#368 - Dale Matthews

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. This is a really special episode.

That it is, that it is. We have a very, very famous and special dealer with us today, Ms. Dale Matthews from Matthews Motor Company in North Carolina. Three locations. And the incoming president of the Carolinas association right now.

Right. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, glad, glad you're here. And, and we don't always do a ton of retail here. We like to get more retail, retail dealers on. But you know, when, when you get one this size, it really, there's a lot to share here. And Jeff, we're just, just ready to get going.

Yeah. Dale, thank you for joining us. I mean, talk about a woman that has so many irons in the fire. You know, you've got a lot of stuff going on from, from everything I've heard about you, but maybe take us back and, and just start us real quick, give us kind of a brief maybe history or, or just some of your background. How did you end up in this crazy business? Because this wasn't your, this wasn't your game plan from, from day one. This, this kind of got thrust upon you. And we'll get to that. But, but where, how did you get in, introduced to it? Where did it start?

Well, I was actually a teacher, a science teacher at the secondary level, biology, chemistry, physics. And I met my husband, Steve, and he ends up, of all things, this is always funny to tell people. He calls the school to the school and asked for them to go bring me to the telephone because I didn't give him his phone, give him my phone number. So anyhow, that was the beginning of romance. He and I got married. It was in 1991. I stayed in the education area for, let's say, I'd say until my daughter was born in 95. When she was born, I decided to stay home. I already had a son and a daughter at that point. And I started helping him, I do. He was working with Royal Pontiac at the time and spending very long hours from 8 o' clock in the morning, sometimes to 11 o' clock at night. And my suggestion to him was at that point, why don't you start your own business in the Clayton area? Because I already had land in the Clayton area and we decided to build a house there. So he decided to do that. So we ended up in Clayton, North Carolina, put together a small little dealership and I would help him do the DMV work and travel back and forth to dmv. And I was teaching at the same time, and we had one son at the time. Once Morgan was born in 95, I resigned the position and I just helped him. I do the legwork for dmv and I'd have two kids in tow, and I'd be in line at dmv. And, you know, that worked out well. We were very blessed the first year with this small business. We were very successful, very lucrative. So we decided to just pursue it more, put more energy into it. And we then opened a smaller store in Goldsboro, worked there, set up the people that ran that business, and it was successful. Eventually, by 2008, we decided, let's. Actually, it was like 2007, we decided to build the bigger dealership in Clayton. And you know how the economy was in 2007, 2008, we struggled through that again, blessings came our way, and we were successful in getting through it. And we were just determined people that were gonna make life happen. And we don't really. And I still don't. I don't give up. It's.

That's a. That's a really good adjective just to describe you and see both determined. One of the, you know, Stephen, are we very close and. And loved him very much, but he determined and. And I can see a guy, I can see him working those eight to elevens every day. And. Yeah, and. And then I never heard the story of him calling the school to. To get you to the phone.

That.

That is the ultimate salesperson. Never given up on a lead. Right, Jeff? I mean, yeah, Best lead of his life.

He got it.

Got it done.

Don, again, you can always tell class. I left an entire class thinking it was important to get to the phone. And I get there and he goes.

Hey, you can always tell how good a dealer is by the quality of their wife, right?

Yeah, for sure.

We're good salesmen. We're good closers. We always go. We always, you know, we always go up. Always a couple levels, trying to hold that high.

Gross.

Yeah, really?

Well, that's so, you know, I remember him telling a story that one of the, you know, you had a boat on the lot to start with.

Three cars in a boat.

Yeah, three cars in a boat. And now, Jeff, how many did you say we're in stock on the website right now?

284, I think. Something like that.

Yeah.

284.

That's.

I mean, that's a long way in. 30, 20. 20 something years ago. How long have y' all been.

Yeah, it's. We started in 91, so that's 30. 30.

30 something years.

Okay, 30 years. Yeah. Yeah.

That's so interesting. So at this time in the, in the 2008 area, you had two dealerships.

Right.

And. And your involvement, were you still teaching, did you say, at that time? Or was that, were you still kind of full time mother and kind of helping out with the logistics?

I resigned my position in 1995. Once my daughter was born, I had two kids that were 27 months apart. So, um, and I was trying to help him and so I decided to resign my position and just stick with him and raise my kids. I always wanted to be a stay at home mom that could teach my kids. So I did that. Helped him along the way. Once the kids got in preschool, I began working with a nonprofit and now I'm the director of that nonprofit that is Clayton Area Ministries in town. And I have 40 volunteers that, that helped me with that too. So not only I do I have four deal, three dealerships and a couple of recon centers, but I'm doing a non profit.

That's just too much. I. I do know that y', all, y' all been involved in that for a long time.

Oh yeah.

And actually won the, the national award for them at some point. So that's.

I did.

Wow, that's great.

Yeah, that's awesome.

We also won citizen of the Year and Clayton Award for We Want It Together. They gave it to us as a couple, which I thought was great.

That's great.

That's so fun. So. So the kids are now, let's say that they're older now, they're out of the house. Did that change your involvement now that they had kind of gone off to college and moved on? Did you get more involved with the dealership or were you still.

I did, I did. I mean I had the time and I know we were having some issues in service and so Steve and I talked about it and I decided to come up and actually work in the service department myself. So I spent probably a year and a half working in the service department just to see how, how things were going. I worked at the parts window. It was a small, it was smaller at that point in time. Now I have three service advisors, parts people, and I have a person hired that does self insurance claims. So yeah, that was an eye opener for me. I think to. You can just see what's going on in your. With your guys at the back and, and your people at the front Then I worked on bringing in, I brought in a person, I trained that person myself how I wanted things done and then I worked myself out of it.

What is.

I mostly at that point would do what was necessary. Paperwork, dmv, things like that.

Hey everybody. Real quick to jump in and make sure of course you know about Buckeye, longtime sponsor of the podcast and the best way to get your reinsurance done, that's for sure.

Yeah. And you, you heard Dale bring up. She has somebody on staff that only handles reinsurance claims so not reinsurance warranty claims. And, and it's so important to have that and using Buckeye and, and getting the help from them to sell your own warranties. Just think if you're selling two to 300 cars a month, Jeff, and you're selling a service contract on each car, I mean the difference in the amount of income you'll have from giving that away to a warranty company or putting it in the reinsurance company, you could probably live off of two or three years of that and that'd be it.

Yeah, that's huge. Regardless of whether you're retail or buy here, pay here, you can still do it. And so that's a great spot for retail to pick up a little extra back end profit. Call the guys at Buckeye.

What is it, I mean what is it like going from a, a teacher's job? I mean I understand that you were, you could teach other employees how to, how to do their job, but going from the, from the teaching side to the, to the retail side, I mean there, I mean there's not much correlation or, or is there?

Yeah, well, you know, there's where you have to have good people hired. To me, this business is who you have in position in your business. That's what's going to make you successful or unsuccessful. That. And that's the hardest part of the business.

100 agree.

When you're trying to get good employees, you may have to. I've had some people that could come in and they would interview with me and I'd be, oh man, that person would be, would be awesome in this job. And then, you know, they don't prove to be that. So sometimes you have to just keep trying until you get the right person. That's, that's kind of hard to do. But I'm like that. If I get you and I see that you're not working out, I'm quick. I'm one of those that's slow to hire and quick to fire. If I see you are really. Or not Working, then I'm sorry, but this is not working out for me. And then I go to the next person until I get a person that, that does a good job.

And what does it mean to you to not to work out? Is it showing up, not being smart enough? Not. Not being. Not be willing to do what you ask? What does it mean to you?

There's two qualities that I look for in everybody I hire. Number one is intelligence. Okay. You got to be intelligent enough to hold a conversation. And I may in the interview take a side road and go down some things that I think any person should know that's intelligent, and I want to see what they know about it. The second component is integrity. I've made the mistake a couple times of hiring some. Some people that were highly intelligent, but they didn't have the integrity and they will do you wrong. I want to see those two components, intelligence and integrity. I don't care what position it is that I hire you. It can be bdc, it can be service advisor, it can be service technician. I want to see. And I can find those things out in questions that I ask without being pushing the envelope too far.

Are you still super involved in hire?

Yes.

And how many. And how many employees do you have?

120. She's right. At 120. At all three dealerships? Yeah.

Wow.

That's pretty much expect to see every one of them's face. I don't want people, the other people hiring my people without me knowing who they are and talking with them.

Wow, that's got to get tough as you scale like that. And what are the distances between these locations?

Is this from. From Clayton to Wilmington is a little bit over 100 miles.

How often do you get to the other locations?

Once a week. I go down on Friday. Yeah, I, I try to get down on Friday and either go in the dealership Friday, Saturday or Sunday, one or the other. I don't stay all three days, but because I do have a house at that end too, and I try, try to get some downtime in that weekend.

It's a lot of traveling.

Yeah, it is.

But it's a night. It's a night. Don't get me wrong. It's a nice house you have there normally. So I understand why you go.

Yeah, I gotta go check it out every now and then.

Yeah, it makes total sense. And.

Yeah.

You know, and when you built the, the store in Wilmington, I mean, it's. It's super nice. I don't know if anybody's familiar with Wilmington, but a beautiful Area on the coast of North Carolina. And, I mean, y' all built that. Bought the property and built it right in the middle of all the other car deals. I mean, you're a smack dab on the. With the new car stores, right?

And that was a big question that I hit Steve with. I said, aren't you worried about the competition along here with. With. You know, and it's even more now than it was in. Let's see, I think we built that in 16 or 17. And he goes, oh, no, I like that. He said, the more competition, the better. And his idea was picking up the crumbs. He said, I'll take crumbs, and I'll make the crumbs work for me. And if you've got the right. And I found that if you've got the right person sitting in the positions inside that store, you can definitely do that.

Yeah, you got a bunch of Hendrick motors around you and. Oh, yeah, all sorts of the big, big swingers, huh?

Yep.

So. So, Dale, talk to us about kind of when. When things got real for you. We know a couple years ago, Steve passed away kind of unexpectedly. Correct?

Yeah.

I think that's a huge lesson for dealers. Talk to us about what that was kind of like from your perspective of kind of having a toe in the business or maybe. I mean, it sounds like you had your whole leg in the business. I mean, you were. You were in it, but overnight you got fully tossed into the driver.

Yeah, I got fully in it. I the that he passed away. It was a heart attack. And of course, I have two children, and I put them at the front of my list as who I'm worried about most. I did stay awake all night. I stayed with my daughter, Morgan. I spent the night at her house. But I was in. I was just contemplating all night what my next move was going to be. And I knew the next move was not going to be sell the dealerships. I knew that we had worked too hard to get to the point that we were for me to give up that point. So I knew I had the will in the vault back in Clayton at my house. So when I drove back and I pulled the wheel out, and I have an attorney, and the attorney looked at the will, and, you know, it was cut and dried, that everything was mine. There wasn't any. You know, there was no parameters there that would go in crazy directions according to the will. So. But the biggest thing that I had to deal with was probate. And so I suggest, as dealers, if you can get yourself to the point that your spouse or your children can avoid probate. That would be the best thing that you could do for them. Probate is not fun. The court system is not fun. It's a slow process. I think I finally finished probate two years later because I have a. I had a massive amount of information that had to be looked at. And at that point in time, your mind is kind of muddled. But I had a very, very good accountant that came to me. I think the funeral was on Sunday. He was sitting in my office on Monday morning and he went through. He had already written out a list for me to do one by one by one.

And that would be the late Dave Keller.

That would be Dave Keller. I love Dave Keller. He was an awesome individual.

Yes, he was.

And then I had the wonderful John Brown from ciada. John Brown came to me. You got to understand, I wasn't a dealer at that point. The store was operating without a dealer and DMV could close me down immediately.

Oh my.

So on Tuesday morning, John Brown was here. And I also took Tyler. Both Tyler and myself went through all the class that it took to become a dealer. And we did a two day class in one day. And if, you know, John just took us right through it step by step by step by step. So Wednesday I was in DMV with all my paperwork and they actually shut the building down. They shut each dealership down, I think it was for an hour. And all the necessary paperwork was done for me then to be the dealer of the dealerships.

Wow.

So to avoid probate, have you kind of checked to see what people can.

Do so that, yes, definitely, you'll have to hire an attorney. And pretty much you have to put your assets in trust. And then if your assets are in trust and you have a will as to what happens to those trusts, then you're covered. There's no probate.

And I mean, y' all have a sizable dealership. And. And I know you have, you know, any. Anybody that has something like that has, has the debt that comes along with, with running the day to day operation. I mean, all of a sudden you assume all this debt as well too, right? Just. Just on your shoulders, right?

I do, I do. I already knew pretty much what that was. And I knew we need to be needed to continue being successful. I kept the staff that I had in Wilmington and I started then very actively participating every day in all the meetings that were going on. And I started looking at, you know, when I just talked earlier about how good is the staff that's what's important. And I started evaluating the staff and I kept some and I, I replaced some along the way. And Covid comes along, you know, not long after that. And Covid was unbelievable time that we could make money in the car business. Now. The Wilmington store got Covid in the Wilmington area. They were quick to shut businesses down. Clayton area, they were not. So we just kind of kept our head down in the Clayton area, and I had the building sprayed weekly and we just kept same thing in the Goldsboro area. We did as much as we could in the Wilmington area, and we made it through it, and we were very successful monetarily.

Hey, Jeff, it's getting close to Buy here, Pay here, United. We're going to be there. We're going to be closing down the first, first day. I know that. And we'll be around doing some filming, so we really want to get people home. But it's April 22nd through the 24th at Caesars in Las Vegas. A perfect time of the year to be there. We want you there. Make sure you hop on their website and get booked as soon as possible.

Yeah.

And make sure you come out the day before for the compliance unleashed with Steve Levine. That's going to be a great one, too. It's still, still very important. Regardless of the administration that's in the White House and whether the CFPB is going to have any kind of aggress tactics or stances towards lenders or dealers, you still have state attorney generals that can be very aggressive. So regardless of what you think is going on in the political climate, you've still got to make sure you're compliant, taking the right classes and getting educated. So make sure you're not missing Steve's convict the day before.

Yeah. It doesn't matter if you're retail or buy here, pay here. Steve can help you make sure your deal jacket's right. Make sure you're really focusing on the, the stuff we don't like. That's what Steve does. So make sure you give him a call. Yep, that's. I mean, that's, that's a lot to go on in that time. I mean, I guess it was just six months later when all that happened and you were still in the middle of probate. And good gracious, that that's a lot going on.

Did you have any issue with any of, like, the, the vendors, whether it was like your bank, your line of credit, or anyone else that was like, well, I don't know about this. I don't know. You Know if we want to be partners with this Dale lady, like.

Yeah, this, this female Dale that hadn't been in the car business. And the one thing that I think was interesting, the bank here in Clayton is United Community bank, has always been the bank that we've worked with. The, the Brent George is the president of the bank here and I talked with Brent George's mother for years. So I go over and talk to Brent and Brent, you know us, you know, I sign all the paperwork and we, we haven't had any problems since. If I need anything, I call Brent. If he needs anything from me, he calls me, tells me and I get it to him. So we immediately, we immediately kept making money. So no, I didn't have any problems as far as first bank is the bank that the Wilmington store uses. So they were real good too. I didn't have any problems.

So you're, and that's your, and that's your real estate and your line of credit, like a flooring line or something?

Well, the floor plans, we use Ally as our floor plan source and we're one of the few independents that, that.

Yeah, it seems like to me the logistics and this is definitely in the weeds. But if you went in there and you're like, well, we're changing, you know, because you had to get a new dealer license number, I assume. Yeah, I did in the state. So you have to go to those guys and say, well We're Matthews Motor 2.0 and here's our new dealer license. And that would trigger all sorts of red flags for reapplication and new name and new everything. That would be scary to me when you have an established relationship or you're just in, you're in with a decent rate and all of a sudden you're resetting it and they're treating you like you're some new dealer with some low dealer number.

And that hasn't really reared its head. I think. If you have the finance, the financial wherewithal independently as a person, you can get away with a lot more than if you don't. Yeah, that makes sense that, you know, that's, that's, that's the biggest thing.

I think having you personally having good credit investment assets. Yes, you are, you are a good risk.

Yes.

It's probably easier to go back to these guys and say, hey, yeah, that five million dollar flooring line, we got to switch it over from him to me and I'm more qualified and a.

30 year track record as well. I mean.

Right, right. And yeah, and I have to give AFC a little plug here because we did use AFC for the longest time, and AFC didn't even blink. They just kept going with us.

What would you say was like a surprising thing when you. When you were, you know, just jumped into it? What would you say? Was there anything you were like, I didn't know Steve was doing this or handling this or I didn't know the burden that he was bearing that maybe didn't even get to you. Was there anything that kind of like blindsided?

Yeah, yeah. The biggest thing was I can't believe how easy this is compared to raising two kids at home that are. And all the neighborhood kids in my house. My husband's sitting up at the office doing this.

You know, he acted like he was stressed all day.

Yeah, man. Seriously, that's so funny.

That is when I get home at night and my wife's like, how was your day? You know, I definitely like to make it sound like it was incredibly painful and difficult and stressful so that she can appreciate. Whereas I may have just been sitting in the office talking to Luke all day or, you know.

And I'm like, why didn't he get home earlier than 7 o' clock at night? So.

So Dale, you, you know, you make it through that and your kids are. Have been in the dealership, I mean, as far as I know, their whole life. I mean, they've been working. They've been working day to day.

How.

How are you handling and how did Steve handle and how do you handle now the family dynamics in this. This huge, huge dealership?

I mean, that's probably one of the things I worry about or not worry, but I just intensely contemplate. I want it to be smooth. When it gets to the point that they're ready and they're getting there, they're getting near, you know, Tyler's 31, Morgan's turning 30 this year. They're maturing, and I can see that they're getting ready, and I'm going to eventually prepare them for that point when they move in and they actually start taking over as the leaders. And not only do you have to prepare them, but you have to prepare your staff in every store, because the staff's looking right at you going, all right, what are you doing here? What's going on with the kids taking over and that sort of thing. It takes a while for the. My young adult children to earn that respect from the staff. That's probably the hardest thing for them. They've got to earn the respect as being, you know, they're looked at now as dealers, kids, and, and I tell them pretty much daily that's the part you have to do. When I see you've done that or are beginning to do that, then I'll think it's time for me to move back a day or two and I'll probably do a gradual thing with them.

And, and how do you, how does that succession planning work when it comes to who, who takes what position and, and monetarily, how do you, how have you gone about ensuring that, that it's going to be smooth or are we there yet?

Yeah, well, yeah, we're not there yet, but I think that that won't be a big issue. That is something that I've already, when I did my estate planning, all the monetary things are already pretty much etched in stone. I mean, it's revocable, but you know, that's something that you think of ahead of time and you've got to give them some growth, period. I, I feel when you're 30, it's a little worrisome to me to think about just dumping a load of. It's enough to try to run these dealerships and my children are financially awarded for the work that they put in. They both have homes, they both have cars to drive, they both have food to eat. They are, they're not living on the street. They're, they're financially okay. But when it comes to all the other aspects, that should continue just like it's set up now, until they've got to reach certain ages, I'll put it that way.

And they're both in it actively. And they've expressed you the fact that they are interested in carrying it on.

Yes.

That's awesome. That's great. I don't think a lot of us, I, you know, I look at my kids, I don't know that any of them have interest in running this thing at any point. They're young teenagers. But yeah, it's kind of like when you start looking at that for you in a secession plan, that's one of the hardest things in this business. Right?

Because yeah, it is.

You have parents that come in and say, my kid's got to earn this thing, he's got to pay for it, he's got to do this. And you have kids who say, when's dad going to let me take over the reins and fly. Like he's got to realize that I'm not going to be as smart as him when he's 60? When I'm only 30. Right. But I'm as smart as he was when he was 30.

Right, right, right.

You have that rub in that dynamic.

And then, oh, yeah, like, well, I.

Got to cash out on this. And the kid's like, well, I don't want to be your retirement guinea pig. Like, I don't want to be that. I don't want to be the pack mule that puts you into retirement.

And we've, We've, we've. We've all experienced. Well, I've experienced.

Yeah.

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Yeah. And I think we're going to have them on next week or the week after to talk about some new stuff that they. They've got in the pipeline. So. Kind of excited for that.

Yeah. Hopefully they are here.

Yeah, that won't be the case with mine. So.

In and right now, and we talk about secession. How about the dealership right now? Are you looking to expand or maintain or shrink? I mean, what is the. What is the environment right now look like for you?

Well, I can tell the environment in the past year has been trying to some degree as far as number of sales have declined some. I'm hoping that that's going to turn around the economy. It seems like February has been a lot better than January was. And I'm always pretty positive when it comes as we move on in the year, it's going to get better. And that's just. You never know what that's going to be. So I'm hoping that with the, you know, we've got. We've had some changes in the government and that sort of thing, and hopefully that'll lead to some growth in the economy.

But three stories is enough.

Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. I just did open a recon center that's about a half mile from my dealership in Clayton that's been an addition to this store. I'm sending all my cars that I buy straight there and they're recon there. They, they go through like 100 point inspection and everything's looked at before. We bring them back and put them on the front line and they have to be detailed and all that stuff. So that's been an addition that we've made this past year. We got, we, we acquired that. We didn't buy it. We decided to lease it for three years to see how it work, would work out. We got that in November, maybe the front of November. So that's working well because it's opened up space in my dealership for more customer service.

Yeah. And I, and, and y' all are set up kind of like a new car dealership when it comes to servicing cars and.

Yes.

Do you see the service department growing as it grown over the last.

Absolutely.

And, and I guess you, you must.

Think service today because sales have declined some, but service is picking up. So it's kind of like new car dealerships. They live off their service. Used cars can too, if they, if they want to make it. Make you a ton of money if you, if you run it right.

Has that loosened up Wilmington space too? Because I know you're a little restricted on space. Do you always do services?

I also have a building down the road from the store there. I've got a truck center if you, if you, if you go out toward the Ogborn area, just keep driving past on Market street. About a mile down the road on the right hand side, there's like seven more bays there. So I've got also in the back. That's in the back and in the front I have offices for accounting and things of that nature. So.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow, that's. That's a lot.

Yep. So that's two. Two there, then two here. That's really five places.

You know, when you get to this size, there's got to be people that, that call that call you and say, hey, we'd like to buy your dealership group. I mean.

Oh, yeah, I get, I get emails every day. Yeah.

And, and do you entertain those or.

I haven't yet.

Yeah.

Yeah, I would probably.

I have somebody in mind that I would call if I decided I wanted to sell.

That's. That's interesting. I, I don't, I get those emails, but I don't take them seriously. Jeff, you ever get.

Yeah, I don't either.

I don't get the serious ones. I, I don't, I don't hit anyone's radar.

But, but I mean, when you get, when you get to the size of Matthew's Motors is. You're going, you're going to get those calls. And, and the, the price ratio that you see these new car stores selling for now. I mean, you know, at some point you gotta take those seriously. I mean.

If I didn't have two kids, Morgan and Tyler, I. But you know, I would.

Yeah.

And I probably would have taken it seriously. Six years or, you know, Steve will be past six years in August. So I would have sold then. But I'm just not a person that gives in. I'm not a person that gives up very easily. I love, I love, love, love to be under, underestimated. Underestimate me. That's cool. I like that.

So truly a used car dealer that is for sure. You are. You will die at the desk selling a car.

Talk about, I mean, did you, did you or Steve ever think about franchise dealership? I mean, Steve did. Okay.

Yeah, he did, he did.

And the right opportunity just never came.

Well, we, we had, I know the Mitsubishi entertained us and when I heard. And he had me come in and listen to the presentation, and when I heard their presentation, before it was even over, I was like a no. And I, you know, my biggest question, you know, was, you know, what if shipment was cut down and Mitsubishi couldn't be brought into the country and nobody could answer the question? And I'm glad, I'm glad we didn't because Mitsubishi's, you know.

Yeah.

Not to.

Yeah, that's the right choice.

There's too much restriction. I mean, you do get free money and all that stuff, I understand, but they tell you what to do, where to be, and they were kind of telling us that they didn't like the location of the dealership and they didn't like this. And they didn't like this. And yeah, I've never been one that wanted any partners because, you know, that, that is not that I don't care about people and, you know, and all that stuff, but it just leads to a lot of argument and issues and if you're not careful.

Yeah, we both, we both know that.

Yeah.

Yes, we do. Yes, we do. And that's. Yeah, there's so much here.

Steve has come home and talked about it along the way and I'd say, nope. No, no, no, no, no, no.

Yeah. Looking to partner up and expand or take some big growth thing. The money, the headache is not worth it. And, and the, the decision by committee just becomes so painful when it's like you got to convince your partner that this is a good thing to do and something and. Yeah, completely so, Dale, really, really appreciate your time. Do you have any parting words of advice for dealers? Anything you'd like to leave us with, as far as, you know, lessons you've learned over the. Over this last, you know, decade, or even what you see coming in the next? I mean, it sounds like you're going to be in the dealership for about three or four more decades. So where do you see this going?

I mean, she's. She's only 29, Jeff. I know.

Really? Yeah. Long life. I mean, I met Luke when I was 10. Yeah. The biggest thing probably is just to me, in. In running the dealerships is people. Your employees. Just. It's. It's a people field, you know that you got to have the right people in places. That's the hardest part.

So true.

That is so difficult, but. And you got to be very persistent to make sure you get the right people.

Yeah. That's great. Thank you, Dale. We really appreciate your time.

Thank you for having me. You guys are awesome.

Yeah.

Thanks. Yeah. Bye. Bye.

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