EP022: - Summer on the Showroom Floor -- John Gavin & Bagi

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome to True Confessions of a Car Guy. My name is John Gavin. I decided to do this because I've been in the car business a little over 40 years. And as I've been going through all those 40 years, I'm not proud of this fact, but I've worked at 49 different dealers. Over those 40 plus years, I have seen some of the craziest stuff happen.

[00:00:27] Uh, good, bad, the ugly, you name it. I've worked with some real characters. I mean, there's stuff that I can tell you that women took their clothes off at a discount in a dealership. Literally, they took their clothes off and offered sex to get discounts. I mean, there's crazy shit that went on in the car business. Unbelievable that nobody else would believe. Yeah, we're gonna get into all that stuff. It's gonna be... Now this is gonna be the real True Confessions of a Car Guy.

[00:00:54] Did you put the disclaimer up that says that we're only allowed to have so many curses in one session? I don't need you. I've never needed anybody. You can go fuck yourself and let's see how your store does in the next six months. I shit my pants. I gotta go. This is the guy parked. Run on the sales floor. I shit my pants and I gotta go. It's 831. Run on the sales floor. You croak and choke. Oh, croak and choke. That's right. I don't remember. Yes.

[00:01:23] Croak and choke. That's right. It was croak and choke. Because your car's on fire out there. Just like that. This guy went a shit. I had more balls than brains and he didn't... He had a little bit of brains and no balls. I don't know if I could use that one. No. But that was so funny. No, that would... That one won't go. But if I had stayed longer, it would have killed me.

[00:01:51] Because all we did was party. They threw keys on top of the roof. They took titles and burned them. They did all kinds of crazy stuff. We've created our own monster. Any problem that the car business has, we've created it. But we had a fun time getting there. That really happened. And all you car guys and gals who are out there, who got stories like mine, you want to send them in to me. I'd be more than happy to read them or have you on the show.

[00:02:20] Send it to confessionsofacarguy at gmail.com and we'll all laugh. You ought to print that on our show. Make that a fucking tidbit.

[00:03:03] Welcome everybody to another episode of True Confessions of a Car Guy. My name is Badgie. Alongside me in studio is one of our hosts, John Gavin. John, welcome to another episode. Hey, Badgie. How are we doing, brother? It's going good, man. We just wrapped up Memorial Day. It was actually pretty busy. Memorial Day has typically been busy for us and good and solid. So, you know, we're chugging along.

[00:03:33] And this whole weekend has been because now the summer season's here, as you know. And it's prime time for us. Well, you know, I've still worked for a group. I'm still affiliated with the Patriot Auto, Patriot Motor Group, because there's two Patriots. There's one out of the southern part of the country. And then there's us, which is Illinois, and then one out in Pennsylvania.

[00:03:57] But, you know, Toyota, still a rock star, still killing it, doing huge numbers. Chevy, CDJR is very tough. Chevy's got no cars anymore. You know, they're in Stockholm. You know what I'm, you know? I'm seeing a unique trend the last probably month. And that trend is short-term EV leases. Yeah. Yeah. Because of the current situation, especially with the gas and all that.

[00:04:28] Short-term, like two-year new EV leases has just... But the problem with that is like you got the advertised lease that the manufacturer advertised, but there's no inventory to match that. So you got people looking for it and nobody has that inventory. Yeah, that's the same problem we're running into with Chevy, with any kind of electric vehicle or hybrids.

[00:04:57] They're just out of them. And, you know, the one thing we're running into in the car business worse than ever is the negative equity. So we are seeing negative equity because of, you know, we have banner years during COVID. I mean, here folks, so you know, everything you bought everywhere, I don't care what the product was, you paid more for it during COVID because of supply and demand.

[00:05:25] Unfortunately, the car is a depreciating asset. And, you know, there used to be a $3,000 rule. I don't know if you heard that. It's probably been around for a long time. $3,000 rule meant that if your car had 150,000 miles on it and it costs more than 3Gs to fix it, you should trade it in.

[00:05:46] Well, the average age of a car right now for 2025 is projected to be, I think, 14.1 years is the average age of a car on the road. Think about that. 14.1 years. You know, not five years ago, it was like 12. So it's going up and up.

[00:06:07] And, you know, people right now to go out and get a car, they really need some help with navigating all those deals, all those rebates, their negative equity, stuff like that. I think you got a guest that we're going to have. What's the guest we're having on next week? Yeah, actually, we will be releasing the episode by the end of the weekend.

[00:06:32] We're going to have on Drew Pearl with Pearl Auto Advocates. He's going to be our very special guest. He's going to be diving into some of this. And, you know, I know Don, we've been doing some of our homework on him. He's big on social media, big on TikTok. That's how we met. And I really look forward to the conversation that we're going to be having with him.

[00:06:54] Yeah, the little bit that I know about him, I really like because, you know, in my 48 years in the car business, I'm a customer advocate. I never, you know, I'm from the neighborhood for the neighborhood. Customers first. Without them, we got nothing. I'm not a big fan of, you know, the elevator. I don't believe in it. You advertise one price.

[00:07:22] I mean, I've left places because I'd tell them I can't sell a car at this joint because you advertise it in the soup or two tunes. And then when you get there, you got to put them on all kinds of items, bring them up. And that's just not my style. My style is this is the car. This is the best I can do. I make money. You get a good car and you get a good deal. And I'll take care of you through thick and thin service wise.

[00:07:49] And then your next purchase and anybody else you send me, et cetera. And that afforded me 40 to 50 referrals a month for forever. I would get that many. So, Drew, with his company, he sounds like he's that kind of guy. He's out. He goes, these people. I mean, it's a company. So, they pay a fee. But he'll make sure you don't get that, you know, croak and choke like we laughed about the one.

[00:08:16] You know, you're getting things that you actually need. He's looking for, I guess he can find vehicles for you. If you're looking for a certain type of vehicle, that's got to be really difficult today because I know trying to find, I've been looking for a Land Cruiser for a while. I actually stopped in a store to see him. And the same story I keep, we own a store, we can't get them. And the same story over and over is I can maybe dealer trade one or get one, but nobody wants to give one up.

[00:08:45] No, that's probably like gold to them. Yeah, that's really a hard thing to locate. I'm sure you're over by Cadillac. Cadillac, very lean on inventory. I can imagine what's Escalade look like. How many? Yeah, we're not, you know, from the manufacturer, you're lucky to get one or two a month. And it's very, very lean. And they're usually, you know, the store I'm at has been around for over 30 years.

[00:09:11] You got loyal, loyal, long-time customers that are always looking to upgrade. And so, you know, they go very, very quickly. They're not making enough. And I think, yeah, it's definitely been a challenge. But like I said, you've seen this. It's probably the last month. But the short-term EV leases are starting to really take hold, which is nice because that we have, you know, we have some of.

[00:09:41] And, you know, back to this discussion about Drew, one thing also I like about him and I want to look, you know, to talk to him by is not only do they help customers, but they also will work with dealers. He'll help coach dealers into some areas that are challenging and they may need some structure or that may need some help in. So not only is he a consumer advocate, but he's also a dealer advocate and he consults with dealers.

[00:10:11] And I'm sure you know from everything you've seen on the road that there's some dealers in some bad situations that really need some help. You're listening to True Confessions of a Car Guy. Well, as a performance manager for Cox, I think I saw almost every possible bad situation there is.

[00:10:41] Having as many dealers as I dealt with. I mean, it's, again, I'm not crying for the Cardios. They still make money. They do their jobs. But it's the hardest it's ever been. I mean, you've got customers coming in. You don't have inventory. Chevy's got no cars. You know, they don't even sell a car anymore. So even if they got inventory, they're all trucks. The average MSRP is up over $50,000. The negative equities is just the worst I've ever seen.

[00:11:10] So, you know, most, if you're not soliciting your service department today, you ought to get out of the car business. You really shouldn't. You shouldn't be managing a car dealer. Because that's really the only place where you'll get a customer and a vehicle that makes sense. If you're going to the auction strictly and buying cars, you've lost your noodles. Because I can see that as a lot filler. But why would you?

[00:11:38] You're paying, you know, and again, this is going to mean nothing to a lot of people. But you're paying 105% to 115% for cars at the sale. And you can go into your service department and pay 95, let's say. Which is still a lot. But at least you get your own customer. You sell a car. You get a car. And the degrees of separation of vehicles are so close together. Used to be a Cadillac was a 10 and a Hyundai was a 3. Well, guess what?

[00:12:07] A Cadillac's a 9 and a Hyundai's a 7. Or some are 8. Kia's, 7 or 8. The customer doesn't have the loyalty they used to have. It used to be, you know, my parents, let's just say, they bought Ford after Ford after Ford after Ford after Ford. Your parents bought Chevy after Chevy after Chevy. Panic, et cetera, et cetera. Toyota, Toyota, Toyota. Today, they don't do that. They do. Just like you said, they see a deal and they're going to try it.

[00:12:37] They'll go take a look at that deal. They're going to go take a look at that deal. If it's a hybrid or electric or whatever it is, they're going to go take a look. So if you don't, if you're a dealer and you're not soliciting your service department and paying up, that doesn't mean, you know, I've seen it forever where they try to steal the car to service. That's not the way to do it.

[00:13:01] I mean, if you're going to go pay almost retail at the auction, well, fucking pay it in the service department then. Take care of your own customer. Make sure you try to help them get into one of your cars and you get more inventory. I truly don't believe people will be buying cars at auctions. Now, I told you earlier, I'm retired. I'll be retired completely this year. I don't know what month, what week, what day even.

[00:13:31] It might be five days from now. It might be September for sure, but I'll be completely retired. I don't believe there will be auctions five years from now that you'll go to or cars will be at. I don't believe they'll exist because, first of all, there's not enough cars to run through them for the expense of having these giant facilities.

[00:13:56] You're already seeing these facilities being multifaceted where they got different businesses inside of Mannheim Auto Auction. So you better be very good at eating what you kill, which is your service department. Go after those cars. Pay up. Don't be afraid to pay up. You're the only one bidding on it.

[00:14:20] But the wrong thing to do is lowball that customer because now that you did do this, you're going to get, I mean, the really good ones who have really good buyers back there. They close, you know, 7% to 12% of the people they talk to. So it's a numbers game. Any moron can do 3% of cars out of service. I don't care who you are. If you make an offer to every customer, you're going to get 3% of accidents.

[00:14:48] The problem is if you're lowballing them, what you did was put that hair on their neck up and go back home and look how easy it is now to get a value for a car. I mean, you call Drew up and ask him what you're doing. For God's sake. Yeah. Any sight and value your trade. And if you lowball them and you had a customer who's been coming to you for 3, 5, 10, 15 years, you may not only lost them in service, but definitely that sale.

[00:15:17] They're going to look at you and go, you know, I've been coming to this place for X amount of years. And they just tried to steal my trade. So you really just kind of killed yourself. It can be counterproductive because they may have not even thought about selling their car. And then you're there on the service and you put that idea in their head. And then for some reason, they have this idea now. Oh, well, maybe my car has value.

[00:15:42] And if you lowball them, then you're going to lose the service side and you're going to lose their value. And you were right. That is the gold mine because people are, you know, they're buying out their leases. They're not leasing. There's nothing for them to lease. Right. And I mentioned that before. You know, they come in by the end of their lease. There's nothing they get into anymore unless they want. It depends on the brand. But your only option is an EV and they don't want to go into an EV. So they buy out there.

[00:16:11] You're not getting lease returns. And the ones you can get, you know, I think the same equation applies to pay up for those that you can get of the lease returns that they're willing to either surrender it to go into something different or different make or, you know, or what. But it's challenging. And then, like you said, you don't want to lose that opportunity. And you were saying, too, I've seen it like I scratched my head like, why is this in this car at an auction?

[00:16:39] You know, a gem of a car. In theory, it's a gem of a car. Why is that kind of car? Someone could easily sell that on the lot. Oh, wait a minute. And the pictures look nice. It's got all the details. And then you buy the car, it comes in. You see that the quarter panel was pictured in a way that you can't see that it had a real bad paint job on it. A car that was bought a week ago. It was a 76,000-mile Jeep.

[00:17:09] I'll leave it at that. We paid around $6,000 for it. Somebody paid around $6,000 for it. I look what we own the car for now. It's around 12 Gs. So the car looked great while it was there. I've always looked at auction cars like this. If it's at the sale, why? Why didn't the other guy sell it by now? A lot of guys go, well, it's because it got old. It got aged.

[00:17:36] Well, in today's world, there's no such fucking thing because you can't get any cars. You just can't get them. And if you've got cars on your inventory more than 35 days, you're doing something wrong. Because everything sells, you've just got to price it appropriately. Not even cheap. Appropriately. Which is, you could sell cars at $105,000, $110,000 all day long, some of these cars. I mean, get an Escalade and put it on the lot. See how long that car lasts, right? So you get all the money.

[00:18:06] Same with mostly any car. There's that one zone, you know, between $10,000 and now it's about $25,000. You've got cars in that range. You hit 70% of the country. They can afford that car. Once you get into those cars over that, those are, you know, Cadillac customers, BMW customers, Mercedes customers. They can do whatever they want. They can buy a car today or buy a car next month.

[00:18:32] But if they see something they like and it's on your lot, it's never a question of dollars and cents. No. I mean, if you think about it, with the internet today, the only thing a customer knows for fact, for fact, because like you said, there's pictures, there's descriptions. The only thing they know that's a fact when they get there is the price. They already know that unless you got a call for price or something like that. So price is never the issue with customers anymore.

[00:19:02] I mean, when they get there, then they're going to smell the car, drive the car, make sure they like it. And if they got there, you both did your jobs because their job was to go out and get the best price and your job is to put the best price out there. So if they came to you, came together, you both did your job. So price isn't the issue. That's where it comes in, how we take care of them, how the BDC took care of them. Yeah. And every car, you know, every car has a story.

[00:19:30] And that's the one thing that I do. Like, you know, they may see the car like, and they're like, oh, wow, that's, that's, it looks like it's in great shape. It's low miles. Well, there's a reason that's like that. There's a story behind it. You know, it was a, you know, it was an elderly person that, you know what, they're 90 years old. They cannot drive anymore. So that's why a 2011 has 32,000 miles on it.

[00:19:52] And they religiously took, that's an actual example we have now, a 2011, 2011 coupe, which is rarer than rare. And she's like, you know what, I'm 90 years old. I want to have a nice fun car before I died. And so she went ahead and traded this gem of a car. So when people look at her, there's a story behind it. And I think that's a lot of time people fail at selling, you know, of telling people the story of why, how we got it, the story behind it.

[00:20:21] And also, and then also reflection on price because there's, there's value in telling a story, not just like, oh, that's the price. There's a value in there. Because we're car dealers is in, in not that you haven't been around a while now, but unfortunately, because we're car dealers. When we tell a story to the customer, to them, it's just that. It's a bullshit story that we're going to tell them some little old lady, because that's the whole common thing.

[00:20:50] It's a little, the difference is, which still you got to be, you got to look out because that's why everybody says, show me the Carfax. And yeah, Carfax was pushed on us as dealers, had to take it because everybody walked in and said, show me the Carfax. You got the fucking stuffed animal Carfax. You got millions of dollars being spent that advertised. So they jammed that down your throat. Now, if you notice, Carfax isn't even the thing. Now it's, now it's, um, auto check.

[00:21:21] Carfax got taken out of the market pretty much by Cargurus, Autotrader and Cars.com. It used to be, you went to the site, Autotrader, Cars.com, Cargurus, and you go look at the Carfax. Every dealer had to have them. Now, Autocheck is the new one because they got in bed with Cox. Cox is big. They got all, all the tools that you need.

[00:21:42] If you don't have tools from Cox, you might not, you really may not be in the car business or at least not making some right moves because they got a lot of tools that make sense for you. But the customer getting back to the story, you know, we get, we show them the auto check. We show them the Carfax. I used to have a guy who, who actually was my mentor, I believe in the car business would be Dan Kern. Dan Kern, one of the smartest guys I ever met. He was my GM, my finance manager. He was everything.

[00:22:12] When I started back in 82, sold my first marquee brome. And, uh, Dan would tell a story about, he told the story about every car. He knew where it came from. Now we were a Lincoln Mercury store. So you did have an older clientele, even back in the eighties. You didn't, besides the Cougar, I don't think there was any cars that, you know, Lincolns were, you know, not exact.

[00:22:39] They were tough guy cars, maybe, you know, but the, the town car, the continentals to say they were the, you know, like younger crowd. I don't think so, certain ones, but Dan would, every trade would have a, would have the pedigree he'd tell you about. You know, this one, and even to this day, you know, I don't close deals anymore, but when I did, I would bring out that pedigree. What do I mean by that? You got a used car folder. You show every RO you did.

[00:23:08] You show them all the work you did because that's work they don't have to do. It doesn't hurt you. You spent the average bill in the back house, got to be close to $1,700 a copy, most dealers. Cadillac's probably over two Gs. But you bring out all the ROs. You bring out the, the auto checker, the car fax. You bring out the books, the keys.

[00:23:29] You, you, you show them that, I mean, the auto's got a tool, a part of the tool that actually is a comparables. It shows you where your car ranks, value rank, V rank, they call it, or price rank. And you, you'll, you can show the customer.

[00:23:48] If you're not bringing all that out to close a deal, you're just, you're doing this disservice to the dealership because that's how you keep the gross is by, by telling that pedigree, like you said. But with a car dealer, it can't just be a story. You got to lay that out. Yeah. Build that. It's like a lawyer. You got to build that case for that. And you're right about the, having a competitive set out there for the customer to see.

[00:24:12] Cause they, you know, if someone's shopping, they're not just shopping you, they're shopping a different, your competitors. They're shopping your competitor brands or competitor like brands who are out there. And you got to know what's out there. Cause they're like saying, well, that, why is that one? You know, that one's, you know, $3,000 cheaper. Okay. Well, let's take a look and see. It's not certified. You know, you go through like you have that already because, you know, you're now encountering a very knowledgeable shopper. Yeah.

[00:24:40] And if you're not prepared and, you know, one thing also, once in Toronto, you know, that old school way. And, and unfortunately you can't just say, Oh, bring them in, bring them in. That's always been the old, you know, the old school way. And sometimes managers get upset. Well, just bring it. Well, unfortunately the customer hide in that. I don't want to say hi, but he stands behind his email and he wants everything shown to him. And you got obliged to that because that's your only way you're going to get that customer. Cause he's doing that with everybody.

[00:25:10] You've got to be transparent. You got to give it your best shot or you're not going to get them at all. And me telling them to just come in doesn't really work much anymore. Stevie, I've been saying since 2000 and probably 15, I was saying for the longest time that whoever's the most transparent is going to win this battle. Now during COVID, I was completely wrong because during COVID you didn't have to be transparent.

[00:25:40] You just had to have cars. People came, they got on an elevator, they paid what they had to pay and they got their car. Unfortunately, we're feeling that brunt of those negative equities now. And I don't even know how long that's going to continue. I will be retired by the time it's cleaned up, but it doesn't help that there's no new car inventory either with it. No leases. There's no leases per se to talk about. The leases they do have, it's just talk because there's no vehicles usually to back it up.

[00:26:09] They don't have the inventory to back the cars up, right? Well, it's usually, here's the issue with that. They're usually some of these programs are like very, very low trim. So if you're getting allocation from a manufacturer, you know, you want to get the highest possible trim level because that's what actually sells. Right. All of these lease programs are on very low level trim, which, you know, you do get, you got to have them, but it's not a desirable, but that's what they leave. And then, you know, people are looking at that.

[00:26:38] Or then also social media has a play on it too. You have all these experts and gurus on there, you know, talking about how to get advantage over the dealer and certain leases, certain that. But it boils down to, do you actually have that in your inventory, which sometimes doesn't even exist. And that's the other problem. Nobody has that. So you got to get into saying, if you want to lease, you got to lease something with a higher trim, but those numbers are totally different. Yeah.

[00:27:07] It's, I hate to say it, the car business is the hardest it's ever been. Yeah. To make deals because used to, let's say the dealer's nut is X, their bills. And they got X amount of guys that they've had for 10 years, 20 years. And they did that based on an inventory of, let's say, 100 new and 50 used. Let me make them simple.

[00:27:38] Today, they got to make the same money and they only get 60 new and they can only get at a price that you can actually sell the car and make a little money about half of that inventory. So they got to make the same money and pay all the bills and keep everybody that they've hired and who has families.

[00:28:03] And they got to keep them all going with half of the inventory. It's like going to a white hen pantry and telling the guy or 7-Eleven and saying, hey, I'm going to take out half your inventory, but you need to make the same amount of money. What's he going to do? You know, it's tough. It's really hard today. You know, I think car dealers are doing the best they can. We're in a different climate for employees. Employees are different today.

[00:28:31] I mean, I never would have believed it, but I was on a call with a bunch of performance managers and they were talking about SPFs. So dealers had SPFs. For those of you who don't know what that is, a SPF is like an actual bonus of some sort. But usually cash in the car business. If you sell three cars in a day, you get a hat trick, you get a buck and a half a car, 300, but whatever it is. SPFs.

[00:28:58] They're telling me that salespeople in today's market of a certain age would rather have three days off than $1,000. Well, for me, I think that it's like insane. $1,000. I'll take $1,000. But today it's all about my personal time. I want the quality of life.

[00:29:25] Well, you know, we work for a living in the car business. You're open nine to nine. And if you get out at nine, you got lucky because customers don't really look at that clock. They're not looking and saying, oh, we only, if this isn't where shoppers, we have 10 minutes till closing. Nobody cares. You're there till it's all done.

[00:29:48] And if you store a car at 930, you can plan on getting home at midnight because it's going to take an hour, an hour and a half to get the car ready, delivered in finance. And then you got to explain the car. And today to explain a car, I mean, they actually hire, there's BMW. I don't know if Cadillacs have a lot of them. They have guys and girls who are just people who explain the car. I forget what they call it. They call them like delivery specialists. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:17] Because I don't know shit about cars. I tell them. I don't know nothing. I would have loved to have delivery specialists because I didn't know shit. My referrals always knew it. That they'd have to figure out how to use everything. That's, oh, read the manual because I don't know. I don't know. I'd get my own car built. That's a big thing to have delivery specialists. And it's interesting. And I'll tell this.

[00:30:39] I think now the dealers that are, you've got to really have smart, good people in your staff. And I don't, you know. It's all about people today. It is. It is. It is. Still, you know, Marcus Limonis always says that people. Process products. And people is the most important. I've been saying forever. If you've got good people, make sure they're paid well and they're happy.

[00:31:08] Because you can't go out like you used to replace them. You can't get them. There's no such thing. Don't go. Even in Chicagoland with 7 million people. I don't care if it's LA, if it's New York. You can't replace them. If you've got somebody good, make sure they're happy. Go pat them on the back. If you're an owner, know their name. Say hello. My brother worked at a place 22 years. My brother is the nicest guy you'll ever meet. He's never been on our show.

[00:31:37] He's my youngest brother. He worked at a place for 20 or 18 years. 18 or 22. I don't know, but a long time. And he would go into work early almost every day because he worked in a parts department. And they delivered parts at night for CDJR back then. They'd come at like 3 o'clock in the morning. They had a key. They dropped them off. Well, he'd get there early because all that shit be laying on the floor.

[00:32:01] Well, as soon as the bell rings, these mechanics would be coming to the desk or the parts desk counter and saying, Hey, I need B146, blah, blah, blah, all kinds of parts. So my brother came in early for 18 or whatever many years it was. He put it all away before it started. Never punched in. He never once punched in. He didn't get overtime. He just did it because he wanted everything to run smooth. When he left, that owner didn't even know his fucking name.

[00:32:33] So that just tells you that's not where you got to be in today's world. You got to take care of these guys. He'd still be there probably if somebody would have said so. Now, he's been at the last job. He's been the new one for the last since he left 10 years. So it's not like he's with me who had 55 jobs. I'm a different animal. You fuck with stick around to hear about it. I want to hear about pay change. That's not the deal. It's not what we cut.

[00:33:01] But anyhow, I'm looking forward to having Drew Pearl on and talking to him about his life in the car business because he's done a lot. He's been a GM. I think he's held all the positions. Yeah. I think we'll find it all out. We'll talk with him. And I'm looking forward to a good show.

[00:33:25] And he also promised to have a couple stories for us, too, which he's like, oh, I got a bunch of stories to share. So we look forward to it. Let us off with one last story. Yeah. You'll read something funny. We're all up to the series. I'm a Ford. And Joe McQuillan is my general manager. And Ray Lefevre is my GSM. And we used to, you know, it was a big stroke. We did four or five hundred cars.

[00:33:54] And we would, to close the month, I mean, it would not be uncommon. Joe would make us stay until every deal was booked. It's not like today I know they'll wait. They'll count the deals the next day or day. We had to have them in by midnight. So, Joe, we'd all stay there. So we'd either go out and play touch football in the back and wave. And Joe would yell out pending. And we'd have to see what deals were left and go through these deals, make sure they're funded, blah, blah, blah.

[00:34:23] So one day we decided, me and Joe, Joe was the GIA, by the way. We put on, we went and got two junks out of the back. And we played crash up derby while everybody was closing. And we went full speed ahead at each other in two jump cars. They kept crashing into each other in the back of the lot. Now, Jerry Gleason has passed now, and he was the nicest guy ever to work for.

[00:34:49] But if he would have knew about that when we did it, this is 25 years ago at least, we probably got fired. But that was what kind of shit we could get away with back in the car business back there. Have a smash up derby in the back of the lot. Nobody sued anybody. Nobody complained. Everybody just cheered us on and played smash up derby. So those were one of the fun times. Yeah, I'm sure there's – I've heard some – there are people with stories that, you know, I hear them verbally.

[00:35:18] And it's just – they just don't want to make them public. And I can understand why because people – Send them in emails and I'll read them. Yeah, we'll get you some – we'll start getting into some of these emails. But it really was the wild, wild west back then. And that's what we're trying to bring to this podcast here is not just the stuff that's going on currently, but, you know, going back, being nostalgic and talking about those days that – I mean, I've been in the business April 15 years.

[00:35:48] And, I mean, this is going back, like, 70s, 80s, 90s. And the stuff that – you know, my ears, when I hear that kind of stuff, it's funny. It's scary. It's happening in one. And that's what we're trying to bring here to this show. It was very exciting. I mean, I just went to training at a couple stores in Pennsylvania. And there's, I think, six new hires.

[00:36:15] And four of them hadn't sold a car yet. They just started. That's all. Had never sold a car yet. And it was refreshing to feel the excitement in them talking about how, you know, I'm a big interactive appraisal guy. I think you've got to be with the customer. I don't want to get into the whole thing. You want to know my secret. You call me and you pay me.

[00:36:41] But I know there's so many – these were very young people. When I say, you know, young, they're probably in their late 20s to early 30s. But very excited about making the car industry their profession. Unlike when I started, you know, my wife was a dentist. And I never told anybody what I did. I was embarrassed to say I sold cars. Until I started making more than a dentist.

[00:37:10] Then I was like, you know, fuck them. I make more than them. I got nicer suits, nicer watches, and a nicer house. I can say whatever I want now. But back in the day, you know, you weren't bragging. You sold cars. Today, it's pretty cool. If you're selling cars, you don't go to a cubicle every day and do the same old shit. It's different every single day. That's what I wanted. I wouldn't trade it for the world. I sit and – it's kind of like a big sales tower.

[00:37:39] It was a big office area, a sales tower enclosed with the GSM, the floor manager, the used car manager. It is a riot every day. It's so much fun because they're good people. Yeah. And they're very smart car guys. And it's a great time doing – and no day is the same. And then no day is the same. And then it's truly – I know for me, it's unlike anything.

[00:38:06] And like you're saying, too, I didn't think I'd make a career out of it. But it's turned – and I always tell people, young people, if you're not sure what you want to do in life, you know, go into the military or if you're not feel like you're cut out for that, go into the car business because you can literally – there's, you know, financial, not just sales, marketing, everything.

[00:38:28] I probably told you before when I was downtown at Pearl BMW, I would get probably 10 to 20 requests of lawyer, guys in law school to come and intern with us. We really couldn't let them do that because the car business, no such thing, hard time. If you want to be part time, it's not fair to everybody else. If you're a guy – I don't care if you've been there 50 years.

[00:38:52] If you work one day a week and everybody else works five or six, that's not fair. I could never let them intern. But the point is they would come because you want to learn how to sell and negotiate. Nothing better than the car business. And once you learn that, you can go into any profession there is and be a rock star

[00:39:13] because car guys and girls are really good at negotiating and selling compared to other businesses and how they sell. But I'm going to leave it at that. We'll have Drew Pearl on next week. And as always, Badgie, it's great talking to you. It was fun. Yeah, we want to thank everybody for listening in for this quick little show that we just did. You can go to our websites listed below. Get some more information.

[00:39:43] You can also leave a voicemail on there as well. You can go look at previous episodes. You can sign up to receive alerts and follow us online. Every social media platform, we're on it. Just look us up, True Confessions of a Car Guy. And with that, we will see you guys soon. See you, Badgie. Thanks for listening to True Confessions of a Car Guy.

[00:40:10] Download this podcast on all your favorite podcast platforms and follow us online at trueconfessionsofacarguy.com.