#358 - How I Built This: Nick Markosian 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. A familiar face of the podcast, Luke.

Yeah, you know, we're going through the series of how I built this and how we improved it, how we stayed the same, or just revisiting what's going on. And Jeff, you and I were talking with Nick that he's our most famous podcast ever. Has the most views, most listens, most shorts, and I guess it's just Mr. Marcosian is so, so friendly and such a nice face to see that everybody wants to hear him. And see.

Yeah, that's something else. Man, I couldn't believe it when you told me that.

What. What do you think, Nick? What do you think. What's. What's the contributing factor to your previous episode? If you guys haven't listened. 253. I'm sure you've listened because according to the stats, everybody.

Everybody's listening.

Yeah, our podcast is listen. And Nick recorded it in his truck on the way to the airport or something.

It was the worst. I remember this.

I had my kids in the background.

Yeah, it was nuts. But we're glad you did it then, and we're glad to have you back, buddy.

Yeah, but, Nick, what do you think. What do you think resonated with listeners? What do you think about. Your story is so relatable and so viral in that. In the dealer community?

I think, you know, it's. It's just real. I don't think I was trying to put on a show. It was just the story, and it was just ugly. It's. It's just a. It was a rough period, and. And I think I, you know, in a lot of ways, I triumphed over it. And. And I think. I think that's a. That's a. A good story. You know, I think to hear how people triumph over adversity is. Is powerful. And I. So I think. If I were going to say, though, that's why I'd say that's. That's the reason.

Yeah, Nick, you. You seem to. And we just said it right before we started corn.

You're.

You're all gas and no break. And I think that so many of us would love to be that, but I'm not. Jeff, are you all gas or break? I mean, I'm a lot of break. I'm a lot of break.

No, no, I'm not. I'm not of that thread. I Think we can identify a handful of dealers in our circle.

Yeah.

And like Nick, who just, you know, that you, you know when to just ignore the flashing lights on the dash and just push it a little bit further. Right? Like, you know, it's saying E on the tank, but you're going to make it to the next exit. Like, there's no reason to pull over here, kids. We're making it to the next exit. Like, it's a really, really cool story of how you can. Like, I don't even know if I could sleep at night. Like, you kept all your hair. You look young. Like, I don't understand it. Nick, you've been through a lot, so I think that's it.

So, so where are we now, Nick?

Well, I, I turned 50 this year. That was kind of a big deal for me mentally.

I mean, that you made it, that you made it to 50. It surprises me.

Just. Yeah, I mean, I'm down. I'm thinking, okay, now it's, now it's kind of the latter half of my career. What. How should I set myself up so that I can kind of deal with worst case scenarios? I still have a vision for my company that has not been realized, so how can I get to that? But still, you know, not put all the eggs in the basket, leave a few out in case things don't go right. And so I'm kind of thinking more that way. You know, things have been interesting in the car world. My sales are down about 20% this year. Interest rates have been really high. Car prices have been really high. Parts have been really high. Employees are really expensive. So the margins have just taken a dramatic turn for the worst in the last couple of years. And so that obviously calculates into what, what your plans are. So I think the last time we Talked, I had five dealerships. I had opened up my fifth store in August of 22. And that store is a beautiful piece of property on a prominent area. It's so, it's sort of a nicer part of Salt Lake. It's in Draper. It was in draper off the 123rd south exit. You're probably aware of that, Jeff. Yeah, you know, it, it did okay. We were doing 30ish a month, but the property was very expensive. And it was a property that we should be generating 50 to 60 sales a month out of. And we were putting so many resources into it. We were doing so many Google AdWords around there and, and, and, you know, just utilizing everything we had into trying to make it work. And so it felt like just too much effort for too little result. So I, I closed it in April of this year and, and I've leased it out to auto savvy. You probably know them, Jeff. But anyhow, salvage tie Salvage title is huge in Utah for some reason and they, they leased it and it's going to be a really good long term lease that goes up. It's just a, it's a great, great move I felt because it just, that particular location didn't fit the model. And so closing that down and slowing down sales has enabled me to generate tremendous amounts of positive cash flow. So I've used that to pay down quite a, quite a hefty amount of debt. I never did have a offshore warranty, you know where company set up for just my buyer pay here warrant or my lease or pay your warranties. So I've been able to set that up this year and put a whole bunch of money into that. So there's just a lot of very cool things about not growing that are really attractive. But I can also see how a dealer can get trapped into not wanting to grow because it's so comfortable. I have never had money. I have never felt like I had money in the bank. Every dime I ever had went okay, what are we gonna, what, what recon center do I need now? What truck do we need? Whatever, you know. And I've put everything I've made over the last 15 years into growing this business. So to have cash in the bank and stuff is. It's something else. It's different.

Yeah. You know, that's had, had to, been hard for you to adjust to the, to the non growth mindset. When did you decide that this store that, that you were just talking about, how do you come to the decision when, when you go, it just doesn't work. So, so many of us will keep plowing the money into it, keep it going, keep doing, keep pushing. But, but something clicked with you. What clicked with you that you maybe can help other dealers understand that it. They just didn't work.

Yeah, I mean I think that I could have stuck it out and probably made it work, but we were having some turnover there. It was just really hard to keep salespeople because it was just such a grind, such a grind to get, to get those 30, 40 car deals out a month. And, and so that was what part of it. But I'd also borrowed a lot of money in a very short period of time and it was a little bit alarming to me. It was like, I don't, I don't this doesn't feel comfortable. And interest rates were going up and up and up and still hard to find inventory. And just. The numbers just didn't make sense to me. It just didn't feel right, you know, And I, I, you know, it was more of a. It was a very nice facility, and I. And my smaller stores do much better in a. Just, you know, around an acre lot to 1500 square feet of office space at the most. Maybe a little detail bay. And this thing was way more than that. And so I just felt it was too much, too much for too little and.

Yeah.

And felt like it was just a good. A good business move. And I really, you know, I get. I get the pride thing. And people call, hey, what happened? Why'd you close down? You know, velocity is right down the street from there, and that guy's calling me up, you know, and it is a little embarrassing. And, you know, not everything you touch turns to gold. And I think the best businessmen in the world are the ones that can turn. Can walk away from something like that.

Yeah, it's hard. It's hard, man. It's even hard with car dealers with, like, a car and taking a loss. Right? And you see people every day go, well, I mean, I've had it for two years. I'm going to make money on it one day. And you just know it's not the best way to go.

Right?

Yeah. Keep throwing good money after bad. Right.

I just.

If I just put one more transmission in this car, it's gonna run the note. You know, I just do one more engine.

Have that debate. My mechanics, my team, they fall in love with cars. Oh, we replaced that transmission in 2023. And. And it's only got a 220. And it's gotta go. It's gotta go.

But it's got a new engine in it.

Right.

And I don't want to do a third engine this time, so.

Hey, Jeff, are you ready?

Yes.

What are you ready for, buddy?

I'm ready for some commercials for this episode. And let me guess. It's probably for one of our three wonderful sponsors.

Yeah. Which one you'll do first?

I think it's tax time, because that's one of the most exciting things right now. Not that I don't love Blitzpay and Buckeye, but tax time, man, the money is coming. I can almost smell it.

Yeah. I'll tell you, it's. It's the most wonderful time of the year. And it is. It's just. It's great for collections. It's great for selling cars, it's great for service. So make sure that you're the one getting the handle on that tax money because it is about to blow our doors off. So get ready, go to Tax Max and put in Pod podcast 2024 to get 40% off the VIP package.

Indeed. See you there, Nick. So talk to us about the portfolio. Kind of taking the foot off the gas there and cutting sales, kind of cut back. And part of that was probably economic driven and market factors. Some of it was maybe closing that store and, and part of it was mentality. But I've noticed that even outside of my mentality, my portfolio has shrunk this year. I've probably lost almost 10% of it just from maybe reduced sales. But I don't necessarily say I have the cash in the bank. I honestly don't know where that cash went. I think a lot of it is maybe overhead cost of everything being more. But what do you think the factors are were for you? Was it mostly a choice or do you think that there were some market conditions that maybe timed up right?

Yeah, I mean it's just we don't, we aren't seeing near the traffic, we're not seeing near the customer interest that we were seeing. I think, you know, a lot of dealers in Utah have actually improved this year. I, I'm good friends with Travis Johnson who owns Axios and he took over all the Asbury, acquired all the Larry Miller stores. They had five Larry Miller used car supermarkets. He ended up buying all those up and starting his own dealership called Axios. And I talked to him and he's selling, he sold 400 cars a month, 500 cars a month and he's doing the higher end stuff. And so there are segments of the used car market that seem to be doing really well right now, although I think everybody's slowed down quite a bit in the last 60, 90 days. But, but the our customer, you know, the Dollar General, Family Dollar, those kind of businesses that cusp, that deal with our kind of customer, our lower income customer, they are all although I did did hear the Dollar General had a really good quarter just recently and they've been struggling for 18 months and they had a good quarter. I really watched those kind of com, those kind of businesses that cater our customer.

You know, so interesting Nick. And I'm going to put this out to the podcast. If someone knows how to do this, we've got to have some smart listener out there that can overlay Walmart, Family Dollar, Dollar General, whatever. Take the Take the, you know, demographic that our customer loves the most and overlay that on top of our portfolio performance and see is that a leading indicator or a lagging indicator of what we should expect. Right. They always kind of talk about like where does the rubber hit the road as it. I'd be really interested to see that those don't correlate pretty tightly.

They have, they have to.

I have no doubt. I mean I, that's an anecdotal, I haven't done the, the deep dive in the data you, that we're the, they're the same customer, you know. And so it's a really, you know, America's car mart. They're struggling. They, they've had a really rough time with profitability this year. Their stock price has been way, way down. So I mean, and then it's hard to look at Carvana because it's, there's so many, it's just games.

Yeah, hocus pocus accounting.

But anyhow, that, those are some things that I really look at. I look at inflation, I look at what the interest rates are doing, what the overall mood is. And our customers, they always want to buy cars but if they don't have money, it just, they can't, they're not going to do it and they're, you know, they, they know if they feel ready to buy a car or not. So anyways, I'm trying to think of if that answered your question.

It did, it did. And do you feel like it was all sales driven the portfolio reduction or do you feel like a lot of that happened on the collection side too? Do you feel like repos went up? Voluntary surrenders? I know for me I could say that yes, I had a collect some collector turnover which caused me issue but I have had a lot of voluntary surrenders. A lot of people heading back south of the border. Not either they got deported or they don't want to get deported. So I've had drop offs but I've had some record charge offs this year.

Yeah, we had a couple of just whopper charge off months. One was October of 2023. That was the largest charge off month in the history of our company. And then we had a pretty big wave in June and July of this year. June was more acute than July. And then normally it feel, and this is pretty, pretty consistent October or August, September, October are really high months for us. And it chilled out a whole bunch. Our, our repos have just trended down, down, down and we, we've done a, you know, we, we, we have an offshore underwriting department that, that is verifying everything before and they're sending approvals to our stores. So we started really implementing that about 14 months ago. We started pulling criminal reports on our customers about a year ago. 14 months ago, we required the biggest factor. So we rate our customers abcd, like Neo and stuff. So the D customer, the biggest factor in repos with the D customer was low down. If they had 500 down, it was almost for sure a repo. So we put a thousand dollar minimum down on that tier. And I think all these incremental changes that we've made, being way more careful with who we're putting in our car has finally, finally translated into a much, much lower, healthier portfolio. Yeah, and that's such, that's sort of the, the delicate, you know, nuance thing with growth. You know, if you're just gonna sell a bunch of shitty custom. Excuse me, sorry. You're gonna just sell a bunch of shitty customers cars. Crappy cars. That's not growth. That's throwing money down the toilet and that's.

You'll pay the piper eventually, right?

Even if they. Yeah, and even if they do pay, they're a nightmare. They're the ones that are in your service shop screaming at your people, and they're the ones causing all kinds of trouble. And so anyhow, that's, that's was my focus, was. I want. I'm not so concerned about volume at this section at this particular moment in time. I'm concerned about getting our processes right, getting the right customers in our vehicles. And then, you know, once we got that foundation built, let's do it. I've also had a lot of turnover this year. I had a couple of people that have been with me very long time that have left. It's been quite a year. We had a lot of turnover with store managers, like, unbelievable. Like one month. This was the. I think in September, three out of four of our store managers quit. Well, we had to let them go. So it's been quite a ride this year.

Is it because they're used to one volume? And then because I could imagine this scenario, you have sales of X amount, you cut that down by 10% because you're being maybe a little more strict with underwriting, which is good. You kicked out those bottom tier of customers, hopefully, and you're only taking, you know, A's and B's and a couple C's or something. But then what happens is those, if those store managers are comped on, on sales, maybe all of a sudden they See, what was just this free ride of easy money starts to get a little harder. They gotta do a lot more underwriting, they gotta do a lot more vetting, and they're. You're maybe cutting some sales out. Do you think that that was a factor at all? That, like, they didn't like.

Absolutely. They get. They get. They have a picture in their head is I always call it. If you died and went to Marcosian Auto Heaven, you know, and Marcosi and Auto Heaven, for them was three years ago. And that's just not the reality of our business. It is so dynamic, and it changes so much that for you to start to plant the seed in your head that this is how it should be, rather than just accepting how it is and trying to deal with how it is, and people just have a very, very hard time with that. And what's really interesting is if they didn't have those preconceived notions, if they woke up today and had amnesia about our dealership, they would say, holy crap, there's a lot of good things going on here. We have incredible programs. Our ACV steadily gone up. We're offering a newer, nicer, a nicer car than we've been able to offer in years. Our approval process and things have improved. We've switched CRMs, and it's much, much better. But they only grab on to how much easier it was to sell folks cars with no underwriting process. And they're out. They're done. So that was a really good point, Jeff. And it's sad. It's sad that that's the reality of the situation, but people just can't let go. They can't let go, and they've got to go. I call a lot of my employees quit and came back. I call that going on sabbatical. Sabbatical can be a really, really good way to get some quality employees.

Yeah, I agree with that. The grass isn't always green. And we had a. We had a tech leave, and. And I always kid with them when they. They leave. And I don't ever. If somebody wants to go, I let them go. And I just said, hey, buddy, if you ever want to come back, you're more than welcome. And a week later, he calls me. He said, hey, buddy, can I come back? I said, would you like me to come with the. With the rollback and grab your toolbox right now? He said, please, that's fine. I mean, it's so great. But I tell you, it's something about leveling out your portfolio, Nick. It's buy your pay here is hard when it gets multiple locations. And I can't explain, I think retail is probably a little easier because the collections are, are not. You don't have collections, you know, but man, the bigger you get in the buy here, pay here, the harder the processes are to keep running in the right direction and the harder it is to make everything go. I'm sure you saw that or have seen that and continue to see that, right?

Yeah, I, I do. I mean, accountability, I think is the number one hardest thing of all, of all managers. Um, it's not comfortable, it's not fun. And processes that you set up when you slow down, like our, to our, our reconditioning center, you know, we've let go a lot of the lower level mechanics because the volume just wasn't there. And when you start slowing down at the beginning, you're just. We, we had, we had, we were selling 170, 180amonth and we had over 300 cars on the front line. Sometimes it got up to 330 cars on the front line. So we were just washing in way too much inventory. And that creates so many problems with old age, with depreciation and so on. So I had to figure that out. So I wrote down cars like crazy and had a big Labor Day sale. And now we are in the. At exact. After getting through all that, now we are in the exact opposite situation. When we first started slowing down sales and I closed that location, most of the cars we were getting back were recyclable. I would say 70% of our sales was recycled inventory. Now all of the volunteer, all the cars that we're getting back, we have to liquidate. I'm talking like it was an absolute switch. It was from 80, 20 to 20 80. So 80, 70 to 80% of the cars we were able to recycle put back on the front line. Now it's more like 20 to 30% of the cars we're getting back are recyclable. So that, that means all of a sudden I gotta buy a ton of cars, I gotta rehire mechanics, I gotta turn the machine back on. And turning the machine back on requires a hell of a lot of oil. It requires getting back processes that were working when it's just crazy, man. And so it's just, I mean, I can't even tell you. This year has been something else.

Do you see it getting better?

I do, yeah, I do. I think that, you know, I think that our customers will start to, to do better. I can see all the apartment buildings coming up and rent is finally not, not so just horrifically high in Utah. That's going to get better. I think that just the, just the general change in the country with the, the leadership, I mean you can love or hate Trump, but I think just the, the fact that we're doing something different than we have been is so such a psychological plus for our country and for everybody in it. I really believe that we're in for some stronger periods. But I do think the competition is still very fierce. You know, the subprime auto finance business is very attractive because of the yields. And so the bond market is as strong as it's ever been, which surprises us. Right. Normally in the credit cycle right now with, with delinquencies going up a little bit and stuff, you would expect to see some tightening. But like Capital One, they are originating more auto loans than they ever have. And, and so it's, the competition's going to be fierce. So I mean really, I think what I'm focused on is just trying to improve my value proposition, trying to get a, a nicer car. I'm really trying to stay away anything under fresh acquisitions, anything under 10 grand and really focusing on like 80, 000 mile, three, four year old cars, you know, trying to get that, as much of that as possible just to improve the value proposition and get more competitive.

Hey, real quick. You know, one thing Nick mentioned was one of the most important things he did was he started his reinsurance company. Hopefully he used Buckeye. That's who I use, that's who Luke uses. They are a great company for setting up your reinsurance and getting all your products that are going to help with, you know, in a situation where Nick had some extra cash flow coming in. I know that as a small dealer or a growing dealer, trying to fund your reinsurance company can be a cash drain. Putting that money aside and waiting for it to vest so that you can borrow it back out is sometimes tough. But it is a smart, smart thing to do to whatever degree you can do it currently in your business.

Yeah, and hey, it took us two years to get our CPI just narrow down and hammering and we are, we are on our way, buddy. Making money, doing that. This is a way to make money instead of giving it to everybody else. So let's do it. Let's look at the new year. Let's get all those programs in, into place.

Yeah, definitely.

Have you ever been your size? Have you ever thought about trying to do a bond or tranche to the open market?

No, no. I. I don't think so. I think there's just too many things that are beyond your control. And the bond market seems pretty vol. You know, I mean, the whole reason why that US Auto and American Car Center. I mean, they couldn't sell their notes.

Yeah.

And the bond market completely froze up. And, you know, those private equity people just don't like to weather a storm. And that was the end of that. And so I think that you. You make yourself a little too vulnerable to forces beyond your control. And so I'm not comfortable with it myself.

Yeah.

Especially.

Especially in the arising interest rate market, which, you know, we're not in currently, but we might get back in if inflation doesn't chill. I could see how you could really get yourself in trouble.

Yeah, I mean, I think there is a place for the bond market for, for big players, but I'm certainly not at that level. I'm not a. I'm not a tri color or a carbon or whatever, you know?

Gotcha.

Yeah. I think. I mean, do you feel like that's where our buyers are going? Because I. I guess are. Are the subprime lenders really being that aggressive? Because I see some of the ones I deal with and they're not. I guess I just don't know where the buyers are going. Right. So when we say sales are down, my sales are down. My number one competitor in my town shut down six months ago from internal issues. And I think to myself, well, that should be an automatic bump to me, because where are those buyers going? I don't know where they're going.

I just think they're sitting on the sidelines, Jeff.

Okay.

Broke, man. They're struggling.

They're just making their car last a little bit longer.

Yeah. I mean, the average age of the cars in the US is now 13 years and rising. Wow. So I think people are just waiting for. To feel a little bit better about their economic situation. So. And I believe that's a huge percentage of our customer. But also I think that when sales slow down for the new car dealers and the independent retail dealers, they expand their subprime offerings and they get more aggressive about trying to sell that customer a car. So just the general competitive environment, I think, has. Has definitely tightened up. So we just got to get better at our game. And, and it's got to be real. It can't be. It can't be us just feeling like we're offering something better. We really need to offer something better, you know?

And what does that look like? Higher acv? I mean, when we talk about in it, in the buy here, pay your space of offering something better. Is it a nicer, newer car? Is it the things that go along with the car, like warranties and service contracts? Is it. What is it that. That distinguishes us?

I think it's all of that. I think it's customer service. You know, we. We. We really look at how many of our phone calls get answered. That's such a huge. I can't tell you the hell we've gone through with dealing with phones, dude. Same here.

Answering phone calls is. Is one of those things that has to happen and never does. It sounds like it's so simple, right?

And getting constant customer service training. So consumer. Constant customer service training. Because your customer, your sales, the people that are handling our warranties and get.

Well, looks like Nick froze there for a second, Jeff.

Yeah, I think what he's talking about, though, and I feel the same way, is we have to look at going through the phone calls and listening. I just made a note this morning when I heard a salesman, one of my sales team talking to a customer, and I just make a little note like, hey, you know, at 10:30 on Monday morning, I need to go back in and listen to that full phone call. And I need to talk about the cus, like, train on this phone call, because I could tell just based off what my girl was saying on her end, that things were off. Like, the answer she was saying, I was like, I don't know what. That I can't hear the other side of this phone call, but I need to go back and listen to it, because I don't think that those answers are correct. And in our dealerships, how many times do we do that? Do we really go listen to customer phone calls? Do we really, like Nick was saying, like, do we. I've never paid attention to the amount of phone calls that get picked up, as opposed to the ones that go to voicemail. Is that like a. Is that a stat you track, Nick? Do you track that monthly? Like, you're really paying attention to unanswered.

We track it daily because too many customers were walking in saying that they. They couldn't get a hold of us. Yep.

So you have that many phone calls or just that few people? Like, what is the answer?

Because you're understanding calls. It's unbelievable. I mean, I have. I have 30 employees in Mexico, and I would say 20 of them. Their job is to answer that phone. And so, yeah, it's unbelievable, the call volume.

I can't think about this, Jeff. Think about 4,000 accounts. And it's hard to put in perspective, but we have right at 900 accounts. Right. And if you walk into my office right now, that phone rings from 7:30am to 7:30pm and we're not even open all that time. It never stops. So just take that and multiply it, you know, times five, and holy cow. I, I can't imagine the call volume, Nick. I mean, you've got to have, you know, you got to have a half a city in Mexico answering phone calls.

Well, and they also have to know what they're doing. They have to actually be able to answer our customers questions and help them.

Yeah.

That takes a tremendous amount of time and a tremendous amount of training. And luckily, I have some great people on my team. That. And we've really, we've really improved. We're not there yet. I'll tell you the biggest problem we have is with our service center and dealing with service customers. Our people have such a hard time being nice to our customer. Coincidentally, we're letting go of two of them right as we speak.

Yeah.

This morning was the day we were going to let them go. And we're pushing the reset button and trying to get people off on the right foot. About how you treat customers, I mean, it's just simple. You're warm and friendly, you say hello, you ask them how they're doing, you empathize with them about their problems. If you know and you try to help, just use common sense to try to help our customers. And so, you know, like, we have 70 loaner cars. I can't even believe that we have 70 loaner cars. And I feel like now we've made a deal with our customer. You're. You're going to pay us a lot of money, and in exchange for that, I'm going to make sure you got transportation no matter what.

Yeah.

And I can't. I can't.

If I.

If my mechanic makes a mistake ordering a part for your car and it's going to take another two weeks, I can't ask you to go do Uber and rental car for another two weeks and expect you to pay me. You know, so I've. I've. In the last year, we've built up a huge fleet of loaner cars, just as an example.

Yeah, they go a long way.

Yeah, that's a value add that. I get the risk. I know there's a lot of people listening right now that are cringing and ducking under the table. But set up correctly, you know, that's a value add. That someone of our size and scale can add because it really is a transportation solution. Right? I mean, you are. That's.

Yes. And I just feel like keep them on the road. How, how can we ask them to pay us if we are not providing them the transportation that they signed up for? I, I don't know. It's a, it is a. There could be both sides, but to me it's just a no brainer and it's really, really helped. I think it's one of the things that's really changed our repossession picture it definitely.

And I can't imagine, I mean, from a service rider standpoint, it's much, it's very, very helpful to be able to say, hey, Mr. Customer, yes, I'm sorry you just bought this. I'm sorry it broke down. But here's a car. You're going to be with wheels. While we get this figured out. What, what we really found on our side. We just let go of a service writer and it turns out he was saying yes to too many people. And so our goodwill was, got completely out of hand just because there was no pushback. There was never any owner responsibility to say, hey, you know what, you're going to have to participate in this repair or no, we're not going to cover the battery after three months. Like he was just saying yes to everybody. So things were getting, getting out of hand on the other side.

There's a balance. There's definitely a balance. And it's, it's really the three Fs firm, friendly and fair.

Jeff, we got to put the money in the bank and we use blitz pay to put our money in the bank from credit cards. Yeah.

If you're like Nick and you're slowing down sales a little bit and you're, you're, you're kind of slowing down your accounts, you're definitely socking away a lot of cash. So it's very, very important that you make it easy for your customers to pay. And on a scale like he does, I don't know who Nick uses for his payment processor. I'm sure all these payment processors are knocking on his door trying to get his business. But you got to be able to get it quick and get it fast. And it's one way to help eliminate some of those phone calls and some of those headaches that you do get at that scale is you've got to automate the process and you've got to help your customers self solve their problems. Right. And that's one great thing about blitzpay is with the payment, the portal that they have, they can solve their own problems, they can add their own cards, they can set up their own auto pay. It just makes it so much easier.

Yeah. I mean, on this, on the scale that he is, he was probably having five or six people a day taking payments. And blitzpay, you don't need that. You can get it done. All the guys can do it all by themselves.

Yeah.

Yep. Awesome.

Give them a call.

I love that. And you know, from a retail perspective, compared to buy here, pay here, at least here pay here, a bad phone call in a buy here, pay or lease here pay here will cause a repossession. I mean, easy, like boom, retail, it doesn't matter. Right. But that buy here pay here phone call is so important. If they can't get you on the phone, a lot of times they can't make the payment. If they can't get your service partner on the phone, they're not riding. And if they get your service department on the phone and that, oh, well, we can't help you. That's a repo. So that's super important. Those phone calls are.

Yeah, agree.

Nick, tell us this. What else, what closing advice would you have for dealers that are listening, that have, obviously they know your journey, they know what you went through before, kind of what you're going through now. What other advice or closing, you know, kind of lessons have you learned over the last two years that you could share with us?

Well, I think that, golly, there's, there's a lot. I mean, I've been able to change, to have a really nice lifestyle. I've, I've enjoyed a lot of fun vacations and I ride my bicycle just about every day. I've taken up saxophone as a. I played saxophone when I was in college and, and high school, and I was pretty good at it and I missed it terribly. So I've started getting involved with that big time and do gigs and play at weddings and things like that. It's super fun. And I practice a lot. You know, I practice at least an hour a day, sometimes more. And so because business just doesn't require so much of my attention and I'm. I'm not pushing the gas pedal right now, which is what I enjoy. You know, I'm, I really don't enjoy the day in, day out. Mundanity, if that's a word. And where can I be most helpful to my people? It's, it's coaching them, it's having a, having a shoulder to cry on it's.

It's interesting.

Out again.

We lose Nick again. Right, Right. When he's about to give us the most juiciest part. Apparently he needs to work on his Internet connection up there.

That's the reason the phone calls aren't being answered properly, is because, yeah, your.

Internet keeps cutting out. But I, I agree with him. And what I find is that it's the working on the business and not in the business. And when you have scale like Nick has, it's almost impossible for Nick to work in his business. He's not, he's not walking out there and detailing a car, moving the front line around, or jumping in and doing the stupid stuff that we do because we're. We're probably physically in our dealerships and we're hearing bad phone calls and we're seeing customers that need to be helped. Nick is. Got such a large operation that he is really only forced to work on his business, which is. Yes, Training, coaching, checking the numbers, you know, tuning into things and making sure. I mean, I think, Nick, you still buy a lot of the cars, right?

Yeah, I do, yeah. I mean, I could take all day.

You could, you could put in 24 hours a day buying. I don't know how you get that done because I. I only have to buy, you know, 30 to 40amonth and it takes all my day.

Yeah. Why? Like, I had to go back. I had to come back to work, you know, in the last few days because. Because nobody else is going to do it. I haven't set it up right for, for buyers. So. Which. Which I'm happy to do. I enjoy buying cars.

Yeah, I think we all do.

If I were going to. If I were going to say one final thing, it would be. I would encourage you to roll with the punches. I would encourage you to figure out how to turn walls into bridges. I would encourage you to figure out how to turn chicken shit into chicken salad. Lemons in the lemonade. And just not dwell on the negative stuff, you know, I mean, sales are off 20% this year. We've had a lot of changes in our personnel and a lot of other things, but I've generated a lot of positive cash flow. I've been able to take some extra time off because it's not so crazy and there's a whole lot of silver on that lining, you know, so I'm. I would just suggest find the positives in any environment and try to figure out how to make it work. And that's. That's really all I.

All I would Say, I think that's very good advice.

Yeah. Yeah, it's good. It's good to know that there's. There's always an upside. And I think sometimes we. We try to look for something else or we get distracted or we want to find some better thing, but it sounds like you're dealing with, you know, changes, and, you know, you're seeing the good in it, which is. Which is probably really hard for a guy who always has his foot on the gas. I know we talked the other day, and I don't know if you executed on that property you. You'd identified as you said. You said you saw a property for sale, and I was like, oh, that's interesting.

I was super excited about it.

You passed.

Yeah, I passed. I did. And it was hard. I really saw the. You know, I still. Like I said, I don't know if it was on air, off air, but I. I still have a really cool vision for my company, and I know that I'm gonna. I'm gonna make it happen. It just ain't gonna happen right this second. You know, Rome wasn't built in a day, and there's a time and a place for everything. And I'm. My intuition and my gut will has led me to a lot of good places, and my gut's telling me right now, just get your processes firmed up, get your back super strong and get ready, because there's going to be opportunity. There always is. It's inevitable.

You got to know when to push, and you got to know when to pull back. And that's part of being a business owner. And it's. It's not always. You don't always see the writing on the wall. Sometimes you just gotta feel it. So I. I'm. I like that.

I like that.

Nick. Hey, man, thanks for your time. We really appreciate it. It's fun to catch up with you again. And of course, guys, you can always catch Nick at every NIADA convention. Thank you for serving. Nick's on the national board now, keeping those guys straight. So talk about a guy. No time.

Multiple conventions a year. We'll. We'll see how long that lasts. But maybe. Maybe this. Maybe this podcast will beat the. The old one. We'll see.

All right, buddy. See you soon.

Thanks ya.

Thank you for listening.

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