I got a question for you though. Would you ask that question to a man? This dealer went from broke to dealer principle of a top five Toyota store in the nation. And like all trailblazers, the path to her success wasn't easy. Today on the car dealership guy podcast, I'm speaking with Julie Herrera, president of Idea Auto Group serving Toyota and Subaru customers in the heart of Texas. Don't forget to click subscribe so you never miss an episode.
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CDK developed it with an outside-in approach listening to dealers every step of the way. You can learn more about CDK's dealership experience platform by visiting CDKglobal.com slash DXP or clicking the link in the show notes below. For those that are watching this, I know most people actually listen, believe it or not, but for those watching, you have a pretty interesting sword behind your head. Tell us about that. What is this? I do, I do. That's a Japanese Kaitan sword that was given to me from Toyota when I got the Toyota franchise in 2017. They presented that sword to me on our grand opening day. I keep it behind my desk for fun just in case I get me bad actors in my office. I can whip it out. Actually, I will only take it out of its case one time, but it's a really chronic one. I like you already.
What a great way to start. While I'm excited for our conversation, you've done some tremendous things broken through some real barriers in the industry, which we'll dig into today. I want to say, you're the number five highest volume Toyota store in the country. Is that correct? I think we're sitting at number five this year. We finished at number two last year. It'll be an interesting good dog fight to see where we end up. I think the East Coast and the West Coast have their back in the game. They figured out with more cars, they're able to sell a little more. We're going to have to raise our game if we want to keep number two in the nation spot. Looking forward to that.
Did you think 30 years ago, did you think you'd be in the car business and make it this far? Absolutely not. Actually, I've been in the industry now a little over 30 years. 30 years, I stopped saying the exact years. I just say 30 plus now because it's really good. But no, looking back at those early days, selling aftermarket at a Chevy store in San Antonio, just needed to make a little money. I was so sick of being broke. I never would have fathomed them that I could stay in at this long and persevere and make it to this level today. So yeah, crazy, pretty crazy.
Tell us about your beginnings in the industry. Just tell us about how you got into the industry. How did you even get started in cars? Sure. I'm really going to date myself then. So I answered an ad in a newspaper for aftermarket sales lady. I had no idea what that was. I needed a job. I'd gone a couple of years college. I was so sick of being broke. And I said, I'm just going to work this summer. I'm not going to school. And so I walk into a Chevy store in San Antonio, Texas. And they hire me on the spot and they said, okay, you're going to sell this package to every customer before they go into finance. And it was literally a box. Okay.
And then box is all this mop and glow aftermarket items. So I'm selling this aftermarket product. And after about two weeks, I thought, gosh, I'd rather sell that Corvette and that suburban that truck. So I got all the courage up and went into the general manager and said, I'd like to sell cars instead of this products. And he said, really? Well, ladies really don't do that. It's difficult job. It's, you know, it's negotiating. It's going in. It's big throughout the sun. It's weekends. It's late nights. And I said, okay, well, when can I start? And he's just standing in his office. It was extremely awkward. He did not want me to sell cars. And he said, well, if you really want to do this, you understand it's 100% commission. And I said, I get it. I said, I want to try this.
And they gave me a shot, the new car manager on those forget his name was Donnie Fraser, good old guy. And he put me out there and taught me a little bit about how to sell cars. And I stayed with it. I just put my head down and decided to learn the industry and to ask a ton of questions and they never give up. So I was just so sick of being broke that I ended up at a car dealership was an accident. Nobody recruited me in. They weren't looking for women at the time. You're looking for an opportunity.
Let me ask you this. So like, what was it about your personality that sort of motivated you to go against a grain, right? Like it's it's it's easier to say, hey, well, you know what? He's right. It's, you know, 90s, right? He's I'm a woman. Maybe I should have been selling cars. What was it about your personality? Why were you being rebellious, quote unquote, at the time, relative to, you know, the stigma? What was happening through your head? Well, if you asked my mother that she say that was that exactly who I was, I was always asking why not? Why can't I? And, you know, I five brothers. I played college basketball. I was pretty resilient.
But what appealed to me the most about the opportunity was simple. I got to be in charge of my destiny. I got to decide how much money I make. I got to decide how many I sell, how many appointments I set, what will my front gross profit be? What will my back gross profit be? What will my commission be? And I would play little games for myself. I would write out a fake check and have it under my my desk man say I'm going to make this much this month. And nobody could tell me that I couldn't do it. I was in charge of, you know, my destiny for the first time as a 23 year old.
And to me, that really appealed to me. My daddy was in the car business. And he did really well. My uncle was in the car business. I did not tell my parents when I did this. They figured it out a couple of months later when I didn't call for money for a while. But, you know, I wasn't necessarily raised around the business. My father was a sales manager for several of your dealerships. And I had a small use car lot of his own. He didn't quite have the opportunities that I was going to have in my day in automotive. But so I guess it was a little in my blood. But I love the fact that you could do as much as you wanted to with it. And that really appealed to me.
So, I want to ask you a broader question. What has it been like? You've so you've seen decades of just, you know, automotive evolving here. And I'm saying that as a, you know, I commend you. That's that's obviously impressive. And you've seen a lot. And so my question to you is, what has it been like to be, you know, a woman and an up and comer in automotive 30 years or in the 90s, right, versus today? Like, what were some of the biggest differences? I mean, I can't empathize, right? I'm a man, I'm a guy like, I have no idea. And to be honest with you, the way I always saw it at our dealership, I mean, you know, if we found a female or someone that was, you know, wanted to enter the business and, you know, even start in sales, I mean, we were, I mean, enthused because we always felt like they did better, right? It just, it's just human nature. Like women performed really well on the floor. And I'm generalizing, but for the most part, like, you know, it seemed to be the case. But anyway, so what were like the biggest differences back then, right? Especially as an up and comer and someone that was, you know, a high performer.
Yeah, well, obviously, first of all, the industry has become much more regulated and it's come a long way. I'll tell you, it was difficult. The journey was difficult. You know, there just wasn't any role models at all in automotive. Women, there was very few. You had to beg to get trained. You had to push for everything. The environment wasn't a really healthy environment for ladies. We've come a long way in the industry. We still struggle with attracting more talent into our industry. But there's been a lot of change for the good over the years. I know when I got in and after a few years, I thought, gosh, this is really cool business. I could do some things here. And I remember just putting my head down and wanting to work and to keep learning. And they never thought of it was I had to push for every promotion. I had to raise my hand every time. I had to prove myself over and over. And it was just harder for the GMs at the time or the dealers at the time to see a lady in the role of director of a department or a general self manager, much less a general manager. So you were constantly having to do your homework. You were constantly having to outperform the others.
And you had to get along with everybody. Because if not, if you're too firm, then there's other words that they call a lady in the industry. So you're always dancing and playing this game of, I need to perform because it's a scoreboard industry. I need to keep learning. I need to keep raising my hand. But boy, I better get along with everybody or I'm really not going to get a shot. So you have to be a heck of a teammate and even then it will be difficult. And even then it will be, you know, for anybody, I think it's difficult for the guys too. So I love the changes in the industry. I think we've gotten a lot better. One of the corny goals I always had was why don't we just make it better? Why don't we just make the industry better? We're you're proud to be a part of it. And for 30 plus years, that's simple thing I've been trying to do. I actually want salespeople to be proud that they're salespeople and to be proud of the title of sales. You know, it's not a negative thing. So I think we've grown as an industry. I think it's gotten better. I think it's gotten quicker when you raise your hand now and you want something, you can go to NADA Academy. You can get in and get additional training. I mean, I literally had to fight for those opportunities back in the 90s and 2000s until I could get heard.
So tell us about at what point were you promoted to general manager? So it took a long time. I think I was I was thinking about that. I think it was 2008. But prior to that, I was a general sales manager of very large Toyota volume store. We were the number one retail volume store in the San Antonio market. That's a big market here at Texas. I think there's six Toyota stores in that market. And I got that opportunity. So a lot of people would say that's pretty much equivalent to to be in a GM because it's such a large department in that variable department. I think I was in charge of 150 people. And we were we were selling 650 new and used cars and President's Cabinet Award hitting all the leasing penetrations, all the things I asked us to do.
The general manager first job was a Cavender Audi in San Antonio. And it was only for 14 months. And right after I got that position, Toyota didn't want me to leave Toyota. And they said, why don't you apply for an open point? So I said, absolutely. And that story took off from there. So I was only a general manager for a very short time. And I jumped right into dealer principal, which is a blessing. And I think that a lot of people get that opportunity and I was able to get that opportunity.
Take us behind the scenes. So what was that like? I mean, first of all, you mentioned 14 months GM and new store, right? I mean, really you're only a little bit over a year in. So you're just starting to really make your impact. This opportunity comes into what goes through your mind. Yeah, I think before they asked me to apply for this new open point, Gulf States, Toyota, the distributor and all of the Gulf States here, there's 165 dealers in Gulf States. They had a couple of things moving around. And they were going to put a new point in Brownsville, Texas, which is a tip of Texas. You're basically in Mexico. You know, I didn't really want to move there. But I went ahead and jumped in the game. I thought, you got to get in the batter's box and say you want something and see how it goes. So we applied for that. My investor partners and I, and I felt clearly like we were the best candidate. We were not picked. And so I said, okay, well, it wasn't meant to be let's get back to work. At the time I had taken the leap from variable. And I was running the fixed operations department of Cavender Toyota, which is a very large high volume top 10 Toyota dealers in the country. I took that position to get Toyota's attention and to learn the back end of a store.
It was in their store. There's crazy stories about that. I can tell you, but so I went back to work. I put my head down and I'm in fixed operations. I've got grease under my nails. I'm running a big group there. I'm learning fixed operations. And we get another call from Gulf States Toyota. And they said, Julie, we want to talk to you. And they said, the reason we didn't pick you for the open point in Brownsville, Texas, is we have something else for you. I said, fabulous. What is it? So it was Toyota Cedar Park and a brand new point here in North Austin. So they said, after you applied, we saw what you brought to the table where we wanted to the miss market, which was a huge blessing. Obviously, this is a very, very big market growing leaps and bounds in every direction all around the Austin Metro. So fortunately, it was the last person standing and it was awarded the new point. And we opened our doors for business in 2017, May of 2017. So it's been a while. You've had a crazy run. Tell us a little bit about what it was like to actually open this point, right? For people listening that maybe have these type of aspirations. How do you actually do it? How did you capitalize it? Give us the behind-scenes. Yeah. So first of all, it's absolutely nerve-wracking. I had very, very good investor partners that they're car dealers and they're in the San Antonio market and they wanted to help me. And I wanted to help them. I wanted to get my foot in the door. So they came to the table with a lot of money. I came to the table every dollar I had. We pushed it and went up in. And I moved up to the Austin market. I didn't bring one employee. I knew that the Austin market was very different than the San Antonio market. I also had been running fixed operations for the previous four years. So I didn't have a lot of variable people on my side. I moved into Austin with my spouse and my two dogs and my mother. And we get to work.
这是在他们的店里。关于这件事有许多疯狂的故事。我可以告诉你,但我重新开始工作了。我低头努力工作,我在固定运营中。我手指头下有油脂。我在那里管理着一个大团队。我正在学习固定运营。然后我们又接到了来自Gulf States Toyota的电话。他们说,朱莉,我们想和你谈谈。他们说,我们没有选择你去布朗斯维尔,德克萨斯的开放点的原因是我们为你准备了其他安排。我说,太棒了。是什么安排呢?所以这就是丰田锡达公园和奥斯汀北部的一个全新开店点。他们说,在你申请后,我们看到了你带来的东西,我们想要抓住的市场机会,这是一个巨大的幸运。显然,奥斯汀大都会周围的市场是一个极其庞大且朝各个方向快速发展的市场。所以幸运的是,我当时是最后一人,并且被授予了这个新的店。我们在2017年五月开业。所以已经过了一段时间。你经历了一段疯狂的经历。告诉我们一点关于实际开店的经历,对于那些也有这种志向的人来说。你实际上是如何做到的?你是如何利用这个机会的?告诉我们一些幕后故事。是的。首先,这绝对让人心慌。我有非常好的投资合作伙伴,他们是汽车经销商,他们在圣安东尼奥市场,他们想要帮助我。我也想帮助他们。他们带来了很多资金。我带着所有自己的钱加入了。我们一起推动并投资进去。我搬到了奥斯汀市场。我没有带来任何员工。我知道奥斯汀市场与圣安东尼奥市场非常不同。我之前四年一直在管理固定运营。所以我身边没有太多变化的人。我和我的配偶、两只狗和母亲搬到了奥斯汀并开始了工作。
The building's going up. Gulf States, Toyota was very instrumental in picking the land. And we picked out all the stuff on the building. You're getting it all going. About four months out, you start to hire your talent. The first person I hired was my parts and service director. He was from the market. I knew him by running in him. But I knew after spending four years in parts and service that it's going to be difficult to find technicians, to find a great shop foreman and to find service advisors. I knew I could variable people. I knew there was salespeople that wanted to work here and finance people, sales managers. So I hired Cecil first. We've had a great run together. And he's still here on the team. Then we hired a controller. I hired a HR person. And then we got my we got a shop foreman. So we just started building it. Once I had HR and getting a little closer, but literally had to hire 135 people within a few months.
Train, establish culture, put people in positions and launched this giant seven seven I call seven 67. It's a big store. And we built it with the goal in mind that this market can support it. We were heavy on expense. We were heavy on personnel. But I didn't want to think small because I knew the brand Toyota and I knew Austin. I knew that we were meant for something really big. Thank God. Thank God we were right. Yeah, so this episode is brought to you by my very own car dealership guy, industry job board. CDG jobs.com my industry job board connecting the best talent and automotive with the best companies will remain absolutely free for CDG listeners to post and fill available roles at their companies. This free job board is for anyone in automotive vendors, dealers, lenders, manufacturers, auto tech, everyone already over 100 companies have posted open positions, including lithium motors, recurrent credit acceptance, Vero's credit, cars commerce, shift digital plug, full path Westlake trade pending, you get the point. The best part is that when these companies hire through CDG jobs.com, they are hiring the most informed candidates in the marketplace. So don't hesitate. You can add your open roles today by visiting CDG jobs.com or clicking the link in the show notes below that's CDG jobs.com.
A couple questions that I want to dig in there. So first of all, how did you, you know, everyone is always talking about staffing fixed up service. How did you find your fixed ops team? Right. You mentioned it was difficult, but how did you do it? Well, I knew the importance, like I said, so I knew that hiring a fixed operations director first was going to be key because they have all the contact. They have the team. Yes. Nations are full, you know, technicians don't just jump around. They have to feel comfortable. They have to know somebody. Immediately we hired the shop foreman that came in. They have both excellent reputations. Tech started calling. We went through and visited four, it was three at the time, three local high schools. There's CTE programs, automotive technician programs, immediately set up relationships so that we could have a pipeline of technicians coming in.
I'm very hands on. I mean, I rolled up my sleeves, we're involved in everything. We start getting all the contacts and we start building this team. And, you know, throughout the first 12 months of operation, you're pulling your hair out. You're not making much money. You're figuring out that some people aren't going to be your culture. You're figuring out that some aren't talented in this area. You're moving people around. There's a ton of moving parts. But we never wavered on our process of taking amazing care of our customers. And we literally wrote all of our sales processes with the customer in mind. And the customers in this market loved it. They said, of finally, someone's listening to us. So things like Express purchase were basically 90% of their transactions online. And they just come into test drive and pick up. And what year was this? Julie, yeah, what year was this? It was 2017. We had online shopping before the pandemic.
Because I knew the market was, this market is, you know, very high technology market. I mean, it's home to a lot of high tech companies. So came in, we said, they're not going to want, we're going to make the special way to listen. So literally, paperless transaction, paperless F&I transaction, tablet based right up on the sales side, as well as the service side, multi point inspection video. I mean, we literally send you a video of your car as we're inspecting it. And the market ate it up. They said, this is this is pretty forward thing. And finally, a dealership operating the way we want. And so it worked. It really worked. Yeah, it clearly worked on hindsight. You've made it pretty far in a short time. Tell us, so you were ahead of the curve in 2017. What are you what's on your mind today, in terms of, you know, processes, systems that you feel are maybe ahead of the curve? What are you doing today? That's a bit different.
Yeah, every year, we're heading into ADA. We're looking at different going to different digital seminars. We want to know, what's the next thing? Because the minute you're not thinking that way, you're already getting high. Okay. You know, most people say, gosh, you're, you were number 10 in the nation last year. Why are you, why are you thinking about all this? But AI obviously is going to take a big, big role in our industry. And I mean, heck, I'm old enough to remember when the internet came, and they said, we're going to sell cars on the internet. We laughed about it. And I thought, gosh, you know, this may really happen. But with AI, I think there's so much out there, we're looking at some neat products right now. I don't want to tell everybody about them. But, you know, we have these huge owner banks in our stores. And we got to figure out how to properly communicate with our customers better, how to target what they're really looking for. What if your customer has three Toyotas, but now when somebody in their family is online looking at a Subaru? How do we know that? I have a Subaru franchise also, and I'm working on a third franchise right now. So in my mind, to be able to take amazing care of your customers, you have to be able to communicate with them effectively. So that you're not always out there trying to get more customers. You're harvesting and taking great care of the ones you have, and marketing specifically to what they're looking for, or that their wants and needs are in their household.
Everybody knows that people have three or four cars. So I want to look into that more. I found some companies that use AI to be able to dig into what their existing owner bank is looking at when they look at other products, because I want to sell them those other products. So there's some interesting things. That's just one thing, but I think that. And any specific names you can share with our audience? Well, I'll tell you, at NADA, we went to a very good showing with me and my team with FullPath.
And they have an exceptional product, and we immediately saw that and said, let's look at it. I will just say that FullPath is a partner of this podcast, and this was absolutely, absolutely not pre-planned. So totally organic, and that's pretty cool to hear. But anyways, is it keep going? Because a second you said that, I'm sure people are like, wait a second, FullPath is an advertiser on that. Yeah, so anyways, I just wanted to make sure that I put that out there. But you go ahead. Actually, they were brought to me by our chief marketing officer, and she said, I think we need to look into this. And she's always looking at ways to target and market specifically with the customers looking for. The way it was explained to me, and a lot of it's over my head, but the way it was explained to me is, we can really know what our customers, if they're servicing with us, they go home and three days later, they're on their tablet, and they're looking up a Nissan, and you own a Nissan store. Well, great. Let's talk to them. Let's send them some things. I think there's going to be some cool things coming up with respect to AI, and that should help us. Yeah. So I want to dig in more on your transition from GM to dealer principle. There's a lot of people that listen to this in podcast where GM's.
There's also lots of dealer principles. My first question on that is, first, firing dealer principles were currently GM's, right? What was the biggest kind of mindset shift for you as you went from one role to the next? What would you say was the biggest change for you? Well, first of all, to go to the next level, you have to absolutely, unequivocally believe that you can. You have to speak it into existence. I want to be a dealer. I want to be a dealer principle. I want to figure this out. And for me, I didn't know any other dealers that were female, that weren't millionaires.
And there was nobody like me. So you have to change your own thinking. That would be the first thing I'd say to get you there. But the shift in, and it's kind of a hardship because you're operational, and you're used to being a general manager, and you used to being involved in every old thing. I had to learn to step back a little bit and ask myself, what is my role now? And as we grow and add additional points, I'm more of an executive now. I'm not involved in every decision.
So that took a little bit of, you know, it hit me a little bit because I always used to be a little bit of a control freak and a little bit involved in everything. But I'd say that my role now as the dealer is the protector of the people, the protector of the process and the culture. And decisions that I make now are, well, if we use this company for our benefits, you know, how is it going to affect our employees? What type of expenses involved? If we use, you know, this company for our 401k, or the administrative fees this much, how can I match some of that? What can I do that's different at most dealers aren't doing?
So I find myself now looking at things that are people, people development, decision making on how to take care of that, our employees really well, and then how to keep our culture. And I say culture a lot. And to me, it's a winning culture, but it's also a kindness first culture. And I know that might sound goofy. But in this business, I have found that you can really win in a lot of ways, if you're, if you're kind. And if you're taking care of each other and taking care of your customer, the soft skills of what missing from this industry for so long. And I think they're damn important.
My retention is incredible. People don't want to leave. Now, am I firm? Heck yeah. Do I hold a accountable? Heck yeah. You don't get to be, you know, top dealer in the nation. And all of that, unless you're, you know, you have a firm set of rules that you follow by, but they know you care. And they know you care by how you treat what their schedule looks like, what kind of money they make, what kind of opportunity and career path they may be on. Did you take them to NADA this year? Did you take them to a different seminar? Did you send them to NADA Academy? Did they get training? When you're doing all that, there's no dispute whether you care about them or not.
I have six graduates from NADA Academy, and I'm sending two more this year. The guys at the Academy, the guys at the Academy called me, says, what are you doing? And I said, educating people on the car business, the stuff that I never got to do, because my dealers wouldn't let me go, is wrong. And so the soft skills are important. And you'll find out you'll be amazingly profitable, and you'll have extremely high retention, if you just pay attention a little bit to the people side of things. So I find myself doing a lot of that as the dealer now. All right. So Julie, in car dealership guy style fashion, as we like to see, you know, we like to the quiet part out loud. Right.
So if someone's listening to this now, they're like, oh, well, you know, Julie is a woman in the industry, she's a minority. That's why she had the opportunity for an open point or to grow like she did. How do you respond to that? Well, you know, that's always going to be said. But I will tell you this. I worked every dang job, just like everybody else did. I sold cars for seven years, new and used. I went to finance. Walling finance, I went to freaking night school, you know, two days a week to finish my degree. I didn't get out of there. I said yes to every job. They put me through the grind to be able to be able to do this. Randy, huge use car dealerships.
Then after a variable, 23 years of variable, I knew that I would not get a shot unless I learned fixed because when you're a woman, you better know it all. Okay, you're not automatically going to be thought of. You have to keep pushing yourself in front of the camera to be able to get a shot. I spent four and a half years with grease under my nails, but in parts and service, 150 people to finally get the attention of a manufacturer and say, hey, well, maybe we ought to let her, you know, try to try to be this dealer. I'd go up against some multi billionaires. And it wasn't easy. I never wanted it because I was a female and I never wanted it because I was Hispanic. I wanted it because I was the best person for the job.
So the minute I got the job, what did I have to do? Well, you got to go be good because they're going to say, hey, Julie got it because she's a female minority. They gave it to her. Well, bullshit. Okay, you don't become number two in the nation. You don't sell 1200 cars a month and you don't have 520 employees at one store that you hold in because you're a minority or because you're a woman. You do it because you worked your tail off. You deserved it. You put yourself in the light. So bring it on. I'd love that discussion with anybody. So I love it. You're so good.
So on that same note, right, you've put in decades in this industry to really work your way up and prove yourself as you have, which is very commendable. Again, for I would say specifically even for for female listeners here that are listening to the podcast right now and really look up to you. I mean, you've just achieved so much. Does doing what you do, does that have to does that comment expense of family?
Well, absolutely. I think I think it's an expense whether you're male or female. I think we put in a lot of late night and a lot of weekends. We miss birthdays. We miss baby showers. It's a tough, it's a tough deal to be in retail. And it kind of comes with kind of comes with the game. I will tell you, I'm a lot nicer to myself nowadays and there's a lot more Saturdays that I have off. But you know, working any business, I don't care what you do for a living a fear, you're making any real money and you're making any real difference. You're putting in 70, 80 hours a week sometimes. And that goes for anybody, this lawyer, doctor, whatever industry that you're in nurse, you're going to put the time in.
And that's why you've got to be really good at time management and try to try to work it out in your household. But I got a question for you though. Would you ask that question? Would you ask that question to a man? I would not. And that's exactly why I asked that question. Because I think that, you know what, you know what I think is beautiful about this podcast? I think that this podcast is, I try when I when I ask a question and when I have the conversation, I try to put myself in the shoes of a listener and the audience. And I try to ask myself, what's going through their mind? Yeah, what's going through their mind? Right? Like, what are they thinking? What am I not asking that someone might be thinking? And then I think if I was a woman right now listening, and I hear this extremely successful woman and and let just, you know, like the facts are, right, biologically, right, being a woman, you do different things in male, right, you give birth, I mean, nine months, there's like these experts in your career. And so then what I would be thinking if I was a woman right now, I'd be saying, okay, well, like, is that even possible for me? Like, what do I have to give up in order to do what Julie has done? And I think that the conversation around that, I feel like it's super important to have that open conversation, because if it's not you and me right now, then where is it? Who is it? At what forum? How is it going to be, you know, how is it going to be spoken about? Yeah, and I think times have really changed. I mean, you see a lot more state have dads, you see a lot more career women. Obviously, you're going to juggle things, especially as a as a dealer or GM, you're juggling a lot. So I think that you finding the healthy balance for you and your families are right thing to do. But when when there's a determined woman to do something, she's going to find a way. It's one of those things if you if you really want to get something done, and you can do it, and you can find a way to have balance with your family also. So well, I love, I love just your openness around that. I appreciate that. You know, that you're able to speak freely of that.
So I want to transition. I want to ask you a little bit about just what you're seeing in the market, right? Your actual insight into the current trends today. And what's happening, right? We're coming off these, you know, crazy couple years where dealers were doing three times earnings on an annual basis. You know, 2023 was sort of a beginning to revert to the mean 2024 stabilize a little bit so far. What are you currently at? I would say in like a broad picture, right? Before we talk about outlook, what are you currently seeing right now in the market, right? And I'm talking about in all departments fixed variable, you know, use new what's kind of your overall take right now. I think things are, I think are obviously any day dealer will tell you things are getting a little bit back to normal. You know, day supplies are up. We're probably have right at a 4550 day supply of vehicles. Gross profits are trending back to a normal area. Customers still want you to take great care of them. They still want efficiency. They still want to get in and out. They still want you to be there for them after the sale. And the franchises I have, we are not seeing hardly anybody walking in wanting an EV. It just hasn't been there for us. The test red does great in this market. But I will tell you, I have five or six of them sitting on my used car lot right now where customers are still saying, hey, you know, we like a dealer. We like to be able to come in and get something taken care of. And we like that you have parts in stock to be able to take care of us. So those are some of the basics we're seeing.
Our customers on the service drive want transparency. I love our multi point inspection video that we work with them. They still want to get in and out as much as they like your facility as nice as you are and as rated as. So I think people still, you know, they're back to work. They're busy. They want your respect. They want you to respect their intelligence and not waste their time. So those are, those are, you know, I think we're just getting back to where we were. I don't have a big problem at this location in the Austin market with losing my customers to other dealers.
We didn't raise the price over our P at the store. And during the last couple years, we just didn't. And I think they really respected that. We are seeing some customers that are heavily in a negative equity position on their trade ins in this market. That was something we didn't really see before. So you're seeing some of that. But I think it's going to be a great year by all indications. The first two months, I mean, they're January or February. They're not your stock rock star months. But we're averaging right under 1200 units a month on both of those months. And we forecasted for this store over 16,000 pieces for next year.
在店里,我们没有把价格提高到我们的 P 之上。在过去几年里,我们一直没有这样做。我觉得他们真的很尊重这一点。在这个市场上,我们看到有一些客户在交易中处于负资产的严重位置。这是我们以前真的没有见过的情况。所以你会看到一些这样的情况。但我认为从各种迹象来看,今年将是一个很棒的一年。前两个月,我是说,他们是一月和二月。它们不是您股票明星月份。但在这两个月里,我们的平均销售量接近1200辆。我们预测这家店明年将达到16,000多销售额。
We finished with a little over 14,000 last year. So we feel good about the year. But that's kind of, kind of the state of the market here, at least in Texas and central Texas. What's your outlook for the remainder of the year for 24 between used new service? What are you most bullish on? I think what I'm most bullish on is we're going to start making money again in the use card apartments. Our use card grosses were way off last year. And I think that that market is stabilizing prices are coming down at the auctions. We can buy things a little bit more in line with book value. So I'm excited about that. And then as you know, we've been in growth mode for literally seven and a half years in Austin. It hasn't slowed down.
So I'm kind of blessed because of stores that we have right here in a very busy growing market. But I'm excited about the whole year. I think it's going to be great. I know it's an election year. I hate listening to all that crap. I like to stay focused on the things that we can control. And I mean, you're going to let your head go way negative if you want to. What I try to do is stay focused on what's going on in our little area and just own this primary marketing area. And you know, I'm surprised we're able to keep the gross profit we've been able to keep on new cars.
Well, that was my next question because I was going to ask you about margin compression. I mean, are you concerned about new car margin compression with, you know, supply increasing pretty rapidly? And look, I know you're at the OTA store. So you're like, you're like, you're like, the hot shit right now, right? The lowest day supply, everyone's still once your product. But not everyone's in that position, right? Does margin compression concern you at all? It does a little bit. I will tell you, you started to see it come down. And at the last quarter of last year, I said, let's change our thinking. Let's look inward. Why do we have to lose the profitability? Why aren't we doing a great means assessment? Why aren't we doing a great product presentation, a great demo ride? Why aren't we building value? Let's get back to those basics to keep the profitability so that we can keep what we've done.
You know, I think it all starts with what's going on between these two ears. And if you set your mind to a higher level of thinking and don't just go, Oh, well, the markets doing, Oh, well, we, yeah, no, we're gonna have to take some losers roberstalked on under right now. We can do that. But why do we just have to give up and shortcut all the things that make our profitability happen? So I think a lot of it is leadership and a lot of it is mindset. And we'll see how it goes. I mean, so far, it's working as we're holding on pretty good. So I'm not as worried about that. But we all we all got excited over those last years. Everybody was making create money.
And now it's back to reality and basics of sales. So tell us about the name for your group. You know, I was checking out your website. I saw it looks, it just looks very different. Right? Like you don't expect it from a dealer group and auto group like your logo is like, it's very, you know, very thin typeface like the lettering. It almost looks like a, like a premium brand. And of course, the name, you know, idea, which I want you to talk about as well. Can you tell us a little bit about the evolution of this, like how you ideated this, right? No pun intended. Why you came up with this? Like give us a little bit background to that. Yeah. So and our logo does look a little and I think I mean, it is a lady run group.
But the idea behind idea was, you know, I wanted to make a little bit of a difference. And this team here want to make a little bit of a difference in automotive. Idea is about inclusion. It's about, you know, helping diversify automotive. It's about, you know, trying to recruit and retain and train women, more women and automotive and more minorities. And it's kind of one of those topics where, you know, I don't want anything because of where minority, I just want to, I just want to help make the dealer body look more like the consumers. And we have a very diverse consumer space. There's a lot of Asian Americans in the Austin market. There's a lot of Indian Americans in the Austin market in Hispanics and in Texas.
And I just think that it's harder to get a break when you don't have a daddy that gave it to you or a granddaddy that gave it to you or a family with multi millions of dollars. So the idea is, let's recruit, recruit and train and keep and develop more women and more minority talent. And let's make a case for this blue collar group of people that we get, we get into the business. It means so much to us. Nobody gave it to us. So that's the passion behind it. In no means do I want to exclude anybody from that. I have amazing white male guys that are DMs with me that are amazing. But I wanted to focus a little bit more attention on that. And I wanted to, you know, not just make a living, make a little bit of a difference in automotive. So that was the idea.
And it's very, again, like very respectable how you've done that and again, achieved financial success. I think that's the fact that you worked your way up and you're such a Toyota powerhouse. I really do think it's impressive to do multiple things. It's, look, it's hard enough to do the ladder, right? Just to sell cars and manage that business on its own is hard enough as it is. So the fact that you're combining sort of like a personal mission in addition to that, kudos to you on doing that. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Yeah. And you know, just piggybacking off that.
What's your personal mission as you, as you, I know you're very involved in the industry, right? You mentioned, and when I say very involved, I mean, in other ways, other than just selling cars. And this was kind of, this is really what everything is rooted in what you just mentioned. But what is really your goal for the industry? Like, what would you like to see changed or evolved over this next decade? I mean, pretty much what I was just talking about. I mean, right now, 80, it's 84% as a latest, I heard 84% of the buyers on a new car in the United States of America, all right, are either by a woman or the woman made the decision for that family. And we've all heard these for years. Every year, we hear all the, all the statistics. But dang, and still less than 5% women own automobile dealerships.
It's absolutely crazy. So we got to figure it out. And it just, I think that women can really help the perception of the industry. Women tend to do things a little bit differently. If you walk into, to any of the stores that, that are run, it's clean, it's fresh. There's fresh flowers, there's smiling faces, there's cookies and smell. There's a cafe, there's wonderful. I just want it to be a better experience. And I know a lot of dealers do that, but we're trying to go to another level. I want unreasonable hospitality. I want people to go, holy mother, they just bought a car here and they're leaving. There's a bow on every car as if it was Lexus December to remember every day at Toyota Cedar Park and every day at City Member Subaru.
It's just a passion to make it better. And I think it comes from, you know, feeling like, gosh, you know, I got into sales because I was broke. And people look at sales as a negative thing. Why? Why do we look at sales as a negative thing? Why can't it be friendly experts? You know, friendly experts passionate about the industry helping people buy what they want to buy. You know, and I get people that, oh, gosh, Julie, you know, it's really, you know, you're not going to be great doing it that way. Well, they're absolutely wrong. You can be amazingly great doing it the right way and using your soft skills and making a difference in the industry.
I just wanted to be proud of the industry I was in and I wasn't real proud in those first few years until I found the right dealers to work with. And I learned how I wanted to do things. And that's when we talk culture, that's what the culture is. Listen, we don't change as dealers. Okay, you're going to continue to have carvanas and Teslas and people buying online. If we don't get better, it's our fault. We are not good enough to take care of our customers. We're not doing it right. So, I think that we got to put our money where our mouth is and start taking better care of each other and our customers.
So, that's right. So, so, so what's next for you? You briefly mentioned you're looking at another store. What's on the horizon? I tell you that I've been asked a lot that question about UFO and our most out of partners and they want to know how many and how much I want I want to continue to grow. I don't want to I don't want name I want manufacturers. I don't want other stores for no reason. I want to do a calculated four opportunities with these GM candidates that we've been developing to put them in as operators. If it's the right market, if it's the right manufacturer, you know, I don't want 20, 30, 50, 80 stores. I want probably, you know, five to seven, but I want to be in the top five in volume and every damn one of them. So, they can't say, well, you know, they change their model. They're not doing what what Julie was saying.
I think that, you know, we can make a difference in a community with changing automotive to a better space. And we can we can retail a lot of units doing it the right way to. So, that's kind of the goal for now. We'll see how it rolls. And I mean, obviously, I'd love to be a luxury dealer. I'd love to have a few franchises are on my list that haven't called me back yet. But we'll keep working on this. I just had another guest on a podcast and they set a line that I liked, which is, if we can't be the largest, can we be the best? And so, I like, I like that mindset. You know, there's many ways to the top. So, you're definitely embarking on one. There you go.
There you go. I like it. Julie Herrera, this was awesome. Thanks so much for coming on. I really had a pleasure. Hey, thank you. I appreciate it. 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.