The Dealership Mogul: Leading a $2B Dealer Group

Everybody was scared to buy dealerships. I didn't really have any more knowledge than anybody else, but every recession comes to an end. So I wrap my arms around him and I said, hey, I'll teach you to run a $100 million business in five years. If I was Stellanus, I would give the US-based leadership the tools that they need to be successful and be competitive in the market. It doesn't always matter what offense you run, but whatever offense you run and you got to run it well. So. Aaron Ziegler on the CDG podcast. Aaron, welcome. Thanks for having me. Good to have you on. Should I call you a car dealer or a media savant? I know which one to choose. I think I'll go with car dealer. I think so too. So you've done pretty well on that realm to say the least. Yeah, we've got a great, great team behind us. I love it. We're going to talk all about it. We're going to talk about the market. We're going to talk about acquisitions. We're going to talk about your podcast. We're going to talk about power sports. So a lot to cover. As usual, before we get started, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get into this industry? Yeah, so my dad started out when he graduated high school, couldn't afford to go to college. He started selling cars in the summer, made enough money to go to college, sold his way through college. And then when he was 26 years old, the dealership in the next town over had been bankrupt three times, basically got it for nothing. So he jumped right from selling cars to own in a dealership and in over the course of his career, he turned around a bunch of stores and ended up with five dealerships. So I went to college. I didn't know what I wanted to do growing up if I wanted to be in the business or not. But after my senior year of high school, I sold my first car and just fell in love with the business. And that's all I wanted to do is sell cars from then on out. So graduated college, went to NAD Academy, worked in every position coming up through the organization. And then took over as president when I was 28. Tell me about, so you started in this business selling cars. Is that what you were saying? I did, yeah. In high school, I worked in parts and service, but called my first kind of real job was selling cars. And that's where I really fell in love with the business. What was it for you that actually attracted you to the industry? I mean, clearly, family business understood. But I always, I'm always interested to know that, you know, what actually led you to sticking around and wanting to kind of grow with it, with the business. So I grew up as a sports fanatic, played all kinds of sports, raised jet skis and played hockey. And every time you score a goal in hockey, you win a race in jet ski and you get this adrenaline rush. It was the exact same thing when you sell a car. It was like, you had this huge adrenaline rush. And it was just so much fun to help customers out. You know, customers are excited when they're buying a car. And I did it the first time and just absolutely loved it. And to this day, you know, I don't go through the whole process of selling cars, but every time a friend of mine buys a car or family member, you know, you still get that adrenaline rush.

大家都不敢买汽车经销商。我其实并没有比别人更多的知识，但每次经济衰退总会结束。所以我搂住他说，嘿，我教你在五年内经营一个价值一亿美元的生意。如果我是Stellanus，我会给美国领导团队所需的工具，使他们在市场上成功并具有竞争力。进攻的方式有很多种，但无论你采用哪种方式，都必须做到最好。Aaron Ziegler在CDG播客中谈到了这些问题。Aaron，欢迎你。谢谢你邀请我。很高兴你能来。我该称你为汽车经销商还是传媒能人？我知道该怎么选。我选择汽车经销商。我也这么认为。你在这个领域做得非常好，可以这么说。是的，我们有一个很棒的团队。我喜欢这样。我们将谈论很多内容。我们会谈到市场、收购、你的播客，以及动力运动，所以要谈的很多。那么，像往常一样，在开始之前，先介绍一下你自己。你是怎么进入这个行业的？我的父亲高中毕业时，因为无法负担上大学的费用，开始在夏天卖车，赚了足够的钱去上大学，并且一直靠卖车支付学费。后来26岁时，邻镇的一家经销商已经破产了三次，基本上以非常低的价格拿到了，所以他从卖车直接跳到拥有一家经销商。在他的职业生涯中，他扭转了很多店的局面，最后拥有五家经销商。我上了大学，我不知道自己长大后是不是想做这一行，但在高三那年夏天，我卖出了第一辆车，立即爱上了这个行业。于是我大学毕业后去了NAD学院，每个职位都做过，最后在28岁时成为总裁。那么你是从销售汽车开始进入这个行业的，是这样吗？是的，高中时我在零件和服务部门工作，但第一份真正的工作是卖车，也是从那时起，我真正爱上了这个行业。是什么吸引你进入这个行业？我知道这是家族企业，但我总是感兴趣，是什么让你坚持下去并希望与业务一起成长。我从小就是个体育迷，玩各种运动，赛艇和冰球。每次在冰球比赛中进球或在赛艇比赛中获胜时，你都会感到一股肾上腺素激增。卖车时也是一样的感觉。当时的顾客也很兴奋，所以第一次做的时候，我就完全爱上了这个行业。直到今天，虽然我不再亲自卖车，但每当朋友或家人买车时，我都会再次感到那种肾上腺素激增的感觉。

Yeah, I know. You definitely do. You know. it's funny because Ross is a creator who is part of our CDG creator network, which is really just a fancy term for other automotive influencers who, you know, we exclusively work with here. I spoke with him the other day and he said this similar thing. You know, he's got incredible opportunities within media and he was and he actually put a post about it on Instagram and he said, like, I want to keep selling cars because people get addicted to that adrenaline rush. And I and, you know, it's funny because I know the feeling. I definitely didn't want to stay, you know, in like, I always want to, you know, I always wanted to do more and different things, but I definitely the feeling can be very addictive. And it's just fun, especially when you get that yes and you make that sale. Yeah, you got to, you know, this is a business that you got to love it to be good at it. And you got to live it every single day, every single minute of the day. And we enjoy it a lot.

是啊，我知道。你肯定懂的，哈哈。Ross 是我们 CDG 创作者网络的一员，他是一位创作者，这网络其实也就是个花哨的称呼，说白了就是一些我们专门合作的汽车行业影响者。我前几天跟他聊过，他也说了类似的话。你知道的，他在媒体领域有很棒的机会，他还在 Instagram 上发了一条动态，说他想继续卖车，因为人们会对那种肾上腺素飙升的感觉上瘾。而且，你知道吗，这感觉我是知道的。我以前也不想待在原地，总想做更多不同的事情，但这种感觉确实让人上瘾。而且这很有趣，特别是当你听到客户说“是”并达成交易的时候。是的，你知道的，这行你得热爱它才能做好，每天每分每秒都得投入其中，而我们确实很享受这一点。

Before we get into nitty gritty, give us a sense of your scale, your brands. Just tell us, give us a little high level overview of the organization. We've got 41 locations. We're based out of Kalamazoo, Michigan. We've got a lot of dealerships around Chicago and in Wisconsin and Indiana as well. So really kind of Midwest based. We've got a lot of a lot of larger volume stores. So kind of run the gamut with franchises. We have all the domestics, most of the high lines, BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, Land Rover, you know, Mazarati. And then we got most of the high volume imports, Toyota, Honda, Nissan. So we really kind of run the gamut with most of the franchises out there.

在深入细节之前，请先介绍一下你们的规模和品牌。给我们一个关于这个组织的概述。 我们有41个营业点，总部在密歇根州的卡拉马祖。我们在芝加哥周边、威斯康星州和印第安纳州也有很多经销店，所以我们的业务主要集中在中西部地区。我们有很多大规模的门店，涵盖了各种品牌。 我们代理了所有国内品牌，大部分高端品牌，比如宝马、奔驰、捷豹、路虎和玛莎拉蒂。此外，我们还代理了大多数高销量的进口品牌，如丰田、本田、日产。可以说，我们几乎涵盖了市面上的所有品牌。

How have you scaled, right? What's been your strategy with acquisitions? Yeah. So in 2002, when I took over the organization, we didn't have a lot of structure. So we really kind of spent the next five years building and building structure, building culture, building up people. We started Ziggler University at that time to develop people going forward. We hired recruiters and we did about a five year period. We did do a lot of growth. And also on the recession hit in 2008. And everybody was scared to buy dealerships. I didn't really have any more knowledge than anybody else, but every recession comes to an end because if it doesn't, we're all screwed, right? So we started buying dealerships in 2008, 2009, really kind of buying them on the cheap and all the sudden, you know, the market got good. We turned these things around, started doing really well. So for the first, you know, seven, eight years, we were buying dealerships. We were really buying underperforming dealerships and making them perform. And it was a great return on investment. When as you get going, you get growing a little bit as an organization. So it was in 2010, we hit 300 million in sales as a team. We put out a goal to get to a billion dollars in sales in 10 years by 2020. And we did it by 2016 and then by 2020, we were at two billion in sales. But what happens is you get bigger and you learn more. We had a lot of great people that were coming up through the organization that had the ability to take over dealerships. We started buying bigger dealerships and really in the absolute best franchise and the best locations, biggest volume stories that we could out there. And that's really kind of been our model. The last six or seven years, but you got to kind of build into doing that. Cause you don't have the bank role to do that when you first start out.

你们是如何扩展业务的，对吗？你们的收购策略是什么？ 对，2002年我接管这家公司时，公司内部缺乏结构。所以接下来的五年，我们花了很多时间来构建结构、企业文化和员工培养。我们那时候创办了Ziggler大学，专注于未来的人才发展。我们招聘了猎头，在大约五年的时间里，实现了显著的增长。然而，2008年经济衰退来袭，大家都惧怕购买经销店。虽然我并不比其他人知道得更多，但我清楚每次经济衰退总会结束，因为如果不结束，那我们都完蛋了，对吧？所以在2008年和2009年期间，我们开始购买经销店，趁着它们价格低廉。当市场回暖时，我们成功地让这些店铺业绩提升，开始取得了很好的成绩。 前七八年里，我们专注于收购经营不善的经销店，并将其扭转，实现了很高的投资回报。随着公司的成长，我们在2010年达到了3亿美元的销售目标。当时我们设定了一个目标，要在2020年实现10亿美元的销售额，而我们在2016年就达成了这一目标，到2020年我们的销售额已经达到了20亿美元。 随着公司规模的扩大和经验的积累，我们内部也有越来越多出色的人才可以管理新的经销店。于是，我们开始收购更大的经销店，特别是那些位置优越、品牌最佳、销售量最大的店铺。这一直是我们近六七年的经营模式。但要达到这种规模，需要逐步积累资本，因为一开始我们并没有足够的资金来进行大规模收购。

Oh, yeah. All right. Let's break that down. So first question there is the Agile University like explained that to us in as simple as possible. So I went to NADA Academy, which is a great program when I was right out of college, taught me how to run dealerships. I basically got 10 years worth of information in one year. It's so hard to send people out to Virginia to go through school that we basically created our own school. So that's where I really got the idea. And I said, you know what, we have to start training people day one. So day one, every employee that comes to work for us goes through what we call keys to success. It's like a new hire orientation program, but new hire orientation program doesn't sound very exciting. Keys to success sounds a lot better. So we teach, we teach them what sets us apart from, from the competition, how we treat customers, how we treat each other, what our cultures like, what our histories like, what we're trying to accomplish.

哦，好吧。来，让我们分解一下。第一个问题是关于敏捷大学的（Agile University），请用尽可能简单的语言向我们解释一下。 我曾就读于NADA学院，这是一个很棒的项目，那时我刚从大学毕业，它教会了我如何经营汽车经销商店。我在一年内学到了相当于十年的知识。因为派人去弗吉尼亚州上学实在太困难了，所以我们基本上创建了自己的学校。这就是我得到这个想法的起源。我想，我们必须从第一天开始就对员工进行培训。因此，第一天，每个来到我们公司工作的员工都会参加我们称之为“成功钥匙”的项目。这就像一个新员工入职指南，但是“新员工入职指南”听起来不太吸引人，“成功钥匙”听起来更好一些。所以我们会教这些员工，我们与竞争对手的区别，我们如何对待客户，如何对待彼此，我们的企业文化、历史以及我们的目标。

And then we have basically six levels of Ziggler University that we can take somebody from literally day one in the car business up to run in multiple dealerships. We have a really extensive platform that we build out that has over 1500 videos on it. And the videos we've realized that training needs to be shorter not longer. A lot of the videos are five to seven minutes. We do a lot of live training, a lot of live classes.

接下来我们有六个级别的Ziggler大学课程，可以把一个刚进入汽车行业的新人培养到能够管理多个经销店的水平。我们打造了一个非常全面的平台，上面有超过1500个视频。我们意识到，培训视频的时长需要更短而不是更长。因此，很多视频都是五到七分钟。我们还进行了很多现场培训和现场课程。

We do a lot of as you get going in Ziggler University, the next level is what we call our aspiring leaders. So those are our younger people that want to be want to get into leadership positions. And that's a six month long curriculum. Then ultimately the kind of the top level is what we call our performance group. And those are people that we're training to run businesses, run dealerships. I run that class myself. So as it goes along, it starts out with 2,700 employees going through training and about, we have about 10 people at any one time going through the performance group.

在Ziggler大学，当你刚开始的时候，我们会进行大量的培训。下一个阶段是我们称之为“未来领导者”的课程。这个课程是针对那些年轻、有志于进入领导岗位的人，培训周期为六个月。最终的顶级课程是我们称之为“绩效组”的培训项目，这些人将被培养成经营企业和管理经销商的领导者。而这个班级是由我亲自授课的。整个过程，从2700名员工开始接受培训，到最后，大约有10人在任何时候进到“绩效组”接受高级培训。

Wow. I mean, you've built a hell of a machine. You know, it's funny when you say, when you mention all these videos, the first thing that comes to my mind is what an opportunity to take that and license that to the, you know, to the industry. I mean, it's so it's that's powerful, especially given the fact that at your scale, yeah, we really think it's it's it's best in class out there. I've never seen anything like it. I think we could go out and market it, but it's just not what we do. We like to run gardenerships, not run universities. So.

哇，我的意思是，你们真的是造了一台超级机器。你知道吗，当你提到这些视频时，我第一时间想到的是，把这东西拿去授权给行业真是一个绝好的机会。这太厉害了，尤其是考虑到你们的规模，我们真的认为这是目前行业中最好的。我从未见过类似的东西。我觉得我们可以出去推广，但这不是我们的专长。我们更喜欢经营花园，而不是办大学。所以。

And then we also bring in, we bring in a lot of outside speakers into the organization that everybody in the in the company has access to people that have done really unique things in life. So you're kind of learning from all different types of people in different walks of life and how we apply that back to our organization. For for anyone listening to this, that maybe says, wow, like I wish my dealership offered that and they don't live in a market where they could work for you or they are a dealer, an owner, a GM. And they say, wow, I think I need that or I'm aspiring to grow and I want to create like, how did you get started? Right. When you say with Ziegler University, it's a super intimidating statement. To be honest, like I hear that. I'm like, holy, like you've literally built a school. And by the way, by the way, you just described it, it's pretty, sounds pretty impressive. But you've also been doing this for over a decade. So how did you get started with building out something like this?

然后我们还会邀请很多外部讲者到公司，所有员工都可以接触到这些在生活中做出独特成就的人。因此，你可以从各种不同领域的人身上学习，并将这些经验应用到我们的组织中。如果有人听到这个，可能会感叹说：“哇，我希望我的经销店也能提供这样的机会。”但他们所在的市场不具备这样的条件，或者他们是经销商、老板、总经理，他们会说：“哇，我也需要这个，或者我正在努力成长，想创造这样的环境，那你是怎么开始的呢？”当你提到Ziegler大学时，这句话真的挺吓人的。老实说，我听到的时候觉得，天哪，你真的建了一所学校。而且按你刚描述的来看，听起来相当令人印象深刻。不过，你已经做了十多年了。所以，像你这样的项目是如何起步的呢？

So it started out really simple with when I got into business, it was like, hey, there's your desk, you know, good luck. And it was kind of sink or swim. He kind of had to learn on your own. And I'm like, boy, if we could teach people to do things the right way right off the bat. So when we started hiring people coming out of college, you get a four year degree and you go home and tell mom and dad, you're going to sell cars for a living. That's kind of a tough conversation. So what we would do is we'd go into colleges and we'd talk to them about, hey, we'll teach you to run a $100 million business. And that's really attractive to people. And then we show them how we've done this time and time again.

所以，当我刚进入商业领域时，一切都很简单。就是跟你说，这里是你的办公桌，祝你好运。然后你要自己摸索，要么沉，要么浮。我当时就在想，如果我们能从一开始就教会人们正确的做事方法该多好。因此，当我们开始招聘刚从大学毕业的人时，情况就变得不一样了。你拿了一个四年制的学位，回家告诉爸妈你要靠卖车为生，这样的对话会很难吧。所以我们会走进大学，对他们说：嘿，我们会教你如何经营一个价值一亿美元的企业。这对人们来说非常有吸引力。然后我们会向他们展示，我们一次又一次成功的经验。

So in in 2016, we're based out of Kalamazoo, Western Michigan University is based out of here and that year, their football team went undefeated, went to the Cotton Bowl and their, their, their coach told me their quarterback was one of the best leaders he's ever seen. So I, I wrapped my arms around him and I said, Hey, I'll teach you to run a $100 million business in five years. And that was really attractive to them. There's a lot of people trying to hire him. And today he runs our dealerships in Kalamazoo. Tell me more about, so now fast forwarding, right? You mentioned, oh, eight, oh nine, you made lots of acquisitions. I can, I can imagine that your strategy has evolved over the years and, you know, till today, I mean, we're, we're, we're way past that now, but you mentioned underperforming. What have you really looked for historically with your acquisitions? Like has this been pretty formulaic or are, is every deal, you know, a quarter court, a court of court, snowflake deal, they're all different and they all have their nuances. How do you think about acquisitions?

所以在2016年，我们的公司位于卡拉马祖，西密歇根大学也在这里。那一年，他们的橄榄球队战绩不败，打入了棉花碗比赛，他们的教练告诉我，他们的四分卫是他见过的最优秀的领导者之一。所以我拉住他说：“嘿，我可以教你在五年内经营一家市值一亿美元的企业。” 这对他们非常有吸引力，因为有很多人争相聘用他。现在他在卡拉马祖管理我们的经销商。 你提到过08年到09年期间你们进行了很多收购，现在我们已经走过了那个时期。我可以想象你的策略多年来有所变化，直到今天你提到表现不佳的情况。你通常在收购中关键看重哪些方面？这是有一套固定的公式，还是每个交易都有其独特性和细微差别？你是如何看待这些收购的？

You know, they're all a little different, but back in 2008, I was looking for dealerships that I could afford. So like the first 15 dealerships I bought were all losing money. Not one of them was making money. And we got them to make money. You're able to buy them fairly inexpensive when they're not making money. And we would turn them around. It would be an unbelievable return on investment. But as you begin to grow and you get larger, it gets harder and harder to be able to do that. And you go slower if you're trying to turn around dealerships. So in about 2015, we realized, boy, we've got a pretty good bank role right now. We can, we can start going after the best dealerships out there in the biggest markets. Blue chips. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So that's really been our focus. The last, you know, eight or nine years is to go after those because now we have the bank role to be able to do it. We've taken no outside money. We haven't done private equity or anything like that. So it's just our money and traditional banking relationships out there that we built this on. Reinvesting reinvesting into business. Now, if I right now, if I said, you know what, Aaron, thrown you to the wolves, you got to start, you got to start from the bottom. And you got to go acquire another store. What are you looking for? Like any specific franchise come to mind or a specific of quote, unquote, like underperformance. You're looking for a service, news car. Like, is there anything specific you're looking for?

你知道的，他们都有些不一样，但在2008年时，我在找我能负担得起的经销商。所以像我最开始买的前15家经销商全都是亏钱的，没有一家是赚钱的。然后我们让它们开始赚钱。你可以低价买下那些不赚钱的经销商，我们会让它们扭亏为盈，投资回报率也是惊人的。不过，越是扩张、变大，就越难做这种事。如果你想扭转经销商，进度就会变得越来越慢。所以大约在2015年时，我们意识到，我们现在的资金储备相当不错，可以开始瞄准市场上最好的经销商了，蓝筹股。对，正是如此。这就是我们过去八九年来的重点，因为现在我们有足够的资金来做到这一点。我们没有接受外部资金，也没有使用私募股权之类的东西。完全是通过我们自己的资金和建立的传统银行关系来实现的，不断地再投资到业务中。现在，如果我对你说，"你知道吗，Aaron，就让你从头开始，你得从底部开始，去收购另一家店。"你会找什么？有没有想到具体的品牌或所谓的“表现不佳”的标的？是服务，还是新闻车？你在寻找的是否有什么具体要求？

So first thing we look for, single most important thing is location because you can't you can't move a franchise very far. So you've got to have a good location. We're looking for locations that are either high volume, high traffic areas or areas that are going to grow over the next 20 years. So we don't want to go into a market that looks like it's like a declining market or things are going to get worse. They're going forward. When you say declining, are you referring to population or just like, you know, governance? What are you referring to?

首先，我们最注重的是地点，因为你不可能轻易搬迁一个特许经营店。所以你必须选择一个好位置。我们寻找的是人流量大的地方，或者未来20年会有发展的地区。因此，我们不想进入那些看起来市场在萎缩或者情况会变糟的地方。你说的“萎缩”，指的是人口下降还是治理问题？你指的具体是什么？

I think more not even population so much is just the areas in decay. Like it's older stuff. There's nothing exciting there. We all know, like when we go to an area that's exciting, all of a sudden they have new new restaurants and, you know, that kind of the trendier type areas. And you can see where they have a really good leadership there and vision of what they're going to do that people are investing in those type of cities. That's where we want to be at going forward. And then once you have the location, then it comes down to the franchise, right? So you've got to have major franchise out there. So we're looking to buy tier one franchises, not kind of the tier tier three franchises. Ultimately, if we have a dealership that can that has the right location and the right franchise, then we have people that want to run those because it's an advantage to them. They can make more money. It's a better return for the organization and they can perform at a really high level.

我认为主要的问题不是人口数量，而是那些正在衰退的地区。这些地方比较老旧，没有什么新鲜事物。我们都知道，当我们去到一个令人兴奋的地方时，会发现那里有很多新开的餐馆和其他时尚的事物。你可以看到那些地方有非常好的领导力和前瞻性的规划，吸引了很多人去投资。这样的城市才是我们未来想要发展的地方。 一旦确定了这样的地点，接下来就要看特许经营权了。我们需要拥有主要的特许经营权，所以我们在寻找一级的特许经营权，而不是三级的特许经营权。最终，如果我们有一个位置优越并且拥有合适特许经营权的经销点，就会有很多人愿意去运营，因为这样对他们来说是有利的。他们可以赚更多的钱，为组织带来更好的回报，并且能够展现出很高的专业水平。

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Who are you in terms of in terms of stores? And again, I'm assuming here that you're still have the acquisition switch turned on. You know, what are like the most exciting franchises do you right now? Yeah, so we never really stop in acquisition mode. We bought bought six dealerships last year. So last year we bought two Subaru dealerships. One of them was one of the largest Subaru stores in the country. It's right across from the factory in Lafayette. We've done really well with Subaru. That's a new one for us all. Sun four years ago, we didn't have any Subaru dealerships.

你在商店方面算是什么（品牌/类型）？另外，我假设你们的收购模式仍然在进行中。你现在觉得最令人兴奋的特许经营有哪些？ 是这样，我们其实从来没有停止过收购模式。去年我们收购了六家经销店。其中有两家是斯巴鲁（Subaru）经销店。我们收购的一家是全国最大的一家斯巴鲁经销店之一，就在拉斐特（Lafayette）工厂对面。我们对斯巴鲁做得非常好。四年前，我们还没有任何斯巴鲁经销店。

Now we've got four of them and we've done great with them. The highlines are doing really well right now. Mercedes, BMW, Land Rover are great. The high volume imports, Toyota and Honda, we've done really, really well with those brands. On the domestic side, it's kind of interesting. Ford was a franchise. It was maybe kind of down on his luck and also on Ford starting to get stronger right now as well. We've got a handful of Ford stores. When you say it's starting to get stronger, what does that mean? They're the volume starting to come back and the maybe the excitement in the brand. They're starting to have the right incentives out there for consumers. So started starting to perform at a pretty good level. Did you invest in the model E program that they shut down yesterday? So I've got four Ford dealerships. One of them was under construction in Chicago.

现在我们有四家他们的店，并且经营得非常好。高端品牌目前表现非常好，像奔驰、宝马、路虎都很不错。高销量的进口品牌，像丰田和本田，我们也经营得非常非常好。在国内品牌方面情况有点有趣。福特之前是一个加盟品牌，可能一度运气不佳，但现在也开始变强了。我们有几家福特店。当你说它开始变强，这是什么意思？就是它们的销量开始回升，品牌的吸引力也在增加。他们开始为消费者提供合适的激励措施，所以表现得越来越好。你有没有投资他们昨天关闭的E车型项目？我有四家福特经销店，其中一家正在芝加哥建设中。

So we went all in on model E. I didn't see it on the other three Ford stores and our guys didn't want to move forward with that. The program made absolutely no sense. So we did it at one out of four. Got it. And then were you part of the lobbying efforts to get it overturned? I mean, how do you feel about the overall program? The fact that Ford shut it down? Yes. So you're probably talking about the law, the law student Illinois. There's 29 dealers. I was not a part of that. I'm a big believer and you don't see manufacturers. You got to, even if you don't like what they're doing, you got to kind of partner with them from a relationship standpoint.

所以我们全力支持了E车型。我在另外三家福特店没有看到它，我们的员工也不愿意推进这个项目。这个计划完全没有意义。所以我们只在四家店中的一家进行了尝试。明白了。那你有没有参与游说希望能推翻这个决定？我是说，你对整个项目有什么看法？对于福特关闭这个项目，你怎么看？是的，你可能提到的是关于伊利诺伊州的法律学生的事情。有29家经销商参与了这个事。我没有参与。我坚信，即使你不喜欢厂商的做法，你也必须从关系的角度与他们合作。

But the model E program made absolutely zero sense from the beginning. It cost dealers a tremendous amount of money. It was foolish money that that we had to spend. It added no value to the customers. They were just completely off base on their thinking on that. And, you know, when when the EVs came out, there's a place for EVs in the market, but it's not going to be a hundred percent of the market. Nothing's going to be a hundred percent of the market. So when they said, oh, it's, you know, these new customers, you know, are going to come in and buy EVs. No, it's the same consumer that's out there. They're just deciding between an EV hybrid gas engine.

但是，从一开始，E 型项目就完全没有任何意义。它让经销商花费了大量资金。这些钱花得很愚蠢，我们不得不去花费。对客户来说一点价值都没有。他们在这方面的想法完全是错误的。你知道，当电动汽车出来时，市场上是有它们的一席之地的，但它们不会占据市场的百分之百。没有什么东西能占据市场的百分之百。所以当他们说，哦，这些新客户会进来购买电动汽车时，其实并不是这样。这些客户并没有变化，他们只是决定买电动汽车、混合动力车还是汽油车。

So they really missed the mark on that one, but that's that's business. Fortunately, they recovered. They killed the program this week and hopefully they come out with something a lot better going forward. And just some added context for anyone listening. That's not familiar, but Ford had this program where dealers would get, you know, quote, quote, unquote certified, excuse me, to sell EVs, which really was primarily centered around installing chargers at the facilities and, you know, required a very hefty investment.

所以他们真的在这一点上失算了，但这就是商业。幸运的是，他们恢复了。本周他们取消了这个计划，希望今后他们能推出更好的方案。为了让不太了解情况的听众有一些背景知识，福特有一个计划，让经销商“获得认证”来销售电动车，实际上主要是要求他们在店内安装充电设备，这需要非常大的投资。

I believe the I believe that the higher end of the investment was about a million dollar per dealership for some dealerships. So Ford originally said it was $1.25 million per dealership is what they told the dealer body. Everybody's in a little different situation. It's really expensive to run the the electrical is what really costs a lot of money in that program. But also Ford did some extremely expensive training that they'd everybody go down to Atlanta to do and every one of our people that went down there and any other dealer that I talked to said, there's absolutely no value in the training.

我认为对于某些经销商来说，高端投资大约是一百万美元。福特最初告诉经销商每家店需要125万美元。每个经销商的情况都稍有不同，主要是电力基础设施的运营成本非常高。但是，福特还进行了一些非常昂贵的培训，让所有人都前往亚特兰大参加。我和其他经销商交流后发现，所有去参加培训的人都认为这些培训毫无价值。

So it kind of felt like they were they were making a lot of money on the backs of their, their dealers with that program. So hopefully they'll make it right with their dealers and there'll be some type of payback for the money that we spent that was not well spent and we got no value out of whatsoever. I was going to ask about that. Do you think some form of reimbursement is realistic? Yeah, I think they absolutely should. I mean, it was it was forced down our throats. There was it was, you know, do you want to sell, you know, all the Ford vehicles going forward, sign this pay $1.25 million. It was ill conceived.

所以，这感觉就像他们在靠经销商辛苦挣钱来赚大钱，希望他们能对经销商有所补偿，并返还我们那些花得不值、毫无价值的钱。我正打算问这个。你觉得补偿现实吗？是的，我认为他们绝对应该补偿。那是强迫我们接受的。如果你以后还想卖所有福特的车辆，就得签这个协议并支付125万美元。这完全是一个错误的决定。

They had a third party company that was was doing the training. That company had absolutely no clue. You know, we're spending $25,000 a day on training for our people plus flights and hotels and taking away from the store. And it was it was very ill conceived. There's no question about that. And I think Ford would tell you that right now too, that they didn't have a good, good plan there. So as you're speaking, I'm on your website and I'm counting the number of stores. You have a one one specific franchise, which has been the hot, the hot topic lately. Stellantis. You have five of them. And you have five of them. I just counted as you were speaking. So, you know, the elephant in the room, what's your like, start high level for a second, right? Like, how do you feel about where things are at and where, you know, the outlook that they've provided? Like, what's your, you know, we're two friends sitting at the bar, right? What are you telling me right now?

他们雇了一家第三方公司来进行培训。但那家公司完全不了解情况。你知道吗，我们每天花费$25,000用于员工培训，再加上机票和酒店费用，还影响了门店运营。这个决定非常失策，这一点毫无疑问。我想福特现在也会承认他们当时的计划很糟糕。就在你说话的时候，我正在你们的网站上查看门店数量。你有一个特定的连锁品牌，最近一直是热门话题：Stellantis。你有五家这样的门店，我刚刚数过了。那么，现在的关键问题是，你从高层次上对当前情况怎么看？以及他们提供的前景如何？我们就像两个朋友在酒吧聊天似的，你会告诉我什么呢？

So on the high lines, the reason why they're, I think they're doing really well right now is that the top end of the market, people aren't so maybe. Sensitive price sensitive. Yeah. On interest rates, right? So interest rates are driving the cost of cars. So is there a sense of sure? Yeah. So, you know, if a guy's going to buy a hundred and twenty thousand dollar Mercedes, he's got the money that he's going to buy that no matter what. It doesn't matter if it's one twenty or one thirty is going to buy the car. When you get into the person that's living paycheck to paycheck and also an interest rates go up, boy, that's a, that's a, that's a tough for gig. And interest rates are about average now where they're at over the past sixty years.

所以在高端市场，我认为他们现在表现得很好，原因是顶端市场的消费者可能不那么对价格敏感，对吧？因为利率正在推高汽车的成本。所以，是否有一种确定的感觉？是的，你知道，如果一个人要买一部十二万美元的奔驰，他有这个钱，不管价格是十二万还是十三万，他都会买这辆车。而当你遇到那些靠每个月薪水过日子的人，如果利率上升，这就变成一件很难应对的事情。现在的利率大约是过去六十年的平均水平。

The problem is in the last twenty years, they've been really low. So anybody that hasn't been in the business in the last twenty years is trying to figure out how to compete in a market like this, especially when we're coming off a market as hot as as it was during COVID. So getting back back to the question on Solana. So to my stores in Chicago or to the largest volume, Christ, it does Jeep stories in America. We've done really, really well with the brand Jeep has been hottest can be for a long time, but they've they've dramatically over produce. And they haven't supported the dealers right now. They don't have the right incentives out there. They up the price too high on their vehicles. You know, they're they're having fifteen thousand dollar price increases per year. They have come back and reenvoiced some of those vehicles, but they're just not overly competitive right now. And they got to get back competitive again and they got to do it fast because I've never seen a.

问题在于，在过去的二十年里，市场一直处于低迷状态。因此，任何在过去二十年里没有从事这一行业的人，都在努力摸索如何在这样的市场中竞争，特别是当我们刚从疫情期间如火如荼的市场中走出来的时候。回到关于Solana的问题。说到我在芝加哥的店铺，在美国的两家最大规模的Jeep销售店，我们和Jeep品牌合作得非常好。这品牌已经长时间很火爆了，但他们大大超量生产，并且目前没有正确的激励政策来支持经销商。Jeep的车价定得太高了，每年都在涨价，一年涨价一万五千美元。他们重新调整了一些车的发票价格，但现在整体竞争力还是不够。他们必须尽快恢复竞争力，因为我是从来没有见过这样的情况。

A brand drop more market share quicker than what Solana's has done in the last six months. What's the secret to becoming competitive? Is it just trimming prices or have they created product that people don't want? So they so they've got good product. You know, the Dow's trucks really good. Jeep's a great brand, but you have to you have to be able to hit the right price point and they don't have the right combination right now. They haven't supported the dealers from an incentive standpoint and then they've way, way, way over built on cars. So dealers are absolutely loaded with inventory right now. Everybody said they weren't going to do that and a lot of the brands have been disciplined.

品牌的市场份额下降速度比Solana在过去六个月中的还要快。那他们是怎么变得有竞争力的呢？只是降低价格，还是他们创造了人们不想要的产品？其实他们有好的产品。比如道奇的卡车非常不错，吉普车也是一个很棒的品牌。但是，你必须能把握住合适的价格点，而他们现在没有找到合适的组合。他们没有从激励措施方面支持经销商，同时他们生产了过多的汽车。所以经销商现在库存爆满。每个人都说他们不会这样做，但很多品牌都很自律。

They were one brand that was not disciplined. So they're back to, you know, pound it on the dealers, try to take extra inventory. They're back to really kind of distress selling, but they're not competitive with their incentives right now. And they've they got to make some changes really fast. They're going to be in trouble. Closing thought on this topic, if Solana's leadership is listening to this right now, what message do you have for them? So listen to your American leadership. You know, they're trying to run it out of Europe and they're trying to do everything from cutting costs right now. That doesn't work. And you've got to get back. You've got to be competitive. You've got to have people running this thing on the sales side that understand the market.

他们是一个没有严格自律的品牌。所以，他们又开始向经销商施压，试图多拿一些库存。他们再次进行一种有点像甩卖的销售方式，但目前，他们的激励措施并不具竞争力。他们必须迅速做出一些改变，否则将会陷入困境。关于这个话题的最后一点，如果Solana的领导层现在在听的话，你对他们有什么建议吗？请听取你们美国团队的意见。他们试图从欧洲管理一切，眼下主要是在削减成本，这行不通。你们必须回到市场中，保持竞争力。销售部门必须由那些真正了解市场的人来掌管。

You got to give your BC directors the ability to put the incentives out there to move the vehicles. They can change this thing overnight. I could turn this thing in one minute. Just put the right incentives out there and the right programs come back with the leasing programs. And they'll start selling cars at the same level that they were before. But right now, they're giving up a lot of market share to brands that are coming on right now, like Hyundai and Kia are kind of eating their lunch. So me putting my capitalist hat on, right? Hey, hey, you know, buy, sell advisory. They publish that's the Lantis blue sky multiples for anyone that's not familiar with the term. Just, you know, what these stores are trading out, the actual dealerships. There are multiple with slightly declined.

你们必须给你们的业务中心（BC）主管一些权限，让他们能推出激励措施来推动车辆销售。他们可以一夜之间改变这种情况。我可以在一分钟内扭转局面。只要推出合适的激励措施和租赁计划，他们就能恢复到之前的销售水平。但目前，他们在失去大量市场份额，尤其是像现代和起亚这样的品牌正在抢占他们的市场份额。所以，我站在资本家的角度，对吧？嘿嘿，买卖咨询。他们发布了Stellantis蓝天倍数（blue sky multiples），这是对这些汽车经销店的交易情况的一种叫法。值得注意的是，这些倍数有所下降。

And so I'm curious to know from your end, right? Would you acquire additional Stellantis dealerships right now? I know you're a little biased also because you're heavy on Stellantis dealerships. But I'm saying like, do you think that this is like the the trough and there's upside where we are on the spectrum? How do you think about this? So right now the the Stellantis leadership has given us no confidence that they're going to make the right decisions going forward. So I would not go ahead and buy a Stellantis dealership. And so I know I know, hey, I see the Hager report, right? There's a little bit of a lag there on that. So he's looking at what's been sold over the last six or 12 months, slight decline. I think right now there would be a dramatic decline if there's even a market out there for people to jump into because because how do you value us? The Lantis dealership right now with what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we get dealerships that were selling 400 and some some vehicles a month that are that are doing less than half of that right now. And it was almost overnight that that happened with them. Yeah. I mean, it's for for someone like yourself to say that it's a bold statement. I mean, you know, like, I mean, you know, there's that famous line, like the market abhors uncertainty, but to think that there is, you know, truly like a lack of liquidity for this type of asset. That's that's pretty meaningful.

那么，我很好奇从你的角度来看，对吧？你现在会考虑收购更多的Stellantis经销店吗？我知道你对Stellantis经销店有些偏爱。但我的意思是，你觉得现在是低谷，有上升空间吗？你怎么看待这个问题？目前来看，Stellantis的领导层并没有给我们信心，相信他们会做出正确的决策。所以我不会去收购Stellantis经销店。而且，我知道，我知道，我看了Hager报告，对吧？那里有一点延迟。他们看的还是过去六到十二个月的销售情况，略有下降。我觉得现在如果市场上还有人愿意跳进去，情况会有显著的下降。因为现在如何评价一个Stellantis经销店的价值真的很难。是啊，我们有些经销店以前每个月能卖400多辆车，现在连一半都不到。这几乎是在一夜之间发生的。对啊，对于像你这样的人来说，这是一种大胆的表态。你知道，那句名言，市场厌恶不确定性，但要认为对这种资产确实缺乏流动性，这是非常有意义的。

Yeah. And that's I've never seen anything change as fast as they have in the in the market. It was a rapid decline. The good thing is it's a rapid decline. They could get a rapid acceleration here if they get their act together really quickly. So yeah, like no different in Ford Ford was declining, you know, a year and a half ago, a year ago. Yeah. It was interesting. Like Ford, when they came out with their Machia, it wasn't selling well. And all of a sudden at the end of last year, they put a program on at least program that was really good. And they started selling at a very strong rate. So let's extrapolate this a little bit further.

是的，我从未见过市场变化如此之快。市场的迅速下滑确实令人震惊。不过好的一点是，既然可以迅速下滑，如果他们能迅速调整好状况，也有可能快速回升。就像福特一样，一年半前也是在下滑。当他们推出Mach-E时，销售情况并不好。但在去年年底，他们推出了一项非常好的租赁计划，销量立马开始急剧上升。那么，让我们进一步推测一下未来的情况。

Next 18 months, this was actually a specific question that another another large private dealer group CEO submitted to me. But they said, like, what's your what's your outlook on just the dealership market and, you know, mergers and acquisitions? Right. Are we going to see more like distressed opportunistic types of deals out there? Are we not? What's your outlook? So I think right now, there's a little bit of a gap because you have people that are looking at what they made during COVID. So we call them COVID earnings now. They weren't weren't necessarily real. And that's not going to predict what's going forward.

接下来18个月，有另一个大型私人经销商集团的CEO向我提出了一个具体问题。他们问我，对经销商市场以及并购的展望是什么。我们会看到更多机会性强、陷入困境的交易吗？还是不会？我的看法是，目前存在一些差距，因为有人在看他们在COVID期间的收益。我们现在称之为COVID收益。这些收益不一定是实际的，并不能预测未来的情况。

But the thought was, hey, it's also not going to go back. Profitability is not to go back where it was in 2017, 18, 19. The difference right now, though, is interest rates and floor plan costs. So interest rates up, you know, five percent. So for every hundred million dollars in inventory that a group's carry, that's another five million dollars in cost. So a lot of the big groups have three, four hundred million dollars in inventory. Now you're talking 15, 20 million dollars more on costs that are invisible to a customer. There's no value there for a customer. So you can't recoup those costs.

但我们也想到，盈利不会回到2017、2018、2019年的水平。目前的不同之处在于利率和库存融资成本。利率上升了五个百分点，所以每一亿美元的库存，集团要多支付五百万美元的成本。许多大集团有三到四亿美元的库存，这样一来，他们的成本就增加了1500万到2000万美元，而这些成本对客户是看不见的，没有任何价值。因此，无法从客户那里收回这些成本。

So is what we think is going to happen is I think there's going to be maybe one rate cut this year. I think that there's a little bit of a gap right now between sellers and buyers. I think the sales that you're going to go through is maybe, hey, somebody's in financial trouble. And it's a little distressed right now and they want to get rid of it or they want to off. Maybe some of their lower performing stores. And then I think things are going to get a lot better going forward. So we're looking and once they start cutting rates, we think there's going to be at least six rate cuts in a row. And that'll dramatically lower the borrowing costs from a floor plan expense standpoint.

所以，我们认为今年可能会有一次降息。目前，买卖双方之间存在一些差距。我认为接下来可能会看到的交易是某些人在财务上遇到问题，情况有点紧张，他们想要尽快卖掉一些资产，或者想要脱手一些表现较差的店铺。然后，我认为情况会大有好转。一旦开始降息，我们预计将会连续六次降息，这将大幅降低从融资角度来看借贷的成本。

But the other thing you got is there's about 12 million cars that were not sold during COVID. New cars that would have been sold. If we just had like a generalized SAR out there. So the same thing happened in 2008, the SAR went from 15 million down to nine and a half million. We made those units back up in 2010, 11, 12. So if you look at that five year gap, we still sold the same number of cars. We just didn't do it in no way. Right now. I think sales would be at least 20 percent higher, 25 percent higher if rates were lower. So as rates started to drop back down, that pent up demand is still out there. Because the average car going into COVID is 12 and a half years old, which was an all-time record. We're at 14 years old right now.

但你要注意的是，有大约1200万辆车在疫情期间没有售出。这些是本来会卖出去的新车。如果我们把汽车销量普遍计算在内。同样的情况在2008年也发生过，当时汽车年销售率（SAR）从1500万降到了950万。我们在2010、2011和2012年补回了那些销量。因此，如果你看那五年的差距，我们其实还是卖出了同样数量的车，只是没有在原来的时间点卖出去。现在，我认为如果利率降低，汽车销售量至少会高出20%到25%。因为那个被压抑的需求仍然存在。疫情前平均车龄是12.5年，这是一个历史纪录。而现在，平均车龄是14年。

So service department revenue is up. We're averaging about six thousand hours more this year than what we were last year per month in service. Like it just keeps going and going and going. This episode is brought to you by my very own car dealership guy, industry job board. CDG jobs is revolutionizing how talent connects with top automotive companies. Here's a shocker. We're not using any fancy technology or AI. We literally built a simple HTML job board. That's it. But it works really, really well. And the best part, it's completely free for CDG listeners to post and fill positions at their firm. So I'm sure you're wondering what sets us apart. Well, when companies hire through CDG jobs, they're choosing from a pool of the most informed candidates in the industry. Don't wait whether you're hiring or seeking a new opportunity. Visit CDG jobs.com today or click the link in the show notes below. That's CDG jobs.com.

服务部门的收入增加了。我们今年平均每月比去年多了约六千小时的服务量。感觉这个增长趋势根本停不下来。这一集节目由我的车行家（Car Dealership Guy）行业招聘网站赞助。CDG Jobs在革新人才与顶级汽车公司的连接方式。让人吃惊的是，我们没有使用任何花哨的技术或人工智能。我们只是简单地建立了一个HTML招聘网站，仅此而已。但效果非常好。而且最棒的是，CDG听众可以免费在这个平台上发布和填补职位。所以你可能会好奇我们有什么不同。其实，通过CDG Jobs招聘的公司可以从行业内最了解情况的候选人中挑选。无论你是要招聘还是寻找新机会，不要等待，今天就访问CDGJobs.com，或者点击下面的节目备注中的链接。CDGJobs.com。

I want to do a quick spark. No, it's for any listeners that maybe missed a part of that. And I also want to ask you about this underproduction. Right. So I've spoken, I've been very vocal about, you know, we've underproduced cars since the pandemic. And that's, you know, we sold, we sold just fewer cars each year, which has obviously has lots of reverberating effects on the industry. And, you know, fewer used lease returns, lease returns returning, which fewer used cars and yada yada. Do you really think that the pent up demand out there still exists? Or, or has the market just found a new balance with people driving slightly older cars, focused on repairing their vehicles a little bit more and taking advantage of leasing, right? Do you really think that there's that 25% pent up demand still to this point?

我想快速说一下。为了那些可能错过了部分内容的听众，我再提一下。我还想问你关于车产量不足的问题。对，我一直在强调，自从疫情以来，我们的汽车产量一直不足。每年我们卖的车都减少了，这显然对行业有很多连锁反应。比如说，退回的二手车变少了，二手车的数量也减少了等等。那么，你真的认为市场上依然存在积压的需求吗？还是市场已经找到了新的平衡，人们开稍微旧一点的车，并更专注于维修他们的车辆以及利用租赁的优势？你真的认为现在还有那25%的积压需求吗？

Yeah. So I think kind of a hybrid. So people are keeping their cars longer, but eventually you can only keep your car so long. And then you've got to do something. So if you think and you go half the average age is 14 years old, that means half the cars are over 14 years old. You know, going back 14 years, that's the 2010. So half the cars are six, seven, eight, nine, they're going to, you know, about 15 million cars get jumped every year or get totaled out. So if we produce it less than that, we have about 300 million cars on the road. That number keeps going down every year. Population slight increase to mathematical equation. At some point when the affordability gets back there, the people in their mind that the rates are down, I think you're going to see a big spark going forward in the amount of cars sold.

对啊。我觉得有点类似混合的情况。人们使用汽车的时间更长，但最终你不可能永远用同一辆车，总是要做点什么。如果你想想，现在汽车的平均使用年限是14年，这意味着有一半的车龄超过14年。回到14年前，也就是2010年，所以有一半的车是2010年的或更老的。每年大约有1500万辆车报废或总损毁。如果我们每年生产的车少于这个数量，考虑到我们现在路上大约有3亿辆车，这个数量每年都在减少。而且人口在略微增加，所以这是一个数学问题。在某个时刻，当汽车变得更容易负担，利率降低的时候，我觉得你会看到汽车销量有一个大的增长。

And again, that spark was, I was saying, so you were really, again, for anyone that's not familiar with SAR, I mean, you're really referring to the amount of new cars sold in the year and how that has been creeping back up. So super helpful. I want to shift the conversation to your group again. You operate in several different states. Are there any key differences for you operating in, you know, Chicago versus in Michigan, right? These different states and expanding far and wide. What are the key differences for you in those different markets? Yeah. So Chicago's got nine million people. So obviously a lot bigger market, but you have it. You might have a dealership every three or five miles. We're in Michigan. The closest, like we'd be in W and Kalamazoo, the next closest competitor is 60 miles away. So you've got bigger territories, less people. And each market is where it really differs is on the advertising and marketing side of things. Something that works really well in Chicago, won't work in Michigan or something that's great in Indiana, doesn't work in Wisconsin. So advertising is very localized, even though it's on most of its digital that we're doing, still different things run hot and cold in certain markets.

再一次，那种火花，我的意思是，你真的，针对任何不熟悉SAR的人来说，我的意思是，你实际上说的是每年新车销量的数量，以及它是如何逐渐回升的。所以这非常有帮助。我想把话题转回到你的团队。你们在几个不同的州运营。对于你来说，在芝加哥和密歇根这些不同的州运营有什么主要区别，对吗？这些不同的市场扩展得这么广泛，关键的区别是什么？ 是的，所以芝加哥有九百万人口，所以显然市场要大得多，但你可能每三五英里就有一个经销商。而在密歇根，比如我们在W和卡拉马祖的最近竞争对手相隔60英里。因此，你拥有更大的领地，但人更少。而每个市场真正不同的地方在于广告和营销。某些在芝加哥非常有效的东西，在密歇根却行不通，或者在印第安纳很优秀的东西，在威斯康星就不有效果。所以即使大多数广告是数字化的，但在不同的市场中依然有冷热不均的情况。

Who would you say is the marketing brains within your dealer group? And I ask that because you are, you know, you have your, you're on a podcast, right? You do plenty of the NIL. I saw you do some involvement with the NIL, the college athlete. I mean, you're really creative on the marketing front. Or I would say, I would say you're more creative than the average dealer that I've come across. So who's leading the marketing on your end? What's that philosophy?

你会说你们经销商团队里的营销主脑是谁？我之所以问这个问题，是因为你知道的，你在录一个播客，对吧？你还做了很多NIL（名称、形象和肖像）方面的工作。我看到你参与了与大学运动员有关的NIL项目。我觉得你在营销方面特别有创意，或者说，比我遇到的普通经销商更有创意。那么，你们的营销是谁在引领呢？你们有什么样的营销理念？

You know, we have a pretty flat organization. So when we have somebody running a dealership, they're really like the owner of that dealership. We give them a lot of autonomy to run it. I want guys that are, that are going to have that entrepreneurial zest. And I don't want to have a lot of rules on them. I don't want to micromanage them anything like that. You can't do that with as many stores as we have. But because of the size of the organization, sometimes, sometimes things kind of come our way. So we've had a lot of success. We have a hot air balloon. Well, the reason why that came about was because my Maserati sales manager. Why did that come about? My Maserati sales manager is one of the top hot air balloon pilots in the world. He used to run the Tony the Tiger balloon for a Kellogg. For a lot of years. So he came to me and he runs a bunch of festivals. And he was selling a ton of cars to other hot air balloon enthusiasts.

你知道，我们的公司架构很扁平。所以当我们有人负责一家经销店时，他们实际上就像那家店的老板一样。我们给予他们很大的自主权去管理。我希望他们有创业的激情，并且不希望给他们太多的规矩，不想对他们进行过度管理。我们有很多家店，无法做到事事都亲力亲为。但因为公司的规模，有时会有一些意外的事情发生。我们取得了很多成功。我们甚至有一个热气球。这是怎么来的呢？是因为我那位玛莎拉蒂的销售经理。他为什么会办这个热气球呢？因为他是世界顶尖的热气球飞行员之一，多年来他曾在凯洛格（Kellogg）公司负责托尼老虎（Tony the Tiger）热气球。他来找我，他还组织一些节日活动。而且他卖了很多车给其他热气球爱好者。

So we got this hot air balloon. And everybody, when they see hot air balloon, just like you're smiling right now, people smile. And they take pictures of it. You're hot air balloon. Yeah, they take pictures of it. They put it online and we use it to give employees rides. And we use it for awards and stuff like that. So we've had a lot of fun with it. We got involved in NASCAR a number of years ago. So we're the primary sponsor for an NASCAR team with Spire and our drivers having a great year.

所以我们有了这个热气球。每个人看到热气球时，就像你现在微笑的样子，都会露出笑容。而且他们会拍照，上传到网上。对，大家都给热气球拍照。我们用它带员工乘坐，也用它来颁奖什么的。所以我们玩得很开心。几年前我们还介入了NASCAR赛车运动。我们是Spire车队的主要赞助商，我们的车手今年表现得非常棒。

He's a young guy. He's 21 years old. He's leading the rookie of the year standings. And we do a lot of things with NASCAR. A lot of business gets done behind the scenes with NASCAR in addition to the marketing opportunities. And we've done a few new deals with some of the college athletes too that we're involved with. So it's trying to do some creative things, fun things that help you build a brand. Out there because even though we're Midwest based, we sell cars coast to coast because of the internet. So in some respects, we're a local brand, but we're also a national brand as well.

他是个年轻小伙，今年21岁，目前在年度新秀榜上领先。我们和NASCAR有很多合作，很多生意都是在幕后完成的，除此之外还有很多营销机会。我们还跟一些大学运动员签了几份新协议，所以我们尝试做一些有创意的、有趣的事情来帮助打造品牌。因为尽管我们的基地在中西部，但凭借互联网，我们的汽车可以卖到全国各地。从某些方面来说，我们是一个本地品牌，但同时也是一个全国性品牌。

That's incredible. So I think what you said is super important. I really believe in this. And it's that you lean into the strengths of your team. That's what I can tell from the outside at least. Right? Like you didn't wake up one day and said, I want to have a frickin hot air balloon. Right? But you have a team member that has experience with that. And I think like what I call this at Cardio Shrimp Guy and obviously we're like, you're smaller than you are as a business. But I love to call this like going with the grain. Right? Like someone from your team has some competency in something that they're maybe passionate about or they should enjoy. Well, great. Like can we channel that in a direction that benefits to organization and it scratches that itch for that, you know, human and like everybody wins. I love that.

那太不可思议了。我认为你说的非常重要，我真的相信这一点。那就是要发挥团队的优势。至少从外部来看，这是我的观察。对吧？你不是某天突然醒来就决定要拥有一个热气球的，对不对？而是你团队中有一个成员有这方面的经验。我在Cardio Shrimp Guy（显然我们规模比你的小）称之为“顺势而为”。团队中有人在某个他们可能热爱的领域有专长，那太好了。我们能不能把这种专长引导到对组织有利的方向，同时也满足那个人的兴趣，这样大家都受益。我真的很喜欢这种方式。

Yeah. So the keyword you said there is passionate. So if we get some of this really passionate about something, I'm like, look, I'm going to financially support them. I don't even know if it's going to work. But if they're really excited about it, it'll probably work because of how passionate they are. So, you know, I try to have my first answer be yes on things and not know because I like people doing creative ideas when they came to me originally and and want to start a podcast. I don't even think I knew what a podcast was back then. But they're passionate about it. And I said, yeah, let's go for it. Then it started working. And next thing you know, we built a studio and we've got an internal and an external podcast has been great. I think it's a big this is a lot.

对。你刚才提到的关键词是“热情”。如果我们遇到一个对某事非常热情的人，我会说，看看，我会在经济上支持他们。即使我不知道这个项目是否会成功，但他们如此充满激情，可能就会因为这份热情而成功。所以，我尽量让我的第一个回答是“是”，而不是“否”，因为我喜欢看到人们来找我时提出的创意想法。比如，当他们最初想开始一个播客的时候，我甚至不知道什么是播客。但他们对它充满热情，我就说，好吧，我们试试。然后，它真的开始运作了。接着，我们建了一个录音室，现在我们有内部和外部的播客，一切进展得很顺利。我认为这真的很重要。

I mean, likely from what I can tell them outside, probably a big reason why you've been so successful because you're you're spreading your chips across the table in smart calculated ways. And you know, these are these are you know, quote unquote risk. I mean, if some things are not much of a risk, but they are at that they like opportunities where you don't know what they could really explode into. So that's a it's an amazing thing. Yeah, quite often people go, boy, you're you're not like any other dealer we've ever met. And we kind of take that as a compliment. We're trying to try to do some different things out there, trying to do some fun things. And those type of things get people really excited as well.

我的意思是，根据我能告诉他们的外部信息，或许你们成功的一个重要原因是你们聪明且有计划地在各个方面分散了风险。这些都是所谓的“风险”，虽然有些事情风险不大，但它们实际上可能是巨大的机会，因为你不知道它们会带来什么样的爆炸性成果。所以这是很了不起的事情。经常有人会说，“哇，你们和我们见过的其他经销商完全不同。”我们把这当作一种赞美。我们试图做一些不同的、有趣的事情，这类事情也让人们非常兴奋。

Well, we come in as an auto group is we really share ideas between the dealership. So once a month we get together with all of our general managers or executive team. We base the meetings out of Kalamazoo, but everybody's at their dealership. So they video conference and we kind of did zoom before zoom was a thing. And we basically run our own 20 group meeting everybody brings the best idea. We have different subjects each month that we bring the ideas on. And it's a great way for us to have something that's really working at one or two dealerships and roll it out to 41 dealerships almost overnight.

我们作为一个汽车集团是这样运作的：我们在各个经销商之间分享想法。每个月，我们的所有总经理或执行团队都会聚在一起开会。会议的基地设在卡拉马祖，但每个人都在各自的经销店，通过视频会议的形式参与。其实在Zoom流行之前，我们已经在用类似的方式了。基本上，我们举办自己的“20群体会议”，每个人都带来最好的想法。我们每个月都有不同的主题来分享这些想法。这种方式非常有效，可以让在一两家经销店非常奏效的措施几乎一夜之间就推广到41家经销店。

How do you how do you structure these meetings? Like what are they actually? Okay, so 20 or let's just say 20 people show up in a room now on. Yeah, so it's actually a lot more people than that is probably closer to 100 people. But as what we do is each month we we rotate a department head. So one month is new cars next month as parts than service than used cars. So we come in meeting started nine o'clock. And I kind of got ADD. So I can't be in more than a two hour meeting. So we're going to be out of there by 11 o'clock. And is what happens is each dealership brings the best idea. They got 90 seconds to present it. And then we talk about it and have a little discussion on the idea that they have. And then we have discussion topics based on whatever the department is.

你们是如何组织这些会议的？它们具体是什么样子的？好了，比如有20个人参加这个会议……其实人数要多得多，可能接近100人。我们的做法是每个月轮换一个部门主管主持会议。这个月是新车部门，下个月是零件部门，然后是服务部门，再然后是二手车部门。会议在早上九点开始，我有点注意力不集中，所以不能参加超过两个小时的会议，所以我们会在11点前结束。每个经销商会带来他们最好的点子，他们有90秒时间来展示。之后，我们会讨论这些点子，然后根据不同的部门主题进行讨论。

So say we have F and I and also and it's like, hey, you know, what question might be what banks are great for somebody that's got good credit, but a lot of negative equity or what banks are giving you the most back end, you know, stuff like that. And so we can you got this connectivity with the department heads and the general managers and the executive team to be able to share information. And that's really, really powerful because no one person has all the ideas. So one minute you're the teacher and the next minute you're the student in these meetings, then the department heads once they're done with that part of the meeting, the executive team sticks around. We spent about a half an hour just talking about anything big picture with the organization or the industry that goes on.

假设我们有F和I，然后就像，有人说，嘿，你知道，可能会有问题是哪些银行对信用好的但有很多负资产的人比较适合，或是哪些银行给你最大的后端回报，诸如此类的问题。所以我们通过部门主管、总经理和执行团队之间的联系，能够分享信息。这真的很有力量，因为没有人是全知全能的。在这种会议中，有时候你是老师，有时候你是学生。然后，当部门主管完成他们部分的会议后，执行团队会继续留下来。我们会花大约半个小时讨论组织或行业中任何宏观层面的问题。

We have an agenda we put together and kind of go through that. Then at the end, it's open discussion on anything anybody wants to talk about. And we one of the things that we've done is we build a really, really tight knit group. So I don't even call us a team anymore. We call ourselves a family. And our our dealership. That's a very controversial statement, by the way. Yeah. Lots of people listen to this. I'm like, say, well, you know, you can't, you know, a family's forever team is, you know, not forever. So we want our people to be together forever. So I've got a lot of people at the only company they've ever worked for is our company, including myself. And we've got a lot of people that are 50 years old that have been here for 30 years and have been able to grow with the organization.

我们有一个议程，大家一起制定，然后按照议程逐项讨论。最后是开放讨论，任何人都可以谈自己想聊的话题。我们做的一件重要事情就是建立了一个非常紧密的团队，所以我甚至不再称我们为团队，而是称我们为家庭。我们的经销店，这是一个非常有争议的说法。很多人听到会说，家庭是永久的，而团队不是永久的。但我们希望我们的员工能永远在一起。我们公司里有很多人，包括我自己在内，从一开始就只在我们公司工作。有许多人已经50岁了，在这里工作了30年，随着公司的发展一起成长。

So we really do look at it as when when we bring somebody in and I've never had a general manager quit before. And I think the reason is because of this family type feel. So even though we're a larger organization, it doesn't feel corporate at all. It still has this family feel to it. And that kind of goes back to, you know, my number one goal in every one of these earships is to have a world class culture. And with a culture, it's really hard to explain it, but you know, you can feel it. So I say, look, if you get up in the morning, you're excited to go to work. You're excited to work with the other people. That's that's a world class culture. And we do a lot of a lot of social events with with our team and also their spouses as well.

所以，我们真的把每次新员工加入团队看得很重要。而且我从来没有遇到过总经理辞职的情况。我认为这是因为我们有一种家庭般的氛围。尽管我们是一个较大的组织，但丝毫没有企业化的感觉，仍然保留着这种家庭的温馨。这也回到我的首要目标，即在每个职业生涯的阶段里，都要拥有一个世界级的企业文化。文化这种东西很难用语言解释，但你能感受到。我的观点是，如果你早上醒来时，感到兴奋要去上班，期待和同事们共事，那就是一种世界级的文化。我们也会经常组织团队的社交活动，包括他们的配偶也会参与其中。

So they've all become really good friends. So they're talking on a daily basis back and forth. What's going on? I think that's a competitive advantage for us as an organization. You just mentioned, you know, 100 people in this meetings, I'm curious to know what are the key attributes that you look for in team members or ask differently, right? The people that have the people that have grown the most with you and have come, you know, the furthest with their careers. What are the characteristics that they've displayed? And this could be relevant to someone listening to this, maybe that wants to get ahead under career, or it can be an owner or a GM that wants to, you know, grow people, right? Like what are these key characteristics that you're looking for in the highest performers that you've you've been around? So we can teach people the business. You don't need to know anything about this business. We can teach you all that. But there's certain things we can't teach. We can't teach you to want it. We can't teach you to have that 12-cylinder engine. If you've got a four-cylinder engine, we can't make it into a 12-cylinder engine. But we have five team values. It's passion, reputation, integrity, drive, execution. And those are kind of our key drivers that we're looking for. But somebody that wants to grow, somebody that's willing to listen, I want somebody that's humble that, you know, we're all going to make mistakes. You say you make a mistake, you just learn from it. Don't make the mistake again. It's okay to fail. I just tell our people fail fast. And move on. If you're not, you're not trying enough new things if you don't fail once in a while at something. I'm looking for people that are very loyal that want to be here for a long time and and just are driven because you can't teach somebody to want it. You can't see somebody want to be number one. Either got that or you don't. And of course, it wouldn't be a CDG podcast. If I didn't plug the CDG job board where the job board that I set up, that is growing really fast. And you should absolutely be using it to hire. So we'll get you on there. We'll send you an invite. And hopefully we can help Ziegler find some other great talent.

所以，他们都成了非常好的朋友。他们每天都在聊来聊去的。这种沟通对我们组织来说是一种竞争优势。你刚才提到了会议中有100人，我很好奇，你在团队成员身上看重的关键特质是什么，或者换个角度问，那些和你一起成长并在职业生涯中取得显著进步的人，他们具备哪些特征？这对听这个的人可能很有帮助，比如那些想在职业生涯中迈向更高层次的人，或是那些想要培养人才的老板或总经理。 我们可以教给人们业务知识，你不需要事先了解这个行业，我们可以教你所有这一切。但有些东西我们没法教。我们教不了你是否有那种强烈的愿望。我们也不能把一个四缸发动机变成十二缸发动机。但我们有五个团队价值观：热情、声誉、诚信、动力和执行力。这些是我们看重的关键驱动力。 我们正在寻找那些想要成长、愿意倾听的人。我希望找到谦逊的人，大家都会犯错，你犯了错，只需要从中吸取教训，不要再犯同样的错误就好。犯错是可以接受的。我会告诉我们的人：快速失败，然后继续前进。如果你从未在某件事上失败过，那你就没有尝试足够多的新事物。 我寻找的是那些非常忠诚、希望长期留下来并且有驱动力的人，因为你不能教一个人去渴望，不能教一个人去想做第一。这要么是你本来就有，要么就没有。当然，如果不提一下CDG求职板块，这个CDG播客就不完整了，这是我设立的快速增长的求职板块，你绝对应该使用它来招聘。所以我们会帮你上去，给你发送一个邀请，希望我们能帮助Ziegler找到更多优秀的人才。

And for anyone listening to this podcast, we'd love to have you as well. It's growing super quickly. That'd be great. Because the reality is it's easier to buy dealerships than it is to find people to run them. So we're constantly looking for good people that can help to grow with us. And I think the other part of that culture piece of having that world-class culture is ultimately people got to make really good money and they got to be able to share in the rewards of it. So even though we don't have owners, we treat all of our executive team like owners. And it's even better because they don't have to pay money coming in. But they get really good, consistent cash flow and big pay plans out there. And the sky's the limit at what you can make in our organization. Yeah, we've had really good success on the job board with any management position and above. And also like corporate positions and stuff like that. I think we're trying to continue growing the bottom, like the salesperson or the entry level. It's a little tough when you go local. But we've had phenomenal results from dealers and it's free, by the way. So that's the other cool part. There's paid options, but it's free to start and to post and whatnot.

对于收听这个播客的每一位听众，我们非常欢迎你们加入我们的团队。我们的发展速度非常快，这将会是一个很棒的机会。事实是，购买经销商要比找到合适的人来管理它们更容易。因此，我们一直在寻找能够与我们共同成长的优秀人才。 我认为，在世界级的企业文化中，另一个重要因素是员工要有更高的收入，并能够分享成果。尽管我们没有所谓的“老板”，但我们把所有高层管理团队视为“老板”。这其实更好，因为他们不需要入职时支付资金，却能获得稳定的现金流和丰厚的奖励方案。我们组织中的收入潜力是无限的。 在招聘管理职位及以上的岗位时，我们在招聘网站上取得了非常好的效果，特别是一些公司职位之类的。我们希望继续增强基层人员的招聘，比如销售员或者入门级岗位。虽然在本地招聘有点挑战，但我们从经销商那里取得了非常好的结果，而这些都是免费的。这就是另一个好处。虽然也有收费选项，但发布招聘信息等操作都是免费的。

So I want to ask you a bit more personal questions as well. What's on your mind nowadays? Or as my favorite and my infamous line on the podcast, anything keeping you up at night nowadays? I think you're always thinking about business and how you can improve your business. And I say the economy is kind of a game. So we don't create the rules of the game or the rules of the economy. But you got to take what's out there right now and you got to run your business different. So it was interesting. We've always been on a fast turn with used cars and also in COVID hits.

所以我想问你一些更个人化的问题。你最近在想什么呢？或者用我最喜欢、最有名的一句话来说，现在有什么事让你彻夜难眠吗？我觉得你总是在思考如何改进你的生意。我认为经济就像一场游戏，我们无法制定游戏规则或经济规则，但你必须适应现有的规则，并以不同的方式经营你的生意。这很有趣，我们一直在二手车业务上快速运转，当新冠疫情来袭时也是如此。

And for the first time ever cars start appreciating. So also we're like, wait a minute, we don't want to like off cars because they're going to be worth more than what they are now. Well, now you've got some pretty big depreciation on used cars where they're depreciating two to three times as fast as what they used to. So we have to turn them substantially quicker than what we did before. So I think we talked about earlier, you know, our cost of business is up right now because of the interest rates.

而且，这是史无前例的，汽车开始升值。所以我们会说，等等，我们不想错过这些车，因为它们未来的价值可能比现在更高。然而，现在二手车的贬值速度是以前的两到三倍。因此，我们必须比以前更快地出售这些车。我认为我们之前谈到，现在因为利率的原因，我们的运营成本上升了。

So that comes back to turning your new and used car inventories absolutely as fast as you possibly can be and very efficient. We always say our first loss is our best loss. And you know, keep that fresh inventory coming in. So I think I think business right now and profitability is really tied around a fast inventory turn. And then you know, probably the other thing, the real uncertainty in our industry right now is what's going to happen in November. And there's two very contrasting styles out there of what could happen in this industry with the regulations.

所以，这就回到了尽可能快速且高效地周转你的新车和二手车库存这一点。我们常说，"第一次的损失是最小的损失"。要保持库存新鲜流动。因此，我认为目前的业务和盈利能力真的与库存快速周转紧密相关。另外，我们这个行业现在真正的不确定性在于，11月会发生什么。有两种截然不同的可能性会在行业法规上产生影响。

Well, the we're seeing, I'm a big believer that government needs to kind of stay out of business and the market should work itself out. And right now, a lot of things are kind of being forced that that probably don't make a lot of sense. But it's either going to continue down that path and get even more rules and more regulation and more kind of forcing things toward EVs or it's going to going to loosen up a lot. So I think for our industry, this election is going to be a probably the most important election in the history of the car business with the direction that the car business is going to go going forward.

我们现在看到的情况是，我坚信政府应该尽量远离商业，让市场自行调节。目前有很多事被强行推动，而这些事情可能并不合理。未来可能会继续沿着这条路走下去，出现更多规则和更多强制推进电动车的政策，或者也有可能会放松很多。我认为对于我们行业来说，这次选举可能是汽车行业历史上最重要的一次选举，因为它将决定汽车行业未来的发展方向。

So it is wish November we get here tomorrow. So either way, you know, we're going to be covered. We're going to figure out how to be successful out there. Whoever's run the country, we've always been successful. But it's going to dramatically change what you do in business going forward based on who's running the country going in the future. You know, I know I had a bunch of people reach out to me after my podcast with Brett Morgan. And they mentioned that that they either reached out to him for an opportunity or, you know, we're looking for a job.

所以我们希望明天是十一月。不管怎样，你知道的，我们会做出相应的安排。我们会找到成功的方法。无论是谁在治理国家，我们一直都很成功。但未来谁在治理国家，将会显著改变你在商业中的做法。我知道，有很多人在我和布雷特·摩根的播客之后联系了我。他们提到，他们要么向他寻找机会，要么在找工作。

So my question to you is if people are listening to this or like, wow, like, I want to be part of Ziegler. I want to, you know, I want an opportunity organization. What roles do you have open? What opportunities are you looking to fill? I mean, what message do you have to these people? So we kind of do it different than everybody else. We are always looking for talented people. I will hire every talented person that I can get, whether we have a position form or not. And then we'll create a position for them going forward.

那么，我的问题是，如果有些人听到这些，就觉得很感兴趣，想成为Ziegler的一员，想找个机会加入这个组织，你们目前有哪些职位空缺？你们在寻找什么样的人才？你有什么想对这些人说的吗？ 我们做事的方式有点与众不同。我们一直在寻找有才华的人。不管我们有没有相应的职位，只要遇到人才，我都会聘用他们，然后再为他们创造一个适合的职位。

So we're constantly, you know, building our team, building up, building up our people, people that want to work in a world class culture where it's a lot of fun to come to work, where you can thrive, where you can make decisions, where you can make extremely good money. You know, that's kind of kind of our mo and that's that's why I think we have the longevity that we do. And the only way that we can continue to build a company is to have that longevity and have everybody working together and going towards a common goal out there.

所以，我们一直在不断地建设我们的团队，不断提高，不断培养我们的员工。这些员工愿意在一个具备世界级文化的环境中工作，这里工作很有趣，你可以在这里兴旺发达，自主决策，并且赚到非常可观的收入。你知道吗，这就是我们的模式，我认为这也是为什么我们能够长久发展的原因。只有通过这种方式，公司才能持续成长，所有人一起努力朝着共同的目标前进。

I think that's the strength of our organization. You built a hell of a machine. Any closing thoughts? No, I appreciate you having me on today. It's a great, great discussion. And it's going to be exciting future. So look forward to it. Had a blast, Aaron, thanks so much for coming on. This was awesome. All right, hope you enjoyed that episode. Please give the podcast a rating, consider subscribing to the show and check the show notes for links to what we talked about. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you guys next time.

我认为这是我们组织的强项。你打造了一台非常了不起的机器。还有什么想要补充的吗？没有了，非常感谢你今天邀请我。这是一次非常精彩的讨论。未来会很令人兴奋，我对此非常期待。今天聊得很开心，Aaron，非常感谢你来做客。这次真是太棒了。好，希望你们喜欢这一期节目。请为我们的播客评分，考虑订阅我们的节目，并查看节目说明中的相关链接。感谢收听。下次再见。