#374 - Buckeye Bret

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 Brett. We. He actually, he physically brought it to us this week. We have the Buckeye Brett on the podcast this week. Hard guy to catch up with, man. Brett, you are. You're a busy, busy beaver.

Yeah, it's, it's. It's been busy for a couple of years now, and it keeps kind of just growing and growing and growing and, you know, between, you know, current clients and, you know, the existing clients and obviously trying to, you know, be supportive to the industry. All the state associations and things like BHPH United, my most recent trip to, to D.C. it's, it's definitely. It keeps me moving around.

I think his, I think his increase in business corresponded with Buck out sponsoring the podcast. Jeff.

Yeah, let's lay those sales numbers over top of podcast.

I think any. I think he needs to send his checks.

Hey, hey, I'll. I'll settle for one of those Buckeye right there.

Yeah, yeah, I'll get you one of the new ones, the new purple Buckeye.

Brett the busy Beaver. I like it, man. So, Brett, talk to us about last week. You were in dc. I saw some photos. What was. That wasn't policy week. Right. For niada. That was. You guys went there and roughed up everybody.

Yeah, so actually there's, you know, we've been teaming up with other industries whose policies just very much align with the automotive industry. Right. So when you think about, you know, just car dealers, you know, you got the niada and we're kind of in our bubble and we're, you know, fighting these battles by ourselves. And, you know, we're realizing that there's other industries out there, you know, like the, the service, the retail service industry, and, you know, the, the car parts companies and the independent shops and all those people. Well, it turns out that, you know, all of the things that we're asking for, you know, like right to repair and the Parts act, you know, with catalytic converters, which affects everybody, and, you know, all the issues surrounding EVs, being able to work on them, being able to work on them safely getting access to the technology, it's. It's definitely not something that is unique to us. So rather than trying to, you know, chip away at the edges where we're out there, you know, Buckeye is actively seeking, you know, with the help of Sean and Jason for sure, and all their time in the industry, other partners who are also wanting to, you know, address those same issues. And so they were having a capital day and asked if we would come out and support them. And man, they did a fantastic job. You know, their, their legal team, their lobbyist was just really great. They even brought in a speaker to kind of give all the business owners, like, a little more detail. And it was a lot of this is who you're going to meet with. You know, we had a lot of meeting times. We even had like a lot of to be determined. So it was just a lot of dropping in the office and trying to get a meeting. And I think all in all, we spoke with almost 50 senators and congressmen, staffers, but actually a lot of the congressmen and the senators themselves especially one of them to mention was, you know, my, my senator here in Ohio, Bernie Marino, who's also an ex car dealer, made the time to meet with us firsthand and it was, it was really positive. So it was a good time.

Yeah, I imagine it's really like, I mean, a hot topic right now, man. You time, you time DC When a lot of stuff's going on with policy changes in Trump and obviously the tariffs that hit last week. So that, that is huge on the mind of the parts guys and the repair guys and everybody. Because we're wondering, hey, what are we going to see price wise? What are we going to see INV wise? All that stuff is, I mean, wild right now.

Yeah, it's definitely, you know, topping everyone's mind and, you know, everyone's opinion of what going to happen, you know, those definitely aren't in short supply. And yeah, you know, everybody knows how horrible it's going to be. And, you know, we obviously get a lot of phone calls, you know, like, hey, you know, everybody always wants to know, you know, what are you hearing? How are other dealers doing? And so, yeah, I mean, it's super important. Most of the people that we talk to, despite kind of the, you know, the tv, you know, energy around it, they were pretty, they're pretty positive and hopeful. Not necessarily in the terrorists themselves, but in the reaction to the terrorists and bringing people to the table and, you know, generating those conversations and, you know, looking at how everybody thinks it's going to impact our industry, I mean, nobody would have thought prior to Covid that those types of price increases would have been sustainable. Nobody would have thought, oh, nobody's going to pay that, or, you know, you know, I mean, how many people did we hear at the beginning of COVID saying, well, I'm not going to Pay those prices. And by the end of COVID they were at the auction raising their hand. I was one.

I was one of those people for sure.

Yeah. I mean, so I think, you know, the answer to that is, is, you know, the guys who kind of choose not to participate and who just focus on their model and go out and do seem to be doing. Oh, they seem to be doing okay. I mean, I, it's weird to have people who are so like, oh man, it's so slow. And then in the same day, man, I said recording record months and it's like the guys just stop, just, just go do, go do what you know how to do.

Like, I've said that for, for so many years. That people's mindset has a lot to do with their, their business success or failure. And if you're out there whining on Facebook about how bad business is, you know it's going to be bad. But the people out there, you know, just one of them, Tracy Myers, has the best attitude in the world. Right? And, and if you ever ask him, it's another record month, right? Even if it is or not, if you go into a month saying you're going to have a record month, the chances of you having a record month are a lot higher than if you go into the month saying it's going to be another crappy month. Guess what? You could probably have another crappy month. So yeah, whatever attitude you bring to your business is attitude is going to prevail.

Luke, Brett, what else? Brett, you travel so much and you meet with so many dealers, man, such a wealth of knowledge. What else do you see as one of those determining or like it factors that some of these dealers have? You know, obviously the mentality having the right frame of mind regardless of what the market's doing is one thing. Is there anything else that stuck out to you lately as like, ah, this is also a common, you know, characteristic or feature of a successful dealership.

Yeah. So it's a really great question because there is one thing that has become very obvious to me recently, but it's been there the whole time and it's. It started in Covid. There's. There's this weird. There's there's two pieces to that, right. The first thing is you've got this, the, the timing of the first to second or the second to third, that generational handoff of the business. Right. I feel like in a lot of people that's being accelerated and the older generation is backing off and lending the sons and the daughters or the employee that they're handing everything over kind of take over. More people than ever are looking for ways to exit their business as smartly as possible. That's actually, you know, we're doing a presentation. We helped with a couple of buy sells last year and they went really well.

I know, I know a guy that's trying to figure out or help people wind down too. Yeah. And actually going through it himself. So I agree, that is happening a lot more. A lot more people thinking about it than it used to be. Right.

Well.

And I think they're just, they're thinking about it more actively. Right. They're not waiting for something to happen where they have to sell. They're like, I'm going to go get the help that I need. And that's exactly what's happening with the, you know, that late 20 to early 40 dealer right now, who all of a sudden everybody is asking me, do I need a better accountant? How do I get outside sales training? Will you come into my store for two or three days and do this? People expanding their businesses and actually, like, you know what, they're pulling the trigger on that service department, they're pulling trigger on that second location. And normally, you know, it's, it's kind of a status quo business.

Right.

Everybody comes to work in the morning, they've got their habits, they buy their cars, they do their things and they're working in their business. And I feel like because of COVID and social media and your guys's, you know, you know, platform and all the successful people that you talk about are these guys who have learned that you have to pull back a little bit, invest in your people, develop your people, take risks. And more independent dealers are doing that than, than I've ever seen before right there. They're like people saying, it's it. I can't, I can no longer be one of the guys who can't read his own P and L. Who can, who can you have that can clean me and teach me how to do this?

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, they're actively participating in their businesses rather than just trying to sell more cars and paying attention to their gross per car and, you know, checking their bank account and going, yep, I still got money in there, so I'm doing something right. Like they're, they're trying to figure out how did I get here and how do I get better. I, I think that's, that's, that's really cool.

It's funny, the view of. And again, like you said, maybe it's cultural. Maybe it's just now hit this segment of the car dealer world. But of course, you look at like previous generations, and your dealership was who you are, you were a dealer, and you will die at your desk, you know, selling a car. Because if I'm here, I'm selling, and I'm open on Saturdays, and it's almost now, a lot of us look at it like, well, no, no, this is kind of. This supports my lifestyle. Right. This is a really great job and I love being here and I love working it, but I do want to take weekends off and I don't want to die at my desk. So I've got to turn it into a system that can continue to generate money for me and. Or like you said, Brett, move it on to the next generation before I'm 90 and they're 70. We're both trying to retire at the same time, and neither of us, you know, you can't, you can't put it on your kid. You can't put all your retirement on your kid. It drives me crazy, man. It's like, well, I worked for all these years and built this up, and now you need to pay me out. And he's like, no, man, I'm 50.

Like, I'm not going to pay you.

Out for 90 years.

I've been, I've been through one of those, Jeff. Yeah. Or in the middle one of those.

Absolutely.

I mean, and I'm glad.

I'm, I'm glad to do it. I just want to put that out there. I'm glad to do it.

Well, you would, you didn't want to do it under his conditions. You guys came to an agreement. He would have ridden you like a mule all the way to his deathbed, and you would have been 80, and he would have been still, you know what I'm saying? You're the one that put the gun to, to the situation and said, look, man, no, you know, you're not going to just ride this into the sunset. Like, we need to divide. We need to cut this now because I'm not just gonna just kind of milk this cow all the way into, you know.

Yeah. And I think there's a, there's a fine line there because, you know, our parents have given so much to us. I think there's a very fine line. And, and, you know, it's a, is a hard, is a hard pill to swallow, I think, for both sides, especially those, those guys that wanted to be in the dealership every day until they die, because there's a lot of car dealers out there that want to be in the dealership every day to their dad. That's their identity. Yeah. And. And Brett, I know you've seen that, even see that when you go to set up a reinsurance company. And. And the son understands the value and how awesome it can be, and the dad or the parents don't understand it, and so they're afraid of it. And next thing you know, there's this struggle just in the reinsurance portion of it. I. Luckily, I didn't have that. That struggle, but, man, I could see it happening every day with Brett.

Yeah, I mean, it does. It's.

It's.

There's some interesting conversations that we've definitely had, you know, with, you know, what's wrong with the way that I've always done it, you know, and so it certainly changes. And now we have people who are, instead of being super confrontational about it, it's like, hey, let me show you how to use something like a reinsurance company so that your son can buy you out. Or what if there was a better way, you know, to do this? But more people. And I think a lot of it has to do because of shows like the Independent Dealer podcast and all the information out there. And everybody sharing on Facebook is they're seeing other people get better and they're seeing other people make changes. But I've also shared some horrible stories of what happened to people. Last year, I've got a client and friend. It was awful. You get a phone call from him, and it's a friend phone call, and is like. And again, I. I've been asking to talk about this. I won't say their name or anything. A lot of people will probably know, but he's like, my dad has cancer. They're telling me he's got six months. We don't know what to do. We don't know what to do with the reinsurance. We don't know what to do with family members. We don't know what to do with, like, our current debt and all these things.

And.

And you kind of go into scramble mode for somebody to help them out.

And.

And, yeah, it all worked out. But when people hear those stories and they start to be like, you know what? Maybe I don't have another five years, you know, and then we've got another situation last year with a client of mine down in. In South Carolina. Luke, you probably know about this one run the business guy was in the business forever. Refused to go away. Not. Not that he was, you Know, bad. They had a great relationship. But he knows one of those guys who just likes to work. Finally agrees to retire. Finally sells the business to his partner, does the whole thing. He's finally going to take the vacation. He spends the money, takes the vacation, goes out and buys the motorcycle. Goes for a ride on the motorcycle. Two days later, gets hit by someone dead. Never got a chance to enjoy.

I may have even started that. I may have even started that dealership.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I mean, those are horrible, horrible stories. And, you know, Mark Burkholder with peachtree, he says something all the time in his presentations that I just think it's like, super important because, I mean, my father's retirement plan, he always made the joke, well, I figured the way it's going now I gotta die and work for three more years to break even, and then. And then everybody will be okay. But his plan is to just work forever. I mean, my dad's 73. They've got nine locations. They're actively looking for more. And he's six days a week. Meanwhile, somebody that's younger than him died. You know what I mean? It's like, man, you gotta. You gotta plan a little better. And. And I think people are definitely looking for the out sooner because I think this is more information because they don't know how to do it.

Yeah.

Somebody to come in and show them how to do that. And I think that information is more readily available. But Mark always says, you just died, your family's already grieving. They shouldn't have to be scared too.

Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of truth. A lot of truth about there.

Yeah.

Yeah. Hey, tell me this, Brett, one more before we move on. From the things that you're seeing from dealers as you travel, where do you see, like, where do you see the puck going? When you look at these dealers, where do you see them putting their focus? Is it in buy here, pay here? Is it in retail? Is it in fixed ops? Is it in multiple locations? Like, do you see any, like, trends out there with these dealers? When you say, hey, some of these guys I talked to, they're actually pulling a trigger on service center? They're actually pulling a trigger on a second location. Like, do you see any overall trends? You know, are we all going to newer cars? Are these guys going into evs? Is. Is buy here, pay here dead? And everyone wants to do lease here, pay here, like any trends you're seeing out there?

Yeah, I think the trend is all of those things, but that it is. It's just that everybody is looking for something else, right? Everybody is looking for that, for that bolt on. And it's very specific to like their wheelhouse. My, my very kind of dialed in analytical. Because there's two, only two types of car guys, right? There's businessmen who sell cars and there's car guys who learned how to run a business. Yeah, the guys who are, who are car guys learning how to run a business, they're like, okay, how can I sell more cars? And that's why you see like these hybrid models popping up like I always did. Buy here, pay here. Now I'm going to start doing some retail to supplement or vice versa. I'm a retail guy. Can somebody teach me buy here, pay here. In the new car industry, a lot of franchise dealers are bolting on lease here, pay here operations to their dealerships and having great success with it.

Because.

You know, as legit normal leasing is, you know, not as favorable as it's been in the past. And as subprime banks because of interest rates just aren't giving them the margins and the grosses that they need and they, they tend to have higher recon and, and time to line expense than the independent dealer does, this is a way for them to capture more deals. Those dealers who kind of have that strong service background, then they're like, you know what, rather than just doing a little bit, what if I do just go out and pull the trigger on a whole facility? So I feel like everybody is kind of trying to figure out now, all right, what am I getting good at and then how can I do more of it? But, but nobody or fewer people are just comfortable with just maintaining the status quo, right? Everybody.

Another angle part of that is probably even just like we talk about profitability, right? You kind of start looking for other revenue sources because you're like, okay, not only am I stagnant or I'm stopped, I'm a little worried that this has started to go backwards a little bit. My grosses aren't as good as they used to be. Maybe I do need to do some service ret. Maybe I do need to step into this other area. And we see it. We talked about this a couple weeks ago with Robin in the, in the, in the software space, it seems like all these software providers are starting to branch out into these other areas. Like I'm a really good DMS or I'm a really good website. And now I also want to do payment processing. And if I do payment processing, I also want to do a CRM like they're all kind of like, you know, branching out. Really interesting.

Well, yeah, because, I mean, think about it. If you're already good at writing software and you're creating all these APIs so that other companies can merge with you, at some point, you just go, wait a minute, why can't I just build, you know, an all in one suite? It's the same thing with dealers, right? It's like, okay, I'm subbing out my work and I'm losing my subprime customer to a buy here, pay here dealership. Well, hold on a minute. What if I didn't have to sub out all of my work? And what if I could learn to sell an extra three to five cars a month by doing buy here, pay here? So, you know, it's just that see a need, fill a need, and the. I think the access to information is more readily available and then also access to the people who are willing to help. Right. Because without the independent dealer podcast and without social media and without, you know, the buy here, pay your boardroom and buy here, pay here success and the independent dealer and, you know, real success in the car biz, like, people don't know who Brett and Luke and Jeff are. They have no idea. They're still in their bubble trying to get the best information they can out of, you know, South Carolina. And I think that it's maybe. And even inspiring people I could do a little more. And the information is out there.

I think, I think that that is a lot of it. That the more we talk about, the more you get it. Get it, you know, put into your head, the more opportunity a good business person sees. Now. Now a bad business person may see the. Those opportunities too, and, and really go the wrong way with it, but. Yeah, I, I definitely agree with that.

Yeah. One thing listeners don't know, Brett, is you are a dealer, correct? Correct.

Yep.

Talk about that, man. Because I know we had this discussion, this was a while ago, but what's going on there? I mean, you, you, you sell the Kool Aid and you drink the Kool Aid.

Yeah. So, you know, the, the quick story is obviously, you know, grew up a dealer, son, tried not to get into the business, ended up getting into it, ended up having a knack for it. My father, you know, he started out in the new car world with some dealerships and then got into buy Here, Pay here. We were. We were JD By Rider franchisees. We ended up with, you know, seven locations. And we're very lucky to have gotten to work together and build a Large business that we sold to private equity in 16. And then after that, I kind of got out. I stayed in the car business, went back to the new car side, actually worked for Bernie Marino at some of his dealerships for a little while, because after about four months of being quasi retired at home, my wife was like, it's time for you to go find something to do. And so I got back into the car business and started helping out independent friends who had dealerships, and none of them had reinsurance companies. Well, growing up in the bubble I grew up in, I just assumed everybody had one, so I started setting them up, and that's how I ended up kind of getting hooked up with Robbie's, like, well, man, you keep setting up, you know, you keep referring people to me. Why don't you just come work for me? So I did. And, I mean, obviously, you know, the Buckeye, you know, the rest of that is history. This has been an amazing thing for me. I mean, Rod has been really good to me. The industry has been great to me. I really enjoy what I do. But odd enough, social media and Facebook and Tracy Myers, there's an interaction of a post going back and forth, and people were kind of giving certain vendors a hard time, you know, kind of that, like, those who can't do teach, you know?

Yeah.

And that are those that are done.

Doing end up teaching.

Yeah. And so I had a moment where as. As is common with men, my ego got the best of me. And one of the things I was always most proud of, being a dealer's son is that, like, I always made the joke. You know, I've only been married once. I don't have a drug problem. I never wrecked the demo. I work every day. Northwood, Right. I didn't have all those horrible dealer son traits. And I worked really hard to not be a dealer son. And then we sold, and somebody said something, and it was basically like, if you haven't sold a car in three years, then why are you giving me advice? And now nobody's ever questioned my advice. Nobody's ever said Brett was a failed dealer. Nobody could ever accuse me of being a failed dealer. I'm not gonna lie. It bothered me. I was like, why don't I just go get back in the game so I could keep my finger on the pulse, stay relevant, know what's going on, the Internet, practice what you preach type of thing. And so, you know, I don't know, like, 16 months ago, ran into, you know, two years ago, I guess now, ran into a friend of Mine, who's a talented used car buyer. Used car, you know, manager. And so we got into business together with the hopes of just kind of having a dealership that was enough to basically sustain him and. And just kind of stay relevant in the industry. But it literally boiled down to I didn't want to be the vendor who used to sell cars. So what's that guy? The thing. I used to sell cars, you know, tough.

Yeah.

I'm still selling. I'm still selling cars. I'm still selling cars.

Yeah. Yeah, we'll see.

So.

So. So I get that. I mean, again, we. We battle that all the time, right? Like the argument of in the industry or in the industry. Right. Or supporting the industry, and they all have a great spot. And I don't think you have to be selling a car to be an expert at reinsurance or an expert at EMS's or an expert at consulting and accounting. And in fact, it's quite the opposite. Right. We go. We lean into vendors all the time to get expertise in that field. So, yeah, a little bit of a silly comment and a silly chip to have on your shoulder. But what's been going on? What. Give us. Give us, like, the. Give us the. The deal. Is it working out? Is it not? Like, what are you learning from it?

So it did and it didn't. It was going good. We were selling cars, you know, basically looking for that, you know, 10 to 15, you know, 10 to $18,000 range. We had a great market for it. Had a friend who had a dealership with, like, a whole section of it he wasn't using. Literally started a dealership with no overhead. I had no rent. I had no real expenses of any kind of. Yeah, it was like the perfect situation because I was able to tap into my network. You know, Wendy at the Ohio Independent Dealer associate was amazing. Basically set the whole company up for me. Her and her office was fantastic because everybody's like, oh, you know, there was always, oh, Brett, I know you're busy, I know you're busy. You know, what can I do to help? And they did. And then we got open. We bought good cars, we sold good cars, we made money. But ultimately, what it boiled down to is I was letting everyone who was working for me down because my goal of being able to be there a day or two a week turned into like a day or two a month, and I became the smallest, you know, the tip of the funnel. And it just wasn't going to be sustainable long term because everybody was relying on me. And I. And I couldn't be there. Right. Like, if a dealership was my main thing and I was doing, like, consulting on the side, kind of like exactly like Tracy does and Luke, that probably would have been fine. But in reverse, being able to meet my responsibilities to, you know, Rob and Jason and everybody at Buckeye, then all of my clients, you know, and. And still be Buckeye Brett, and do all the state associations and all the travel, and if a client calls and says, I need help, you're on a plane the next day and you go, right. Getting to the deal is like. It just. It just wasn't. It wasn't going to be sustainable. Everybody was waiting around for me to tell them what to do, and I was never there. So I didn't. A failed experiment. It was an absolute lesson in. No matter how good you think you are, you can absolutely spread yourself too thin.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I. Yeah, I see that. It's. It's easy to think that all of a sudden you're gonna. You're gonna have more time than. Than you do when you don't. Yeah. And. And cars are hard.

I.

You know, luckily, I have three very experienced people now working for me and two very experienced collectors. So, you know, it. It. It's hard. It's hard a bread. Nobody, I don't think, would fault you for. For trying.

Well, and I think, I mean, if it puts anything in perspective for. For you and for other dealers is. We talked about it all this time. This is a. This is a business with so many moving parts.

Yeah.

That it goes to the first of our conversation as these dealers try to pull themselves out of the business and work on it instead of in it, or become a business owner instead of owning a job. Which is what we all do now. Right. We basically own a job. It is a very difficult thing to do in the dealership model, especially the buy here, pay here, because there are so many moving parts. There are just so many moving parts. And, and did you see that? I mean, when you talk about not being in the business and you being kind of the pinch point or the kind of the funnel, what were those things? I mean, you couldn't empower these guys to buy cars, sell cars, pull the trigger, do this stuff. Like what. What do you feel like was specifically, like, not. Not getting done.

Yeah. So it was a lot of things, right. It was, it was. It was one. Andy was able to do all those things. I 100 trust him with my bank account to buy other cars. He knows how to do titles. He knows how to sell a car. He knows how to do a trade appraisal. I wasn't worried about him doing any aspect of the business. What I overreached on was his ability to do every aspect of the business without me, right? And then. And then all of a sudden, a bunch of weird stuff happened, right? So you're starting small. You got no floor plan, you got no debt. You got a couple hundred grand of your own money in there for inventory. You're buying stuff. You've got no overhead. You're paying people right away a living wage, right? Because I'm also trying to take care of a friend of mine, right? And then all of your buddies find out you have a dealer's license, and now you've got $300,000 tied up in three toy cars that they. And, sure, you were able to get them and flip them and sell them real quick, but then when they were gone, well, guess what? Now you've got no inventory again, and you got to wait. So there was all these, like, intangible things that you couldn't have predicted. And then, oddly enough, normally when you start in the industry, you're a subprime dealer, right? Because the banks are restrictive. Not everybody has a bunch of their own capital to throw at it. I'm very lucky, you know, that way. But all of a sudden, every single. All the cars we were selling were, like, prime, and it was like, oh, I need a new denali. My budget, 65 grand. Well, when you're trying to keep it small on purpose so that you don't get overextended, but your entire floor plan money that you set aside for yourself, you know, 3, 400 grand is gone, and you've only got six cars and nothing in recar. We sell them all, and then the next month, we'd be starting from scratch, trying to buy inventory. So it was. It was like, you know what? If that's what we want to do, have a dealer's license, have a small brick and mortar, do some specialty cars, stay relevant, have a place to do things, you know, that's good. But Andy and anybody who works for me, like, I can make money doing that, but they can't. You can't have a whole bunch of employees when you're just flipping a couple of toy cars for people. So I was like, it just it. Everything that you thought was going to go a certain way, it went completely the other direction.

Well, I. I mean, yeah. I mean, it sounds to me like that you just didn't have the model dialed exactly, and then Yeah. I mean, it's. And it's not your primary income, so, you know, go back to what you are. Primary. I get it, man. I get it. Yeah.

There was no way I was gonna let my buckeye work sacrifice, because there's no way. Yeah.

Yeah.

And then you're. And you're probably. It doesn't sound like you were. You were like prepared mentally to jump in with both feet. Obviously time wise, but also financially. Right. You could have put the 300 grand up and leveraged it towards a flooring line and had a million dollars or a million and a half in a flooring line. You could have had. You had to buy a property or put big money down. You're committed. Right. So some of those, some of those steps that some dealers take where it's like, yeah, you're right, man. Like I'm sleeping on the floor tonight. Like, I'm here until we are or until we buy another one because I can't go home because everything is in this dealership. So there is some of the burn the boats type mentality that sometimes you have to have.

Yeah. And I mean, and that's, that's 100% what it is, is, you know, if you're going to go all in on something, you burn the boats. There is no plan B. And my plan I, my plan A is pretty amazing, but the dealership was the plan B for me. That was irresponsible of me is that it was the plan A for the people who came to do it with me. I'm like, okay to leave and go do something else. You're not going to hurt my feelings, you know. And now Andy's, you know, having a. He's got a. He's right back and he's, you know, helping run a Maserati slash high end, you know, used car store. And he's doing great because he's fantastic at what he does. But, you know, that's, that doesn't mean, you know, it's like they would say a good sales manager, A salesman doesn't make a good sales manager. Right. He does. But juggling a whole dealership by himself, that it just, it was too much. And then.

Yeah, I know we've talked about this on the podcast before. I just finished a book and it was talking about ladders in. In organizations.

Right.

And. And that the worst thing you can do is the best thing you do is build ladders. So if you start as a salesperson, the best thing you can be as a top salesperson, unless you have other managerial Experience. But to take your best salesperson that started as a green pea and move them up all the way to the top sales persons make, they're selling 30, 40 cars a month, then try to make them the sales manager. That's probably not a good idea.

Yeah.

And it sounds like maybe taking that good sales manager and making him the owner, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But you got to know what, what that person's specialty is for sure.

And what it was is I think he's fully capable. I. But I think the biggest issue was, and I love him for it, was you can make somebody so scared to make a mistake because it's not their money and they're spending your money and, you know, so he's being really careful. And had we gotten to that like 10 or 15 car month model where it was easy and it was automatic, would I have gone out and said, hey, put my money up against the floor plan. Let's go buy a building. 100%.

Yeah.

I would have done it because I knew what the next step was going to be. And then I would have felt okay about hiring another guy that I know and putting a team together. But if I wasn't going to be there enough to support them, then if they wanted, if they were uncomfortable and wanted to leave to go back to what felt safe, I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna be upset about it.

It's so interesting. Brett, talk to us about what's next. Obviously we're going to see you down to buy here, pay here United down in Vegas, April 22nd through the 24th. I think it sounds like you're there the entire month of April, but the rest of us will be there a couple days. We've also got, I think Compliance Unleashed is along with that. So we're going to have education, appliance, anything. You can tease that out. I mean, obviously at this point, we're a couple of weeks away. If you haven't booked, you better book right now.

Yeah, I think actually, I think tomorrow is the last day for BHPH United. At least the room block. Right. I made a joke in my little video that I shot out there that like, there's always the inevitable people who call me up and are begging Sean and Angela to, to get them at the last minute, or people who booked to come to the show but then never got a room. So there are some still available, but definitely get in. But this year's show, really good. It's, it's, it's already larger than last year, which was our biggest year. So I'm excited about that. And then, you know, we've got, you know, we got Miata coming up. We got Virginia's thing coming up, you know, and then it'll be Georgia and it'll be Texas, and, you know, as we're running around and, and, and thank goodness that, you know, Bill and Jason are out there hiring, you know, a bunch of new people. So we don't necessarily have to send me to, you know, every state in the union to be, you know, the representative. But, you know, Jason's kind of taken a different role. We hired a new guy. Jim o' Connell is our CEO from Global. You know, we got Bill on the team. Bill's out there finding talent. We just hired two people within the last week. And through, you know, Rob Fox and Jason Fashion, you know, there's. There's other big things for Buckeye, you know, on the horizon here soon. And, you know, I get to be the direct benefactor of all their hard work. So I'm super excited about what's gonna. Some things that we got going on the second half of this year. But it's, it's. It's 25. We've. We've known for a while it was going to be a really busy year for us, so we're, we're. We're ready for it and we're backfilling with some good talent.

So that's exciting. It's awesome, man. That's awesome. Brett, man. Hey, I appreciate your time. It's good checking in with you. We look forward to Vegas. Luke. We're gonna go race with cars to go golfing or hit the big.

You're. You're.

I mean, you're taking me golfing. I do want to shout out to Steve Levine while we're still on this and talk about a little bit about compliance. Unleash. And I had a little issue go down a couple weeks ago where the person that did my. My E. Oscar and things like that quit. Just up and quit on us. And I didn't have logins, and luckily, Jeff, I had gotten the folks at Ignite to audit my E. Oscar a while back, and guess who still had logins that were working for E. Oscar. Wow. Ignite it. And so she was also an administrator, so she was able to go in and. And do an audit and, and take care of some things. And I tell you, the value of having somebody like Steve Levine and their staff on. On your side is the value is huge. And it, it proved itself to me last week and I just want to thank those. Those folks over there because they do a great job.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, I've talked to Steve and obviously referred a bunch of people to him. I think the biggest turnoff or the biggest thing that keeps people from kind of not wanting to look at compliance issues is they're worried about all the heavy lifting that they're going to have to do. And it's about as turnkey as it gets over there with having to do it. And I've always told, you know, clients, when they call me, they're like, hey, Brett, you. I was thinking about creating this, or I want to do this. I'm like, all right, well, do me a favor. I have a litmus test that I like to use. What? Say that back to me again. And at the end of it, I just want you to add two words, your honor. And they. They laugh. I'm like, well, like. Yeah, well, I was thinking I should be able to charge customers a late convenience fee every time I do this, your honor. Like, if it don't sound like a good idea, just don't do it. I think those two words, scare. Puts the hair up on the back of your neck. I wouldn't do it.

Yeah. It puts Steve out of a job with that kind of.

That's cheap advice, but it is. It is good advice.

Just.

It is very good advice. Very good, boss.

All right, guys, good times. Talk to you next week.

Yeah.

See you soon. Have a good one. Appreciate you.

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