#310 - How I Built This w/ Carlos Ido

This is the Independent Dealer podcast, education by Dealers for Dealers. Now here are your hosts, Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson.

Hello and welcome to the Independent Dealer podcast brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. We are going to hear the story and talk to Mr. Carlos Ito of Carnival Auto in Dallas, Texas. Luke, it has seemed to be a theme, this series of how I built this. We are finding some very, very successful and great operators in Texas.

Yeah, I mean it's, I mean everything's bigger in Texas and it seems like buy here, pay here is the largest thing in Texas. So you know we had been on the start with to kind of kick this off big independent dealer in the last, last two been buy here, pay your stores and Carlos is no different. So Carlos, please introduce yourself to everyone and thanks for being here.

Hi, thank you so much for having me. So my name is Carlos Ito. I own Carnival Auto Credit in Dallas, Texas. Been in business since 1996 in the buy here, pay here business and it's been a great business.

Carlos, what's your basic business model there? Like do you cater to higher end type cars, kind of basic runs and drives type stuff. Give us kind of the overview of like your philosophy on the types of cars you buy and finance?

Well, we do, we do a lot of repeat and referral business and due to my repeat business we've had to like increase the quality of our inventory and type of inventory. So we sell a lot of later model since 15 and up, a lot of Chevy Tahoe, Silverados, GMCs, Acadia. We just started trying to carry more and more of Toyota, Corollas, Camrys, Nissan Altima's. You know, they all have their challenges, not so much the Toyotas, but we've kind of changed our model. The majority of our clientele is Hispanic and that market's also kind of changing a little bit. We're going to, you know, different demographic within the Hispanic markets. We're also very aware that try to change up our inventory, you know and we, we do give a warranty and you know there's treat our customer, you know, gotta do what you have to do to, to treat your customers right for them to come back.

That's an interesting. People who haven't been in business for a long time don't understand that the more if you want to continue to keep that, that referral, that repeat business that dealerships like us have been in business for so long, you have your ACV has to increase because typically your customer gets better. You start them young a lot of times as who People who don't have credit or have really bad credit to start with, and every time you sell them a new car or trade them, you've got to put them in a better, nicer car and you just end up with 30 and $40,000 cars, which I have, I've ended up with. And it's, it's scary. And people say, well, how do you do it? Well, it's, it's because we know this customer. Right Carlos?

Correct, Correct. So if you know your customer and they've been a good paying customer, now you know a good customer can turn bad. But oh yeah, you, you need to really know your and have your be on top of it. But you know, the customer service is a huge part of it. You know, if you really want to maintain it, you know, it being in the buy here, pay here business, you're not going to be very competitive on price. You know, your price can be a little higher, your interest rates can be a little higher. And what proves to me that I think, and there's always room for improvement but service, treat your customer right because we know they shop around. They, they especially tell you on the Internet, I'm sure they're shopping around, they're looking, but they come back. They come back for a reason. And because we do, we do we really take care of the customer after the sale. Yeah, yeah.

You, you brought up two things there that, that I think we should dive into a little bit, Jeff, and that is why do customers who have been historically good go bad sometimes? Why does that happen? Anybody want me to answer that? Anybody?

Well, what's interesting so to dive into that, that why do they go bad? My feeling is our customers have cycles, right? Just like all of us have cycles. We go through up times, down times, divorces, we get in over our head, we get laid off, we get sick and injured, we get behind on our bills, we have a family member that gets sick or misplaced. We have a legal issue catch up to us. So we all go through cycles. And that's where I think with our. The difference between the customers that fall apart in those situations is being able to handle and problem solve. Right. We know that we're the problem solver for our customers if their car doesn't start, we're the ones figuring out how to get it to start. You know, some of the most basic things, sometimes when they're faced with like a divorce or short hours, they don't know how to problem solve. They just, you know, let it happen to them and it might wreck their Credit, it might make them late on your payments and then they fall apart. So when you say, yeah, we've got to service that customer to the next nicer, newer car and creep up in acv, it is very dangerous a lot of times because we may have caught them on a really good three year cycle where they were working and their expenses were low and they were getting a ton of money. And we don't know that they're just about to go over a cliff because that's just how it happens with our customers. It's this cycle. So you do have to balance that out of like, all right, well, yeah, I think this guy's stable and he's going to be like this forever or. Yeah, this guy is just barely hanging on by a thread here. I don't know if I want to.

Get any deeper on Carlos. Do you see, do you see that same thing or is there something else you, you find in the, in our customer that, that kind of just gets out.

I think he kind of nailed it. I mean, because the, the, the higher the acv, the longer that notes gonna turn out to be and there's just things happen in people's lives. So now instead of paying off a car in two years, they're gonna have a note that's four years. So. But it is doing your best to try to work with your customer and let them know if they have an issue. Stay in contact with us. Let us help you. You know, we're not, I, I do everything in house. We don't deal with any banks. We have, you know, no floor plans, everything, you know, we built it up from, you know, ourselves. So I'm not dealing with a bank that's looking at my notes. So I can really do whatever I have to do to help that customer. But they have to know that and be willing to share with us heartaches. But the longer the note, the more problems you're going to have because they, they store somebody with challenge credit. Now some of the customers in this, in, in, in our market, they, they don't really have that challenge credit. They just have no credit. That's why they're with us. Yeah. So, but yeah, longer the note. Yeah.

The more likely it's going to blow up. But like you said, you're in a unique situation that not all dealers are in where they can go in and, and do an amendment or, you know, do a deferment or change the note at the whim of whatever. That's kind of the, the good situation, guys, of getting debt free. And getting out from underneath a line of credit is you have the flexibility to do things that maybe your line of credit covenants wouldn't let you do, you know, to keep that customer in the loan. So, and, and. And one thing you said was we buy the car that the customer wants. Right. Because there's.

There's.

I think there's two types of cars in buy here, pay here. There's the car that the dealer thinks it's going to run the note, right. I'm going to buy a, you know, whatever. Just my basic transportation I know is going to make it 36 months. And then there's the car that the customer will pay for regardless of what happens. And that's the car. If you can find the intersection between those two, I think that's a magical puzzle to have. And I think it's regional. Right. It changes. Texas might be different than here in Utah and South Carolina. And it's different in Latino. And like you were talking about, Carlos, it's different in the Hispanic Mexican if you're from Mexico as opposed to being from, like Colombia or Ecuador further down in South America. Those preferences and tastes are different. How do you balance that? I mean, how do you. How do you balance buying a car that. Oh, man, this is not something I normally spend on, but I know the guy that takes this is never going to let it go.

Well, what's funny is I would love to be able to convince, like, I bought some Hyundai's that are actually really good cars, but you have to shoehorn somebody into the vehicle. Or like, I bought a Kia Soul once, and it was a great little car with low miles. It was a great car. And you know what? Every night sales and laugh at me. They're like, I can't. And guess what? The guy that bought it is still paying on it, and he loves his little car and.

But so, Carlos, we have to sell. We have a running joke on here. I make fun of Jeff because he loves Kia souls and sells a bunch of them. So it's so funny that you brought that up. I'm outnumbered here. I'm not even gonna. I'm not even gonna.

Yeah. Carlos is a man after my own heart. You know?

You know what?

They're good.

Yeah. They're good car. They don't. They run it out.

Yeah. Other than that engine, as long as you can. I've had one engine blow up now on one that I sold to a customer, and it's the only one out of probably, I don't know, 200 that I've sold that has actually grenaded that engine. And they're expensive engines, so, yes, keep an eye on them.

But.

But yeah, to your point, sometimes we're like, hey, guys, you really need this car. I trust that it's going to make it. They don't believe that. What they want is the, you know, whatever Honda Odyssey or, or Honda Accord. That's going to have a couple issues, you know, are going to cost you.

Right? And on, like, some of the higher end, like, I bought some pretty nice QX 80s or QX 56s, the infinities, nice vehicle quality. I mean, my wife's had one. I mean, they're. They're actually pretty good vehicles.

I've got four of them. I've got four of them right now. So I get, I get it.

Yeah, they're. They're good vehicles. But my clientele, they come in, they rather buy a Tahoe.

I know that makes no sense.

So I've gone out there and actually talked to the repeat customer. And like, you know, guys, you know, you got to convince your salesman also to want to sell that because, you know, if the salesman isn't into it, he's gonna push him to the car he's into. And, you know, as the owner, I'm like, I'm looking at that car. I'm like, I'm gonna have a lot less problems with that Infinity, actually, than I am gonna have with that Tahoe. Let's try it. And the customers end up happy.

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

And it's.

And it's nicer, honestly. But we won't go down that.

But yeah, what I wanted to mention was you said the. The salesman has to be bought in. And that is so true. I think, I think as owners, we. We overlook the fact that we don't know why that Infiniti has been sitting so long when we know it's a quality car and we've driven it. Guess what? Your salesman doesn't like it. You know, I remember back in the day, my salesman, he loved Buicks. He loved lesabers, right? Just bulletproof cars. Loved them. He'd buy them, he would sell them. No customer wants them. No customer wants that. The Saber. Nobody. But we would sell the crap out of them because he was so bought in that he would convince the customer, this is the car for you. So it's really true. If you ever see a car that's being stepped around on your dealership and it's not getting attention, I guarantee you, if you asked your Salesman to drive that thing to lunch, they would not take it. They don't like the car. So you got to be careful about that salesman bias.

Well, what I do is I, I'll go out there and pick a few cars that I like. I've got a Hyundai Santa Cruz Santa Fe hasn't sold. I had a Prius out there and then we had a little Mercedes. So they're all very nice cars. And I, I went out there and told the sales guys, hey, whoever sells one of those cars by the end of the month, it's a 200 bonus on that particular vehicle. You know, guess what? They sold two of them. So. But they're. Yeah, that's not cars that they're used to. It's 100.

Hey everybody, real quick, just a reminder, if you're not set up with tax max, now is the time to do it. We are just right on the very edge of tax season. We've started to see a couple W2s come through, but today's the 17th of January, so they're all going to hit in the next two weeks. Get signed up today.

Yeah, do it. It's very simple. Texting and file or whatever it is has been helpful for us. We got a phone call the other day, hey, I did my taxes online. We didn't even know it. It was so great.

So we had the exact same thing.

We showed up one morning and this.

Lady had messaged us.

She's like, hey, my, my tax return is there.

I want to come get my car.

We're like, what are you talking about? And sure enough, we look in the system and we've got like five grand to deposit.

It's crazy.

So, so neat. So get set up. VIP is the code to use. And get going, man. So Carlos, you know, we've kind of gone a little different direction to this. How did you get into this business? What was the emphasis that got you here?

So I actually started off. It's kind of, you know, a long story, but I'll make it short. My brother in law got an auctioneer's license and there was a local charity that was taking donated vehicles and they were doing a silent bid auction. So he wanted to do a live auction. So I, for morals report, when met with them, convinced them to do a live auction, which was a great success. The girl that ran the program, after a while got to know her and her father was in the buy here, pay here business is actually one of the bigger guys in town. And since I speak fluent Spanish, my parents are from Cuba. She was like, oh my God, my dad would love to have a guy like you. So I had nothing better to do. So I went, I met with him and he hired me and brought me in as an assistant manager and put me with an old timer that really knew the business. Worked for him for about a year and a half. Then the auction business where my brother in law was doing pretty well. Then we decided to open up our own auction house to cater to other charities that wanted to accept donated vehicles but didn't know how to get rid of them. So we started that and then once that started making money and it was successful, we brought my brother and in with three, three equal partners. I said, guys, we need to get into the buy here. This is good, this is making, we're making a living. We need to get a buy here, pay your business and back then you could buy a two, three thousand dollar car, get five, six hundred dollars, seven hundred dollars down and fifty bucks or seventy bucks a week and you're out of that car and six months you're making money. So we kept doing the auction and then I went off and started the buy here, pay here business with my partners and took off. And it was, you know, great business. But I was always about customer service, always going out, talking to my customer. We actually started doing some TV advertising that's completely changed. We don't do that anymore. But really started off slow. And luckily we decided as a family, my brother and brother in law, that you know what, let's live off one business and let's build up the buy here, pay here business and let's try to not get in debt. And we, we were successful. Very hard to do today. I don't know how somebody could do it today if you didn't have, you know, streaming. And it's fine, I mean that would be fine, but. And it was much easier, much easier back then to get in the business because of the car cost. And you know, we didn't have the competition from new car stores. You know, a lot of our clientele can go get subprime financing at some of the newer dealership and new car stores. I don't know if y' all experience that up where you're at, but we do down here a lot. Sure. And then we were, we were growing, we were growing pretty, pretty fast. And it was a good business. And then I got married, had kids and decided do I want to keep working seven days a week or, or you know, spend more time with my family. So slowed it down and we've kind of maintained. We no longer do the public auto auction boat. We've maintained at a pretty normal, you know, same level in the buy here, pay her business.

Yeah, well that, that, that's a great spot to get into. And in 96, honestly, 96 was a really good year.

Yeah.

For a really good time for buy here pay here. I, I graduated high school in 96 and started working essentially full time during that time. And man, if you, if you did it right, car prices were so compared to today, so reasonable.

Right.

And, and honestly we were probably getting about the same amount down then as we are now.

Right.

You could really grow it and really make it work. I wish, I wish my dad had. Had gone a little deeper in at that point, but he did.

Yeah.

Are you still day to day doing anything or you kind of got everybody running everything for you?

Yeah, I go in, I, I go in, but I pretty much have. Then we're up to about 23 employees. Everybody. You know, I've got people that have been working for me for a really long time and I still do the buying myself and, but you know, my sales guy's been with me forever. I've got collectors that been with me a really long time. My head mechanic, I was using before I even got in. You know, the buy here, pay here business. He works really full time and we have full shop lady that runs my shops and you know, working for my family for, you know, she used to work for my parents when they were in the shoe business.

Yeah.

So, you know, I've got, it's key to have a good group of people and I can go on vacation, I can go do stuff. Now, obviously when I'm there things are better.

But you're cracking the whip. What would you say advice for dealers that have issues with turnover? How do you think you've kept those people around for so long? Because obviously having longtime trusted employees is crucial to ever having any kind of success or freedom from the day to day. Any advice or input on how you've been able to make that happen.

You know what? I'm not a great manager in the sense I'm not going to just be on top of you all day. I'm going to train you and let you do your job and it's how you treat people, make them feel at home in your business. Trust that, you know, trust. Now I've had turnover, but the key people have been with me for a long time because I just give them a sense of security even. There were, there were times where you Know, business was maybe a little rough. I've never not paid an employee on time. You know, they've always been paid on time. So the sense of security more than I think even bonuses. Just sense of security and treating people right, giving them the freedom to do their work. It's funny because with my collectors, I've had times where they come to me and I'll get in the middle of them dealing with a customer and then I give in. And then after, I'll come to my office and say, are you serious? Like, will you just let me do my job? Like, that guy was so rude to us and da, da, da. And you just gave him a pass. I'm like, okay, sorry. She does have my best interest, but I don't know the whole story. And once they see that you trust them and I'm like, hey guys, I don't want. Yes people. Like, if I'm doing something wrong, just tell me. I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not that kind of guy that just treats you nice and then one day turns around and fires you. I mean, takes me for a. To fire somebody is like, you know, I might carry you for six months before.

Yeah. Do you, do you still have your brothers and brother in law apart as partners?

So my brother and I just bought my brother in law out in July. He was ready to retire. And my sister, his wife, who years ago decided her kids were already grown, she came in and started doing accounting for us, which worked out amazing. And she has stayed on hopefully for the next couple years, two, three years. So that's worked out great. You know, I'll have to cross that bridge when, when I get there because that's a key part. Our business is not necessarily selling. It's collecting and accounting and having CPI and warranty. There's just so much involved. I mean, you really have to have the back end. It was compliance today. I mean, the back end part of our business is, is just really, really entailed, is a lot of work. Yeah, yeah.

Luke had mentioned once, it's like having six businesses in one. Right. I mean, you're running six different operations under one rooftop.

Yeah, it's.

It's great.

Yeah. Until it's not.

Right. I feel like you're putting out fires. You're putting out fires all day. Yeah.

I mean, you talk about that. It's. The back end of our business is overlooked so much. And, and that's the, the verifying the money's in the account. The, the making sure that everything is transferred properly. Just the, the sheer accounting volume that goes into what we do is a full time job. And then it's usually another person checking behind a full time job. I spend the last part of the year only doing accounting things. And there's got to be better, there's got to be better ways to use my time. Right?

Right. 100%. So I, I lucked out that my sister came in and you know, at the time, her husband's a third owner, so she had the exact same interest in mind. But the day she leaves, it'll be a challenge. But yeah, it's the cpi, the collections, chargebacks on credit cards, making sure that the collect, all the proper money is deposited. Yep. So that's a whole aspect that as you grow, you have to keep in mind and, and you can really be rob blind. I mean, you have to trust your employees, but you have to also have checks and balances in place to make sure that things are being accounted for.

Yeah. I was laying in bed last night thinking about my shop accounting system and I was trying to think through my brain, okay, well what about this? If an employee bought it here and then returned it here, it actually wouldn't be tracked anywhere. So I'm like in my brain thinking through these little loopholes in my, in my processes of how something could fall through the cracks or not get added to a car or not even be accounted for even if I paid for it. Right. So, man, it is a, there's a, there is a million little things that you get into.

So, Luke, we switched our payment processor or we're in the process of processing our payment processor over to Blitzpay. Right. I, I did a, a research, I looked at all of them. You guys have heard that episode. I am so surprised by the amount of customers who are just like positive feedback. They're like, it was so easy to set up my portal. It's so easy to make a payment. It's just easy. Right? We've had zero pushback.

It's really, really an easy setup, easy platform. I think Blitzpay reached out to us when we switched back in March. Like, how did y' all get so much buy in so quickly to people using this? And it really wasn't us, it was their product. So save yourself some money, save your customers some aggravation. Switch to Blitzpay and start collecting better and processing payments better.

Carlos, how do you. So how did you buy your brother in law out? Was that something where you did the.

Business go into more debt?

Did you just use operating cash? Because I imagine that could have been a small number.

So what we decided to do was in. We. We decided to either we went out, got our. Had our notes evaluated. We ended up not going that route, like just buying him out, taking the loan. We decided to pay him out over a period of time. So. We're collecting and paying him. And then we decided on. We couldn't really come up with a fair number on what, you know, is it 80%, 85. You know what? So what we decided is we're gonna. He's gonna get 100% of the upside. There'll be some. There'll be recourse. So we decided on an amount. And we also, 2 of the properties are key to us. We have some other business as well, but the car lot and the repair center we need to own. You know, I didn't want a partner stuck in the middle of that. That's not an operation. So we're buying that as well. But we decided, okay, over 10 years, we're going to pay you out, and we're going to pay him interest instead of the bank. And then we decided, okay, we're going to. For the first four years, we're going to pay this amount, and then we're going to reevaluate. And we had a lawyer. We sat down with our accountant over at Lane Gorman. And. And so, okay, for the first four years, this is how much you're going to get every single month. And then we're going to reevaluate. And if it's higher than. I think we picked 80%. And then if it's higher than 80%, I owe you the collections. We're going to owe you money. So it'll increase per month. And if it's lower, then we'll decrease what we pay you out over. So it worked out great because he's still getting. Still making the percentage on his money. He's getting paid out over a period of time. He's not looking to go start a new business or go buy a job.

Yeah.

Or vacation.

He just wants a comfortable lifestyle in retirement.

Right. And then my sister still works for us, so, you know, health care and all that stuff. And she gets paid. So, you know, it's actually worked out.

And well, she stuck around.

Oh, my gosh. Thank God.

Yeah, it must have been smooth, huh? You must have been an amenable split if she's still there.

Oh, yeah, for sure. So, you know. Well, also, she cuts their check first.

She knows what to tell her husband. Like, we gotta go, we got. We gotta cash out and get out of here.

These guys are about to go belly up now. But one thing having the challenges of having a family business is you're always going to have some that work more, work less, smarter. This we've always just been matter. The mindset is we're a family. Everything split three ways. And any business opportunity that comes up, we all get a chance to participate in. If I'm going to go buy a commercial property and my two partners want in, then we go in together. If they don't, I can go do it myself or they can do it. But you have to be fair. You have to be fair and you have to be open minded. You can't say, well, I work more than you do, I want to get paid more. It's not going to work. Then there's going to be jealousy. So thank God. I think it's, you know, we were very lucky to be able to, to, to have that type of partnership.

That's it. That's, that's so interesting that y' all were able to do that. I think that's something that in our industry as a whole, there's not any good precedent on how to buy people out. And we hear this, we hear this so, so often. Well, yeah, I want to get out. How am I going to do it? And I think something like, like you have set up is really a good way to do it. And it's probably something that you could, you could help other dealers try to figure out that are going through this.

Right. And it's really fair. It also depends what point you are in your life. I mean, he's already a retirement age. He wants to just, you know, he likes working on, on older vehicles and fixing them up. That's his passion. So he's going to do that.

Is my dad Yalls partner.

Just.

Yeah. It's interesting. So I'm guessing you guys never had any kind of a signed partnership agreement. Obviously no buy sell was in place before you guys got going, huh?

You know what, when we first got in business, we, we did a little buy sell agreement and we insured it. And then that ran out. And then things have just been working well. And I mean, like, I have a great relationship with my siblings. I'm the youngest of the three. And so, yeah, you know, I mean, look, I mean, I don't suggest that to everybody because, you know, the dynamics can be different in every family. You should have, you should have that stuff in place and have a prearranged agreement on what happens in different circumstances. Somebody get a Divorce. Somebody could pass away.

Yeah.

Some of you just want to retire, so. Yeah, don't necessarily do what I did, but, you know.

So now the key is, Carlos, you just need to be the next one out. You don't want to be the last one in the boat. So you got to get out before your brother gets out. Make him buy you out.

He's the youngest. That'll never happen. Right?

I'm the youngest, so I don't think that's gonna happen. But, you know, my brother, we work great together. So, you know, do you have an exit strategy? We don't. We don't.

No. No successor. Do you have kids that are in the dealership that could take it over?

What do you.

How do you plan on.

Well, my. My. My brother has two kids. One. His daughter's in advertising. His son just graduated from Texas Tech. He wants to go into commercial real estate. Maybe he might end up in our business one day, but he needs to go out and get experience somewhere else, go see what the real world's about. I have a daughter that's 17, about to graduate high school. I don't know how interested she is. And then I have twin boys that are 15 that I actually put them to work this summer. We get a lot of any wrecked vehicles that we might take parts off to use for other vehicles. I had them list some items, you know, on offer up and such, and they were able to sell it. So I got a taste for, like, selling, you know, some parts. So maybe, you know, but that'll be, you know, we'll have to cross that bridge, because that could be a dynamic that could, you know, cause some issues. But my brother is the same as I. It's like, you're not going to walk in here and get a salary. You know, we. We started off literally, you know, doing the work ourselves. I mean, when we started our auction, we'd actually go pick up some of the cars, we'd clean the cars. We do the paperwork. So besides the mechanics, you know, I've never changed an engine or a transmission, you know, but besides that, I've done the work, so I expect the kids to come in if they're. You're gonna start at the bottom and you're gonna prove yourself or go find something to do. I mean, you're not gonna just, you know, come in and ruin or. Or just get a free ride.

Yeah, I start. I started at the bottom, so I get it. But I started at the bottom when I was 10, so it's. There's something to be said about, about kids that just have worked in the business forever, right. Instead of just going to college and coming back and thinking, you know, thinking they're gonna be CEO, because I don't, I don't know that that works. It may work in a larger corporation. I don't think it works in, in the car business.

Right. Yeah. Make them go out and I'll tell you a quick story, a funny story. So I had my boys up there this summer and it's under 14, and so they're. Then they're helping my sister and she's doing some deposits and she has one of the boys do the two or three deposits and fills out the paperwork. And then she has another one do two or three deposits. So one of them got, you know, one out of the three, right. He messed something up and the other one got all three perfect. So she looked at one of them and said, okay, you go to the front of the store. He's got a lot of personality. Good. You go to the front of the store, go out there with the sales guys. You stay back here and work with me. Okay, that's great. So, you know what then? My brother and I are kind of the same, you know, he likes more back end stuff. I like more, you know, out front with the clientele. So maybe that'd be wonderful, you know, or help them set up their own, you know, and my brother's the same way. You know, why you want to get in the business, come hustle a little bit and don't work for us. Start your own business and, well, we might give you some seed money and then buy us out, you know, or, or make them, you know, go through the growing pains.

You all know guys, Buckeye Reinsurance products. I have also made the switch, you know, making the switch to all of our vendors. I guess I don't know which came first, but I'm switching my stuff over to Buckeye right now. It's a process, you know, but we're getting it set up so that we could be better at selling those products. Right. I'm reinventing the products, I'm repricing them. I'm looking at all of our back end stuff again and figuring out how I can use that reinsurance company to set up long term wealth.

Yeah, and we always talk about that long term wealth. The best time to get started with Buckeye is today. Call them, get set up. They'll have you going. You can get all that tax, tax money into your reinsurance company and start, start booking it, man, that's what you got to do. Give them a call today. Yeah, that's. I totally agree. Deliver.

Yeah, it's. It's a. It's an interesting balance of, of teaching them responsibility and leaving the. Teaching them that legacy and leaving them a legacy. And you see a lot of dealers, and I have friends who are, you know, looking for their parents to leave them money or they're thinking about leaving their kids money. And I just think to myself, no, I mean, if you need something when you start out at 20 or 30 to start a business, I'm going to help you. But guaranteed by the time I die, there will be zero in the bank account. So don't expect there to be any cash at my funeral. It will be spent. I'll give it to you now to help you out, but there's going to be nothing left. It's just. It's kind of a funny thing. Carlos, in closing, what kind of advice or do you have any words of wisdom for dealers that are listening that. That are wanting to grow a dealership like yours and be to where you are now?

Number one in the business aspect would be customer service without the customer. It's like any business, like a restaurant, a retail store, it is all about customer service. It is all about having your employees. I make sure that my employees treat the customers the way I treat customers. You know, I'm polite, I'm upfront with the customer. I get up, I shake their hand. I'm there to help them. I expect the same from them. Then on the personal aspect, you know, stay within your means. Early on in our business, you know, we were successful. Oops, do I lose you? I got a flow.

You're good.

Keep going. So it is live within your means. Early on in business, we actually started doing much better than we ever assumed we would do, period. But we kept rolling it back into the business. Instead of going out and buying brand new cars for everybody or, you know, buying a bigger house, we rolled it back in and rolled it back in and, you know, we've been very lucky that we were able to grow it debt free because of that, because we kept rolling it back in. If we would have expanded, we could have gone out and got some debt. And we did try some other locations. Let me tell you something. You're gonna open up another location. You better go and start. It's like you're starting from new. You better go there and you better put all the same work you put into that first store. Then I, you know, now that my kids are getting bigger, I'M getting the itch. I might go do that and let my employees run the store that I have now and then do that. But stay within your means just because the money's flowing, money's coming in. You need to make sure you pay your employees first. You, You. You don't go into debt with your vendors. You're. You're buying the right type of vehicle. You have money set aside. Because there are going to be slow times, there's going to be slow, and there's going to be times where three or four cars come in, any transmissions, and you've given them a warranty, you need to be able to pay for that.

Yeah, I think a lot of dealers, when you look at guys like you who have been there, who have paid their dues, who have grown organically, and a lot of guys get in the business new, and they just think, oh, well, I want that. You know, I want that big house. I want to drive a nice car. I want to have a second location. I want to have a boat down on the lake. Like, you forgot that it took. It took Carlos 25, 30 years to get there. It's not going to happen in the first three to five years just because you got a fat line of credit.

Yeah, well, also the first few years, you know, these. You get in the business, and, man, that paper looks amazing, you know, but you're not going to collect all that. You know, you're gonna have repos, voluntaries, wrecks. So, you know, if I look really fat, your, Your, Your, Your, your paper looks amazing. Oh, my God, look how much money I made on these cars. But you haven't made anything until you've actually paid off the cost of the vehicle, your overhead, and then you started making profit. So. And you still. It's very difficult to know how much you're gonna end up making that year. Just stay within your means. Treat your customers right, you know, do your best to find the right employees, and it. It'll be good, you know, but, you know, it's. It's not an easy business. Not as easy as it used to be, but it's a. It's a fun business, a great business to be in.

It's rewarding, treating customers the right way. I tell you, it's. That is. That's gold right there. That's gold.

Right? Right.

Carlos. Hey, Matt. Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate you joining us. It's so good to get to know you and. And hopefully we'll see at maybe down at Tiada this year. And some of the other places, so.

All right, guys. It was a lot of fun. You know, anytime you need a third, you know, give me a call, you know, I'm happy to join in.

Thanks, Carlos.

Great. Yeah, I love giving information. It's great. All right, man. Take care, man.

Thank you.

See ya.

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