#356 - How I Built This: David Zapata Follow-up

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. Luke. We continue our How I Built this follow up series. The Where Are They Now? Some of our best and most memorable and fun How I Built this episodes we've done over the last five, six years.

Yeah. And we're back to episode 200. So everybody stop what you're doing and go Back to episode 200. Listen to David and, and how he built this to start with. Interesting story. And we've got. This is going to be a follow up that is going to give us some perspective, I think. And David, so we're so happy that you're here, introduce you reintroduce yourself to the podcast audience.

Yeah. David Zapata from Car Smart in Michigan where the weather is always lovely. And man, when you mentioned listening to that podcast 200, there was definitely some man, some feels from back then. I was really feeling like I was going somewhere and I wish I could say today that I was like, hey, look at where I am now. But didn't turn out to how I expected or hoped that it was going to turn out. Well, David, still here.

Yeah, you're still here. And you know, it's not been the easiest last two years and, and anybody that, that would say it has been the easiest past two years is really lying to themselves. Have people made money in the last two years? Yeah, but people have lost money too. People that have been in business for years. So don't be too hard on yourself. We're gonna, we're gonna go because it sounds like you went through a bad patch, but it sounds like you're in the right direction now. So that's.

Yeah, you came out.

Yeah, we did, we did.

Let's, let's talk about that. So, so people that just went back, listen to the episode 200, it got up to speed with your story. When we Left you in 2022, what was it you were looking forward to over the next couple years? What did you have lined up or teed up that really had you excited and felt like you were about to fire on all cylinders and have a great couple of years?

Well, I thought I was going to be buy here, Pay here, dealer 100%, you know, everything, all the numbers looked like, hey, this is what we're going to do. This is where the business is headed. We had built a portfolio up to $1 million. And I mean that was what looked like, you know, our business was gonna be, and that's not what it turned out to be, at least not right now.

So, so, so why is that? You say you built it up, the portfolio, you were transitioning, you got, you, you kind of got set up with some, a line of capital so that you could grow and transition away from doing. Because back before then, you were doing kind of a little bit of retail, a little bit of buy here, pay here, and a lot of repair work.

Right, right. I was trying to get away from that and focus more on the dealership, on the buy here, pay here. I got that line of credit, so. Which means I'm working with a third party finance company. And unfortunately, we lost the capability to monitor it in the way that we were monitoring our buy here pay here. So we no longer had control of collections at one point. We no longer had control of the cars that we were buying and how we were structuring our buy here pay here. So a lot of it was starting to move towards what this third party financing company wanted us to do.

And that was. So was that by choice or, or at some point were you getting to be out of trust with them and they had to dictate what you were doing? Why did that happen?

Yeah, so at one point they said, hey, if you want this type of funding, if you want us to front you this money, you have to meet these guidelines. And those guidelines were not within my original guidelines of how I wanted to structure the buy here pay here. Right. So we own a repair shop. We know how to work on cars, we know what kind of cars we want to work on. And I know which cars to trust in, which cars I can sell and have out there running, you know, that have over 150,000 miles. And when this company says, no, no, no, you need cars under 120,000 miles, those are going to be the ones that work. Those are going to be the ones that are going to last. And we can build off a better structure that way. But if, I mean, you know, if you look for a car under 100,000, you're not paying five grand for it unless if you have to put an engine and a transmission or, you know, who knows what kind of challenge you're going to be dealing with? And that was just not my ideal structure for it, especially when we're dealing with subprime customers.

Yeah. So they were, they were saying, hey, based on our data, which a lot of these companies, their data is, what is the car worth when we have to send it to the Auction and these people default, they only look at the disposition of the, of the collateral after the customer makes it maybe 12 months. Right.

That's an interesting, that's an interesting point, Jeff, because they're, they're only looking at the defaults. They're not looking at the data of what made it.

They just want to know what your asset's worth. And if you're selling 150,000 mile car, that asset is worth zero. Way, way too quick for them. It's not worth anything at the auction. Even though it might be a great buy here, pay a car for us and we can keep it running and we're going to recycle it ourselves and resell it and, and keep it going in our system. But if it gets out of our ecosystem and it goes into some third party collector and they repo it and send it to the auction, it brings peanuts.

Yeah.

And that is something, something I've always looked at in my buy here, pay here portfolio. And, and it's a buying philosophy of mine. And everybody out there write it down. We've got the, you know, 40 years of buy here pay here experience. What will make the note? That's what matters is write that down too. There we go. David, what will make the note? And from my data and looking at what pays out, David, I know you like Toyotas and Hondas. Toyotas and Hondas make the note. And if they don't make the note, they get to be recycled and you can sell them again.

Yeah.

And, and so we've built our portfolio on Hondas and Toyotas and Acuras and Lexus and things that I know will make the note. Whenever I veer off that course, I take a beating when I go to sell it. Jeff, what do you think?

I have only now started really steering heavy into the, you know, the Asian, Japanese brands. Before that I was very much like an American. You know, they were all Ford Focuses and Dodge Grand Caravans. Right. But, but yeah, bottom line is the car has to run the note. Right. So you got to be prepared. Even if it's got150 or180,000 miles, you got to put money into it. So, so, so going back to the reason why they were trying to change your structure and what worked for you, that's the problem is they're dictating a buy here pay here deal that might not work for you and your customer and where you position. I couldn't, I couldn't easily switch to a Luke business model because it's a higher acv, I would have to swim upstream in customer strongly and that's not where I position myself in the market right now. So it'd be hard for me. So I can see that. David, if they come in and they try to change your structure overnight, it gets really, really hairy because now you're putting more money on the street in a different car and worst case scenario, it sounds like you didn't have any control over the collections practices. Right?

Yeah, yeah. And on top of that, you know, they're telling you like, oh, you know, we're giving you this money, this is our money. But in reality it's my money. Like that car I had to purchase and I have to resell it, work on it, etc. And even though they're giving me a portion of that money up front, sometimes they didn't cover all of it, you know.

So you had some deals where your advance didn't even cover your cash in deal?

Yeah, there was plenty of deals that it did not cover my cash and deal. So it just did. That part of it was just not structured properly.

Hey guys, real quick. It's not too late to get signed up with Tax Max. We are in the middle of the fourth quarter program and as you know, it's cash is king. You know, one thing we learned from David is you've got to have the capital, you've got to have cash. And getting those tax refund advances is a great way to do it. Don't wait until tax time. Don't wait thinking the customers are going to roll in with a fat tax return. They're going to get intercepted by a dealer down the street before they even get to you. Unless you're using Tax Max to pre file their taxes in your dealership.

Yeah, it's great. You've got to, you've got to get this money. If you don't get it, somebody's going to get it. And the best way to do it is to print that check in house. Right?

Yep. So call the guys at Tax Max, visit them, make sure you use the code podcast 2024 to get 40% off the VIP package, which is really just the sign in drive. Makes it super easy. They can do it all online. Really cool program. So check them out. Get signed up. Taxmax.com.

Yep.

Did you have to pledge, did you have to pledge over all your existing portfolio or were you able to collect that outside like on your own?

I, I kept very few of them, but yeah, I mean I, for, in reality I think I sold 95% of everything I had.

Okay, so you sold it over to the, this finance company into the portfolio. You got whatever, 70 cents on the dollar or 60 cents on dollar or whatever it was.

60 cents on the dollar.

Okay.

And that would probably with the expectancy that asks, more comes in, I'm gonna continue to receive that monthly income, and that never happens. Well, the thing that, why, why I was so excited for it was because I had already built a good portfolio and I had good paying customers. And once I transferred those over, these customers continue to be good paying customers because they were already used to us. And it wasn't too difficult to say, hey, you know, just pay here instead of here. Yeah. So those customers kept paying. And so we started receiving monthly income on top of what we had already received, advanced, so it looked good. The problem was when we started doing new deals and we started, you know, doing that over and over again. And these new customers, you know, once they realized that, like, oh, I missed a payment, it's no big deal, or I paid 50 bucks and, oh, they're not taking my car. It was just like, who cares? Like it.

Did you remember my, you remember my rule on the, on partial payments, right?

Don't.

Don't take them because it trains them to pay you partial payments anyway.

Yeah, yeah, there's no, there's no partial payments. I mean, Right. It was just those new loans, they.

Didn'T have any kind of a seasoning period with you. Right. You would sell them directly over that first payment, went straight to the, to the, to the servicing company. So you didn't condition them. You didn't really get a, you know, teach them the way things would work. They all of a sudden got dumped into a system that sounds like it was a way more lax of a collections process and standards than what you typically do.

And. Yep.

So. So, David, how did you. How did you get out of this?

What.

I mean, what did it take for you to figure out that this was a wrong path? And when did you figure out it was the wrong path?

Can I first ask, before you answer that, David, when they bought out that portfolio, was that enough money to make your current investors whole? Were you able to pay off your friends and family?

Yes.

Okay.

I was.

I wanted to make sure you didn't have anything still hanging out where you were. Like, okay, I didn't even clear out these guys because I didn't, you know, they didn't advance me enough. Okay, so you didn't have any other debt hanging out? It was only the finance company. They took over everything but you had to pay all those people back and may have lost those relationships for the future, but okay.

Yeah. And honestly, it was great. Like we were, I was always in the mindset, okay, you know, debt first. Like, I don't want to, you know, use this money to do anything else. But if we're covering this debt, I think that was a really good call that we made. As soon as we got this advances, okay, who do we owe for what pay those off. And then I no longer had these small loans with friends and family. It was just, you know, just that the line of credit, no more little loans. And in that sense it seemed good. Like I'm only dealing with this one company. I have this money that I can work with. So going back to the question how we got out of it in 2021, I, when we started doing this and looked like it was going to be promising, I asked my wife if she would come work. She was getting good money being, being a nurse. It also a couple other reasons, helped out with the family, with our girls. But all in all, she was going to be in charge of this new area of the buy here, pay here, working with this third party company. And she was the one who said, hey, no more. Like, this is not going the direction we want it to. She had at first a lot of access to see the payments that were coming in. Until one day there was no more access. Like she couldn't see who was making payments. She couldn't see. And yeah, yeah, so they took that away from us.

And then, and then you kind of. It snowballed from there, I imagine.

Yeah, it snowballed from there for sure.

I mean, was she asking too many questions? I mean, that blows my mind.

I think she was asking too many questions because they were not being answered.

I mean, it's your portfolio.

That's what we thought.

It's your portfolio. Wherever my camera is. Your portfolio.

Yeah.

I mean they could be telling you one thing and doing another, right?

Yeah.

Wow, that's super interesting. And so, and so your wife said, david, this is bad. We've got to figure out how to get away.

So. And man, I thank her. Like I've thanked her so many times because I was in the mindset, like, no, you know, we just gotta stick with it. We gotta, you know, just make adjustments, we can make it work. But she just said, you know, no more. And there was, I think it was coming into 2022 in January. We were still kind of going back and forth. I had put a deal together, I submitted it for getting an advance and something got kicked back. It was something ridiculous. I didn't write it down. It was something ridiculous. And they kicked it back. And then they said we needed to change something. And that's when my wife was like, that's it. No more. I'm telling you, this is not going to work. So I listened to her and I was like, okay, well, no more deals. We didn't do anything in 2022. And, man, that. Yeah, that was the best decision ever.

Wow. So we're in 2022, your wife's there, and you still owe this line of credit, right?

Yeah.

How much was that on the line of credit then?

Over a million. Just over a million.

And how much in receivables did you have?

Like, how much coming in monthly now?

How many pr. How much principal did you. Did you have principal?

That was the principle. That was a principle. The principle that we had build it up to, it was a million dollars.

But how much. How much did you have loaned from the. How much money had you taken from that?

Oh, yeah, 680.

Yeah. So he had a million because they only advance a small portion.

Okay.

It was an equity position the whole time, but you don't have a recourse beyond that. Right? Like, they can't come back to you retroactively and say, hey, you had a million dollars in receivables, but we only collected 500,000. We advanced you 600,000. You need to kick us back that 100 grand. Right. They don't recourse. They don't come back and claw back your advances. Right.

I sent all this information over to my accountant. I reached out to a lawyer, and the way that they read the contracts and the way that it looked was, yeah, we sold them and the portion that they advanced us, that's it. And then obviously we're, you know, the. The accountant told me, he was like, yeah, don't expect to get anything more like, no, yeah, yeah.

It's kind of like your. Your ca. Your CAC pools, right? Like credit acceptance. Like, I do some deals into credit acceptance, but I'm never going to see a portfolio check like those are. I get a little bit of an advance, but I don't count on any kind of a back end from them. The issue with Agora or with this company is you. You would. You would have to give the advances, I think are probably less. You're really banking on that residual income to keep the doors open because they're not advancing. Really. I mean, the whole point is, can you make Perpetual cash flow. Right.

Yeah. I don't think you can make anything in a 60 advance. I don't. I don't see how that would work.

No, no.

And so go ahead. Go ahead, David.

I was gonna say, but here's the thing. I was willing to put some of my money, and I still am. That's why with the investors that I was working with, I would really only take what I need. If I had a vehicle that I did buy here pay here with, and it cost me five grand, they put some down, I paid the taxes, etc. If I could get away with only using $3,500, that's what I would do. Just the minimum. And then I would pay that 3,500 or 5,000, whatever the amount is, as the monthly payments come in. Most of the time I was paying 90% back to that loan. And then once I got that loan paid off, it's like, man, a weight off my shoulder and everything that coming in is gravy.

And that is so important. Everybody should use their line of credit exactly as David is talking about. That way you're never in a position of being out of trust or worrying about. Worrying about them calling that line. That's a great, great idea of doing.

Yeah. And that's why I was excited about it, because that's how I started to buy here pay here. I was like, hey, if I'm gonna have family or friends or somebody invest, like, I wanna pay them back as soon as possible. So 90% was my average of what I was paying back. And I wasn't counting on anything else. That's why, like, our repair shop and everything else was just kind of holding us together. And once the buy here pay here would take off, then that money was coming in free. And then I would have, you know, more of my own money to work with. That was always in the beginning. That was the game plan. Now, I mean, to be honest with you, we've been scared to say it, you know, not put it any other way. We've been scared to start the buy here pay here heavily because, I mean, we had such a bad experience. And trying to get back up from that took a lot. I mean, it definitely took a lot, Jeff.

We've got, like two weeks. You gotta get one thing done. You know what that is, Jeff?

I don't know.

Getting your Christmas presents.

Reinsurance, man. That is a Christmas present, okay? It's the Christmas present that keeps on giving. Years and years and years and years. Fifteen years down the road, like. Like me and I Was talking to somebody last night at a angel investment thing I was at. And. And I told him, I said the single best thing I ever did was start a reinsurance company. Buckeye is the place to go. Give them a ring. They will get you hooked up.

Yep, definitely. Well, I want to hear about that part. And of course, I'm going to throw another disclaimer in here that, you know, obviously David's experience with this company is his experience. Right. So we don't disparage any company on here. We don't talk bad about anyone. We know that, you know, these guys have their own program and it's got to work for them. Just like if I was the one lending money or if Luke was giving me money, he would have a program set up that has to work for him. So it doesn't work for everyone. We are by no means insinuating that they did anything wrong or misleading or. Or illegal or anything like that. So there's the legal disclosure for everything. Because, honestly, they've treated us as podcast people and personalities. Amazing. Like, I love everyone. Everyone that works there is super friendly and great. We've had nothing but great interactions with them personally. They have thrown a ton of attention and money at the independent space to help us out from conventions and everything else. So great, great people, Great, great company. Weird situation here with Dave.

Yeah. No, and to be honest with you, I agree a hundred percent with what you're saying. I have no grudge or nothing against them. They were great to work with. They. I mean, everybody that there, we just. We didn't have any problems with anybody in particular. I'm not gonna name anybody because, honestly, it was great talking, dealing with them. Maybe we. I just didn't know how to make it work. Like, it's. That's just kind of how I looked at it, you know, it just. It wasn't for me. The program was just not something that I could make work and I had to, you know, survive other. In other ways.

Yeah. So what did you start doing right now that you're. Now that. That kind of hit the. Hit the skids and that was cut off. What have you been doing since then to get back into that space? Is that something you want to do or you wanting to get back into carrying notes and being by her payer, or you just sticking with retail and repair?

No, I want to get back into the buy here, pay here. I think right now I'm focused on really building a company that just looks 100% trustworthy and something where I don't have to go looking out for companies. I want either companies or individuals to come to me and say, hey, can I invest in your company? Like, that would really be my ultimate goal to where I don't have to lose the capability of managing how I want my company to run and not be managed by some other company, you know, telling me how they want my company to be ran.

Yeah, you know, there's, there's always a, there's a saying, right. And I'm gonna mess it up. But essentially is person with the goal makes all the decisions. Right. And whenever you take, whenever you take cash from someone, next thing you know, they can tell you how to run your business and whether it be a bank, whether it be a person or whatever. And, and it's a bad situation to be. And I'm glad that it didn't end any worse for you than it did.

Well, yeah, but I think David has a point there, Luke. I think we, we know a lot of dealers who, when you go looking for money now, you're, you're, you're the one asking, right? And it's like, oh, they're going to help you out. But. But under my conditions. Right. And we know that's how it is with the big lenders. Like, they have their tentacles in you. They have their processes. They've been burned a lot by dealers. So they're very cautious and they've got rules and they've got sweep accounts and everything else. But it's different. Like when David had before was, it's, hey, look at my company. I can give you a return on your investment. If you want to invest with me and into my company, this is a solid operation. I make money. I have a proven track record. I can give you a 8, 10, 12%, you know, return. That's a different story. Right. So what David's saying, I've got to rep business. Come invest with me.

Yeah, Yeah.

Y.

And I think he's back to that. And I, I love that. David's big concern here is that he wants to be that reputable business and he wants that. That image to come back. Do you think. Do you think this situation hurt your image in your community?

No, it did not. It did not. And that's probably what's the most, the most expensive thing is running an honorable and running a. This type of business with integrity. And that's, that's my slogan. I mean, our business name is Car Smart, and our slogan is dealing with integrity. And that slogan right there is the most expensive thing because we're you know, I'm gonna be honest with anybody that comes through our door. If we sell a car with 220,000 miles, you know, I'm gonna tell them like, hey, you shouldn't buy this car if you're not ready to, you know, put some money into it in the next six months to a year. But, you know, here's the list of things that we did and why we're selling this car.

Yeah.

And I mean, things. Things happen. And you be, man, the amount of stories that I have to share is crazy because we've helped some people out and, you know, we don't expect anything back. But it happens so many times where we've had people where, you know, we give them a three month warranty, they run out and they're like, oh, you know, my warranty ran out, but my alternator went out. And we tell them, oh, you know what, like, just bring it, pay us for the alternator, we'll put it on. And before you know it. I think I had one instance where we did that and they brought like three people to buy cars from us because they were just so impressed that we, you know, went out of our way to help them out for sure.

Dealers that don't make it or the dealers that don't do that, that's for sure. So David, you, you said you got down to selling about eight cars a month, but you're back to about 16.

Is.

Is that where we are now?

Yeah, yeah. So when we stopped, when we stopped doing the buy here pay here, I started just doing retail. So I had a lot to learn between selling cars, dealing with the banks, dealing with third party finance companies, and that was difficult. Most of these cars that we go through for just retail and going through the banks, I mean, we, most of the time we're making $1,015 and sometimes just breaking even. And for the past two years, man, it was just like back to back on. And I was like, man, there's got to be something better because where we buy cars from how we sell them, it was really difficult. So one thing that I really didn't consider for a long time was buying salvage cars. Because, you know, most people say, oh, it's a salvage car, like, you know, it's a bad car. But I started buying a lot of salvage cars and I started buying hail damage vehicles, some vehicles that had some minor damage but a little bit higher mileage. And the insurance company was just like, yeah, just, you know, throw it away. It's salvage. And we fixed them up and I think because of the reputation that we have, I sold a lot of vehicles with rebuilt titles, and people just trust us that they know it's a good running car. There's nothing mechanically wrong with them. And we've been made. Have you decent money with that?

Are you able to get those financed or you are.

Oh, yeah. Yep, yep. The credit unions will finance them. Companies like Westlake will finance them. And I'm now more so open and wanting to do buy here, pay here with these cars because they don't care.

I know somebody that's made a awful lot of money doing it. L. A?

Yeah.

Yeah. So I was reading here on some of the questions you talk about road closures, so it sounds like you just be getting hit in the head. David, what's going on there?

Yeah, we had twice where our main road right in front of our business got close. I think in certain areas, there's a small divot in the road where the creek goes under it, and they had to redo it, lift the road up. And they did it before where our business is located and after, like five miles after. But both times they closed all our road. Man.

Buddy.

Oh, man.

But what do you do in a situation like that?

Honestly, we, I. I'm not lying to you. We just pray and we say, all right, God, like, if this is where, you know, this is where we end up, and that's it. Like, you know, he opened the doors for us to be here. If it's time to shot him, we'll shot him. But, man, we're still here. We're making adjustments, and it's still going good. I just. Believe it or not, we just purchased a tow truck. Nice.

Look at there. It's got snow all over it. What's that white stuff? I've never seen?

Yeah, yeah, it's got some white stuff on it, but it's hauling cocaine. Oh, man.

Man.

But yeah, so we're, We're. We're still kicking, man. Yeah, I think one of the making it better and better.

Hey, and one more time just to break in and make sure you guys are signed up with Blitzpay. It's who both of us use for our payment. So if you're in the buy here, pay here industry, or if you're just taking credit cards at your. At your car lot, in your retail, they can still set you up a retail portal, a virtual terminal where you can take credit cards right from your computer. You can send the customer a link. They can do their down payments through their phone. So it's A super, super easy program. Both buy here pay here and retail dealers can take advantage of it.

It's super easy, especially for buy here pay here stores. It's got a collection module also, so use it, text through it, send text links to get paid, all those things to help you get the money in the bank. And as you listen to David, one of the biggest problems he was having was getting those collections done. And Blitzpay is there to help and show you the best way to get it done.

A huge advantage you have. And I think it's, it's, it's so many dealers when you're a repair shop first, right? Because that's kind of like your DNA is we can fix a car and that works so, so, so useful in a buy here pay here, right? Because the car's got to be running. You guys can keep the car on the road. You can do the goodwill stuff because you've got all the infrastructure to fix whatever the issue is to knock it out. And on top of that it sounds like you're able to go out and find those value add projects where you're like, hey man, we can handle this R and R on an engine, we can handle this hail damage. We can do the bodywork, we can kind of build value in a lot of these little teeny niche areas. That's, that's so huge. When you're, when you're as small as you are and you're, you're growing, you can get into those little teeny areas. Whereas some of the big, big, big dealers like they can't go out and buy 100 projects every single month. It would just be a massive ridiculous undertaking. So they like to start stepping away from them. But you can still go find those little diamonds in the rough and build a lot of value in those.

Yeah, yeah. And I, it's funny you say that because I tried that model. I looked at, you know, okay, what are some of these other dealerships doing that they work with so many finance companies. Newer car, lower miles and man, there, there's no money to be made in that. I, that's my opinion.

Race to the bottom.

It's. Yeah, yeah. So I bought, let's see here in the past couple months because I still, you know, you still get a lot of people, they want their clean title, newer cars, they don't want to deal with any rebuilt. So I still always look for clean title, newer vehicles. I bought a 19 Mazda 54, 000 miles, green light through the auction. Everything carfax clean like no yellow Flags at all. This is a car that I'm expect paying good money for. Expecting to get here, clean up, put up for sale, got here cracked head, you know, and the auctions like, oh yeah, we'll give you two grand, you fixed it. And I'm thinking, I'm like, man, if any other dealership that doesn't have the capability like I do to fix this, it's going to cost them 35, maybe four grand.

Yeah, oh yeah, I've been there.

So it's, I'm just like, man, I'd rather, at this point, I'd rather take my chances with a salvage car that I know was on the road, it was running, you know. Yeah, yeah. Insurance just said, oh yeah, you know, you got hail damage, we're going to pay you off. Yeah.

So that's.

Wow.

So where do you see this going, David? What's your game plan for the next, like, you know, until we talk to you again in a few years, what's your hopes? I mean, is it continue to find outside investors? Is it kind of go down and build your service center or you want to steer fully into, you know, trying to be 100% buy here, pay here. What's your game plan now?

Yeah, I think the one thing that I need help with is to be able to reach out to one individual. I really just need one, maybe two individuals that would be open to working with me in investing and letting me be in control of running my business and them just collecting the interest on it. Because I would much rather pay that interest to somebody that's willing to give me an opportunity to make run my business the way that I see fit. Which is again, with integrity and doing everything right and not have these guidelines of, oh, you know, you need to do things this way or that way. I mean, I already know that just doesn't work. You know, the buy here, pay here, I definitely want to grow. I would like to go back to the way I initially started doing it, but I also don't want to go back to dealing with so many individual, you know, family members or friends that want to invest 10 or 20,000. I mean, at this point I could take on at least half a million dollars and make that work, you know. Yeah. Pay interest with no problem. They're just no credit union is going to give me that amount. Yeah. And you know, and it's hard to.

Find that guy who says, yeah, I trust you, I'm going to give you a half million and I Wanna, you know, 8% or 10 return on this. You know, see, in a couple years, you know, it's like, it's a very, very hard thing to find. But I. I think some of the guys who have been able to partner up with someone like that, that's kind of the holy grail, right?

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So. And we can't go to the. What does that show? Sharks.

Shark Tank.

Shark Tank, Yeah. I don't know how that would work. They're like, oh, you're in the automotive industry. Nope.

Yeah, well. Well, of course, David, we wish you the best. And. And hopefully when we check in with you in a couple more years, you'll find that person, you'll get that capital. Not necessarily. Obviously, you've kind of got a bad taste in your mouth for going to the institutional lenders, which. Not for everybody. You know, I think it's fine to either slow grow, you know, take on some small lines here and there, or just. Just keep slinging those cars, man, and just reinvesting that cap, that profit every single month, you know? Yeah, yeah, that's.

That's the current motto, is just slow growth, steady grow, and make what works better. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David, thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you.

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