#93 - Getting Through The Corona Recession w/ Tracy Myers

You are listening to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. Thank you so much for tuning in. Let's do this.

All right, Tracy, thank you so much for joining us today. Really, really appreciate your time. When we think about the dealer, who is the rock, you know, kind of the emotionally grounded, optimistic dealer, you just instantly came to mind. And thank you for. When we reached out to you, you responded quickly and you gave us. I know you've got a million things to do this morning, but we want to get your insight and your expertise on this. We really, really appreciate you being here.

Yeah, it's always good to be here and share what I've been through and what we're going through together as a dealer community, you know.

Yeah, it is. It's very interesting. Now, I do want to push back on Emotionally Grounded and Tracy Myers in the same sentence there. But, Tracy, you know, this is so scary for so many dealers, and I use that word, scary. And I hope people aren't worried because I'm saying that, but it is scary. Let's compare what is happening today and in the past two weeks to what happened in 08 now. What I see is there was a 08 kind of drug out on how it went south, and maybe this went south so quick. We can learn some stuff from that. If you can talk about what happened in 08 compared to now and what your thoughts are. Sure.

Because I was right in the middle of 08, as were you, and we went through that time together. I think I just maybe met you a couple years before that.

Right about that time, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. And other than us just being in the Carolinas have connection with you, because we were younger dealers then. Younger, still young, but we were much younger then. My backstory, I just bought the dealership from my father in 2006. We were setting records and setting the woods on fire. And I had 33 employees. And I had not built my service department yet, but nonetheless, we were Cranking out about 125, 30 cars a month, predominantly subprime. And, man, life was great. And two years later, I remember calling my dad saying, what have I got myself into? Because my house was on the line. I had a young son and daughter. My daughter was maybe 18 months old. We had only been in our new house, like, maybe a year and a half. And literally everything that I owned was on the line for the business. Because like I said, our tradition, our family, is to buy the business from the previous generation and not, you know, not give it over, which I Totally agree with, but still, I'm two years in thought I knew what I was doing. And then that happened. And we went from, we went from the typical special finance store where you got the paper hung and you had to have somebody knew what they were doing to having the 700 credit scores coming in because they'd already been to the new car store and they were coming to our store because they couldn't get approved there because no one was loaning money. No one was loaning money. And if they loaned, it wasn't enough to buy a car, so they were coming here. So the short version of the story is I sat down with my dad, who's still the best business person I know and best mentor that I could have ever had. And I'm thankful for him. He said, look, one of two things can happen here. You can capture market share, be smart about it, but you can capture market share or you can stick your head in the hole and wait for this to pass. And I think you stick your head in the hole, you're going to be out of business. And we took a huge risk, calculated risk, but still a huge risk, and decided to actually increase our ad spend. We borrowed more money. And I say we because I was tapped out at that point. Once again, like I said two years earlier, I just bought the business. So we actually borrowed money. That's when we went aggressively into Buy here, Pay here, which that sounds crazy in of itself thinking about it now because you don't have any cash flow.

Right.

If you're buying the buyer payer business. I mean, both you guys know that, right?

Yeah.

However, we didn't know how long this was going to last. And every great dealer I know, they went out of business. The ones that went out of business, they went out of business for a couple reasons. Number one, they lost a floor plan. Right. And it was working. And they ran out of working capital. One of the two things, it wasn't because they weren't were bad dealers. Now I knew some bad dealers who went out of business too. But I'm talking about, I'm talking about the really great dealers that I looked up to at that moment in time. So I went from 33 employees to three. I asked my dad how I should, should I wait? And he said, I don't think you should wait. Because at this point we were right. If you remember, you had that little area where they were in the beginning where they said, we think this will bounce back kind of quick. Which, and look, I'm glass more than half full Kind of guy, right? But I hear government officials talking about, man, we think this will be over by Easter and back in business by Easter. And you know, I kind of get flashbacks. And I remember all the pundits were saying, not all, but a lot of the pundits at the time were saying, man, this is going to be really quick and this is not going to be a long recession and the economy's too good. This is going to bounce back. And I'm hearing all those same things over again. And I'm not saying that's what's going to happen. I'm still not that guy. But I remember them saying that. And I told them, I don't want to let these people go. I've had people that's been with us like 10, 15 years that were with him first that I rehired when I bought the store, just kept them on. He said, look, you know, you got a few things you can control and payroll's one, right? Personnel, you've gone from selling 130 cars to selling 25, 30 cars in less than 45 days, which I think we're getting ready to see again, by the way, if not less than that. And so I said, I'm gonna bring them one at a time to an office and let them go. He said, that's a bad move because what's gonna end up happening is if you bring one in by the time the second one and third one, you bring them in, they know what's up. And then you've got Mutiny out in the showroom. So I brought 33 people into a room and it was like American Idol. I say that jokingly now. And I kissed and made up with all these people, man, the hardest business decision I've ever made. And I said, okay, you, you and you move to the left. U30. What other option do you have at that point?

Right?

I'm thinking about my home, I'm thinking about my savings that was all tied up.

I'm thinking, were these people, were they on salary or were they commissioned or was it what? Well, combination.

Combination of both. Yeah. Yeah. And I said, and unfortunately, due to the circumstances, I really feel in my heart of hearts that this short term recession in quotation marks is going to be a long term recession. I have no other option but to let all of you go. And it wasn't a good day. But two and a half years after that, we gradually the banks opened back up slowly. By that time, we're buy here pay. Your business had grown from zero to 30amonth we added 30 retail back on top of that, then another 30 retail, then another 30. And what Luke did, Jeff, two and a half years later, maybe 32 and a half, three years later, you know, we had grown back to where we were sustainable in retail with cash flow. So, you know, and what we're looking at now and what I see now is a lot of similarities with a lot of people dismissing things. And I'm not doom and gloom, but I think we have to be realist here. I think the word of the day is unprecedented, right? You can't turn on the news or talk to you guys or talk to your family members. We've never seen anything like this before, which means unprecedented. And you know, we really haven't seen anything like this before because in the recession I knew if I could cut expenses and keep my head above the water, if we work really hard, we could come out right. As long as we could keep capital in the business. Now, I mean, that's the question, you know, what do we do? Will that matter? I mean, it will matter, but I don't know if we work hard, I don't know how we come out on the other side.

Let's talk. Tracy, let's talk two things real quick that I thought that I think we all need to be very concerned with and that is having too many employees. So I've cut three employees so far and what I found was that they weren't essential, you know, so I guess, you know, we talk about essential business or essential employees, whatever you want to say, but how can we look at our staff right now and say, hey, these people are essential, these people aren't essential. What roles do the non essential people play? And does that, I mean, do we take up the slack? What do we do there? How do we look at these?

Yeah, well, it's a good question and I absolutely think we have to pick up the slack. I don't know whether other options we have. I know back in, you know, all those years ago during the recession, God knows I picked up the slack. Yeah. And look, I still don't mind picking up a broom, don't get me wrong. But you know, over the years, it's funny because right after the recession, man, we'll never do that again. And we'll never get employee crazy heavy again. And, and, but here we go again, right? And I'm looking and said, okay, you know, this person is a convenience, but they're not a necessity. And we really, especially as small business owners, we really have to, you know, like the old Ben Franklin. Draw a line down a sheet of paper and put, you know, the necessary team members on the left. And I hate to say unnecessary, but maybe non income producing employees, the convenient employees on the right of that and weigh those things out and take the emotion out of it as much as we possibly can.

And it doesn't necessarily. I mean, if it fits better, use the title, use the responsibilities, use the tasks. We're eliminating these tasks. Not that you're, you know. Yeah. Not that we don't like you, the employee, but these tasks are no longer.

That's, that's interesting. You talk about the income producing employee compared to the non income producing employee. And I think that's a good way to look at it as well. You know, if technicians are staying busy, then they're producing. Right. Our salespeople are selling cars. They're producing. But porters aren't necessarily, you know, it's nice to have porters, but you don't have to. And maybe you have too many of one certain thing. And I guess that's. That is a good way to look at it. If, if this thing drags on and banks start pulling back and not financing customers. You've seen this before. What do you do when, when you can't get people bought? I mean, is there a way to get people bought when you can. I mean, where are we? Where, where could this go?

So the old saying that the best time to pass the roof is before it starts raining. That's not a very optimistic statement or a very optimistic answer to your question. But I think at this point in time, you know, if you don't have good relationships with your lenders and you've never called your lenders and you know, and now you're calling your lenders, might be too late. Yeah. You know, I'm not gonna say it's too late, but, man, it's tough. It's really tough. It's kind of like the blind date. You're not quite feeling it. And a year later you say, yeah, you know, and you don't call her back. Right. And then a year later you say, yeah, you know what? I'm kind of lonely this week and I think I'll give her a call. You know how that's gonna work out. Right. And I use that example for my salespeople all the time who, when business gets slow, they decide to go through their database of customers, call their customers back. Right?

Yeah.

How's it going? A year and a half later, even though I haven't contacted you up until this point. You wanna buy a car? Well, no, not really. You know, better than nothing. But the outcome is probably going to be the same with the majority of them. But the answer to the question, what do you do? You should have probably already called all your lenders. You probably should have called all your full plan companies. And we did that. I did that last Thursday, Wednesday or Thursday, which was probably a little late, but there's a lot. And I started and got through. It took me a couple days to actually talk to people. And this week I've noticed that floor plan reps, man, it's like, it's insane to get them on the phone. And I understand why, right? They're being bombarded now and being hammered, but it's crazy. Didn't we all see that coming? I mean, the floor plan cut back. So I mean, I think sometimes we're in denial and we, as a dealer body, I mean, I put myself in there too. You know, we've got to be realistic with this. This is something that we haven't seen in 20, 25, 30 years from now, you know, God willing. And I'm fortunate enough to be there, you know, sitting down with my kids and other customers and maybe you guys doing a podcast or whatever the version of that is in 20 years from that. Remember back then? And yeah, how did you get through that? And all these guys waited till, you know, business as usual, until they had shut down. You know, we need to take action today because we've truly never seen anything like this. The recession is one thing, because we've been through recession before, right? As a country, we've been through recessions. We've never been anything through anything like this. So nobody knows anything really.

I want to touch on something you brought up about, about the floor plan companies and hard to get people on the phone. I want dealers to remember one thing. These, these vendors, you use their businesses as well. And when you get really mad at your vendor for pulling back, well, they're doing what you're doing. They're trying to save their butt too. So make sure you keep that in mind when you start trashing some of these vendors because they've got to survive as well. And if that means cutting your floor plan, that's what they're going to have to do. So just keep that in the back of your mind. Dealers.

Well, and I think a good way, and that's a good point, I think a good way to relate that for all of us. I know, especially for me and other dealers that I've considered Over the years is that we all have customers that come in with problems after the sale. Right. Something happened to the car. Which customer are we more apt to help? The good attitude and making their payments.

Right?

Or the ones that get up in your face and demand and you're gonna fix this? And, oh, by the way, you're 90 days late already and I've been looking for your car.

Right.

Let's be kind to them because those reps, it hit all these reps hard as well. A lot of them are, you know, they're answering your call, but they're being hesitant about it because they know they're gonna get. They're getting hammered by a majority of these. You be the exception to the rule. And as excited as you. There's a difference between excited and angry. And sometimes I have to have to remind my employees, don't mistake me being excited and passionate for anger, because you'll know the difference between the two. Right? They are drastically different.

Yeah.

So I wanted to ask both of you. I mean, it's really the differences in the contrast between today and 2008. Right. I mean, really, the main issue is, you know, the ride to the bottom, which is the two, three, four weeks a month of when it's kind of the shock and awe and everyone's maybe a little scared and we all don't know what to do. And consumer confidence, that's really it. Right. You don't have the buyers coming on your lot because they want to hold on to their cash. They don't want to sign up for new debt. So that's one thing you've got kind of that buyer supply side, but then you've also got the lender side of it. And in 2008, you lost your lenders. Right? Because the banks collapsed, the government didn't step in quick enough. The guys lending the money to the guys that were lending the money didn't have the ability to do the loans. So is there going to be a difference this time around if the banks stay open and stay aggressive and have cheap money to put out there? We just need to wait for that consumer confidence to kind of bottom out, hopefully bounce. And would that create a slower or, I mean, a quicker turnaround? You know what I'm saying? I guess that's what I'm trying to in my brain. Do you guys feel that's the difference between these two? Whereas that one was a bank crisis that we lost our lending, this is.

More of a.

Human crisis.

I'll agree with that. I was just talking to my dad, about that last night. Because during the recession, the number of customers coming to the dealership by car never decreased, which was the most frustrating thing for us. And for once in my career, I had to actually pull back on my marketing message and turn it into a branding message. And that's another podcast for another day, but I believe the two should be the same, right? But I had to stop the call to action messages because they were working. I couldn't get anybody financed. And this is before I made that really quick switch to buy here, pay here. And accidentally, I didn't. I mean, I knew I wanted to get into it, but didn't necessarily know exactly how it worked. But I knew I wanted to keep selling cars because this is, you know, this is what I do. And I'm the first to tell dealers who, especially in the dealer form. So I'm thinking about trying buy here, pay here. I'm like, no, you don't try buy here, pay here. You don't stick your toe into buy here, pay here. You have a plan, you do it. Well, you know, I really, against better judgment, I'm the one that stuck my toe in the water and said, you know, I'm gonna sell all these cars. I'm like, oh, my God. You know, I'm selling myself out of business. Cost amount of money, right? But I'm a quick learner. And I figured it out, and we've got standalone by your pay your stores now, which I asked Luke the other day, you know, about business. He said, well, you know, look, if we shut down, there's X amount of my cash flow is not gonna completely stop. And mine's not either at those locations. And even if we do shut down to a degree, you know, we'll still see some cash flow. But I totally agree with you. I think that. I think the banks are in good shape from what we all know. I mean, unless there's some hidden information that we don't know, even if there's an economic turndown due to unemployment, et cetera, et cetera, which all indicators say there will be, right. And supply and demand, which is inventory conversation we can have too, that's going to be thrown way out of whack. But I don't think that the lenders are going to be affected by this or pull back, other than, you know, on the collection side, their repos are going to go up. Just like buy here, pay your stores, repos are going to go up or our collections are going to be sideways. You know, the 20 group meetings aren't Going to be good for a while because you know those collections numbers, we gonna keep them in the street and work with them, right? Or we're gonna start popping the cars just depending on what your model is. And that's not for me to judge, it's just, it's a fact. And banks are gonna be dealing with the same thing. But man, I think if we get through this, I even think, you know, four to six weeks, maybe even two months, I think the banks, the money's there and they're gonna want a loan. My bankers are calling me right now and telling me if I want to borrow money to buy real estate right now, which I don't because I, you know, I have investment properties as well. They're like, look, we can give you the best deal that you've ever received because they've got money to loan and nobody's calling. Cheap money to loan and nobody's calling. Well, I think on the, on the automotive side, it's going to be exactly the same.

The only, the only concern, the only pushback I would have with that is that if, if all these jobs are contracted like which may happen is that the banks may be willing to loan it, but the customers may not have the job history or this, that and other to do it. So maybe, or maybe not the same job they had. So that would be my only concern with the bounce back is that might be slower on our side if customers didn't have jobs and they're trying to dig their way out. I wonder what's going to happen to credit ratings after all this. But you know, who knows? Who knows?

This is times like these. It's like right after the Great Recession. I read a great article, I pulled it up, see if it mattered the conversation. I think this is a good time. But during the Depression, Ford had been number one. They had outsole Chevrolet 10 to 1 during the 20s. And right after the Great Depression, Chevrolet passed forward for the first time in sales because they made a quick change. I think that, and that relates directly to the credit ratings. You know, there's been conversation for 15 years on changing credit ratings and credit reports and now more than ever because of fraud. Well, I think this is the one thing that could possibly trigger the action. The reason nobody's done anything on that in the past in my opinion, and talking to people in government is it's just too big of an undertaking. And consumers generally just don't give a flip. Right. Because it doesn't make them any more money in their minds anyway. They still borrow Money and money has been readily available. I think this is the one thing that will create the outcry from the public that could cause this to change credit ratings. But you look in major legislation like that was three to five, six years. So that's longer term stuff. But I agree with that. The job market is going to change dramatically. But I also think things will open up in the job market. That's never been there before.

I agree with that. Yeah, go ahead.

The wild card in all this is the manipulation that governments and business entities are willing to do in the name of. This is an anomaly. Right. Or this is a unique situation. So when the government throws X trillion dollars into the market and all of our customers are going to have $3,000 in their pocket within four weeks or whatever the time frame is to get this stimulus out, it's a second tax season, you know what I'm saying? If credit bureaus are willing to say, hey, we're actually not going to let any derogatory marks hit between April and August, we're gonna just completely wipe that out of the history books because of this situation, you know what I'm saying? So that's what we don't know is how many wild cards are out there. Government or business entities are willing to cook the books under the guise that it's okay.

If you look at areas that were ravaged by Katrina, for example, and I'm sure you guys have probably seen this, but you'll see on credit reports where the car was involved in natural disaster with some lenders and after it was involved, the customer actually kept the car but nothing was reported to the credit bureau. It just shows there's a balance and the customer doesn't have to make payments because it was involved. That's one of those variables, right?

Yeah.

We've had customers wanting to trade the car and had a 7,000. It's showing a $7,000 payoff and it was never paid off. And the customer doesn't have the title, but it didn't affect the credit bureau. Yeah, it's a strange situation. And I don't know what that legislation was or what got, what emergency funding measures got approved by the government. But something happened and there's a couple of lenders in particular that like CAC for example, CAC did that with with majority. It seemed like that's who I see it with all the time. So they must have made a blanket wide deal with all their customers. If you are in one of those areas, here's your make good. Now I don't Know how they own that car. I don't know if they have to pay it off. I don't know if they drive it until it breaks. They'll never own that car unless they pay it off. But they're not making payments and it's not affecting their credit.

Yeah. And who knows, they probably got some disaster relief funds. That was part of the gig. Hey, we're gonna make you whole on all these cars, but you cannot pursue deficiency balances.

So the wild card correct. And we don't know what that's going to be coming out of this, but I think there's going to be some huge wildcards coming out of this that some. That we're already aware of, like the stimulus checks they're talking about. If it doesn't pass quickly, there'll be more stimulus checks. We're already seeing businesses being created that weren't there before. And I think that will continue because, you know, this is a great country and we're smart and we're entrepreneurial and no one's better than in automotive. And I think this will force us to get out of our comfort zones. And the good and great dealers will become amazing. And the ones that sit like in 08, that this will just pass and go away. I don't think they'll be here.

That's so, so interesting. You say that. I told my staff, I said, we're gonna do things now. We're gonna learn how to do things now that we did, we thought we didn't know how to do and that we didn't need. But now we know how to do it. And it's gonna make us better. And we've got to remember that every time we do something, these struggles are gonna make us better. It's gonna make us better as a country. It's gonna make us better as an industry. Because 08 did it. It's gonna do it this time. So just keep that in the back. Your. So, Tracy, I guess what is the one thing that a dealer should do today to weather this storm?

So I'll tell you a couple things that I'm doing and I guess things that are working successfully for me already. We had already implemented our delivery service, Come to you service. We changed the name of it three or four times, of course, but everything that I came up with outside of the concierge service, which is what we've called it for two years now, sounded like it was self serving for the coronavirus thing. Right. So we just kept the name what it is. But we've actually Sold six cars in the past week using that. And we haven't sold six cars using that in the last year.

That's great.

So, you know, you can go to my website or my Facebook page and copy everything I got. I mean, look, there's nothing new. It's just all repurposed, right? And look, I've got the staff here to do it, right? And since business has slowed being productive and selling cars is what we do. I'm not talking about the service side, right? I'm just selling cars. If we have to shut service down, we have to sell cars, period. If it's just me here, I have to sell cars one way or the other. But the. We're doing the concierge deal, so. And look, Carvana's doing that and say the bad C word, Carvana, right? And they're losing billions doing it. But there's no reason we can't adapt that. And that's why I said a couple years ago, and we're doing that. So, you know, we'll send extra pictures, we'll send extra videos, we'll do FaceTime or whatever, you know, platform you want to use to show you the car. We've already got our money back guarantee in place, which is Carvana's big thing. I can't do seven days. I don't know. That cash flow is pretty strong right there. Right? But we'll still do money back guarantee two business days. But look, I've been doing that since 06, by the way, the money back guarantee. I may have seen two dozen customers come back. And out of the two dozen, we reclosed, you know, 18 of those on another car because it's usually payment, or my neighbor's got one just like it. I didn't realize it's something funky, right? Or turn the air conditioner on, there's a funny smell coming out of the vents, and it makes my wife's head hurt. It's always something small, right? And the six, seven, eight cars that actually came back, they probably would have failed their bank interview anyway. And then you can say, you know, you got no recourse, like most used car dealers, right? It says right here, no recourse. And then you're gonna tick them off. You get a bad Google review, and you never, never sell that customer or anybody, they know another car. So that's one thing. And it's pretty easy to do. Even though it sounds like, I don't know, I hear dealers talk about that. And look, I'm in the subprime business, right? I'm not selling Mercedes and put it up on there. I don't have that nice little car carry that Carvana's got. Right. With the office inside and built in wifi I don't have. But we can emulate all that stuff without that expense and probably do a more personable job than Carvana. That's not a knock on Carvana. That's just, you know, that's how good we are as an independent dealer body. The other thing that I'm doing is I'm following lead of 2008 and I'm increasing our awareness through marketing. I bought television advertising yesterday. 75 cents per 30 second commercial.

Wow.

One of the first things that businesses do when times get tough is they start canceling all their advertising. Right.

I did that. Uh. Oh, exactly.

Luke, we had this conversation.

I get it. But you know, if you're gonna be the exception to the rule, if there's no dealer on television or radio or whatever, your form is, right? Look, man, if you're in a state where everything's shut down, right, They're Netflix to death. Or if you're like my family, Netflix is on and you're sitting there with your phone. Right. And you're Facebooking it, right? Just scrolling while Tiger King's playing, right?

Oh, gosh.

Yeah. No, that's amazing, by the way. Anyway, that's the recommendation for the weekend, Tiger. Oh, gosh, yeah. No, it's out there, bro. But Facebook marketing is dirt cheap and there's more eyes on it than ever. I saw a study last Friday or Saturday where television news consumption two weeks ago Thursday until last Thursday was up 90%.

Wow.

I believe it.

So I'm on news programming, which I usually don't buy, typically. Not my demographic that's watching news programming right now.

It is.

I'm right there now, what's the message? Gotta be careful with your message. Or not. I mean, you know, it depends on what your market is. I think for most dealers, you probably need to be careful with your message. We do a lot of text marketing, and our first few messages were, hey, we're here for you. We do this better together. We're cleaning this infectant. We're here if you need us. And then I started leaning, okay, enough of those. They know we're here. They know we're clean. So let's start throwing some sales messages out there. I got some pretty nasty replies, you know, at which, look, I'm kind of used to that too. Aggressive marketing. I do. Yeah. However, this was a little different because People are losing their jobs. People are scared. People are, you know.

And they, they think you're not socially responsible because your doors are open.

No, no, no. I actually haven't got that once. Okay, I'm getting. I can't believe you're trying to sell us something. All this is going on. You guys are, you know, we're losing our job. That type deal, Right?

Yeah.

We're trying not to lose our job.

And there's a lot of industries that are doing very well and very stable.

Yeah. So I'm just saying if you're gonna do that, you're gonna be aggressive with your marketing and their sales messages. I liked yours a lot, by the way. Jeff, that was really well done. Like, God, man, I wish I thought of that. What are we doing? But look, it's a good time to get creative with your marketing messages because you can buy it really cheap. But I guess, you know, don't pull back on your marketing messages. Make that same list you did for your team members. Right. And say what's necessary, what's not necessary, which we should be doing that all the time anyway. What's the ROI? Producing marketing. But once again, and right after 08, we said, we'll never let that happen again. And look at your marketing now. Like, oh, my God, I'm still spending money with those guys.

Yep.

Which is funny that this whole thing with the third party advertisers went down two months ago.

Correct.

And this just drove it home even harder, guys. Like, what are you doing? You're throwing money down the tube because you're not tracking this hits home. This is why you shouldn't have been doing that for the last five years.

But I think it sells me one car a month, so it pays for itself, man. I guess that drives me crazy. I think those are the two big things right now, taking action on top of the things we probably should have already done, which is call your vendors, including your marketing partners, your full plan companies, your finance companies, and sit down with your key personnel, whether that's your wife, your husband, business partner, if you have one, or like, my general sales manager has been here 11 years. Right. He was there. He was like the first person I hired. And we went into the recession together and came out of it together. And, you know, he put his arm around me last week and he said, boss, we've been through this before. And I said, man, I really appreciated that reminder, you know, and trust me, I know, I've been there before. But how quickly we forget things. Like, it's scary Actually, how quickly we forget that and the sacrifices we made as, you know, speaking for myself, as a sacrifice made as a husband, as a father, as a business owner, I mean, I went from 60 hours a week at the dealership to, you know, 70 plus back then. Right. And it was challenging canceling the vacations. And, you know, I was like, oh, man, we here again. I'm a lot older now than I was back then, but, you know, may not be as easy, but we'll get through this. We are the most resilient entrepreneur in America, and I truly believe that. And creative as well. The good independent dealers are, man, we can. We don't jump in and jump out. The good ones don't jump in, jump out. When the economy goes bad, when stuff like this happens, we stay in, we figure out ways, we change, we adapt, and we move forward, and we come out on the other side better than we were before. We always have. And I think there'll be no difference this time.

I agree. And, Jeff, you got anything else?

I think that's a great place.

Tracy. Thank you so much.

Yeah, you're welcome, man. Hey, y' all stay safe. And if you need anything, I mean, on a personal level, you know, need anything, just. Just hit me up, man. I mean, I care about you guys. You do a great job with the podcast, but just, you're good people and you represent our industry well.

Thank you.

And I appreciate you both.

Same here, buddy.

Yeah. Thank you, guys.

See ya.

Yup.

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