably, you probably wanted them. Let's talk about the journey, how you got to having Wells and to Ally. Who did you start with? How long did it take you to get these, these banks?

So you know, we could have never gotten anything like that when we first got started. And I had, when I was in new car business, I had the relationships with some of them but, and one of my ally rep is the same rep I had when I was at Volvo. But I think it was keeping your financial house in order because to get what else was the first one like that. And they were, they had to look through it took them three months to say yes and they had to really look at my financials and make sure, hey, this guy's not going to screw us. And you know, and they, and, and he saw how many were selling. It's like, you know, and they approved and all the other banks have been a similar story. But yeah, that, that was a game changer to getting that banks, you know.

Who'S your major lender now? And so you've been through the financial crisis. Do you see any similarities what's, what's starting to happen now to, to what happened during the financial crisis?

Not really. We're still, I think we still got decent rates and again, I don't, I'm not on it every day, but I think we can still get people decent rate and the banks that we have are still lending and we do a lot of credit unions. Like a lot of, there's Some really good local credit unions that we have. And so we just. We use dealer track and we send it and just see who. Who will get. Are you on financing?

Are you on cuddle to use credit unions on cuddle or are you going directly to them?

Directly. It's all local. I don't think we do any that aren't local. And then, of course, we're a military area. We got Fort Stewart and all that. And so a lot of usaas and Navy Federal are strong. Only thing in Navy Federal, they won't do anything that's got any kind of issue with the title or on the carfax, but that. We do a lot of Navy Federal and we have a lot of repeat customers. You know, if there's a problem, park just like y' all do. Anybody that's gonna stay in business, we're gonna take care of it and do what we can with it. So it. You know, you can't make everybody happy. But we do podium. So I've been with podium. I do a couple of neat things. I do podium, which has really gotten our reviews up. I think we're over 800 reviews right.

Now at 4, 800 and 816 reviews. Actually, I think you and I have the exact same amount of reviews.

Yeah. And, yeah, that was. That. That podium has been good for that. And then spin car, which I always wanted a photo booth for my cars because I always thought that was tight, and I don't have a space for that. So I did this. We do the spin car, and a lot of people like that. It's cheap, 300 bucks a month, and I've been doing that for a long time. People like that.

Actually, I got you beat by. I got 8.

21 right now.

Jeff, how many reviews you got, buddy?

Eight 88. 4.

4.8. How about y'?

All?

4.8 for a buyer payer. That's so good. That's good. Yeah.

Yeah. Our goal is to hit a thousand reviews in the next two months. That's our big push here.

Yeah.

Just to just dominate every other used car dealer in the area.

Well, when you got the reviews, you. You go to the top. I don't pay Google anything. And if you got good reviews, it'll. It'll push you up. I had one time where it was going down, and I got somebody on Fiverr that did something to my website, and they brought it right back up. So I don't pay Google anything reviews. That's a big thing.

Yeah. Reviews are huge.

And.

And taking care of your customers.

Are, are huge.

And, and I know to be in business like all three of us are, you have to take care of your customers and that's, that's there's anything that dealers should get out of, out of what we say. And you want to be in business long time, that's what you need to do. So.

Yeah. Hubert, any other words of advice for the community?

No, just don't let it stress you out. I'd say that's my biggest thing. Like we talked about earlier, don't let it get to you and take it easy. Take vacations, which is hard, but yeah.

Especially when you're short staffed. You try to sell 120 cars a month with 12 employees and then you.

Have one detailer quit. I mean we've had so many cars back up in detail. I mean we haven't. Our detail hasn't been cleaned out. And that's our number one, I'd say number one detail.

Do this. Take a truckload and send them two hours north. We'll detail them and then you can take them back. We'll have them ready in two days, I promise.

Yeah. Wow. Not here. That's the hardest position I've found. Detailers.

100. 100% agree. 100% agree.

Well, Hubert, thank you so much for your time. This has been awesome.

Having me. Thanks for having me. All right, good deal. Nice talking to y'. All.

Thanks, bud.

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