Niche, Scale, and Pivot – How One Dealer Found Success by Doing Less

Niche, Scale, and Pivot – How One Dealer Found Success by Doing Less

In this episode of Word on the Street, we sit down with Jason March of March Motors to discuss how focusing on niche inventory, strategic scaling, and operational efficiency has fueled his dealership’s success. Learn how Jason refined his buy here, pay here model, leveraged WhatsApp for customer engagement, and built a highly efficient sales and service process.

Discover how paid social and targeted automotive marketing have played a key role in reaching the right audience. Tune in for insights on dealership growth, customer referrals, and how doing less—but better—can drive bigger results.

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Transcript

If you're interested in hearing a conversation with a super scrappy entrepreneurial used car dealer, a buy here, pay here dealer specifically, who's changed his model a few times, who's kind of backed into a really cool niche with stocking his inventory with only nine or twelve different models. and a service center that can like perfect those twelve different models and has come up with some unique processes, just catering to Hispanic audiences and communicating through WhatsApp and outsourcing some of his work. It's got a very efficient dealership in Jacksonville, Florida. His name is Jason March. Please enjoy this episode. I'm Andrew Street. This is Word on the Street, and this is Jason March with March Motors.

I'm here with my friend Jason March with March Motors out of Jacksonville, Florida. who I've gotten to know over a handful of years, meeting him at different conferences from Digital Dealer to NIADA, TIADA, and have had the pleasure of doing some work with him on his side of the desk and work together. And man, okay, so this was your dad's store. You've helped take over the reins, gone from one store to two stores. And I think we could start there. Like what was that experience like? And what were you experiencing when you decide to get into opening a second store? So I wanted to buy a piece of real estate and I wanted to focus it on automotive because I understand automotive. It's what I've done my whole life. And so I found a piece of property conveniently, thirty-five minutes away from the dealership. And about an acre, very small office, no service facility. And I was able to renovate the space. And my father and I agreed on a lease for the property for my family business, essentially started leasing the property from me. And that was a ready made tenant. That was good for me. That was good for my bank that I financed the property with. It was a good lesson to learn on how to get a business actually started. You know, in the aspect of there was already a parent company running. You know, one day we drove all the cars over there and we were in business. We were selling cars and the sales didn't come like I thought. We had some government pressures towards the beginning of the fifth month. We were open for six months at this second location. And then our sixth month in business, we sold five cars. My projection was selling twenty five to thirty cars a month. I had had massive turnover with the two employees that were reporting to duty every day there. And the oversight for me was a little difficult because even though it was thirty five minutes away, it could have been an hour and thirty minutes away. It was still difficult to break away and get over there. And then, you know, one of the other challenges we looked at with that was we didn't put a whole lot of money behind increasing our inventory count. So at our big car dealership, our first dealership, we have about we have space for about eighty cars. And at the time we had about sixty cars here. And then we moved thirty cars over to the new store, which is still a little thin. So we went from being relatively well stocked to having two dealerships with smaller inventory levels. And I tend to lean more on a leaner operation. But it was a little too lean on both counts. So, you know, I don't think we put the money behind it that we should have kind of tiptoed in instead of jumping in with both feet. And then, um, along with government pressures, uh, that changed some rulings on, uh, immigration down here in Florida. So that kind of hurt that, that side of the business for us, we do about half of our business, our Spanish speaking customers and, Um, so with a few different obstacles, we decided it was best to bring our inventory back to the first lot, our main store. And then I ended up holding that property and I leased it to another car dealership and they're doing pretty well. So it worked out for me, but it was a good lesson as well. And it's easier to run one dealership than it is to that's for sure. And you went from kind of like, you kind of adjusted demographics as you've been riding, you know, the, the rapids of, of running an independent dealership, really focus growing that Hispanic footprint that you're catering to. Was that while you were opening the second store or did you already have that in place before you opened the doors? Yeah, so for a long time, we've been in business twenty seven years. And for a long time, we would occasionally have a Spanish speaking salesperson or somebody on staff that spoke Spanish. We always thought it was novel to have a Spanish customer buy a car from us. And sometimes we'd be able to communicate with them via an employee. And sometimes we would try to communicate with them via Google Voice or a Google Translate. And I always had a better opportunity to land that customer as a sale when we had somebody that spoke Spanish. And then a couple of years later, in twenty nineteen, I met a gentleman and he's heavily focused on Spanish speaking clientele. And he insisted that I lean more towards that. And and along with that, you have to hire the people that can speak the language. So our dealership is now seventy five percent bilingual uh english and spanish and that's really opened up a lot of business for us in our community or in jacksonville florida and um so in twenty twenty we really started making a significant effort towards getting more spanish business and we took that spanish business from ten percent of our sales every month to some months as high as seventy percent of our sales. It was a significant shift for us. And now, as of February of twenty twenty five, we're seeing some government pressures come on some of our Spanish speaking clientele. And we're going to see how that affects us going forward, but we're going to continue to stay lean and we're going to continue to offer Spanish speaking employees to service Spanish speaking clients. Yeah, it's it's so dynamic. And it sounds like the person that you worked with, it was influential to help, you know, while you're making a decision steering the ship, which direction to go. How he's had success in a different state, niching with with Spanish speaking audiences, or Spanish speaking customers, Was that somebody from a twenty group or was that somebody met at a conference? We actually met in a service twenty group talking about our service facility and we got to become friends and similar age group similar had some mutual contacts but we really hit it off and we stay in contact and he's dealt with the government pressures too in his state and we try to stay in touch about different ways to continue to make good decisions in our business model, similar business models, but we've learned a lot from each other and it's definitely been helpful that Twenty Group and networking with like people. Is that through NIADA? Yes. You've been in there for years, right? I think we've been doing that nine years now. And if like, If there's other dealers looking, considering a twenty group, would you recommend it? Any big takeaway that you've had outside of changing the direction you've gone? I think we've really been fortunate to have some good people in our twenty groups over the years, and I think we've learned a lot that we just didn't really know. You can read a lot before Facebook groups. I feel like people lean on Facebook groups pretty heavily these days, but I feel like, you know, twenty group, you get a little more intimate with the people in there and they can kind of share things that they do that they may not want to publicize out on the social media channels. And we're happy to have made a lot of great friends and business contacts through those groups. And Jason, in my observation, I've only been around a handful of them just going out and doing education, but it seems like a good place for dealers to be a little bit more vulnerable than they maybe can be with their staff or their customers or family even. Is that right? I mean, when you're in a room with a group of people that fight the same battle you do every day, there's a lot of assumptions that people have. There's a lot of things that it's just like minds. brainstorming and sharing. And it's really a special time. I look forward to it. We meet three times a year and I would do more of it if my schedule allowed it, because I think some of the information you gain there is just so valuable. Yeah, I think they're amazing. You can open the kimono. I'm doing this with like other vendors and with other, you know, marketing agency owners and things. All right. So back back to the like, I'm really interested in like these these adjustments and pivots that dealerships can do. So you said when you moved to more Spanish speaking customers, it changed up who you were hiring. I imagine it changes up the inventory you're stocking. What other surprises did you have as far as just being prepared? So one that still challenges us is the documents in Spanish. Not a lot of the DMS providers offer Spanish speaking uh, clients documents in their native language. I've heard of some dealers getting in trouble with that. And, you know, it's kind of funny, the documents in your DMS, um, that's like the service you're paying for and they don't readily provide those documents. So we have been able to hire people to do the closing statements, the sign of contracts and the different paperwork involved with purchasing a car are solely bilingual. We heavily train with them. We want the language to come across correctly, but I definitely don't like handing a packet of papers in English to somebody that doesn't. That's not their native language. I obviously want them to have the information, but I'd much rather hand it to them in their native language so they can have clarification on what they bought and they can reference that in the future. As far as the staffing goes, when you staff your showroom with Spanish speaking salespeople, you also have to staff your service department with Spanish speaking people as well because your customer especially in our situation, we service our customer in house primarily. And we want that customer to feel comfortable in the service department because the old saying goes, you win the customer in sales and you lose the customer in service. And when he can't speak again in the native language, it creates issues, creates animosity, um, sales people don't like being the translator all around the dealership so we have found that you can't just dip your foot in you really need to invest in the whole dealership and that's a little tricky when it comes to legacy employees when you're really looking to take that step into a different market some changes sometimes have to be made they're a little difficult when you staff up like that. I imagine like, okay, so it's the getting your salespeople, your service, the documentation that they're getting DMS, it's a lot of adjustments. What about like the the inventory that you're stocking? Has that changed much? To try to cater to Hispanic audiences? So, you know, we, as a company, we decided to really align our company values behind what cars we're purchasing and not to sound too much like a motivational guru or something, but we took a dive into our performing vehicles that we sold quickly, that performed well for us, that didn't take many visits to the shop after the sale. and we decided to just buy those twelve vehicles. And what we learned was not only were these vehicles high quality, but they also attracted a customer that we were really comfortable with, that we want to serve. Some customers tend to gravitate towards certain vehicles, and we wanted to align our mission of good cars to good people. with the inventory that we offer so you know buy here pay here is our specialty we we focus heavily on that uh ninety percent of our sales are buy here pay here customers and we hold the note so that's very important that we're giving a quality car to our customer and a friend of mine uh encouraged me to do this calculation and i want to share it with you is out of my current active customers They drove approximately eighty four thousand miles yesterday. So when you think about all the customers lives you support and all the families and all the businesses that depend on those customers, we want to take a lot of the guesswork out of what vehicle we offer. So it becomes a lot simpler decision for that customer when they do need another vehicle and they choose March Motors as the dealer they're going to buy from. That's like a quarter of the way to the moon. That's amazing. I just had to fact check myself to make sure. I was like, maybe that's the moon's distance. It's a lot. That's a lot. Yeah. And so it's nine models total is primarily what you're looking to stock with. Yeah, about probably about twelve or twelve. And what's cool, it sounds like it's like kind of like the Southwest old model where they all had seven thirty sevens only. And so it was easy for them to repair and stock parts and everything. You know, I think I was reading a couple of years ago how a couple of fast food chains had really dialed in their menu. You know, McDonald's was one I read that was offering some healthy alternatives and and they cut those because the sales weren't good and Maybe the profit margins weren't good. And Chick-fil-A, people like to reference Chick-fil-A, but they are continually staying on top of their menu offerings to make sure that what they have is still relevant. And I think we're doing that as well. We really like certain models, and sometimes they either get a little long in the tooth, maybe they're a little older, or they're not being produced anymore. So we're trying to stay up with that. It can't just be the same twelve models year after year. But we're really happy with it. It does create some difficulty in trying to find those vehicles. We end up having to go a little wider out in our search. We're not just going to the local auctions in Orlando and in Jacksonville. We tend to get out in the southeast quite a bit. We do try to stay away from vehicles with rust. So we not buying many vehicles from states like that but we ship a lot of cars into jacksonville florida from a lot of states around the southeast it does seem like an interesting uh you know headwind to have is like getting those specific models just you know finding those at markets around you total side note but we have a database of what people are driving If we want to look at just targeting specific folks saying, hey, we're buying Nissan Altimas right now, and your Altima has never been worth more for a five minute appraisal, go through this form. We can do that. Or a Saturn or whatever it is that you guys are stocking. That'd be great. Yeah. Yeah. It could be an idea. Because what I've found is if we're not just saying we're buying cars like every other dealership, but it's like we're buying... you know, Nissan Altimas right now, and it goes through somebody's newsfeed or through their phone, and they drive a Nissan Altima, they typically stop. And it's giving us a lot higher quality of appraisal leads as well as like driving down the costs. We'd love that. Okay. That wasn't the purpose of this call, but I think we're unearthing some new things. uh okay so what else okay we're talking marketing now what have you found that's been like totally different with marketing to spanish audiences what's worked what hasn't worked yeah so we used to be really heavy on television back when we met each other i want to say that was both before we had kids so we're probably ten years we've known each other and probably about seven or eight years ago, we really cut a lot of the TV advertising. So with our Spanish advertising, we weren't doing a great job of social media marketing. What we found was the Spanish referral marketing was unbelievable. And something I've kind of learned over the last couple of years is that Americans tend to listen to each other, but they take the referral with a grain of salt. So if I tell you, hey, Andrew, go check out this new butcher in town that I found. He's got great steaks. You may or may not listen to me. But what I've learned with the Spanish community, at least in Jacksonville, is if you sell a Spanish customer a vehicle and they have a good experience and they tell one of their family or friend network, the chances are much higher that that person will come to visit or at least reach out. And the trust factor of the Spanish community is much higher. Now, I think there's a few pieces to that. And one of those is there aren't a lot of people in my community that are serving the Spanish customer clientele very well. So that definitely helps in our favor. And then I also think that having a plethora of vehicles that Spanish people are interested in is also helpful. And then the last piece of that would be giving them financing options that they may not have in other dealerships can make that referral a lot easier customer to sell and become another referral source for you. So it definitely has perpetuated more so than I'd ever remember in my career. Some weeks we're writing three, four thousand dollars worth of referral checks and we're paying, you know, that may be two hundred, two hundred and fifty or three hundred dollars per referral just based on how many customers you've referred us in the past. But that's my favorite advertising money to spend. Yeah. Referral check because you're paying it after the sale and we're able to capture that with a photo. We have a big fake check in the showroom and we're able to show that off on social media. And we feel really we feel like that really helps perpetuate getting more of those customers in. So it sounds like, do you have like a mechanism upfront to proactively ask customers for referrals? You know, the sales person is also getting that referral. So it's in the sales person's best interest to really talk about how referrals can not only pay you, but help your friends and family. So, We're probably not doing as good as we should about having written advertisements around the dealership. But as far as our salespeople, they understand the value. So this month, we have a bonus in place where the salesperson will increase their commission on every car sold that comes from a referral. And we want to start tax season off with that. sources are usually some of the easier customers to please and they typically become good customers in the future especially in the buy here pay here realm this is like this is really random but this reminds me of like i used to work in e-commerce when we like first left meta or facebook at the time but One of them, one of my clients was like a baseball glove bidder. He like makes these different shaped balls that you put in a baseball glove and it like shapes it for different bases and positions. And as soon as we find out that we'd sell it into a dugout, everybody in that dugout would buy it. It's kind of the same idea as like, if we can get into this community and serve that community well and get people to share that message, It spreads, they'll come back. And it's like from the marketing end outside of like the what doesn't cost money out of pocket to advertise and get people to introduce their friends to you. But it's like, can we do outreach using your DMS data to your past customers? Because a lot of what we're doing is like as soon as somebody buys is stopping the advertising of inventory and incentives and financing. but to start saying, thank you for buying, here's the service department. But it could be like, hey, follow our page for updates. And just like a reminder to everybody who's purchased from us ever about our referral bonus and march them through a couple of next steps to refer their friend to our dealership. Is there anything else that you can do like with your DMS data that you've figured out in the past start activating old customers for referrals or trade in trade ups kind of thing. And this is one of my favorite topics. Every year I prepare a calendar and I send it out. And this year we did seven thousand calendars, not like a magazine. And so we print the customer's name on the back. The first year we did it, we did individual envelopes. It was terrible. So the second year we started printing it in the format of a magazine similar, you know, where you print the name of the customer or the current resident on the back. And our magazine has photos of trucks and stylish SUVs that we sell here at March Motors. And we have our logo on each page, kind of like a watermark on each car. And I love the outreach. It's it's very passive. but it stays in your face all year and we don't do fancy cars. We don't do unrealistic, uh, cars. We put our inventory that we sell every day up there. We try to find the fun stuff, the yellow stuff, the lifted stuff, but it's stuff that we sell. And, uh, we really, I, I'm really passionate about the calendars and, uh, it's just kind of a old school way of reaching out to a customer that has been, uh, customer in the past or current customer and you kind of tend to hang around all year so that's something and so you mail this you just mail it to all your past customers yep whether they live there or not you know chances are if they don't live there anymore the customer that has occupied their previous home may may be a customer in the future yeah or at least needs a calendar everybody needs a calendar love that it's like ultimate top of mind awareness because you're constantly looking at the yeah and gifting is an art like It's easy to send them like a key chain with March Motors, but it's like, okay, are they gonna, is that something they want? They'll use this at least. It's like when we first started, we had just like a handful of clients. And so we sent them all beer. Like I brewed beer myself. I put labels on it with their logos on it. And we shipped six packs with everybody, every business's logos on them. And it's illegal for one I found out, but it's also a lot of these beers like exploded and broke in the mail. We got some hate back from the U S postal service and some of the, you know, some of our clients didn't drink and they were so in this, but it was a good test and like trying to do something that's thoughtful and a thanks for, you know, working with us. Uh, that's, uh, yeah, that's a false start in, in getting out the door. Okay. So marketing your, your DMS, giving them a calendar. It seems like it's been lighthearted. You've seen some people probably come back or unknowingly refer friends that you can't really track that ROI, I assume, but you can feel it. It makes me feel good too. I think we got it. We all have little pet projects like that, that where you get passionate about and, you know, it costs about five thousand, you know, it's, maybe like a dollar a calendar, a little more. And just seems like money well spent. It's really not that much in advertising dollars these days. Yeah. So and I like that. I like the combination of, you know, digital advertising, print advertising and the referral advertising. That's that's our three current mediums right now. What do you what are you guys doing with print? We use a service that does a card each four times a year. So we send all new customers information to a service called dealer cards. And then they begin a mail campaign for us four times a year. So they get an anniversary card for the purchase. They get a Thanksgiving card to try to differentiate us from all the Christmas cards. Give them a birthday card. And then we do a fourth card that is giving them something to come in and redeem, whether it's a car wash or an oil change. And then in the third year, I had mentioned we're by your payer. So once we start getting down that track, those cards start turning into, we're trying to get the customer to come back in and trade. We're also talking about referrals in those cards as well. So It's a nice service. I think it's forty bucks a customer. And it handles three years of high quality greeting cards with our logo and, you know, their address stamp. We don't touch them. The only thing we get is the return mail. We also use that return mail in our finance company where we then chart if the customer is no longer at that address. So know with finance companies it's kind of nice to know where your customer is at and uh if we need to get in touch with them this is a way for us to get a little bit of understanding that they may not be at the same address that they were when they purchased the car it sounds like it serves a couple different purposes yeah we're happy with it And we'd like the price point and, uh, I like that it's a simple product and we're pretty hands off other than sending a database of current customers each week. And they take it from there. They do the direct mail and you can see the returns that come back in. And so that's all the PR all the print stuff you're doing. It sounds like it's pretty much calendars of the men of March motors each month. And then it's the, the, uh, the direct mail piece. That's right. I was kidding, it's not the men in March motors I heard. Yeah, we all pose with spantily clad out in the Florida sunshine. Okay, digital. You guys are doing a lot with digital, it sounds like. What are you finding that's working well right now? Yeah, so something we've been trying with the help of you guys at DealerOMG is I had this idea that we could solicit our customer specifically our Spanish speaking customer in the best medium for them to respond back. And what we've learned over the many years of advertising with Facebook is that Facebook Messenger is not typically the most common communication platform for people in general. I know myself, I'm usually using iMessage or SMS to talk to people. What I learned with our Spanish community is they typically are on WhatsApp and that's really easy for international texting, video sharing, audio sharing. So what we did with your help is we set up some Facebook campaigns where the customer is able to respond and it takes them into WhatsApp. We're no longer soliciting customer responses in Facebook Messenger. We found we were spending a ton of time in Facebook Messenger with not a lot of great results. A lot of response from us was going with no response back from the customer. So we have felt really good about our change of direction with utilizing Facebook and WhatsApp's connection to advertise on Facebook and then move the customer into WhatsApp. are you noticing about whatsapp like are you kind of following what the conversation looks like is it pretty much the same as is it still available pricing you know any of that stuff you know you don't have all the pre pre um i said pre-recorded responses but the the responses that are already there for you just to tap and send and I feel like the conversation is getting a lot deeper, a lot quicker than just that preliminary conversation. Is it available? Can I set up an appointment? Because you already kind of see somebody's name. With WhatsApp, you're getting their number and their name. You're maybe getting a picture. I think with WhatsApp, we're also getting into their personal lives because that's where their personal communication is going on. Whereas in Facebook Messenger, you may contact some of your friends in there. You may have some going conversations with others. But generally, I don't feel like Messenger is the most common first tier communication medium. So with our Spanish speakers, My belief is that WhatsApp is their first tier communication medium, and we want to be there. We want to be in that app. We don't want to be in the Messenger app. And so as soon as we can get the conversation in there, the better we feel about our prospect of getting the customer in the door. Do you use WhatsApp yourself? Just to talk to my people, just to talk to my Latin American friends. What about you, Ashley? um i don't we started a um twenty group whatsapp a while back um but i think everyone just kind of fell off of it okay we just like text each other i've got a few whatsapps like my cousins my dad's group of dads who were like my kids friends dads and a couple others i'm starting to use it more it works well yeah i use it more than facebook messenger now And like, so let me, let me explain this cause I think it's kind of interesting. So with what we're doing with Jason and with March Motors targeting people who use Meta's platform, Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp in Spanish. So immediately just eliminate a ton of folks with messages in Spanish. And as soon as they tap it, it opens up a WhatsApp messenger and we're getting three hundred, three hundred and fifty conversations a month that get started on that platform. Do you have a sense for like how qualified those are versus third party leads versus Facebook leads? I was looking at some data before I started talking to you and you know, our appointment ratio with those folks is coming in around. Twenty eight percent. Twenty eight percent of the people who are having conversations of of customers who agreed to an appointment. OK. Are going to show up. So. One of the amazing that you have that information at your fingertips, but it's also that's a reasonable show rate because Facebook leads is lower in my experience. Unless we're like so dialed in that that person started filling out a credit app on the website and then they abandoned and then we retarget them and they fill out a lead form on Facebook. That person's a little bit more qualified than or that person's a little further down the decision making process than somebody that just is ice cold filling out a lead form. You know, I think. Our main goal is to get the customer here at the dealership. We do not do any digital sales. We are not online sales. So when we can get that customer here in front of us, we have much better success with selling them a car than when we're talking to them on the phone or texting on WhatsApp. So it's really always our end goal is get the customer here, fill out an application, and let's take a look. So if there's like another dealership listening that wants to start with WhatsApp, do you have any, uh, advice on kind of where to get started outside of calling us? Of course. So having a WhatsApp business number is important and responding quickly is extremely important. We have four people in our BDC and those people are working those WhatsApp leads every day immediately when they come in. So I think anytime you're going to take on something new, you got to really prioritize the response time because I think, um, Not only will it provide value to the customer, but you'll see results quicker too, right? You're not looking for how many new conversations were started, but how many of those conversations actually turned into a conversation. And that was always our problem with Messenger was you get thousands of leads and we would maybe see four appointments that showed up and It was very tricky to balance the time that it took to give great response time with those customers and just the volume of them. So what I've learned with the WhatsApp is you don't get the same volume, but the leads, they actually start a conversation. And again, you're kind of in their personal space at that point. You're not in Messenger, which can be kind of maybe a little less personal. So when you're going to take on the WhatsApp, if that's something you're interested in and you're going to try to talk to people, being able to speak to them in their native language and having an app that can be utilized by multiple people. If you're off one day, I really feel it's important that you have somebody that's able to respond for you and give back to that customer quickly because That makes a big difference. And another thing that it sounds like you wrote the book on, if there's another independent dealer that's listening that is considering changing their model, any advice that you'd give them? I think it really helps to take a look in the mirror or look behind you in the rear view mirror and see what has not worked. One thing we did in twenty twenty was we took a good look at the cars we sold quickly, the time to line. And then time to line, meaning how long it takes you to get a car ready for sale. And then the days on lot is how many total days does it take for that car to sell? And more and more, it's more expensive to hold inventory. So if you're able to sell a car in a month or two months, that's a lot better than if a car is sitting on your lot for three or four months. It's a lot more expensive for the dealer to have a car sit on their lot for three or four months. So one thing was we found certain cars would sell very quickly. But the problem with those cars is they would either wreck or they would repossess very quickly as well. So there's multiple things I would consider if I were to open a different dealership. And one of those would be, what's your target market? Understand what those people drive, where do they live, where you want to locate yourself, and then understand what the market looks for. And maybe you haven't had a good experience with in the past. And even though the car may sell quickly, How did the result from that car sale work for you? Now with third party, and I'm not very accustomed to traditional third party financing, but I do know with some finance companies, you do have a running reputation. Maybe it's a pool or maybe it's something where they're tracking your portfolio that you're originating. So I do think it benefits everyone to sell a quality car and to sell a customer who has good intentions on paying for the vehicle so you know it's it's a balance of what sells quickly and what performs for the loan and what works in your area and then once you choose how you're going to tackle this you really got to get out there and give it your full effort not just halfway I think we have done really good in one field, which is selling cargo vans. But right now, I think I have one cargo van for sale. So I'm not a real cargo van dealer. I feel like I should have four or five cargo vans for sale all the time. So I really feel like if you're going to go after something specifically, you need to make sure you have what's called critical mass or you have enough of that vehicle. If you're going to be a truck dealer, Having two trucks on the lot doesn't qualify you as a truck dealer. I would think seven to ten vehicles, seven to ten pickup trucks. Now you're starting to catch the eyes of people driving by that are in the pickup truck market. So those would be a couple of thoughts that I have for people that are maybe trying to find their way, maybe somebody new or trying to kind of reinvent their dealership. It's cool. This is what I love about like the scrappy entrepreneurial spirit of the independent dealers. You can kind of adjust and then see if it works and then come back. And you're not kind of beholden to OEMs and all the stuff that franchise dealers are stuck with. And if we want to test out our market and test out our marketing and just say, hey, for the rest of this month, we're going to do truck month. It's truck month at March Motors. We should see. We have five trucks. We're going to push the hell out of those and just see how our market resonates with it. And then at the end, let's sit down and be like, how did that feel? Do we want to try to stock more trucks? Seems like there's a market for trucks within, you know, our DMA and our city. Anyways, this is what I dig about what you're doing. You know, and then I think you also got to look at, okay, what's the downside if we were to try that? What could possibly go wrong? The worst thing that you would have is maybe seven or eight pickup trucks on the lot that you would either have to reduce the price on or you would sell them wholesale. These days, independent dealerships still battle wholesale unless you specialize in it. I know for guys like us, we do not get great wholesale prices. We don't get great wholesale numbers at the auction. So I think the downside is pretty limited because you still have a decent asset in a pickup truck. I think you do need to be strategic about the price point and the mileage. And I think also the trim package on that vehicle is important too. So there's a couple things that you should consider if you do want to get out there and try something different. and uh you know buying trucks with steel wheels and two-wheel drive is there's a market for that but uh you know you got to be thoughtful of your approach and you got to try more than one and it sounds like you got to keep your marketer in check when they're coming out with wild hair ideas i like that truck month we've done that many times it's fun yeah i've seen it um What in like, just like with these different decisions and pivots and not even that, but just like something that's happened with you and your career and at your store that's been like, aha, this is it. We're doing it right now. I know it ebbs and flows, but what's like something that's, you know, one month or one experience that you've had at the store that was like, this is why we do it. I think one week we sold eight of the same model vehicles. And it was like, well, we sell about twenty cars a week and eight of those were the same model. And we were like, all right, we're on something, you know, and, you know, finding things that continually perform for the length of the loan, looking back on cars that pay off and then having customers that have bought multiple vehicles from you. No, these aren't things that happen one day. It's kind of lead up to just kind of big lead up. Some of these things take a long time to get settled. You know, one thing we started doing was tracking our vehicles every movement through our reconditioning department. And for those dealers on the call, you know, I feel like that's really something that you should put a lot of emphasis on. When we get a vehicle, whether it's from Texas or from Florida, we're usually receiving that vehicle within two days of purchase. And it is for sale on the website within seven days of purchase. And then we sell the vehicle for in thirty four days on average. So we're really happy with that number. We really like that that quick turn. And. We don't stock a ton of vehicles. So we have about eighty eighty eight vehicles in stock and about thirty four of those are for sale. So as soon as we recondition them, they come out for sale and they're replacing vehicles that got sold yesterday. But we really are looking at you had mentioned earlier about Southwest Airlines having the same planes. You know, when you only stock a certain type of vehicle your technicians get really good at working on those vehicles you tend to have parts left over from either wrecked vehicles or or parts vehicles and you can tend to stock parts that you know are either difficult to come by or something that's broken on each one so you can really expedite that and one of the last things i really like is that we have a tire shop next door that rents a building and we have given them most of our business On the one term that they stock all of our tires that day. So we get tires done on a car in an hour and a half. And they always have the tires we need in stock because they're always the same. So a couple of economies of scale there that we have found are really helpful when you kind of limit what you're doing. Yeah. And they have a symbiotic relationship with some local businesses. I think that's what symbiotic means. I don't know. It's like the fish that sticks onto the back of a whale. It like cleans that fish, but it gets food at the same time. Um, This is eyeopening. Like, I'm just like, it, it keeps me thinking about like stuff that, that we can explore collaboratively. Like if, and if like one thing, if you weren't, if you didn't have the notoriety and do all the public speaking and grow up in the car industry, what do you think you'd be doing? I don't know. Day trading stocks probably. Okay. I think you would be good at that. You can do it for two hours a day. I like the brush. Yeah, it feels great. It's much more rewarding than a mutual fund, an ETF that just slowly moves. It's like, all right, this one just tanked. What else? I think I had a good little closer thing. Advice to give independent dealers. I already asked that. Jason, I guess if anybody wants to follow you or connect with you somehow, what's the best way? Yeah. Email me, Jason at MarchMotors.com. I love networking with people. I've met a lot of great people through some podcast stuff. I want to try to be helpful for new and old dealers that are looking for a change. I'll just mention that something we've implemented in the last few years is hiring people in other countries to do some of our work. from home. And we've found a lot of benefits to that. And we want to continue to offer employment opportunities to people in different parts of the world that may be able to do a job for us a little less than what we would have to pay in the United States. And not because I don't want to hire people in the United States, but I feel like with all the pressure that we get with rising interest rates, expensive cars, parts, whatever's going to happen in the future. It's definitely a way that you can budget your payroll a little differently. And it's really been helpful for us in areas like collections, BDC, and some other kind of like computer type jobs. So we're really happy with that. And I'd love to have a conversation if anybody's interested about that. I feel like we could set up another company on the side that helps dealers structure those relationships and those call centers. But we'll have to do that. Put in our two weeks notice here. Well, Jason, man, I really appreciate your time, dude. I look forward to getting together. What I didn't ask about was the yoga and tea. Is that still part of your regimen? I'm drinking black coffee these days. I'm doing the carnivore diet. So that's been good. Lost about twenty pounds in. Three months. And wow, not much yoga lately. Got little kids at home that are waking up all all times of the morning, so. I mean, I never do yoga either, but I knew that you and I were talking today and I was up and I'm like, you know, do yoga. I've got time. It's great. It's like a massage. It's a peaceful way to start the day. Yeah. All right, brother. Well, thanks for your time, man. Thanks, Andrew. Later, Jason. Thanks, Ashley. Thank you.