That doesn't work for me. I don't want to work for a guy like that. That's fine. The 17,000 other people we can work for. We get up early, we start our day early, we work late. And we're savages when it comes to that schedule. If this man is calling you at 4.30 in the morning, you're going to be very, very rich. Today I'm speaking with Brian Benstock, General Manager of Paragon Honda, the number one Honda and Acura dealership in the world. We discuss his career long journey to $1 billion in sales, the wild success of his 24-hour service center, how he mentors and develops his key employees into car sales savages, being mentored by Jack Welch, if you don't know the name, Google it, and much more. Don't forget to click subscribe so you never miss an episode. What's up, everyone? This is Car dealership guy. You're listening to the Car dealership guy podcast, which is my effort to give you access to the most unbiased and transparent insights into the car market.
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So it's great to be here with you. Dude, I tweeted about you in Paragon like a year ago. Do you remember that? Big deal after NADA 2023. Yeah, we came up strong last year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I forget how. I mean, someone sent it to me for NADA. I was there actually, but someone sent me like, hey, you shared some numbers about, you know, deliveries of cars, service deliveries, or you pick up and drop off cars in New York and just, you know, how it's impacted your bottom line and numbers and the post went viral. And then a million and a half impressions.
Yeah, somebody called bullshit on us and it was actually true. You know, we, since 2017, we were doing pickup and delivery. And I think we had picked up only 200,000 cars and generated $53 million in gross profit. And someone said that's impossible. And they started doing the math and you know, they couldn't get their head around it. But you know, it's actually factual. And you know, we started doing it long before COVID. You know, there was a dealership in Manhattan that wasn't there. They went out of business, a Honda dealership. We had to figure out how to solve for X. And you know, we came up with several terrible ideas, how to, you know, I was going to have a truck go in and pick up cars from a garage and, you know, ask the customers to drop the cars off of the garage. And that was a terrible idea. And we thought of, you know, another way that we were going to go pick up the cars from the old location, doing it one at a time. Well, that was terrible. Then we were going to train and incentivize the customers comes to the dealership. And, you know, it's 45 minutes to get from in Manhattan to the dealership. And then 45 minutes to have an oil change and 45 minutes to get back, that was terrible. And then we just saw, you know, hey, what if we, you know, put the dealership on the phone and just picked up the customer's car and serviced it overnight when it was sleeping and brought it back to them. And then ideas seem to be a home run. I love to hear it. Brian, take us back. Like I want to start way, way back. I don't want to know anything yet about auto business. I want to know, I want to know who is Brian Benstock? Why did I hear your name when I was, you know, a small use car dealer in Philly and then, you know, growing an online e-commerce startup? I heard your name multiple times. I had no nothing to do with you, right? Like who are you? Who is Brian Benstock?
I started selling cars in a little place called P.S. Hondam in Hasett, Long Island. I started selling Hondas, I was told, if you're going to sell cars, you got to work for Paul Singer and if you're going to sell cars, you got to sell Honda. And I started working for Paul Singer on May the 10th, 1982, May the 10th, 1982. Prime interest rates were 18%, which means we were lending out money at 19%. And during my job interview with Nancy Phillips, who's still in the business, and is a wonderful dealer broker, she asked me, how do you feel about charging customers 18, 19%. I was 21 years old. I didn't know any different. I said, no problem. And of course, I had a motorcycle loan. I was paying 23%. So I thought that was a bargain. And it was a great time for me to get started in the industry. And I had excellent management. She provided incredible leadership. And I took the job in May until something better came along. My dad, being a really good dad, said, you can't work in this day. One day, if you're not going to college without a job, and I wasn't sure if I was going to go back to college. So I got a job in the car business till something better came along. And it's, what is it, 40 some ideas later, and nothing better came along. I found some real great opportunities in the car business. Classic car guy, I love it.
So when you say your dad, right, was your family and entrepreneur or family were they in the car business? My dad sold cars. My dad, in fact, at the time sold cars for Paul Singer. He worked at the Kavok dealership for Paul Singer. He was a manager in the organization. And he didn't get me the job, but he got me an interview. I was sweating bullets, applying for the job with Nancy, a job with a Honda dealership, was a pretty special job, even back in 1982. And I thought, really, I'd take the job for the summer and see how it went. And I thought the industry was interesting. I saw a couple guys that were supporting families selling cars. And I remember the guys, they were professionals. They dressed like professionals.
And I'm living in my parents' basement apartment. And I'm saying to myself, what is it? If this guy can support a house and a car and kids, and I'm a guy living in the basement, I can do pretty good. And I remember that first half a year, I made a decent living. I made a very decent living between me and the end of the year. And I decided to get serious about the business about a year or so into the business. I mean, I was somewhat serious, but I got real serious after Paul Singer and John Mazzotti sent us to a meeting with Jojorroir.
Yeah, we saw Jojorroir speak. And Jojorroir spoke about being the number one sales person in the world. He was going to get his book of records selling six cars a day. I couldn't get my hair on that. And then he told this wonderful story about a high school reunion, getting back to high school, and running into the sky. And the guy was a doctor. And I said, Joe, how are you doing? He said, I'm doing pretty good.
And he goes, what do you do for a living? He goes, I sell cars. And he said, the guy looked at him. I'm like, someone put a turd under his nose. He goes, you sell cars? And he goes, yeah, I sell cars. And he goes, I'm a roller shell for life. What do you do? And the guy said, well, I'm a doctor. And he goes, I gave him that look right back. I gave him the look of an, oh, yeah, yeah, doctor. Oh, the blood and everything else. And he goes, Jojorroir, I made $400,000 last year.
And Jojorroir famously tells him about it. Because I made $600,000 last year. And I didn't get any blood. I didn't lose a single patient. And now there's a 22 or 23 year old me sitting in this and wait. He made $600,000 selling cars. And it's not like basketball, where you've got to be six foot seven or seven foot tall. It's something like a football where you've got to be able to have this physical strength.
I figured, gosh, if he can do it, I can do it. And so it was really Mr. Rosati and Mr. Singer do not know the value that they got out of me from that one meeting, whatever they paid for that, they got an exponential return. Because I was the puppy dog sitting there in that room, eating up every word that Jojorroir said. Tell me more about your rise into industry.
Like, you said 1982. What was it like back then? How is it different from what it is today? I think I got to see the birth of a lot of different changes in the business. It wasn't a lot of leasing back then. In fact, there was really no captive leasing back then. And I think as part of my career has been associated with innovation. And I had the pleasure and the blessing to be around a lot of people that gave me great insights.
I had a gentleman that worked for me that was involved in leasing very, very early in the game. Gentlemen, there's Longston's past, but Norman Lagau, who taught me the leasing business in the early 80s. And I think that became a real cornerstone of my business well before anybody else was leasing. We were leasing more cars disproportionately to anybody else before American Honda had a lease. He, in fact, had written a manufacturer's handover lease way back in the day. We figured out leasing and it was a way for us to really offer value for our customers.
And we were told when I came to Queens, nobody wants to lease cars. People here don't own their houses. So they only want to own their cars. And when I came here, we really tested that. And sure enough, of course, the people of Queens wanted to own, I mean, lease a car. It's tried more car for less money. And we were able to be pretty far out ahead of everybody else in the leasing game. And there I say, trade cycle management.
I met Sean Wolfington and Sean's uncle used this, was at the forefront of half a car with Ford. And that was another lucky break for me to meet a family like the Wolfington's and to be involved in trade cycle management. And trade cycle management became a cornerstone of what we do and what I do at Paragon. It's really new to you every too. And understanding that the small of the trade cycle, the more frequency you could have, the more frequency you have as a greater way to increase geometrical your ability to do business. And that led us to being able to get those customers back in for used cars and a great way to manufacture a used car. So it was really a great, it's been a great education that I've had by being around really spectacular people. And I think like a snowball, as I roll, I pick up a lot of these ideas and insights. And it really helped me and helped us as time has gone by. I wanna get a little bit more personal. You've been in the car business 42 years. The first thing that comes to mind for me is lots of late nights. I mean, this is retail business, right? It takes a lot. Tell us a little bit about your family life. And how has it been growing a family while also growing what has become the number one accurate on haunted dealership in the world?
Jack Welsh, who's a mentor of mine and became a friend. I mean, I'm blessed again to be living in New York City and have access to some people. I think there I say, I met him a number of times and had dinner with him and his wife, Susie, a couple of times. And, you know, he said that famously there's no such thing as life choices. I mean, these life choices have consequences. And people ask me about life balance, work life balance. There are no such things as work life balance. There are life choices and those choices have consequences. I'm blessed to have married a great woman. And she understood from day one. I worked very long hours, you know, six days a week. Six days a week was common, 12 hour days is common. Back in the day, in fact, seven days a week was common for me for many years of my career. My boss, Paul Singer, had a work ethic that I've never seen in anybody. He worked seven days a week and I tried to work at that pace with him for much of my career. And I've changed that these days. And six days a week these days, more like eight to 10 hours a day, not to 12 to 14 hours a day. As I've changed the choices that I'm making now, I'm trying to see my kids grow up a little bit, but in the early days, like a rocket ship when it's coming up off the ground, you've got to put a lot of effort into that career. And I see young people starting out today and they want all the things. They want the toys, they want the cars, they want the house, the boats and all those things, but they're not willing to make the sacrifices. And I just don't think you can have both. And I will tell you, I missed many a wedding. I missed many a party. I missed many a trip in my life. And I don't regret a darn thing because those were the choices that I made. And thankfully, I promised my wife, I said, later on in life, we'll be able to enjoy ourselves. Later in life, I promise you. And thankfully, we are able to take a little bit of time that we weren't able to take back then. But this business, like you said, it's a retail business. It's a business that goes on 24 hours a day. And my guys will tell you, the phone calls, the text messages started about 4.30 in the morning and they don't stop until about 11 o'clock at night. If you work for me, that's normal. Now you can say, hey, that doesn't work for me. I don't want to work for a guy like that. That's fine. There's 17,000 other people we can work for.
We get up early, we start our day early, we work late. And we're savages when it comes to that schedule. And I can tell when my guys wake up because they start to return the text, summer at six, summer at seven, summer at eight o'clock in the morning. But I'm looking at the data, first thing in the morning, I'm looking at where we're at and looking to see, hey, Attaboy, good job. Or, hey, you told me we did this and the data says that. Hey, here's what we need to do. Here's what my list is. And shooting out the information. And again, I like to think that we work at a pretty good pace. And I think the numbers show. And last year, we had the privilege to finish top spot in the country. And I don't take that for granted. There's 1,200 Honda dealerships and to finish in the top spot. I think it was a pretty special job done by the men and women of the company. And we'll get more into that. Tell me more about, what is it like working for Brian Benstock?
Tell me more about that. Oh, I suck, man. It's a grind. It's an absolute grind. My job is to develop people. And that's not an easy job. I think there is a lot of pushing. I think I'm fair, but there are demands. My job is to cause your growth. I've learned in life that life is constant pain, uncertainty, and constant work. And if you try and avoid any of the three, you get more of the three. If you try and avoid pain, if you try and avoid uncertainty, if you try and avoid work, you get more of that. So let's just face that reality. And as you're trying to educate people on that, they look at you like, this guy's a strange dude. Life is not pain. Well, yeah, it is. And there is uncertainty out there.
So we try and mitigate that uncertainty by developing skills. We try and mitigate that pain by being prepared. And we try and work every day, a little bit every day. Because if you don't pull the weeds out of your garden, every day, they'll take over the garden, as Jim Rohn says. You've got to pull the weeds out every day. Is it a constant, constant grind? No. But if you take your eye off the ball, the market will sneak up on either competitors or sneak up on you, and they will take your garden. And so I think we've got to prepare. You've got to make time for health. You've got to make time for skill sets. You've got to make time for your family. If you don't make time for these things, you'll find that decay will set in, and they will be taken away from you.
Do you think that's practical for someone starting out in the car business or early on in their career? I mean, I think even my first half or five years in the car business, and I say that at the minimum, it's a grind. I mean, you've got to be there. You've got to put in the time. You've got to put in the grind. And the reality is, to do anything great, there is no such thing as balance, if you ask me. I mean, people, even something as simple as a car dealership guy, which is the most recent idea that came to life, thinking through, till now, even the amount of time on a daily basis to put something to that, I mean, doing things that, quote unquote, don't scale, right? There is no such thing as balance.
It's more so balance in between periods in your life. Can't balance me, hey, I'm going to dedicate this 15 years so that I can have a better 15 years later. That can be balanced. I'm going to be all in now, right? I'm going to go dark for six months so that I can be in a really special place. How many people dedicate a month to, hey, you know what? I'm not going to the bar. I'm not going to the club. I'm not going to. I'm going to give up drink and I'm going to give up. I'm going to dedicate this to educating myself on a specific craft or a skill set. What does 100% of you look like? Has anybody ever seen a 100% of you? And wouldn't that be amazing to get a 100% of you towards some driven goal? Whether that be a relationship, a job, a career, a craft, anything? And what could it be if we could harness that for just a short period of time? We're so freaking distracted all the time.
And they say it takes about 10,000 hours to get mastery at something. And 10,000 hours takes 10,000 hours. So it's over. It's that monotony of doing something over a long period of time and just developing that skill. You know, I try and teach the guys here. If you read 15 pages a day in a book that would take you and improve your skills in a given direction, you could be an expert in that field and you can make tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you just read 10 or 15 pages, absorb those pages, not necessarily listening to it, but reading and understanding them. And if you ask somebody in a sales meeting, hey, how many of you have read a book about selling and that number, that number is shockingly low if you get people to be honest. And you say, well, how many have read two? How many have read 10? How many have read 15? And I've got, you know, I absorb, I eat books.
I mean, I read a lot of voracious reader and it was a terrible student at school. But you know, my, that boss of my Nancy Phillips told me the solution to any problem you've got starts with the turning of a page. And I sort of broke that down in the back of my head and started reading books. And isn't it, you know, she isn't into the blessing that by getting up in the morning and reading every day, my oldest daughter, one of my second oldest sort of Trinity, sort of watching me and getting up in the morning and she'd get up early in the morning and she'd grab a cup of coffee. And she'd go and she'd start reading and she, oh, she's reading it. And she's reading and she's reading and she's reading and she became an exceptional student, which I was not, as I said when I went to school.
And she finished one of the tops in her class in a very high high school. And last year, she got accepted into Cambridge University in England, you know, which is one of the top schools in the world. And I'm proud to say she reads about 90 books a year. And she's not reading love novels. She's reading pretty intense books. So, you know, those habits can change people's lives. And I don't know where her journey will take her, but I think it's a pretty interesting spot.
And so, you know, the people that are around me at the dealership that understand that this stuff can really have an impact on your life. I think they're, hopefully they're better off for it because I think our job as a leader, as mentors is to develop people. And that's the most rewarding part of the world. Here's my question. You seem like an intensely focused person, right? I speak with a lot of people on a weekly basis, you know, different walks of life. You seem someone who's intensely focused. What got you to this point? Like, was it someone? Was it something? Why? Why? I have had a series of great mentors, you know, the office that I'm in now, there was Paul Singer's office. And he, I worked for him.
Isn't it? You know, I don't know how spiritual you are, and I won't get into that, but I started working for him on May 10, 1982. He died on May the 10th. You know, there are no coincidences. He died on May the 10th, 2006. And so I worked for him, I guess it's 24 years to the day. He was an intense worker. I still work for him. And I think he said a blistering pace. He was elegant, eloquent. He was, his nickname was the Silk Camera. He was soft-spoken, but driven. And I think that I feel like I'm carrying on his mission. So a mission driven. And we're not done with the mission now. I'm proud that his wife, who's my partner, has given me the opportunity to continue what we started some of the years of filming.
I think, you know, she's one of the blessings is when you realize there's more there, there. And so how can you be done when you realize, you know, whatever, you deliver a thousand cars, let's say in a month, and you realize, gosh, with all the opportunities we had, you left so many opportunities on the table. And if you look at the number of people that visited your website, when you look at whatever the outcome was, whatever you delivered, you realize, gosh, look at all the deals, the transactions we missed. And how do we go after that? You'll never get there, right? And so that's the challenge is how do we get there? How do we serve more people? How do we serve them better, faster, quicker? And I think that's really the mission that we're on. That's the mission I'm on.
Brian, how do you allocate your time today? I have to imagine it's shifted a lot over the years. And so today, like what does a week for Brian Ben Stock look like? I've started out with the day. They started for the morning and it's reading from four to five coffee and exercise from you generally from five to six thirty data from six thirty to seven thirty shower and whatnot in breakfast till eight travel time, which we try and make efficient use of the travel time. And then it's usually work from about nine to I guess about seven at a dinner time, family time and we started all over again. We have five tasks a day that we're not going to stop the day till we get those five tasks done. And that helps to make sure that we're pushing in the right direction.
I manage six to eight people a day. So my contacts, my communication is going to focus heavily on working with those six to eight people every day. I think the realization came to me late in life. It could be effective with about six to eight people a day, not too many more than that. That doesn't mean you can't communicate with thousands of people on a day, but I'm trying to have the development of people. It's six to eight and I've got my six to eight and sometimes it shifts a little bit, but there's six to eight people that I rely on to drive what we're doing. And maybe now with the new store of my planes, I've made that eight to 10. But I look up to the Roger Penske's of the world, my hero.
How do you do 170 stores? How the heck do you do it? And he's really good at it, the Terry Taylor's and these little guys, just phenomenal icons. And I've got a very small little world that I operate in and learning to scale that is what's next and how do we scale that? Tell us more about your team. So you mentioned these six to eight people. Who are they? What do they do? What type of compliments do you surround yourself with? Or ask better? Ask better? How do you compliment yourself? They've got energy. They've got the Jack Wells for ease. They've got energy. They've got edge. They've got enthusiasm and they execute. And so we're going to focus on that. And they're youthful. They're not young, but they're youthful. Some of them are young, but they've got to be youthful. They've got to be puppy dogs. They've got to have that zest, that dry to get some stuff done.
They're male, they're female, right? They're multilingual. I think they can communicate with the team that we have. They're very, very well educated in the tasks that they're to perform. That's a requirement. They're up early. They are in the 5 a.m. club for sure. It is not uncommon for any of them to hear from me before 5 o'clock in the morning or at 11 o'clock at night. And is that a prerequisite for working for you? No, I have to wake up at 5. I don't think it's legal to legislate that. But certainly it's not uncommon for us to communicate in those hours. I think for me, I'm clear at that time of the morning. I'm clear at that time of the morning. There's a stillness that's there.
And I think it's best to get those ideas out. Again, if I'm breaking any state of federal laws, I apologize. All they have to do is say, please stop and it'll stop. But they don't. And there's nothing better to get a text message from somebody. It's a good idea. And there's somebody that's on fire. Hey, can I call you? Yeah, call me. And there's a guy whispering because I know his wife is asleep someplace. Hey, and they give you an idea. And that's an energy, that enthusiasm. That's a puppy dog with the tail wagon. I just figured something out. And OK, OK, thank you through. No, I did. And you know, you love that, right? That's those are the kind of people you want to be around, you know, whether they be partners or they be leaders on the team. That's what we're looking for.
How do you find yourself sifting for that, right? Like, how do you attract that type of talent? Where did it come from? Yeah, you know, the last thing I want is a dead fish laying on ice with one eye open. Sit in there. You know, you've got energy attracts energy is attractive. We're salesman. You've got to sell the mission. You've got to sell the vision. What's the vision? I'm the chief vision officer. Here's where we're going. Here's how I see it. Here's how we're going to get there. And if a man or a woman can't sell the vision, you know, that they're going to be rendered ineffective. And some guys want to be swagger and cool and laid back. And they can't get that emotion.
They can't charge people. They can't get them excited. And there for me, they're going to be less effective. And I understand there are cats that really respond well to that kind of energy. That's just not the energy that works well with me. You know, that may work well in California and certain laid back, you know, environments. That's not the environment that I operate best in. And I think another Jack Wells, you've got to hire people that laugh at you jokes, right? He tells the story famously that his wife is applying for a job at a big accounting firm.
And she tripped and she made a joke about, Oh, I was an entrance. And the people she was interviewing for just sat there. They didn't laugh. And she knew right there. I can't, this is not the kind of place that I would fit in. And I think it's true. You don't have to work for people that are exactly like you. But I think he said it best. You've got to work for people that laugh at you jokes. There's got to be some sort of a similarity of kinds. And again, it doesn't mean they have to look like there's a word we like to say nowadays. It's the vibes. It's all about the vibes. Yeah, vibes is the right word because if you use the word cultural, what's that was about to use culture can no, no, no, that culture means to some people, everyone's got to look like you know, that's not it.
But the vibe, right? The vibe is the right word. Like a pitching fork. Everyone's in tune. That vibe is a good way of putting it. So tell me how long did it take you to become a partner at your store? How many years was that? It seemed like forever, but it was the right time. It came about somewhere in the late 90s, 97 or so. So was it that long, 15 years, 16, 17 years? Do you think that for people listening to this for any up and commerce, do you think that opportunity still exists out there? Yeah, it does. But you've got to be patient and it takes plus or minus nine months to develop a baby. And it takes a long time as a new dealer. Now it takes a long time before you develop the trust to make somebody a partner. And I know a lot of dealers that throw out these fake partnerships and they make people partners, but they're not really partners. They can throw you out at any minute.
That wasn't the arrangement I had with Mr. Singer. When we became partners, I was a real partner. He pushed us a basket of checks across the desk and said, you're my partner. And I remember, I remember quite vividly the first check that I had to sign was a floor plan check. And it was for about 170,000. I have the check, a copy of the check. And when he left the office, I called the controller. And I said, Nick, is the money in the bank account? He's sort of laughing. Because of course, I said, because I've never signed a check for this much money. And pay off check for 170,000. And when somebody's going to trust you to sign checks like that, you want to make sure that you know who you're in bed with. And so those that are fighting for that, remember, it's not just a fair weather relationship. You've got to be there for the good times and for the bad times.
And trust me, I've been through all the times with my relationship with the singer family for recessions, the floods, the insurance problems, everything that you can go through. And you've got him standing there, you know, not just for the times when the money's coming in, but when you reach those times when you're truly tested. And you'll know how good your marriage is when you hit the rocks. You'll know how good your attorney is when you've got an impossible case. You know how good your doctor is when your doctor's tested in the life or death situation. That's when you know what you're dealing with. And the same thing I think is true in business. You know how good your partner is when he or she is truly tested. Anybody can cheer when the temperature's right and the game is going your way. But do you have faith when your team's down by three touchdowns with five minutes to go in the game? Well, that's when you're the real fans are.
So I want to get into some of the brass tacks here. You know, I think we've talked a lot about your your real impressive background and rise in this industry and just what you've accomplished. And you sell, I mean, over 32 cars a day, 950 cars a month, you know, based in New York. How did you get to this stage? And I like tactically, right? What is what is it like to operate in your showroom? How do you put out these numbers? You know, first of all, we don't do any flea. I want to say that no fleet, no broker business. You know, a lot of the dealers can't get their head around that. A lot of these Honda dealers with these franchises that are worth millions of dollars, prostituted by selling cars to brokers and they're going to turn their multi-gazillion dollar franchise into a Nissan store.
And it's a disgrace. We don't do that. You know, we don't do it. It's belly button to belly button one at a time because I'm not going to prostitute my business by selling cars to a broker. We're going to sell the cars retail. I'm in the retail business, which is why when push comes to shove, our dealerships profitability numbers are staggering and our business grows. You know, and the past three, four, five years, even the stupid dealers as an accounting friend of mine said, made money. But right now, all of a sudden you see panic because we've had a little pullback in the market and I don't mean to say stupid dealers, but even the bad dealers made money. And now it's a fun time. I had breakfast with a dealer this morning and I said to this, Alan Dubre, he's an accurate dealer, a Honda dealer, excellent dealer. I said, Alan, this is a fun time for us because all the other guys are going to be jumping over bridge. And this is a time when let's go guys, roll up the sleeves, take out the playbook and let's go.
And we saw last month a dramatic increase in the New York market in broker business. Guys were panicking and selling off their inventories to broker yourself. When you ask about doing volume of business, we have a very healthy database that we can turn to, to engage and to enact and to ignite to sell our cars. So we've got again, a very healthy trade cycle management that we can, I think, look to give them a proposal that makes sense for them to upgrade to a brand new car. And when you're selling your cars to the brokers, you have no such opportunity.
So pardon the little commercial about the brokers, but this is a, in certain markets, Florida, in New York, it's prolific. And the manufacturers say they don't like it, but they do nothing to stop it. And it'll destroy the OEMs, the manufacturers, the roots of their tree. It's a not careful. You know, whatever we used to have tough sales months, we would always just say one word, right? And so I'm curious with you, is it for you like the success? Does it come from focusing on the fundamentals or is there also some, you know, some real nuances to the way you operate? Yeah. Yeah. Do you ever get away from the fundamentals? I don't think so. It's blocking and tackling.
And a basketball coach went to see Kobe Bryant one day and he got there real early in the morning, four o'clock in the morning, and he was shocked. This basketball coach was a coach of either a college team or a high school team. And he said he couldn't believe that Kobe was there doing the most basic or basic drills, you know, standing behind the free throw line and throwing free throws one at a time and then doing the more basic rudimentary drills. And he asked him about it and says, well, where else could you just start? It's all the fundamentals, blocking and tackling Vince Lombardi said you have to be brilliant at blocking and tackling. For us, our blocking and tackling will really be a database mining.
And when do you stop that talking to the customers inside of your database? And that's got to be 12 months a year, 365 days a year and having a communication strategy to talk to the people with the highest statistical probability of doing business with you now and in the future. And that's got to be mapped out well in advance. That's not a guessing game. It's a strategy that you have in place having the right people employed at the right time to say the right thing to the right customers.
And so we knew about a year ago, I wrote an article that Dale Pollock published and I said, you know, there's a profit coma going on right now and that coma is going to end. And some people are going to be in deep shiba because many of the salespeople that we have on our floors today got hired during this profit coma and they don't know what it's like to have a customer say, no, let me think about it. I'll get back to you because the customers are walking in with their wallets and say, oh, you have the car here, take my wallet. How much over sticker do you want? Oh, 3000. Okay, I'll pay it. And somehow they think that that's normal. And they thought that that was normal.
And all of a sudden customers are saying, no, no, no, no. I want to discount. I want 3000 or I want 4000 more for my trade. And we saw some of our younger salespeople struggling. So going back to the basics, the mundane things, the everyday things, the road to the sale, the opening investigation, selection demonstration, verification appraisal, closed to what's the purpose of the step one was purpose of step two, three, four, and the specific order and what the purpose of those that order is. Maybe I'm simple, but if you're going to go through an operation, I want the doctor to follow a set procedure understanding that there is a beginning, a middle and an end.
You do clean the area before you make the incision. You don't just wing it. You have to have a specific setup. And I think that the sale, the same thing applies. And that goes for an online sale as well as an in-person sale. What's your take on online versus person? Where do you think the market's headed? I think both have a bright future. I have no preference. I think the customer should decide what's best for them. Many of us want to touch and feel before we buy, especially in the age of electrification.
I think it's nonsense to think that customers want to buy an electric car online. Can you imagine I'm going to buy and you name the brand. I'm going to buy a brand new electric Toyota. I've never seen it before. I've never sat in it before to think that I'm going to do 100% of that transaction online and take the leap of faith. I think it's ridiculous. I want to, Toyota, Honda have an excellent reputation, but I want to feel this vehicle. I want to experience it before I pull the trigger. So I think especially with the 168 new models coming out over the next two years, people are going to want to get behind the wheel. So I think the in-store experience still has a lot to be desired.
I think we need to change what the store looks like. I think Professor Galloway calls it, the stores need to become a temple to the brand, a temple where you can encourage, touch, feel, start it up. And again, that's a wonderful thing about an EV. You can have that thing fully running inside the showroom so the customer could, with the exception of driving it, I may not be safe to drive it around the showroom, but you could really get the customer immersed in all aspects of the car fully lit up like a Christmas tree inside the store, which a lot of dealers or hesitant to do.
And change that experience inside the store to make the store a temple to the brand and really focus on that customer experience. That somehow, that experience has to be mimicked or replicated online. And isn't it interesting when you buy an app product online, that experience somehow matches the experience when you buy an Apple product in the store. Completely different experience, but the smoothness of the experience, the feel of that is about the same. So that's kind of cool. So how do we do that? And we can do that. And the wonderful thing about online experiences is it's transparent. So if you see something you like, you can knock it off. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. If Apple does something great, and by the way, if you haven't bought an Apple phone online, it's so analogous to how you can buy a car online, even when it comes to trade in.
So why all these companies are trying to do it themselves, take a look at what they do, knock it off. Because it's a pretty good setup there. But I think that to answer your question, I think there's always going to be a place for a showroom. Maybe the showroom footprint is going to change. Maybe we don't need the amount of real estate that we had for showroom space. But to have an in-store experience, I think is very important to the manufacturers going forward. So how's your technology stack adapted to this reality? It's clear you believe in the showroom. What have you done on the tech side in order to meet the demands of just a modern day consumer?
Yeah, I think technology, I think the dealers have failed with technology. We talked about in 2008, we got rid of a lot of headcount with the recession, right? And we tried to, and we added a lot of technology, but we added all this tech and then we brought back all of the headcount. So we've got the tech expense and we've got the headcount. I think technology should aid people in purchasing and selling. It's got to be a tool. And we're pretty heavily immersed in technology. We think the technology that we use helps us find customers more strategically. Aragon was at the forefront of digital.
I think that was one of the things that we came to people saying, how do we become the number one certified dealer in the world? Dale, Pollock and I got together very early in the M-Power days before Vioero. And Dale showed it to me. It was great. I was confused to use it because it made the men feel less like men. I'm not going to use it. I'm not going to let a computer tell me how to put the right number on the car. And I said, Dale, come back to me when it has an offensive tool and not just defensive, we put the number on the car.
Dale came to this very door in 2007. I think I've got something. I think I've got something. It was the first version of Vioero. And I looked at it and I loved it. And I went all in. And I always used to joke with Dale. We were the number two certified dealer in the nation. And I said, all you did was move this from number one, the number two to number one. But we went from number two to number one, doubling number two. And we've held that position for 100 and I care for pretty much unchallenged for about 15 years. And it was really just a tech play. I learned that it's a math problem. It's not an old-sharked, sorbet boy's gut. It's really just a math problem. And when we saw it as a math problem, yes, give you an honest moment.
When Dale looked at my inventory in 2007, the average age of a used car, a paragon was 150 days. 150 days. And he said, you know, but he was telling me my inventory was way upside down. And I said, but Dale. And I mentioned number like 6,000 a car gross profit was really proud. And he said, but look, what about that? At 150 days. At 150 days average, you were doing $6,000 profit. Right. At a car. And he said, yeah, but what would happen if you took those cars to the auction? Because I don't know. He goes, I do. And he gave me a number. He said, you probably lose a million dollars. So he said, if you subtract that from what you made, you didn't make what you thought you made. You probably lost a bunch of money. And I committed to fixing it. You know, if you identify a problem, what we did, we fixed it.
And since that time, our average age of a car for the past 15 years has been about 21 days. And our turn is that on a used car? Yeah, on a used car with very little exception. It's been about 21 days. We corrected the problem. And I said, I said, isn't it interesting, a man who's blind gave me insight and taught me how to see my inventory. Because I wasn't paying attention. You know, just we write down some of the old cars and we'd sell them. Write down some of the old cars and sell them. So we'll rather than write them down, how about just not letting them get old and turning the inventory. And so we used technology in a pretty special way at that time. And we've applied that now to many other uses.
You know, we teamed up with Google in, I guess it was 2011 or 2012. And so looking at how we could create a frictionless transaction for service, that was in 2014 of 2015, we wanted to create a frictionless transaction. And I wanted to do it for selling. I had an Alexa. Whose idea was this, by the way, I did read about this and I've heard about it. Whose idea was this? Well, I'll tell you what happens. It sent me an Alexa. And I didn't know what to do with it. So I'm a big coffee fan. And so I said, hey, Alexa, what a Starbucks coffee. And I said, like, cured cake cups, 24 cups, you know, 34 hours. I said, okay, buy it. What's your code? One, two, three, four. And I forgot about it.
The next day, the next day, a box of cake cups came to the dealership. And I was, holy shit. Holy shit. That was a frictionless transaction. This is terrible. I called somebody else into the office and said, watch this. And I did it. And the next day, another box. I must have 15 boxes of coffee in my office, big boxes of coffee. And I had an executive from Honda. I said, look at this. And I was, now I'm collecting the boxes.
And I realized that they were sourced from all different places. And so it appeared that Amazon was going to, whoever could fill the order first and best would get the order. And the price was the same. So they were agnostic who filled the order. And so I went to, I met up with the people at Google and I was speaking before the audience at Google. And I said to Google, what's the number one search engine? There's all these young kids. And I say pimple face kids. They're all young. I'm old, they're all young. They all had their Apple computers open. And I said, what's the number one search engine?
They went, Google. And I said, what's the number two search engine? They went, YouTube. And I said, you're overall proud of that. And that's great. I'm a retailer. What's the number one search engine for retail? And they go, Google. And I go, no, it's Amazon. It's Amazon. And I showed them in this chart. I said, it's Amazon. Google brings the customer to the product. Amazon brings the product to the customer. And so Amazon beats you in retail. Afterward, a woman named Joanne Sheehan from Google said, hey, I wish I was on it. And she said, why don't we work on something together? Why don't we see how we can deliver products to customers using Google?
And I said, Ray, I'd love to deliver cars. And she said, no, no, no. You can't deliver cars. You got to start out what we call the LCD, the lowest common denominator, and that service. I said, no, I want to deliver cars. And she goes, no, LCD, lowest common denominator. We're going to go wide, and then we're going to go tall. We're going to go wide, the wide space. We go tall. And that's where it started, which is how do we deliver a voice technology, a frictionless technology where someone can use Google and say, hey, Google, talk to parents on Honda. And without them having to touch or swipe, we could arrange for someone to pick up their car, have it brought to the dealership service, and brought back to the house. A year, about a year later, that was completed.
And when you realize all the different tech that we had to bring into play, which is how do you afford it? How do you keep the customer communicated? And how do you put that on the schedule? Or how do you keep the customer informed throughout that process? And we were a little bit ahead of the world at that time, because now, when you do it, you can have it on your dashboard. A light comes on in the car, and you can talk to the car in the car, and talk to you. But that led us to doing pickup and delivery, communicating with a pickup and delivery service. And like I said, we were open 24 hours a day.
And so you can have your car picked up after work, serviced overnight while you're sleeping and put back in your driveway before you wake up in the morning. And give us some more numbers on that. Like, tell us a bit more about just how it's impacted your profitability, sales numbers, everything. You know, I seldom talk about the profitability of the dealership, but I can say that we've had 200 plus thousand transactions since 2017. And the gross profit on that's been over $60 million in gross. The average repair order is double what it is if you come to the store.
So all these people that are hesitant to do online transactions, the average repair order in the store is about $250. When we do a transaction, where we pick up the car, it's over $500. And that's not because we're charging more. But Yoshi, the learning lessons, the lessons for us have been so great. When you come into the store, let's say you have an oil change, you wait online, 25 minutes. God forbid, but you wait on 25 minutes. We write you up, you sit down in the lobby, you wait a half an hour, we get your car in.
So you're into this project for about a half an hour, an hour. And now we get your car up on the lift. And we notice legitimately you need front brakes. And you're sitting in the lobby and we say, Yoshi, you need front brakes. We have two questions. What are they? How much is it going to cost me? How long is it going to take? Correct. And I've spoken Sweden, I've spoken in Denmark, I've spoken all over it. And wherever we are, the same two questions. And you're not going to like either answer.
You're not going to like that answer. But when we've picked up the car, and you're not worried about the time anymore, the time is no longer a consideration. And so we're getting a lot of that work that needs to be done, that the customers would say, you know what? I can't. I got to go. I got to go. I'll do it someplace else. I'll do it some other time. And what ends up happening, we're losing that business to the independence. My competition is not hillside Honda. My competition is not Bay Ridge Honda. We thought that was a competition, right? We took a look at the heat map and we looked in the New York metro area. And there are six Honda dealers within 10 miles, six.
And we thought that was a competition. There are 17,000 New York State inspection stickers, stations, 17,000 within 15 miles. It's the 17,000 independence that we're eating our lunch. They get 80% of the service business. So in this case, when I say to you, you need breaks, you say, I mean, you know, I'll get back to you. You leave, you drop the car off when you're good and right. You have the, you know, your family member drop the car off at the local gas station to get that done. Not because they're better. They're just proximate.
You don't have the time sitting in my store to get that work done. So we're getting that work that we weren't getting before. You know, so if you make better use of the customer's time, they'll reward you by giving the business to you, which is which was a really great finding that was under our nose the whole time that we just didn't understand. Yeah, I mean, I think it's an example of something that in concept is so simple. Clearly, it's not simple to execute, but it's that's a true value ad, right? For a consumer, for anyone, and we all value our time so much nowadays that it makes total sense.
Time is more valuable than money for the first time in history. Time is more valuable than money. And then you see the examples over and over again. You look at Amazon, look at the business, look at the growth they've had, and it's not the least expensive price. It's not the least expensive. They just drop it off at your front door. My wife is British. When you first moved to the United States of America, 25 years ago, thereabouts, Amazon just started out and she was somewhat unsure of where to go shopping. And so she started shopping online.
And I watched over the years, the holiday shopping during the holiday. So I go to Amazon. And it just was just insane where you couldn't get into the house with the boxes. And I guess that was replicated. They just made it too darn easy for you to do business. And so I think that's the lesson, right? If you make it easy for people to do business or do a lot more business with you. Speaking of sales, and tell me how do you set your goals, right? Like just tell us about like, again, more numbers. How do you set your store goals and whatever you can share? What are your goals? Yeah, it's global domination. It's nothing a sort of that.
Now we're looking to beat ourselves. We want to be number one in everything that Honda and Acura measures that's good. Number one, customer satisfaction. Number one, gross margin, number one in volume, number one in sales growth, sales effectiveness. You know, you go down everything that they measure. That's good. You want to be number one in and certified sales, new car sales, gross volume, customer satisfaction. You know, and it's a challenge. It's a challenge. And sometimes we will hit the customer satisfaction, the president's award, precision team, which they always have to be impossible for us as a menstrual dealer.
We got that and some of the other things fell off. But we're putting together the right team now to get all those things up. My new store up at White Plains, man, it's a struggle. I mean, you own the store and you think that's going to make things easy and you find, you know, it's what's the hardest part? What's the hardest part? Managing from a distance. It's 30 miles away. And, you know, I would love to live in the store, but my obligations were paragot. I can't do it. You know, I'm a partner here. I own that store with two associates. I can't. This store is too big. And if I don't pay into the paragon stores, they'll get away from you. So I'm managing that from a distance. But I do have an associate that's going to be joining me up there in a role as general manager. And I'm excited about that because that gentleman and I have run together. He worked at Paragon for many years. And I think he's joining me tomorrow at full time there. And that's the solution. You know, I'd say it's like I'm a quarterback and he's my wide receiver. I could throw the ball full speed. And he got, you know, I just called the play and he'll get there. The ball get there just as he gets there. We know the playbook and he'll add he knows the drill. He knows what I want. And we, you know, we're looking at this as a good first step to do a make great things together. So I like to think of it as I planted a tree grew. The tree grew gave me some shade and now I'm going to get some to eat some of the fruit from that tree. And he's going to enjoy some of that too. I love to hear it.
So I'm a curious guy. I mean, I still want to know some more numbers here. So whatever you can share with us, right? So I mean, let's just start high level, right? What units per year? I mean, revenues, right? Between units and surveys, like what can you share there? You know, I'm targeting a billion dollars. In both sales and. And is that and so that's between Honda Accura, the total group combined, right? Yeah. And give yourself a return on sales, whatever makes you feel good. And that's that's the number. Got it. And then when it comes to profitability of used first new view, I got, I love this question that I heard recently at an ETA. But do you view yourself as a new car dealer that sells used cars or use car dealer that sells new cars? I view myself as a dealer that sits on a stool and that stool has three legs. And I started out my career as a one-legged stool. I was told I was one of the most profitable new car, Honda dealers in the country, that one department, but I was a one-legged stool. And then a guy that worked for Mr. Singer, when he made me a partner, the guy went into Mr. Singer and said, you should have never done that because Ben Stock doesn't know used cars. And I won't mention that guy's name.
But when he said that to my partner, my partner told me that, he said, that guy said, I want him out of here. And he said, no, he said, no, you don't do that. He'd rather him be jealous of you than feel sorry for you. I want him out of here. I said, he said, no, don't do it. I just wanted you to know. And instead of getting him out of there, I just got good at used cars. And so now I'm a two-legged stool. I'm too low, but I stunk at fixed ops. And then a couple of years later, I realized that fixed ops is just another sales department. And I started to get better at fixed ops. I'm still not great at it, but I'm getting good at it. And so those departments are so intertwined in feeding each other. I like to see each of those departments contributing equally to the bottom line at the store.
So 2 million, 2 million, 2 million, 3 million, 3 million, 4 million, 4 million, 4 million, in gross per month. Those are the numbers I'm looking at. You're also the number one certified Honda store in the world, right? So tell us about that. Right. You mentioned trade cycle time, right? You want to get people to trade their cars in faster, but how do you strategically acquire all that inventory? I'll give you a fun story. So there was a Honda breakout session at a Honda National meeting and they're launching their certified program. And at the time, I want to get a Honda dealership, another Honda dealership. And Mr. Singer said, you know, he gave me the Ben Franklin list, took out the yellow legal path and made a list down here. And he told me, you know, you've got to get working capital. I said, what's that? And he goes, you need working capital, the blue sky.
And he got to the bottom of the list. And it was nearly $20 million. And I'm a young guy at the time. And he said, at what level are you ready to participate? I think I had 200,000 dollars, which I guess would make me a 1% partner. And he said, listen, you know, let's not do that at this time. And I was a little frustrated, but I, you know, I get it. I go to this pond to me and they're talking about the certified use car department, so franchise within a franchise. And they said, you don't need factory approval. You don't need any key money. And I so I came back from that meeting. I was probably like one of what do people that were attending that meeting that particular year was a breakout session. You know, there's 2000 dealers at the meeting, but back then things were great for Honda, everyone after the major meeting went out to the bar. And I'm going to 40.
And I came back and said, hey, let's get into certified. I told Sam Delanti, the zone manager at the time, I said, I'm going to be the number one certified dealer. I said, well, last year you delivered 12. I said, Sam, trust me, I'm going to be the number one certified dealer. And we started focusing on that. We set a target to do 100 certified cars in a month. And sure enough, we got a hundred and I immediately, Yoshi, look, God, hand to God, set the goal to do 200. And then we got to 200 and we set the goal to do 300. And and really just understanding of taking those customers new and renewing it, renewing and renewing.
And I'd say we flattened out a little bit now with COVID and everything else. But we're back on the now back on the climb. We've we've we leveled off at about 3000. Certified use cars a year on the Honda side. But the focus this year, we'll be getting back to those big numbers for 1000 certified use cars. But what a wonderful franchise within a franchise we were able to develop. And for a couple of years there, we were the number one certified dealer in the nation, all brands. So it was pretty cool. And I got some award from Dale Pollock and Dale, of course, he always had his statistics and he said, Brian started out and he told the story about, you know, my not being really good at use cars. And he said, and since then he had the number like 15,000.
Chips on shoulders for chips and pockets. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, what the deal is a very special mentor to me and a friend. Dale Pollock, he's one of those heroes in the car business. Real here. Yeah. Yeah, Dale's a legend. I get his I get his blog delivered to my email, check that all the time. It's really insightful. And someone that should come on the podcast and we should bring them on. Yeah, you should. You know, I went out interestingly enough. I took the I was I was a big runner up until about a year ago. I lost most of the college in my knee, but I was a big runner and I invited Dale to go running in Central Park. And he wanted to chicken out the last minute. He said, no, it's dangerous. I could get hurt. I could hurt somebody.
I said, Dale, let's go running. And it took Dale for a four mile run in the park. It was euphoric for both of us, you know, and and and and and I never want to touch Dale. I didn't want him to feel that there was a handicap. And so I would I would say left, right, left, right. We were running and we ran around the park. At some point, there's a horse and carriage coming towards us as a horse and carriage. I'm going to touch him now. Don't him right, right, right, right. And and moves to the right. And and I go, oh my God, he goes, that was close. Wasn't I go? Yeah, how could you tell? He goes, I think I could smell the horse's fucking breath.
I go, yeah, I mean, it was close. Right. And and so because of that, Dale invited me to go skiing with him skiing, an Aspen. And he said, I want you to have my back. And he went with another gentleman, Eric Winamair, who was also blind and they had guys and I I skied behind Eric and Dale and I've made sure nobody ran into them. And these guys speed down some pretty darn huge mountains and Aspen, as I recall. And so I mean, these are people that are just, I mean, the people that I've been blessed to meet in this business and this. And what do I do? I sell a couple of cars, these guys are heroes, true heroes.
Well said, Brian, before we, before we zoom out and we wrap up, I want to ask you, you know, you see clearly a high volume of sales service used new on a daily basis. Give us some insight. Where is the market headed, right? Give us generally speaking, where is the market headed today? Well, I think there's some storm clouds out there. I think there's going to be some turbulence. We're not this a lot of instability. The market loves stability, whether it be a stock market, whether it be a car market. And we don't have that right now. We've got some difficulties in the Middle East. We've got political instability here. We've got some inflation going on. I keep hearing the notion that we're getting back to normal or back to 2019.
And I think a lot of people are forgetting that in 2019 interest rates were two, three percent. Now they're seventy nine percent. And so when you're holding on to inventory, that cost right now, depending on the size of your store, could be several hundred thousand dollars in flooring costs. And we're keenly aware of that as a high volume deal. Or ships of churn is going to be extremely important. Inventory management is going to be extremely important. I want to believe that we're going to see interest rates reduced as we get closer to the election. That hasn't happened yet. So it'll be interesting going in the bev, going from the ice age to the bev age, as bev's are being shoved down our throats.
You know, there's this that's another little bit of a wild card for those of us in the state. How do we handle that? And how do we play that politically the right way? You want to advise the government that the customers aren't necessarily receiving these the way you'd like them to receive them without being seen as an obstructionist. Because the last thing we want is for the states to push for direct to consumer laws, right, saying, Hey, these pesky dealers, the other ones blocking this. And so let's just circumvent the dealers. We certainly don't want that.
We want the OEMs and the dealers to advise the local municipalities that our customers are struggling with infrastructure problems. The dealers are struggling with infrastructure problems. And if you want more adaptation towards BAB, we've all got to work together to make it easier for people who do buy BABs to have the security that they need that they can have safe and reliable transportation. And I think safe and reliable transportation is what we should have for everybody. And so I have some questions about the affordability factor of BAB vehicles for people that don't have large income.
And I think transportation equals freedom. And so I want to make sure that everybody can participate in the bad future. So I think those are some difficulties that we have to deal with as we go forward. I did hear something about the administration potentially pumping the brakes on BAB to extend some of the lines. I think that's a politically good move. And I think it's a thoughtful move because I think they moved a little bit quickly. You know, I like clean air. You like clean air, but we've got to do this at a pace. It makes sense. So I think the fact that they're considering it, I think that's a very good move.
What about consumer health, right? What are you seeing on that? And when it comes to negative equity, you know, terms of loans, what do you think there? You know, terms of loans, I think the manufacturers are advised strongly to push towards leasing and incentivize leasing. I think many of the finance companies are listening to dealers who are asking for a suicide bill, a cyanide bill, 84 month loans, 96 month loan. And I think that, you know, I said at an accurate national dealer advisory board meeting when you when when you recommend or when you offer an 84 month term, you should hand the customer, take the customer outside, hand them the keys to the car and shoot them in the back of the head because you're never going to see them again.
You might as well just shoot them in the back of that. They looked at it like I was crazy. I said, well, use your data. I don't have the data you do. What's the renewal on a customer who leased the car for 36 months and then leased again? What's the renewal rate? It's over 50%. Give me the renewal rate on somebody who was in an 84 month loan. It's like 16% 15, 14%. So tell me which would you rather support with subvention? A 36 month loan or lease where you can get the customer back every 25 months or 26 months because of term early and you'll get the two cars sold and two trades, which is four transactions or you've got a 17% shot of renewing a customer at five years.
Well, you get to sell five cars. You're going to sell five cars in 36 months or 48 months, or you're going to sell two cars in 72 months, do the math, do the math. And so, you know, I do think we've got to understand the math a little bit better. And the math is that the trade cycle management, the Ford setup with red carpet leasing was a great program. It failed because Ford couldn't handle at the time the residual. That doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the bath. Well, I think that if we have an affordability problem facing us, leasing is the savior. Leasing is the salvation. Do you think there's any bigger issue facing the industry and consumers than affordability right now? No, no, I, you know, I think that affordability is the issue. And I think, you know, look, look for leasing to enter used cars in a big way. I think that's a really great opportunity for us. I think that's, you know, all the nimes. There's, there isn't really any other option at this point. I mean, people can't afford them. You got to put them in a road some one way or another.
Every, you, everybody's driving a monthly payment. And so get the payment down. You know, what's, what's the difference? New used, everybody's driving a used car. So make it, I buy transportation. We all consume it in minor bites, right? Whether it be an Uber and I'm buying just the lift, just the ride or it's a lease. And I'm buying it for a month or I'm buying it long term. When you fly to, let's say, California, do you, when's the last time you flew a California and he asked them how much is a plane? You don't ask how much is the plane. Doesn't matter. You want to know how much is it going to cause you to go from New York to LA. You're not asking how much is the plane. So what differences are make? And if you ask them and they said the planes, a hundred million dollars, you go, Oh, I can't afford that. But if you want to fly, it's $600. And it's the same thing. If you can sell the customer car, a transportation, you can make that affordable on a monthly basis, then you're going to sell a lot more cars. It's affordability for transportation. And I'm in the transportation business. I'm not in the leasing business. I'm not in the selling business. I'm in the transportation business. I want to make it easier for people to consume transportation whenever, wherever and however they want to consume it and stop trying to force people to do it one way or another. I mean, that's so.
Are you offering you car leasing right now? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. A hundred percent. I know what programs are using for that. American Honda, American Honda and Acura are doing it. And it's a great program. American Honda, I think, is really that they've got it figured out and very few dealers are taking advantage of it. You know, again, and I'm going to just answer the why question because most of the finance departments of dealerships are running the dealerships. Most dealers don't run their dealerships. The finance department's do. And the finance departments can't make the same money. They think they can't make the same money on a lease that they can't make. That's right. They think so. So therefore they will it's all it always comes out in the Senate issue. That's right. Yeah. And so they do which bad for the dealership. They'll put them in an 84 month loan as opposed to putting the customer in a 36 month lease on a used car and make it easy for the customer to buy cars from over and over and over again. They'll put them in 84 month loan and never see the customer again.
How did you solve that in Senate problem? I run my store. Simple as that. You know, I'll give you a picture of a set of problem. I run my fucking store. I got I got that from Paul Nygaard, right? I run. I got that from Paul Nygaard who runs Larry H Miller, a group where he did. And I said, Paul, how do you do it? How do you manage 71 stores? And I pull my hair out with three stores. And he said, you know, he's a higher good people. I trained him. I said, yeah, me too. What's the real answer? He goes, I reserve the right to manage my business. And it hit me like a ton of books. I took out a business card. I swear to God, I wrote it down. I reserve the right to manage my business. He said, Brian, if the if the bank heard that line, if the bank comes to take your store, they're taking it from you, not from your finance manager, not from your sales, but taking it from you. And so I wrote that down. I reserve the right to manage my business. And so when I finance guys, so what I did. Anything over 60 months, the F&I guys get half commission. I cut the commission. And go, baby, problem solved. And if you're saying they won't take the car unless it's unless it's 72 months, okay, we're both going to give a little of them because that's the only way they can do it and watch out quickly. They go to the 60 month instead of 72. Watch out quickly. Oh, yeah. Millionaire finance guys driving around their Ferraris and telling us that they can't sell the guys 60 month. I get it. God, I love it. Give me some your outlook on tech and the industry for the next, you know, five years, AI, right? Is this real? Is this is is is for guys? You like, what's the deal? No, no, no, no, AI is real. It's it's scary. It's great. You know, right? Use it, of course, the right descriptions on your cars right now. The best thing you can do is say, you know, give me an SCO, SCM relevant text on it's 2018 BMW 523, I that will reach the mass most amount of people within 100 miles of the zip code, 1, 1, 3, 7, 7, and watch it go. You know, it's it's it's there and a thousand different applications. I want to reach X amount of people for this particular car where market boom. I want to find this employee. I use it for simple things. I I will dictate a memo and then and then I'll just put make this better. And, you know, so there's so many. I do that one. Yeah. And we're just grammar, fixed grammar. Yeah, we're just scratching the surface, right? We don't know what we're doing. And I do intend to take a college worse than why you on the proper application of this stuff. Because it's it's it's a it's a whole nother world out there.
And what jobs are most at risk when you think about the dealership, any? Fine. No, I'm going to change. Right. They're not at risk. It's just consolidation, you know, using in the office to mitigate risk, you know, certainly run one titles searches on things through AI. I think I love it. I you're thinking the wrong way. I think, you know, I another risk. I think how do we use it to make ourselves better? How do we how do we incorporate it to reduce risk and increase efficiencies? Now that we should never look at it as something to be afraid of. But but something to really help us to to gain more customers.
You know, I want to, you know, and again, the better the query, the better the outcome. How do we make ourselves more effective in the marketplace and simply by asking for better, better queries? Well, we're we're we're in for an interesting and interesting ride at the pace that it's involving, which I mean, it's been unbelievable. Now you see now that, you know, Sora, you can just generate videos. It really has become unbelievable. I want to wrap up with with a general question. You know, does anything keep you up at night at this point? Everything. What keeps you up at night? Everything. I I'm insecure about everything.
The the legislation that they're there that they're going to go direct to consumer. The Chinese are coming to Chinese are coming to Chinese are coming. The having China have an edge on EVs. They've got the raw materials that they're going to come in and destroy the market. I saw golf carts that we saw golf carts, electric golf carts for $15,000. And they had a show, an EV show for golf carts. They had Chinese golf carts that were 40, 49. 95. That was spectacular. A third of the price. What if they did that with cars? You know, the direct to consumer model that the dealers are going to take a hard line stance on some of these things, saying EVs aren't selling in states like New York are going to say, Hey, we're going to allow direct to consumers and the manufacturer going to shake their head off. We don't like this, but they're going to be happy about it and and and the destruction of the franchise laws and the OK Corral.
Now, I think that when that happens, the OEMs will sell less cars and they'll go back to the franchise model as Musk is going towards a franchise model. But there'll be a bloodbath in the meantime. So about those things, you know, investing at my age of 63 and investing millions of dollars in the New Dealership and with all the chains going on. So I think all good entrepreneurs are a little insecure at all times. You're always looking over your shoulder for what can, who's going to steal your cheese and only the paranoid survive. Yeah, I think so. I think I think it's a great book. So yeah, so I'm paranoid. My man.
Again, pain, pain, uncertainty and constant work. You can't avoid those three. You know, one thing I did forget to ask you is about just your social media presence. I mean, where did this come about from? Let me, I do want to take one guess here, right? So tell me what you think about this. But the way I see it is, you know, you're you're an entrepreneur, right? You've come up with all these great innovations and, you know, really done a lot of unique things in our industry. If I, if I see it correctly and tell me from wrong here, but you sort of saw an opportunity on, you know, to make a bigger impact, to have, you know, a platform via social and in my entrepreneurial brain, that's an arbitrage that you took advantage of.
Now I want to hear the real answer, but go ahead. No, it's, you know, I'm just being real. And I think any of us being authentic, I think that's what resonates. And I'm authentic, authentically bad or authentically good. But, you know, I there's nothing that I say where I'm full of crap. It's people will tell you that it's, that's me for better or for worse. And that way I don't have to worry about what I say. Some, someone's not going to call me out. It's me. And again, you know, it's I don't talk about specific numbers. The net profit of the dealerships, nobody's business, but my partners in the IRS is except the CDG podcast. Yeah. My wife doesn't know what I earn. You know, it's nobody's business. And, and if I told somebody what I earn, half the people would say, that's it. And the other half of people would say, Oh, my God, that's so much. And you see, you never get it. It's not about that.
But but the social media, I, I, a buddy of mine that I work out with and we work out. We like to think that we're bringing other people along with us, that, that we're bringing that we're encouraging other people. It's, I'm not going to be the fastest, the strongest or any of that. But we think we're trying to get people to say, Hey, you know, let's, we're with you in this. And one of my favorite sayings is the shepherd has to smell like the sheep. And so many people in the car business are get to management and they don't want to smell like the sheep, the salespeople. And in fact, they learn to despise the sheep. And I think just the opposite man, the sheep are my people, the salespeople are people. And so I want to show them I'm up early. I'm not on vacation. I was had breakfast with some of the executives at Accura this morning. And they said, I heard you don't like to fly international. What are you talking about? We never go on any of the trips.
And because there's a trip to Belize or something. You go, did I win? They go, yeah, you won. But why aren't you going? I got a new store. It's a baby. I can't and they go, Hey, you got to start taking some of the fruits of your labor. So not right now, not right now. This is more time for me in business. I got to be in the store and the shepherds got to smell like the sheep. I can't be in Belize getting son. Well, while the business is a little shaky, it's the wrong message to my team. I got to go. That's how I see it. You know, so that's a hell of a way to end my friend.
Brian, I seriously thank you for coming on. This has been so awesome. So great to meet you. The man in the myth of it. To many more, many more, my friend. 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.