Secrets to selling exotic cars with Jason Putnam of Tactical Fleet

Or average age is decreasing, which I love to see because we have younger people littering the market. And I think your laugh maybe was, you know, we had a lot of doge boy and a bit choreator. Exactly. Did you see Mr. Beast just shredded a Lamborghini? I did. Yeah. Right guys, something else. Did you sell that Lambo?

平均年龄在下降，这是我乐于看到的，因为市场上有更多年轻人。我觉得你的笑可能是因为我们有很多Doge小伙子和一些创作者。没错，你看到了Mr. Beast刚刚撕毁了一辆兰博基尼吗？是的。嗯，对了，还有件事。你卖掉那辆兰博基尼了吗？

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. Let's get into today's episode.

大家好，怎么样？我是汽车经销商。你正在收听的是我的汽车经销商播客，这是我为了给大家提供最客观透明的汽车市场见解而努力的成果。让我们进入今天的节目吧。

Jason Putnam is co-founder and managing partner of Tactical Fleet, Texas's largest exotic use car dealer. In this conversation, we discussed the secrets to selling exotic cars, the fast rise of crypto money buyers, selling his company to a public company called Sonic Automotive, how much money he makes selling exotic cars, the cars he refuses to sell his own friends, and what car he personally drives. Plus some fun, or should I say authentic moments throughout this episode? I think you'll absolutely love it.

杰森·普特南是战术车队的联合创始人和董事总经理，是得克萨斯州最大的二手豪车经销商。在这次对话中，我们讨论了销售豪车的秘诀，加密货币买家的快速崛起，将他的公司出售给一家名为索尼克汽车的公共公司，他销售豪车赚了多少钱，他拒绝向自己的朋友出售哪些车，以及他个人驾驶的车辆。此外，在本集节目中还有一些有趣或者说是真实的时刻。我相信你会非常喜欢它。

All right, let's get into the show.

好的，让我们开始节目吧。

Alright, we got Jason Putnam on the pod. Jason, how's it going? Doing well. Thanks for having me.

好的，我们请到了Jason Putnam上节目。Jason，最近怎么样？我过得很好。谢谢你邀请我。

Jason, as if the use car business is not tough enough, you decide to go exotic. Yeah, I don't know how you do it, but we're going to find out today. You know, can you start just giving us your background, your story? How did you get to this point?

Jason，好像二手车生意还不够艰难，你决定去做奇特的车辆生意。是的，我不知道你是怎么做到的，但我们今天要找出答案。你知道，能不能先告诉我们一下你的背景，你的故事？你是如何走到这一步的？

Yeah, sure. You know, ran out of college. I graduated and owned iron. I thought I was going to go Wall Street and, you know, get into VC or be an analyst, and not the right timing for that, obviously. I always loved to cook cars, so I moved to Dallas. To work for a startup, long story short, that took too long. So I started selling porshows. Turned out I was halfway decent at it. I left Dallas. And what do you mean by that? Like, what was the startup that you went to? And like, how do you just randomly wake up one day and start selling porshows? How does that work?

是的，当然。你知道的，我上完大学后就失业了。我毕业了，有了自己的资金。我本以为我会去华尔街，你知道的，从事风险投资或者成为分析师，但显然这个时机不对。我一直喜欢烹饪汽车，所以我搬到了达拉斯。简而言之，我去了一家创业公司工作，但这花费了太长时间。所以我开始销售汽车展示。结果证明我在这方面还算不错。我离开了达拉斯。你说的是什么意思？就是说，你去了怎样的创业公司？还有，你是如何突然一天醒来就开始卖汽车展示的呢？这是怎么回事？

Yeah, fair. I guess I skipped over some details. It was a startup in the healthcare space. They were doing like an inpatient monitoring system and, you know, 09, 8, 9, 10 was just not the right time to raise capital. So I never really got off the ground. And so I spun my wheels for a few months and afraid of the family was like, you know, you've always loved cars. You should try to sell cars as well as like, it ought to be a car sale. I don't know about all that. But I was afforded the opportunity to start selling porshows at Park Place. And Park Place is for anyone that doesn't know a massive dealer group in the South in Texas. Yeah.

是的，说得对。我想我可能忽略了一些细节。那是一个在医疗领域的初创公司。他们正在开发一种住院患者监测系统，但是在2009年至2010年期间，筹集资金的时机并不合适。所以，我从未真正起步。然后我浪费了几个月的时间，直到我家人提醒我说，你一直喜欢汽车，不妨尝试做汽车销售。一开始我对此持怀疑态度，但我有机会在Park Place销售Porsche。对于不了解的人来说，Park Place是德克萨斯州南部的一家大型经销商集团。

So started to push you there in sale, became the new car manager after a couple of years. And then I actually left Dallas and went to Nashville to run up portfolio of car dealerships. So I was the the variable officer, the sales director there. He had 12 brands in six states. It was yeah, very interesting. So I went from Porto to like Ford, Shedding, Tia, Subaru, went on that side of the business.

在销售中，我开始推动你在那方面，几年后成为了新车经理。然后我真的离开了达拉斯，去纳什维尔管理一系列汽车经销商。所以我在那里担任可变部门的职务，同时也是销售总监。他在六个州经营着12个品牌。真的是非常有趣。所以我从保时捷、福特、标致、斯巴鲁等品牌中成长。

And then a friend of mine, Chris Bordeaux, became my business partner. He and I started in the same sales training class in 2009 at Park Place. He's like, Hey, come back to Dallas. Come back to Dallas. Let's start our own dealership. And at that time, we had a client who has a multinational company with a couple thousand vehicles that didn't have any fleet management in ours. So that's where the fleet part of our name came from. He needed somebody to come in and really manage his fleet long story short after about a year of putting that project together. Fourth and cold, they bailed. So Chris and I looked at each other and we're like, let's just do what you've asked on sales sports cars. So we called four or five clients, took a couple meetings and got one client to say yes, gave us 500 grand and said if you can find a space and get going, go for it.

然后，我的一个朋友克里斯·波尔多成为了我的商业伙伴。他和我在2009年一起在派克普莱斯参加了同一个销售培训课程。他说：“嘿，回达拉斯吧。回达拉斯吧。让我们开一家自己的经销商。”那个时候，我们有一个客户是一家拥有几千辆车辆但没有任何车队管理的跨国公司。这就是我们公司名字中“车队”（fleet）的由来。他需要有人来真正管理他的车队，长话短说，在约一年时间的努力后，他们退出了。所以克里斯和我对视着说，那我们就去做你要求的销售跑车吧。于是我们联系了四五个客户，开了几次会议，最终一个客户说好，给了我们500万美元，并说如果你能找到一个场地并开始行动，就去做吧。

Oh, so you called up your prior clients and pretty much asked them to invest. Was that like the, yeah, we'll get rolling, right? So you give you 500k. What do you do with that 500k?

哦，所以你给之前的客户打电话，几乎是要求他们投资。这是为了让事情顺利进行对吧？所以他们给了你50万美元。那你打算用这50万美元做什么呢？

Somehow we got a lease on a 30,000 square foot warehouse. You know, our financials were literally a checking account that was three days old that had 500 grand in it, but it worked. And we spent $474,000 rehabbing the warehouse. And then at the same time, holy shit. Yeah. Did you guys spend some money? Did you make a sale by this point? Was this all pre pre revenue? It was kind of, you know, we got the lease at August of 2018, started selling cars kind of in October using the same capital. And then by January, I think what lot. But at that time, we were working with about a million dollars of working capital. So not a lot, especially in the legislature.

不知怎么的，我们租到了一个30,000平方英尺的仓库。你知道，我们的财务状况实际上只是一个三天前余额为50万美元的支票账户，但是这样做起来还算有效。我们花了47.4万美元进行了仓库的翻修。与此同时，天啊。是的。你们有花了一些钱吗？这个时候你们有销售额了吗？这都是预收入阶段吗？大致上是这样，我们在2018年8月签下了租约，从10月开始用同一笔资金销售汽车。到了1月份，我想我们当时有一个多万美元的营运资金了。所以并不多，尤其在立法这个行业。

I mean, I think of everyone in the use car space that I know that started like you from, you know, just, you know, nothing really. Everyone that I know took a very lean approach. You took a very aggressive approach, which clearly, I mean, hindsight's 2020, but it worked out for you. Yeah. I mean, that's risky. That's ballsy. Good for you.

我的意思是，就我所知，在二手车行业的所有人中，像你这样从零开始的，你知道的，什么都没有的那种，所有我认识的人都采取了非常节俭的方法。而你采取了非常积极的方式，显然，我是说，回过头来看，看起来很明显，这对你起到了作用。是的。我的意思是，这很有风险，很有胆量。你做得很棒。

We knew, especially if Dallas, the type of clients that we wanted to attract, we had to make what was it 1980s tilt wall kind of crappy, dumpy warehouse nice. So we stripped it, you know, down to the studs and put it in exposed duct work and all the walls were white. We just kind of wanted it to be an art gallery for cars. It was still pretty quaint, but we knew that we had to try to be different and attract that client that is used to, you know, marble countertops and state-of-the-art facilities and all that kind of stuff.

我们知道，特别是在达拉斯这样的地方，我们想吸引的客户类型，我们必须将那种19世纪80年代的倾斜墙仓库变得好一点。所以我们拆掉了墙壁，露出了管道和白色墙壁。我们希望它可以成为一家汽车艺术画廊。尽管还是相当古雅，但我们知道我们必须设法与众不同，吸引那些习惯于大理石台面和最先进设施等等的客户。

So how do you attract that client? Like when you, so you said you're launching a dealership and especially an exotic dealership, right? Like I said, it's already hard enough to sell used cars, you know, at scale and do it well, but then exotic is like a whole other level. How do you even attract that client? Like what are you doing day one? How do you market that?

那么你如何吸引那样的客户呢？就像你说的，你正在开设一个豪车经销商，尤其是一家经营奢侈车的经销商，对吧？就像我说的，销售二手车已经很困难，要做到规模化且做得好，而奢侈车则是另一个层次。你又如何吸引那样的客户呢？就是说，从第一天开始你要做些什么？你如何进行市场营销呢？

You know, it's super interesting. I had been out of this space with respect to selling cars, day-to-day to clients for four or five years. Chris, my business partner was one of the top Bentley role salesmen of the country. He was also a park place and he left there to immediately start tactical fleet. And we kind of thought we would be able, we didn't kind of, we really thought we'd be able to bank on his book of business and selling cars for 10 years and having the relationships, relationships. Yeah, exactly. And that was our whole focus, right? The whole auto industry had become so transactional, nothing against like a carbana or any of those models, but the human element had been kind of removed in our opinion. And so what we wanted to do is bring back kind of the relationship style, selling, if you will, where we don't want to sell you one car, we want to sell you all your cars. And you know, specifically him, he had been hamstring to selling Bentley or Rolls product a little bit of a clan. And now it's okay, we've got a clean slate, we can sell whatever we want. But what was super interesting is that book of business didn't really help us. It was all new people.

你知道吗，这非常有趣。就我来说，我在销售汽车方面与客户的日常接触已经断断续续了四五年。我的商业伙伴克里斯是这个国家最顶尖的宾利销售员之一。他之前在某个地方工作，然后立即开始了战术车队。我们原以为我们可以依靠他的业务并建立10年的销售关系。是的，完全正确。这就是我们的重点，对吗？整个汽车行业变得如此短期交易化，这并不针对像卡尔巴纳或其他类似模式的公司，但在我们看来，人与人之间的联系被削弱了。因此，我们想要带回人际关系式的销售方式，如果可以这样说，我们不只是想卖给你一辆车，而是想给你卖所有的车。特别是对于克里斯来说，他之前被限制在销售宾利或劳斯莱斯的产品上。现在好了，我们可以自由选择销售任何我们想要的车型。但非常有趣的是，这本业务记录并没有对我们有太大帮助，因为全部都是新客户。

So our whole goal was to set up a business that was a little bit more transparent and a lot more user friendly. So if you walked in our store and you liked a car, you could be in and out in 20 minutes paperwork, we're super fast. We were pushing product. Very, very, dude, I have so many questions you're killing me right now. Yes. So wait, like 50 million questions to go, but we'll start with one. Okay, how so if relationship based was not the way you got your first customers, how did you get your first customers?

我们的整个目标是建立一个更透明、更用户友好的企业。所以如果你走进我们的店铺，喜欢上一辆车，你可以在20分钟内完成所有的文件工作，我们办事非常迅速。我们在推销产品。非常非常的，伙计，你现在把我问得迷迷糊糊的。是的。那好吧，还有五千万个问题要问，但我们先从一个开始。好，如果关系不是你获得第一批客户的方式，那么你是如何获得第一批客户的呢？

We took it really kind of, I would say aggressive approach on advertising on auto trader. At that time, not to get into the minutia, there was a kind of an underutilized portion of their advertising product called alphas. And what we did was basically an alpha says for a given market, any search for McLaren in El Paso, we would be the first ad to pop up. So instead of buying just an RDM S or our local area for Dallas, we bought alphas of Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami. So what we were trying to do is just get our name out there. And then we didn't do any traditional advertising with respect to print ads or billboards or so no brand advertising strictly performance marketing performance marketing. And then we tried to be early and aggressive on Instagram.

我们对在汽车交易网上的广告采取了一种非常积极的方式。当时，在不涉及细节的情况下，他们的广告产品中有一部分被叫做“阿尔法”，但没有得到充分利用。我们所做的就是，无论是在埃尔帕索还是在其他市场上搜索迈凯轮，我们的广告都会首先弹出来。所以，我们不仅仅买了本地区的广告，如达拉斯的RDM S，还购买了洛杉矶、亚特兰大、纽约、芝加哥、夏洛特、迈阿密等地的阿尔法广告。我们只是想让人们熟悉我们的品牌。我们没有进行任何传统的广告，比如印刷广告或广告牌，仅仅是严格的性能营销。然后，我们试图在Instagram上早期并积极地展开活动。

How did that work out for you?

那对你来说行得通吗？

Really well, we have a good good following. It's not a crazy number, but you know, 50 60,000.

非常好，我们有一支很好很强大的追随者队伍。虽然并不是一个疯狂的数字，但你知道，大约是五六万人。

Oh, wait, we should keep that in the podcast. I hear someone I hear someone revving the engine behind you. I love that. So a piece of Simon. What is that Jason? What car is that 2020 for a piece of a pair of tres convertible? That's great. I love it.

哦等一下，我们应该在播客中保留这个片段。我听到有人在你后面发动引擎的声音，我喜欢这个。那是西蒙的一个片段。那是什么车呢？2020年，一辆带有撤篷的三双座敞篷车。太棒了，我喜欢。

So you mentioned Instagram, did that work for you when it came? So and on a quick tangent, like what's your average sales price for a car?

所以你提到了Instagram，对你有用吗？另外，简单说说，你们的汽车的平均销售价格是多少？

Average sales price, potentially, we've been marching down over the last six to 12 months to kind of, I guess, be respectful the current economic times of trying to stay in front of it. So we used to be this time last year, about 275,000. We hover around 240 to 250 right now. Okay. And all right, so going back to what you were saying, so auto trader Instagram. So so these customers, like were they strictly from auto trader also Instagram?

平均销售价格，在过去的6到12个月中，可能我们一直在下滑，目的是尽可能尊重当前的经济形势，努力保持领先。所以去年的这个时候，我们大约是275,000美元。现在我们在240到250之间徘徊。好的。返回到你刚才说的，所以是汽车交易员Instagram上的客户吗？他们只是从汽车交易员和Instagram上来的客户吗？

Really Instagram, what we found was great for brand awareness. And then the first year to two years, that was our main focus was just getting our name out there. Especially in this space, you know, there's a lot of skepticism and kind of going back to what I talked about about a book of business, despite transacting with clients and building relationships for over a decade for Chris and even myself, there was a little bit of skepticism, you know, are these guys going to make it? What are they doing to the new kid on the block from a dealership perspective? So Instagram was great for brand building. And what's super interesting, we don't really sell any cars on Instagram, but a lot of our higher net worth clients, you know, we're generally male, let's say 40 to 60 years old that are on Instagram. They like the attention. They like the kids get excited about the cars. I don't know if it's an ego planet or just the fact that you can feel cool by watching, you know, kind of our stories and our cars. So Instagram's been a good brand builder for us, I guess, very interesting.

在Instagram上真的很神奇，我们发现它对品牌认知非常有帮助。在最开始的一到两年里，我们的主要重点就是让大家知道我们的名字。特别是在这个领域，你知道，有很多人持怀疑态度，关于我的生意之前有谈到，尽管克里斯和我自己已经与客户进行了十多年的交易，并建立了良好的关系，但还是有一些怀疑，你知道，这些家伙能坚持下去吗？对于车行业来说，他们做了什么？所以Instagram对品牌建设非常有帮助。非常有意思的是，我们在Instagram上并不真正销售任何汽车，但很多我们的高净值客户，通常是40到60岁的男性，他们都在Instagram上。他们喜欢受到关注。他们喜欢孩子们对汽车的兴奋。我不知道这是出于自我满足还是仅仅因为通过观看我们的故事和汽车，你可以感觉自己很酷。所以对我们来说，Instagram对品牌建设非常有帮助，真的非常有趣。

So going back to go back to your story, right, you were mentioning your, your kind of star, your your rise. Can you walk us through to present day? I know, I know you've gone through a lot through these last couple of years.

所以回到你的故事，对吧，你提到了你的明星，你的崛起。你能给我们讲述一下直到现在的经历吗？我知道，在过去的几年里你经历了很多。

Sure. So go ahead. Yeah, I mean, it was a, it was a really fun time to start. I think we had no, we had no idea that the market was going to do what it was going to do. Right. We saw this meteoric rise and pre on values, which was great. And really advantageous for our business. Spinning forward, you know, we went from one location, we added a second in the latter part of 2021. And then we added a third in the beginning of 2022. So really, really explosive growth. We ran all three stores with less than 30 people. And that includes our Dallas location where five of those people are just doing PPF and vinyl installation. So really what's PPF? Yeah, sorry, pay protection film. So it's the clear plastic that you put on the front of cars. Yeah. Just to protect from rock chips. So explosive growth at a very short period of time during kind of unprecedented, you know, as you know, times of the used car market where you were buying a car and then two weeks later was worth more than you paid for it both though, which is just unusual, right? And then we saw what I think was a pretty major correction this time last year, when the market really pulled back. And so now I think we're in more normalized times with respective values, meaning, you know, cars would appreciate it as they should before we jump into that though, you're a humble guy, but you sold to Sonic automotive, right? Oh, yeah, yes, sir. Tell me about that. I mean, how did this come about? When did this happen? How much are you like, you know, sailing off on a yacht right now? Are you know, off to the to the cave in islands? I mean, what's the deal over here? I would. You know, we had a good friend that came through and had been in the automotive space and then sold to Sarek and wanted to acquire us. He just liked our business model, what we were doing. We couldn't come to terms there and he had said, hey, I'm gonna bring I'm gonna bring a good friend of mine by his name is Jeff Dyke and I'm like Jeff Dyke, Jeff Dyke. Why does that sound familiar? Quick Google president of Sonic and I was like, oh, okay. Walk through the space in about 20 minutes. He asked us a bunch of questions and then he looked at our mutual friend and said, are you buying them? Are we buying them? Let's get this done. And about 10, 12 weeks later, we had to deal with, you know, full-size parents, see, we were running really, really hard with very level of working capital. So on any given month selling seven to $8 million with the cars with four million of working capital. So we were doing some consignment, but really we're out running our cash. And so Sonic brought and afforded us, you know, a big open checkbook, which is why we, you know, grew to three locations. This time last year, June, July, we had $100 million with inventory on the ground. So really allowed us to grow and do what would have hopefully happened for Chris and I organically. And 10 years we did in, you know, a year and a half or two.

当然，开始吧。是的，我的意思是，那真是一个非常有趣的时光。当时我们完全没有想到市场会有这样的变化。我们看到了车辆价格的飞涨，这对我们的生意来说非常有利。往后看，我们从一个地点开始，2021年后期增加了第二个地点，然后在2022年初增加了第三个地点。所以增长真的是非常迅猛的。我们只用不到30个员工就经营了这三家店铺，其中包括我们的达拉斯地点，那里有5个人专门负责PPF和汽车贴膜安装。对了，这个PPF是什么？是的，抱歉，是保护膜（paint protection film）。就是那种透明塑料膜，用来保护汽车前部。用来防止石块划伤。在一个非常短的时间内经历了爆炸性的增长，这是在二手车市场前所未有的时期，你买了辆车，两周后它的价值已经超过你的购买价格，这是非常不寻常的。然后我们看到了去年这个时候市场的一次相当大的调整，市场真的回落了。所以现在我认为我们进入了更加正常的时期，车辆的价值在正常增长，我指的是在我们进入这个话题之前，你是一个谦逊的人，但是你卖给了Sonic汽车公司，对吗？是的，先生。告诉我一些关于这个的情况。这是怎么发生的？什么时候发生的？你现在是在游艇上航行，还是在去安德罗斯岛的路上？说说这是怎么回事吧。对了，我们有一个好朋友，他曾经在汽车领域工作，后来卖给了Sarek，并且想要收购我们。他喜欢我们的商业模式和我们所做的事情。我们没有达成一致，然后他说，嘿，我要带一个好朋友来，他的名字叫杰夫·戴克（Jeff Dyke），我想起来了，杰夫·戴克，杰夫·戴克，为什么听起来这么熟悉？很快就在Google上搜索出来，他是Sonic的总裁，我就说，哦，好吧。大概20分钟的时间，他走过了我们的空间，问了我们一堆问题，然后他看了看我们的共同朋友，说，你要买下他们吗？还是我们要买下他们？让我们把这事办了。大约10到12周之后，我们就达成了交易，Sonic给了我们一张大小算得上空白支票的支票簿，这也是为什么我们扩张到了三个地点的原因。去年的六月和七月，我们在库存中有1亿美元的车辆。这真的让我们有机会在一年半到两年的时间里实现了我和克里斯希望实现的增长目标，这本来需要十年的时间。

What was the price tag they paid for you guys? I can't say it, but I appreciate you asking. Oh, it's not public info. Correct. I figured public company. What year did this happen? We sold at the end of 2020, so the November of 2020. Oh, wow. Good timing. Okay. And can you share like, what were you doing? What was your like net income at the time? Can you share that stuff? Yeah. So it's interesting. As an issue, we were out running our capital. The first year in 2019, we did 34 million in sales. We doubled the next year and did just short of 70. And then in 2020, we were at like 130, 140 in terms of revenue. We were, I would say kind of break even, ish pre acquisition based on our cost of capital. We didn't have the credit facilities to have an expensive money to buy at the inventory. So I think they were buying kind of us and the story of the opportunity and the other. Got it. And so let's, I want to get into some, some financial because I'm really curious here. What do you typically make? Like what's your average gross profit per unit on a luxury and exotic car? Sure. You know, we always kind of shoot for 10%. So we do it on more of a percentage basis. It really varies. You know, sometimes it's 2%. Sometimes it's 12. And a lot of that has to do with our philosophy on reconditioning is a little bit different. So we don't acquire any worry from options. And so that's interesting. I was going to ask you that question too. Where do you get your inventory?

你们付出了什么代价？我不能说，但我感谢你的问询。哦，这不是公开信息。没错。我以为你们是上市公司。这是哪一年发生的？我们在2020年底出售了公司，也就是2020年11月。哇，好时机。好的，你可以分享一下，当时你们在做什么？你们的净收入是多少？你可以分享这些吗？可以的。有趣的是，在某个时期，我们的资本运营出现问题。2019年，我们的销售额是3400万美元。第二年翻了一番，差不多达到了7000万美元。2020年，我们的收入大约是1.3亿到1.4亿美元。在被收购之前，我们差不多是收支平衡的，基于我们的资本成本。我们没有信贷机构提供昂贵的贷款来购买库存。所以我想他们购买了我们，以及我们公司的发展机遇和其他一些因素。明白了。那么我想了解一些财务方面的内容，因为我挺好奇的。你们通常能赚多少钱？对于豪华和奢侈汽车，你们每辆车的平均毛利是多少？嗯，我们通常瞄准10%。我们根据百分比来计算。实际上各不相同，有时候可能只有2%，有时候可能达到12%。很大一部分取决于我们对车辆翻新的理念有些不同。所以，我也想问你这个问题，你们的库存从哪里来？

Yeah. Tubs repeat business. We very early on, based on providing what I think are really fair trade values, kind of a certain ourselves is the dealership that not necessarily will overpay, but it'll give top dollar for trade ends or just to sell cars out, right? You know, a lot of, you see a more now with the compression of the market, a lot of dealers will say, well, I'm not going to buy your car unless you buy something from me. And I go, you know, I'd love to have your inventory if you buy something for most great, but 2016 target with 10,000 miles, sure, I'll take it. So yeah, working on relationships and networks, being kind of proactive and approaching dealers, Mercedes dealers that give a Ferrari on trade or something like that, I would like to think our names on the short list. So that's where we, so all your inventory you're saying is like relationship based trade-ins, other dealers, like nothing from auction. Correct. Well, yeah. Do you ever buy anything at auction? Ever anything? You know, I've used ACV a little bit, which is more of a dealer to dealer auction, kind of similar to it, OBE. But no, I've never bought anything in Manhattan for this business.

是的。脱盆汽车贸易是我们的重点业务。早期我们就基于提供公平的贸易价值，从而确信自己是一个不会为了交易而过度支付但会给予最佳回报的经销商。你知道，现在市场压缩，很多经销商会说，除非你从我这里买车，否则我不会买你的车。我会说，如果你买了什么对我来说非常好的车，我会非常乐意收购。比如一个里程数为1万英里的2016款目标型号，我绝对会买的。所以是的，我们致力于建立关系和网络，主动靠近奔驰经销商们，让他们将法拉利交换给我们之类的事情，我想我们的名字应该在他们的名单上。所以你的意思是你们的库存都是基于与其他经销商的关系交易，没有从拍卖会上买来的车，对吗？没错。你们有没有参加拍卖会买车的情况？有吗？你知道，我有点用过ACV，那是一种更像是经销商之间进行的拍卖，有点类似于OBE。但是，我从来没有为这个生意在曼哈顿参加过拍卖会购车。

So like you're reconditioning, right? Yeah. Average, a used car dealer may spend $1,000 on reconditioning a car, at a shop, you know, non-certified tax, or maybe outsourcing. How do you do that? I mean, you're dealing with serious, I mean, liabilities, you're, these are expensive cars. You can't afford to make mistakes.

所以，你是在对车进行翻新，对吧？是的。通常，二手车销售商可能会在修理店花费1,000美元对车辆进行翻新，你懂的，不是认证的税款，或者可能是外包的方式。你是怎么做到的呢？我的意思是，你正在处理严重的责任，这些都是昂贵的汽车。你承受不起犯错误。

You know, early on, we saw about potentially bringing service at the house. It's a great revenue driver, and it's a good value add for our clients. We also recognize that when people go in for service, they're not happy, right? Because they're spending money on their car, tires are not flat. So we wanted to focus on the kind of fun set of the business, which is the excitement of the car.

你知道的，早期我们考虑过可能在家提供服务。这是一个很好的收入驱动因素，对我们的客户来说也是一个很好的价值增加。我们也意识到，当人们去进行维修服务时，他们并不开心，对吗？因为他们要在自己的车上花钱，轮胎也不是坏了。所以我们希望将重点放在业务的有趣部分，也就是汽车的兴奋感上。

Yeah. On top of that, with the breadth of brands we carry, I mean, our core brands are in no particular order. Portia Ferrari Lambo rolls Bentley, Astin, and we do a little bit of a clan. We would have had to have, you know, 10, 12 tax just to cover our brands. So we've got great working relationships with the OEMs. We've also got some wonderful highline independent service facilities here in Dallas that we utilize in our philosophy years, especially because we sell cars all over the country. We don't want to sell a car like the known issue or sell you a car, ship it to New York and it beats tires or it's missing a T. So I would say we probably over-reconditioned our cars with everything. You know, I would say our average recall is closer to five grand a car. If a car has one key, it's getting down.

在此之上，我们销售的品牌范围广泛，我们的核心品牌没有特定的顺序，包括保时捷、法拉利、兰博基尼、劳斯莱斯、宾利、阿斯顿马丁等。为了涵盖这些品牌，我们可能需要10到12种租金。因此，我们与原始设备制造商（OEMs）建立了良好的合作关系。我们在达拉斯还设有一些优秀的高端独立服务设施，我们在过去的几年中利用了这些设施，尤其因为我们在全国销售汽车。我们不希望销售有已知问题的汽车，或者卖给您一辆汽车，在将其运送到纽约时出现胎压异常或缺少备用钥匙之类的问题。所以我可以说我们对汽车进行了过度翻新，加配了所有可能的配备。我认为我们汽车的平均翻新费用应该接近每辆5,000美元。如果一辆汽车只有一把钥匙，我们也会准备一把备用钥匙。

Wow. Yeah. Well, if I saw a five grand recon ticket on a car, I don't know what happened to that car. I mean, that thing is going back to auction or something. And that's half of what you spent on a McLaren, which is if you look at my inventory, we have a couple average ticket for a McLaren is about 10 grand, even a short mile car. So yeah. But anyway, we try to make our car super nice so that we can send them anywhere side of the city. Makes sense. Sleep well at night.

哇。嗯。好吧，如果我看到一辆车上贴着一个价值五千美元的重建票据，我真不知道那辆车发生了什么事。我的意思是，那辆车可能要被送回拍卖行之类的地方。而这是你在买迈凯轮上花费的一半，如果你看一下我的库存，我们有几个迈凯轮的平均票价约为一万美元，即使是里程较短的车也是如此。所以没错。但无论如何，我们努力让我们的车看起来很漂亮，这样我们就可以把它们送到城市的各个角落。这样做合情合理。晚安，睡个好觉。

Yeah.

是的。

All right. So I want to talk more about you mentioned earlier, just like the ramp up, the ramp down $100 million in inventory. Is that still what you have today? No, I think, you know, candidly I anticipated hired demand for our Beverly Hills location. And then we moved into a new facility here at Dallas and kind of see behind me a year ago, June. And that really coincided with the market kind of taking a downturn and prices corrected. So it is your question. No, we're seeing about $40 million with the cars on the ground right now, between our Charlotte and Dallas. How have you managed this correction? 2022 was a brutal year for exotic car values. You know, how did you manage to that? Do you take big losses? Yeah, sure. We historically haven't really realized many losses. In fact, we don't only not buy cars at the auction, but we typically don't dispose of the auction either. We try to sell out of whatever we have. You know, but I'd be remiss to say, yeah, we did, we took some hits for sure. And but learned a lot. We were rolling in a little heavy at the wrong time. And so we moved quickly to kind of come back our inventory and sell through some age units. But it wasn't fun. The first half of 2022 was actually great, super profitable. The second half definitely took took some loans on some floor.

好的。所以我想再谈谈你之前提到的，比如库存增加和减少1亿美元。现在还是这样吗？不，我想说实话，我预期我们位于比弗利山的店面需求会更高。然后我们在去年6月搬到了达拉斯的新设施，在我身后你可以看到。这正好与市场的下滑和价格的调整相吻合。所以你的问题是，现在我们在夏洛特和达拉斯之间有大约4,000万美元的汽车库存。你是如何处理这种调整的？2022年对奢侈车价值来说是一个艰难的一年，你是如何处理的？有没有遭受巨大的损失？是的，确实。事实上，我们历史上并没有真正蒙受很多损失。实际上，我们不仅不在拍卖会上购买车辆，我们通常也不将车辆卖给拍卖会。我们努力销售手头所有的车辆。但是如果我不承认，我们确实遭受了一些损失。但是我们从中学到了很多东西。我们在错误的时间购进了太多库存，所以我们迅速行动，压缩库存并销售一些老旧车辆。但那并不好玩。2022年的前半年实际上非常好，利润丰厚。但是后半年确实吃了一些亏。

How long do you hold a car in inventory? It's a great question. So we manage and typically try to do a 90 day turn, depending on make model. And really, we kind of get granular. We go down to the trim level to try to get the right product mix. I'd like to think we're relatively good at what we do. But at the end of the day, we are trying to acquire inventory and guess what the consumer is going to want. And so we don't always get it right. But more often than not, we do. So we try to manage to have out a Maggie nature 90 day turn, which makes sense. I mean, exotic cards, more expensive. Average dealers, let's just like 60 day or 50 day.

你们的库存车辆通常保留多久？这是一个很好的问题。所以我们通常管理，并且试图在90天内处理完，具体取决于车辆的型号和品牌。实际上，我们很详细地处理，我们针对不同的车型进行调整，以获得合适的产品组合。我认为我们在这方面相对擅长。但是说到底，我们还是要尽力去获取库存，并猜测消费者可能需要的车辆。所以我们并不总是做得准确。但是，大多数情况下，我们是可以的。所以我们努力管理以使每辆车在90天内售出，这是有道理的。我是指，奢侈车型价格更高。普通经销商可能是60天或50天。

So go back to gross profit per unit. You mentioned 10%. How is that broken down, though? Are you aiming targeting to make 10% on the car? Are you selling like warranties? Are you service contracts insurance products? How does that work?

那么，让我们回到每辆车的毛利润。你提到了10%。然而，这是如何分解的呢？你是打算在汽车上获得10%的利润吗？你是否销售保修？还是销售服务合同和保险产品？这是如何运作的呢？

Yeah. So out of the game, we shied away from a lot of those products because we were a two-man with a with a detailer and a porter. So I guess there's more of us. And when we found the veracity with which our clients were creating cars, we were going to spend more time trying to cancel warranties and get their money back. We wanted to remove any of the quote unquote key cases that we could. So we didn't have a lot of product offerings.

是的，所以在游戏之外，我们避免了很多那些产品，因为当时我们只有两个人，一个是清洁工，一个是搬运工。所以我想现在我们有更多的人手了。当我们发现我们的客户在创造汽车方面的真实性时，我们打算花更多时间尝试取消保修并追回他们的钱。我们想要消除任何我们能够的所谓重要案例。因此，我们没有很多的产品选择。

And then, you know, I'll tell you it was super I open again. I probably should have been more attuned to this having run a big dealer group. But that'll speak part of a really big dealer group. All the banks are courting you and they want your business. All of a sudden, you go out and start your own dealership. We've only been in business for six months. You go to a- You're nobody.

然后，你知道的，我会告诉你，我又重新迎来了巨大的机会。或许我作为一个大型经销商集团的经营者，应该更加敏锐地意识到这一点。但这将会成为一个庞大的经销商集团的一部分。所有的银行都争相追逐你并希望与你合作。突然间，你自己创办了一个经销商店铺。我们的生意才刚开张六个月。你之前只是个无名小辈。

Yeah, nobody. We quickly became Woodside Credit's, you know, one of their biggest fans because that was one of our only resources. So with that, we really didn't have a lot of offerings in terms of back-end product. And that's part of the reason we brought up a wrap or a PPEF department in house that was kind of our back-end product.

是的，没错。我们迅速成为伍德赛德信贷的忠实粉丝之一，因为那是我们唯一的资源之一。因此，我们在后台产品方面的选择非常有限。这也是我们自己成立包装或PPEF部门的原因，作为我们的后台产品。

And then the the rate at which our clients were trading cars because we had access to all these different brands was so fast. There wasn't really a need to sell product. Now that's pivoted a little bit. We do have a wheel and tire and extended warranty options now. But we don't sell anything that we don't, you know, firmly stand behind. The last thing you want is a client upset because the $6,000 dollar award shoe sold them doesn't cover something.

然后，因为我们能够提供各种不同品牌的汽车，我们的客户交易汽车的速度非常快。实际上并没有真正需要销售产品。现在情况有所改变。我们现在提供轮胎、轮圈和延长保修选项。但我们不会销售我们不坚决支持的任何产品。你最不希望的就是客户因为我们售卖给他们的6000美元奖励鞋不 cover 某个问题而感到不满。

Yeah. Well, we've been really picky and kind of slow to enter that space. And our finance penetration is, you know, 30-35%. So it's always a focus, but we deal with just a ton of cash and typically your cash buyers less app to buy an extended warranty or a road hazard product.

是的。嗯，我们一直非常挑剔，而且进入那个领域的速度有点慢。而且我们的金融渗透率只有30-35%。所以这一直是一个重点，但我们处理大量现金，通常情况下现金买家不太可能购买延长保修或路障产品。

Oh, really? Yeah. Why though? Like, are they just expecting that if they have an issue with their, you know, $300,000 card that the manufacturer will take care of it? Or what's the plan?

哦，真的吗？是吗。但是为什么呢？就是他们希望如果他们的那张价值30万美元的卡出了问题，生产商会负责解决吗？还是有其他计划？

I think that's part of it. I also think of this base, you know, we're not selling people. They're generally they're daily drivers with the exception of 80s and G wagons and more mass market vehicles that we carry. It's a Sunday driver. It's crazy to hear you say G wagon and mass market in the same sense because any normal person would be like, that's, you know, on the exotic side. And for you, it's probably like the, you know, the Nissan Altima, the bread and butter. You know, we've sold a ton of them.

我认为这是其中的一部分。我还考虑到这个基础，你知道的，我们并不是在卖人。它们通常都是日常驾驶的车辆，除了80年代的G级车和更多的大众化车辆。这是周日驾驶的车辆。听你说G级车和大众化车辆在同一种意义上真是太疯狂了，因为任何正常人都会觉得那是，你知道的，属于奇特的范畴。而对于你来说，可能就像是日产Altima或是主力车型。你知道，我们已经卖出了一大堆它们。

I think only 80 G wagons so far this year. So that's just how many? 70 or 80 something in one there. Yeah. Did you see my, did I posted about this like baby G wagon that they want to come out with? Did you see that?

我今年迄今只见过80辆G款车。那就是多少呢？在那里可能有70或80辆左右。是的。你看到我发布的关于他们计划推出的迷你G款车的消息了吗？你看到了吗？

Yeah, we were laughing about it. What's the deal with that? Is that going to happen? Are they going to come out with a mini G wagon?

是的，我们开玩笑地谈论了这件事。这是怎么回事？那真的会发生吗？他们会推出一款迷你G级吗？

I think so. Yeah, I don't remember which executive of Mercedes was kind of on the record and said you're going to see a movie called a sister brother G wagon or something. A little crushing. I mean, they're awesome cars. We've, I never would have anticipated, you know, we started was right with a new G wagon was about to come out that they'd be going for over MSRP is back in the day you could get a good discount on a G wagon. They're too expensive. But here we are.

我觉得是这样。是的，我不记得奔驰的哪位高管说过你们会看到一部叫做"姐弟G级越野车"之类的电影了。有点让人失望。我的意思是，这些车真是太棒了。我从来没有预料到，你知道的，当我们新款G级越野车即将推出时，它们竟然要卖到高于建议零售价。过去你可以打折买到一辆好的G级越野车。它们太贵了。但现在这就是现状。

Tell me more about the G wagon. Did you, did you follow the G wagon? You know, madness last year on, you know, they were selling at auction for like 280,000 suddenly, you know, couple months later and like 220,000. I mean, do you remember that madness?

告诉我更多关于G车的事情。你是不是也追踪了G车的情况？去年的那场疯狂，你知道吗？它们在拍卖会上突然卖到了28万美元，然后几个月后又降到了22万美元。我的意思是，你还记得那场疯狂吗？

Of course. Yeah, I always try to be kind of behind the curve on that, which is going to sound odd. But when there's a big craze on a car, they're bringing huge numbers over MSRP. I like to wait. Six, eight weeks, even a couple months just to see where the dust is going to settle. Yeah. Just because it always comes back, right? The hovers, the G wagons, um, horses are still kind of bringing crazy money for R. E's, of course. But you know, I had a totally, and a guy, uh, one of our top sales that was really psyched. He was able to get a key and tell you, right, a sticker for his wife. And I just remember thinking he's like, they're selling for 10 over, but I got a key at sticker. I was like, oh, this has to correct. Right. So yes, we did play in the G wagons base, but I don't think we were as aggressive as sub dealers just because I could have rationalized a hundred thousand dollars over and not limited edition SUV.

当然。是的，我总是试图稍微落后一点，这可能听起来有些奇怪。但是当一款车型非常热门时，他们会高价销售。我喜欢等待。六到八周，甚至几个月，只是为了看看局势会如何发展。是的，因为事情总会回归正常，对吧？豪车，G牌，嗯，跑马带回来的收益仍然令人疯狂。当然，但你知道吗，我有一个完全不同的看法。我们的一位销售顾问非常激动，他能以正常价格为他的妻子买到一辆car name。我记得当时想，他说它们正在以高于指导价10个点卖，但我以指导价买到了一辆car name，这一定会纠正过来。因此，是的，我们确实参与了G牌的基本销售，但我认为我们没有像其他经销商那样积极，因为我可以合理地解释为什么要在一辆非限量版SUV上加价十万美元。

So yeah, pretty much what is what is your best selling car right now? There has to be some model or some make or something, right?

嗯，目前你们最畅销的汽车是什么呢？肯定有一款车型或者某个品牌，对吧？

Yeah. Um, I guess we shall attend on that level. That's a core product for us. We do sell it. But we do really well with Ferrari, a ton of 48, California, those Portositos. So any of those, a lot of the contention and comparable volume numbers. So if you identify a trend, what do you do to source that vehicle?

是的。嗯，我猜我们应该在那个层面上考虑。这对我们来说是一个核心产品。我们确实销售它。但我们在法拉利、大量的48款、加利福尼亚款和那些Portositos款上做得非常好。所以如果你发现了一个趋势，你会如何寻找这款车辆的供应来源呢？

Definitely. In the last year I added a guy to my team and call on who's been in the highlight space kind of as a broker for over a decade. And you know, it's sometimes pretty old school. We troll auto trader, we call clients, or you know, we keep a really kind of a robust CRM or database with our current clients. And we'll people that we now have a certain car and try to trade about the thing else.

当然。在过去的一年里，我为我的团队增加了一个人，并且联系了一个在广告领域担任经纪人已有十年的人。有时候，我们的做法相当老派。我们在汽车交易平台上搜索车源，联系客户，或者保持一个非常健全的CRM或客户数据库。我们会告知客户我们现在有一辆特定的车，并试图与他们交换其他车辆。

It seems like you're you're such a bespoke service. Like how do you scale that when you think about, you know, you mentioned through stores and I understand that, you know, one of them, you said you're closing now or closed to walk me through that.

看起来你的服务非常独特。那么，当你考虑到规模扩张时，你是如何做到的呢？你提到通过实体店铺进行运营，我可以理解。但你也提到其中一家店铺现在正在关闭或者已经关闭了，能否向我解释一下？

I'd like to see we're still figuring out the scaling process. We opened Charlotte at the latter part of 2021. That's where corporate offices for Sonic. That store's been great. It's a little smaller for us. It's about 20,000 square feet. And then one kind of sea sales person there and then a support staff built around him with detailers and quarters.

我希望看到我们仍在探索扩张过程。我们在2021年的后半年开设了夏洛特分店，那是Sonic的总部所在地。那家店一直做得很好。对我们来说，它稍微小一点，大约有20,000平方英尺。然后有一个销售人员和一个以他为核心的支持团队，包括细节工和宿舍人员。

We had the opportunity to take over an existing space in Beverly Hills, across from the Audi store. It was the old Howdy Beverly Hills service center. That was a legacy lease from Beverly Hills BMW from 20, 25 years ago. And really thought that that would be kind of the perfect spot for us, right? The heart of Beverly Hills, the sports cars. And you know, candidly that that store under Perforant, it just didn't do what we thought it was going to do. On top of that, the Beverly Hills, BMW, sort of cited they needed more space. So after about a year, it was just a good opportunity to say we tried it and exit.

我们有机会接管贝弗利山的一处现有空间，就在奥迪店对面。那是Howdy贝弗利山服务中心的老地方。那是贝弗利山宝马20、25年前的一个历史性租约。我们真的觉得那是一个完美的地方，对吧？贝弗利山的中心，跟运动车很贴合。坦白说，那家店在Perforant的经营下，并没有达到我们的预期。此外，贝弗利山宝马方面也表示他们需要更多的空间。所以大约一年后，我们觉得现在是一个好的机会来试试，然后退出。

But scaling has been interesting. I think we, you know, in hindsight, didn't get enough credit to having kind of an individual in market that really has a book of business and is a mover. Like Chris, I mentioned previously that that didn't help us out of the gate. It was really weird kind of around that two year markets like, okay, these guys are sticking around. And then all the old clients kind of came back into the fold. So scaling, I think it's important at this level of the business to have somebody in market who really is established and those people and can kind of lean on previous sales and client history to try to boot product.

但是扩展一直很有意思。我认为，事后来看，我们并没有得到足够的认可，即在市场上真正拥有一个业务书和活跃者。像克里斯，我之前提到这个对我们来说并没有帮助。在那前两年的市场真的很奇怪，他们一直在挣扎。然后所有老客户都逐渐回归。因此，在这个阶段，我认为在市场上有一个真正有影响力的企业家是很重要的，他们可以依靠以前的销售和客户历史来推动产品。

Yeah, that makes sense now. And I would add on to that, like, is there, is there something to be said for you to have this like one massive, auto mall, like, you know, 1000 cars where you're tracking you from all over the country, as opposed to kind of littering these locations throughout the country and all these different places. Like, what do you think about that?

是的，现在我明白了。并且我想补充一点，比如说，是否可以说你们有一个巨大的汽车城，就像一千辆汽车集中在一起，你们可以从全国各地追踪它们，而不是把它们散落在全国各地的不同地方。你对此有什么看法？

I think it's really interesting. You know, we purpose built a facility here in Dallas. We've moved into about a year ago. That's 100,000 square feet. So we have under air conditioning and heat. It's fully climate controlled. The ability to fill a couple hundred cars, which at this price point is, you know, pretty expansive inventory. I like the idea of having, you know, our Charlotte location. It's a great jump off to the East Coast.

我觉得这真的很有趣。你知道，我们在达拉斯新建了一个设施，大约一年前搬进来的。那是一个有10万平方英尺的建筑。所以我们可以在空调和暖气的情况下使用。它完全受气候控制。我们有能力储存几百辆车，考虑到这个价格点，这是相当丰富的库存量。我喜欢拥有我们在夏洛特的位置。这是通往东海岸的绝佳出发点。

So what's really interesting is that you would say kind of consolidating everything here in Dallas, which is like the bottom of the smile belt would be the smart thing to do. But, you know, the car pieces is being what it is. I could have a car age on me here for 60, 65 days, I'll move it to Charlotte. And you know, it happened last week. We sold the car while we were in transit. And the only thing that changed was into our Charlotte inventory. Oh, wow. The guy in Florida that bought it, it popped up at his search radius for auto trader. It's like, there is some, I think, huge benefits to having a room. Yeah, different location.

那么真正有趣的是，你会说在达拉斯这里进行整合是非常明智的选择，因为这里就像是“微笑地带”的底部。但是，你知道，汽车市场就是这样。我可以在这里拥有一辆车60、65天，然后把它运到夏洛特。你知道的，上周就发生了这样的情况。我们在运输过程中卖掉了这辆车。唯一改变的是它转入了我们在夏洛特的库存。哇，厉害。佛罗里达买家在auto trader的搜索范围内看到了它。这就像是，我觉得有一个库房有很多好处。是的，不同的地点。

That's interesting. I would have thought buying at these price points, you know, people would not really discriminate location wise, but I guess it kind of makes sense. At the end of the day, it's near you, you know, just more accessible.

这很有意思。我本以为在这个价格范围购买时，人们可能不会太在意地点，但我想这样也说得通。毕竟，就终究而言，离你近的话更便捷、易于接近。

Well, it was crazy. I mean, you're on the business, right? So you understand that shipping cars is something we do every day. You'd be amazed at how many people, especially at this price point, don't know that we can ship a car from Dallas to Florida for 15 other bucks. It's not the price. It's like the lack of understanding that these cars move. It's really interesting.

嗯，真是太疯狂了。我的意思是，你是在做生意，对吧？所以你应该知道运送车辆是我们每天的工作。你会惊讶地发现有多少人，尤其是在这个价格段，根本不知道我们可以用15美元将一辆车从达拉斯运到佛罗里达。问题并不在于价格，而是缺乏对这些汽车运输的了解。真的很有意思。

Right. Yeah. Who is your like average customer? Like, what's the profile here? Like, you know, how much money do they earn annually? Like how old are they? Tell me about that.

对，嗯，你们的普通客户是谁？就是说，这里的客户画像是怎样的？你知道的，他们一年赚多少钱？他们多大年纪？告诉我一下。

You know, I think that's shifted in the last few years historically, our average client was, you know, 30 at 60, maybe half a million plus in income, but our average age is decreasing, which I love to see because we have younger people entering the market.

你知道的，我觉得在过去几年里，历史上发生了一些变化。我们平均的客户年龄从60岁的人，年收入在50万美元以上，变得越来越年轻了。这个现象我非常欣喜，因为年轻人开始进入市场了。

And I think your laugh, maybe it was, you know, we had a lot of doge boy in Bitcoin. Exactly. My life, well, I was like the crypto money, the crypto money, baby, the crypto money and like the live streaming video game, or my is really interesting. We've got several young clients that are video game programmers, live stream and do Twitch, all that kind of stuff. So it's different.

我觉得你的笑声，或许是因为我们在比特币的世界中玩得开心。没错。我的生活就像加密货币，加密货币，宝贝，加密货币，还有，像游戏直播或者其他很有趣的事情。我们有几位年轻的客户是游戏程序员，进行直播和使用Twitch等等。所以这很不同。

Yeah. Did you see Mr? Did you see Mr? Beast just shredded a Lamborghini? I did. Yeah. Like I something else. He pulled down a million last year. So he's probably like, yeah, he's fine. Did you sound that Lambo? I did not. We got to get you on there. Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool.

是的。你见到了先生吗？你见到了先生？兽先生刚刚撕碎了一辆兰博基尼？我有见到。是的。就好像我看到了另外一件事情一样。他去年赚了一百万。所以他很可能就像“是的，他没事”的意思。你有听到那辆兰博吗？我没有。我们得让你上去一次。是的。是的。那真的很酷。

Now, what about online buying, right? Like you mentioned that you moved it to Charlotte, but are people buying like, you know, eBay Motors, like been around since like 2000, right? Buying cars online. Do you sell a lot online? Like remotely sight unseen?

现在，咱们说说在线购买吧，对吧？就像你提到你把生意搬到了夏洛特，但是人们是不是在网上购买汽车，就像 eBay Motors 这样的网站，它成立于2000年，对吧？你在网上卖了很多吗？例如远程买车，无需视察就能成交的那种？

You know, it's interesting. Looking back to when we have three stores, the percentage of our kind of online side on scene sales was very different. So Texas at the Dallas location, over half of our business is local. What I say local call it Texas proper. The balance of that. Sometimes it gets even as high as maybe 60, 70%. The rest of them lead the state. So we ship to both coasts out of the country. But then you look at our Charlotte store and maybe 25, 30% of the sales stay local. And then the rest are going out of state Florida and then up the Eastern seaboard. So it really depends on which story you're looking at. But we do a ton of online side on scene sale.

你知道，有趣的事情是，回顾当我们拥有三家商店时，我们的线上销售在不同场景下的比例是非常不同的。所以得克萨斯州的达拉斯地区，我们超过一半的业务是本地的。我所说的本地是指得克萨斯州内的地方。剩下的则是其他地方的销售量。有时甚至可能高达60%到70%。而其他地方则涉及到了州外和国外的发货。但是当你看我们的夏洛特店，也许只有25%到30%的销售量是本地的。其余的则发往了佛罗里达州以及东海岸地区。所以这真的取决于你看的是哪个店铺。但我们在网上也有大量的销售。

You know, historically people would fly in and they'd want to see and touch it. I'd like to think we have a good enough recommendation now that people trust the process and our product. So more often than our people don't fly out or come see the car, we just put a lot of truck and drop it off their house.

你知道的，以前人们会飞来，他们想看看，摸摸它。我想我们现在已经有了足够好的推荐，使人们相信我们的流程和产品。所以我们的人往往不会飞出去或亲自看车了，我们只是把车装上卡车，送到他们家里。

Yeah, that's impressive. You built quite a reputation. What's the most expensive car you've sold side and scene? Probably a set up, you know, somewhere around that million dollar price point range. We should off an F 50 at Sotheby's last year, which technically the buyer was a present right? He bought it side out. So you do well.

是的，那真是令人印象深刻。你已建立了相当的声誉。你曾经卖过的最贵的车是什么型号和价格？可能是在百万美元的价位范围内吧。去年我们在苏富比拍卖行卖掉了一辆F50，实际上买家是一个礼物对吧？他是全款购买的。所以你做得很不错。

Well, we tried one. I found a really short mile. F 50 had a separate rate of miles on it. The re-optioned off it. It might be so that that was kind of a something we just would try. That car was bought and brought a little over $5 million. So that was a big web.

嗯，我们试了一辆车。我找到了一辆非常短的英里车。F50在上面有一个独立的英里速率。然后我们把它重新拍卖了。也许这是我们尝试的一种东西。那辆车被买下来，价格超过500万美元。所以那是一笔很大的交易。

Yeah, that's interesting. Now that I think about it, you know, once you I'm going to just take a wild guess here. But once you probably eclipse like the maybe $300 or $400,000 range, does you know, does price discover to become more of a challenge? Like do you have to do more of these auction types? I'm not like, we all know the price of like, you know, on G 63, a 2022 G wagon. That's pretty easy. But you know, 400,000 plus, like, does that become more challenging?

嗯，那很有趣。现在我想一想，你知道的，一旦你达到大概30万或40万美元的范围，价格发现是否变得更具挑战性呢？就像你是否不得不做更多这样的拍卖类型？我并不是说我们都知道像2022年G-Wagon这样的G 63的价格是很容易确定的。但是在40万美元以上，这是否变得更具挑战性？

It does because in a certain respect, what's a 2019 Phantom where there's four of them. So I have to look at the market and be competitive, but also take a little bit of an educated guess on what that car is worth and what it's going to bring.

这样做是因为在某种程度上，如果有四辆2019款幽灵车，其中一辆会是怎样的？所以我必须观察市场并保持竞争力，同时也要对这辆车的价值和未来的推出带有一点教育性的猜测。

So what's the toughest car right now to get like the toughest exotic car on the most in demand, but also the toughest. What are you saying?

现在最难获得的是哪款车呢，像需求最高的超级豪华车一样，同时也是最坚固耐用的。你在说什么？

You know, new Ferraris are always really tough. That new Porsche product GT3 RS is a really what my opinion is kind of crazy, buddy, to 250 over MSRP. Those are always always going to be tough to get outside of that. You still see you wag is being bringing a bit of a preview of some of the new Lamborghini product. But I'd say the hot hand right now is pushing Ferrari.

你知道的，新的法拉利总是非常强大。那款新的保时捷GT3 RS产品真的非常疯狂，伙计，要比建议零售价高250万。这些车总是很难在外面买到。你还可以看到，咱们已经有了一些新兰博基尼产品的预览。但我要说，现在最受瞩目的是法拉利。

But are you feeling any of the impacts of interest rates? Like is it impacting your business in any way here?

你有感受到利率的任何影响吗？比如说，它是否在任何方面影响你的业务？

What's super counterintuitive and I'd say are seeing a little frustrating is that with the rise of interest rates, our finance penetration has actually gone up. So despite money being more expensive, I take people that are moving into some of this type of product are using a bit more leverage and are more traditional cash buyers are kind of sitting on the sidelines and waiting. So they're not buying, but the guy that would buy four or five cars a year is just going, all right, let me watch. So it's interesting.

违反直觉的是，随着利率的上升，我们金融渗透率实际上有所增加，这让我感到有点沮丧。尽管资金更加昂贵，但我发现越来越多的人在进入这种类型的产品时使用了更多的杠杆，而那些传统的现金买家则有点观望。所以他们没有购买，但以前买四五辆车的那个人只是说：“好吧，让我观察一下。”所以这很有趣。

I didn't buy her. Who's the buyer at that age for streets? I've gone up like, you know, I don't know, five, six percent, whatever, and is now using more leverage to buy an exotic car. Who is this person? A lot of people that are pretty affluent and have just, you know, kind of had their ass handed to them with a stock market or go and screw it, I'll buy a Ferrari and it cost me eight percent of a year. I don't care. I'd see some of that. That's crazy. Some stretch. I feel like it's so dumb. Like put that money into some treasuries or just pay cash at that point. I mean, why pay the eight percent or whatever they're paying? I mean, what are they paying? What are the rates right now in these cars? Tier one credit, you're somewhere in the upper sixes to mid eight. Wow, which was crazy. Historically, it's really not. But you know, the last 10 years, money's been free. Yeah, it's just changing activity the way you think about it. It's been really interesting to watch and kind of a post-COVID era.

我没有买她。在那种年纪，谁是街头买家？我涨了，你知道的，不知道，百分之五、六之类的，现在正借更多的杠杆来买一个异国飞车。这个人是谁？有很多人相当富裕，他们在股市中吃过亏，所以他们就会去买一辆法拉利，花掉我一年（收入）的百分之八。我不在乎。我看到部分人就是这样。这太疯狂了。有点愚蠢。把这些钱投资在国债上或者直接用现金支付不是更好吗？我是说，为什么要支付百分之八或者其他的费用呢？现在这些车的利率是多少？一级信用的话，大约在百分之六点几到百分之八中等水平。哇，太疯狂了。从历史上看，其实并不算太高。但是你知道，过去的十年，钱一直都是免费的。是的，只是改变了思维方式。观察这一切在后COVID时代变得非常有趣。

A lot of clients are saying, you know, I see a drive a stock, right? So that's not very fun. But I could drive a Ferrari and if I lose a little money, I don't care. What you also have, which is really kind of a unique anomaly is people that aren't needing the exotic space and for a short period of time or buying cars and then selling them and making money. Now, when things come home to roost and pre-owned prices are leveling or becoming more normalized, they don't understand that it cost them 50 grand to own that Aston Martin. And it's like, well, yeah, that's how this works. So it's been pretty interesting.

很多客户都在说，你知道吗，我希望我有一辆非常动感的股票。所以这样并不有趣。但是如果我有一辆法拉利，即使我少赚点钱也无所谓。你还有一个非常独特的现象，就是有些人并不需要豪车，只是短期内买卖车辆来赚钱。但是当二手车价格趋于平稳或更加正常时，他们并不明白自己买这辆阿斯顿·马丁实际上花了他们50万美元。这就是情况，所以这一切非常有意思。

Do you have to bail anyone out? Like if people have you dealt with some people here that are taking baths in these cars? Yeah, sure. I mean, nothing crazy. I'd like to think we did an overpriced out of the gate, right? We never are the most expensive car in the market. But definitely some people that also bought cars and other dealerships and way overpaid that are upside down. We hadn't seen negative equity in the last, I'd say 24 months. And you're starting to see the people that paid 280 for that G-Wag and come back to trade a year later. And it's worth 180. It's a bit of a problem. Yeah. How do you deal with that? Or what are you telling them? Are people just trying to get out of these cars? Whether you, I'm not saying you sold it, but generally speaking, are you finding that lots of people are in these situations though? Not so much with the negative equity. We see a little bit of that, but more so, people that bought the toy and now they need the cash for whatever reason. So they're leaving the market for a little while. We get a lot of people that early create their cars here is in Texas. We could hold a tax credit for future use. So we are seeing people shedding their toys, the third and fourth cars. They're wanting to sell. So you ask where we're getting our inventory, the phone's raining with a lot of people that are just shedding some toys. That makes sense.

你需要帮忙解救任何人吗？比如有些人在这些车里洗澡吗？是的，当然。我的意思是，并没有太疯狂。我想我们一开始就定价过高了对吧？我们从来不是市场上最贵的汽车。但确实有些人在其他经销商那里买车并且付了太多钱，他们现在处于亏损状态。在过去的24个月里，我们还没有见过负资产。但现在你会看到那些一年前以28万美元买了G-Wag的人要来交易，但现在只值18万美元。这是个问题。你们是如何处理这种情况的？或者你对他们说些什么？人们是否只是试图摆脱这些车辆？无论你是否卖出了这些车辆，普遍而言，你发现很多人都处于这种境地吗？负资产的情况并不多见。我们有一些这样的情况，但更多的是那些买了玩具车但现在因为某种原因需要现金的人。所以他们会暂时离开市场。在得克萨斯州，我们可以保留未来使用的税收抵免额度。所以我们看到很多人正在出售第三、第四辆车。所以你问我们的库存是从哪里来的，我们的电话铃声响个不停，很多人都在出售一些玩具车。这很合理。

What would you say right now? Could you even say this, but what's the best exotic car deal in the market right now? Is there such thing? I guess deal is all relative, right? Or maybe what's the most oversupplied, like something like that, where you could truly have the most pricing power as a consumer or negotiation leverage, say? I think it's all relative because unfortunately, the best point of put deal means there's a lack of demand in the space, right? So there's cars you could get a huge discount on, but that's because they're like, I think they're going to keep and what are those claims? McLarens are corrected. But to that end, a deal is all relative because they're just so maintenance, they're tough to own. And it's tough. I always think Porsche is a great value for what they do. It turbo-s is now a $250,000 car, but it hangs with stuff in the three, four, five, $600,000 price range. So value, I guess, is relative, right? Because it's still expensive. But a lot of cars are available.

你现在会说什么？你能说这个吗？但市场上最好的豪车交易是什么？有这样的事情吗？我猜交易是相对的，对吧？或许最过剩的东西，就是可以让你作为消费者或者谈判者真正拥有最强的定价能力或者谈判优势的东西，对吧？我认为这一切都是相对的，因为不幸的是，最好的交易意味着该领域的需求不足，对吧？所以有些车你可以得到巨额优惠，但那是因为它们不受欢迎，我认为它们不值得收藏。但就此而言，交易是相对的，因为它们需要维护，对车主来说是件麻烦事。我一直认为保时捷是物有所值的，它们的Turbo S现在是一辆25万美元的车，但它的性能可与30至60万美元价位的车辆相媲美。所以物有所值，我猜也是相对的，对吧？因为它仍然很昂贵。但很多车都可以买到。

Are there any exotic cars that you just recommend staying away from completely? This is just junk. Don't touch it. I always say, I will sell a friend of a client of a client. Oh, he should just won't do it. And that's more so because I think that's really a race car company that's trying to make consumer cars and they just have a quick up at it right yet. I think the product's good, but it's not something you'd want to own out of warranty. So that's not a luxury car by any stretch of imagination. But remember that story from a couple years or five years ago, whatever about the Maserati? Is it like the pedals that we're breaking? Remember that? Oh, yeah. Dibley's motor's falling out. Oh, my God, dude. Yeah. I guess, well, it was on my mind. But yeah, that's a brand we shy far away from. Yeah, yeah. I won't forget that. I started looking at that very differently since that day.

有没有一些你完全不建议接触的特别的汽车？这就是垃圾。不要碰它。我总是说，只会卖给朋友的客户的客户。哦，他就是做不到。这更多是因为我认为这是一个试图制造消费者汽车的赛车公司，他们还没有真正掌握技术。我认为产品还不错，但是在保修期过后你就不会想拥有它了。所以它绝对不是一辆豪华车。但还记得几年前或五年前关于玛莎拉蒂的那个故事吗？像是踏板断裂那个故事？还记得吗？哦，是的。发动机都会掉下来。天啊，伙计。是的。我猜嗯，自从那天以后，我对那个品牌看法完全改变了。

I guess the magic question, what do you drive? It's a great question. I get that question a lot. So yeah, internet of cars every day or every other day, I try to make sure, especially if the car has a little bit of my response as well. But I personally probably own the most just pouches, pouches, fine 11s. They just hold their value. People love them. And it seems like it's like a timeless brand. Like, you know, it's also what I cut my teeth on. So ideally driven, I have really daily driven that I 11 to the last 15 years on and off. So just require really like, all right.

我猜思维问题是，你开什么车？这是一个很好的问题。我常常被问到这个问题。所以，每天或隔一天，我都会尝试确保如果汽车也能表达一点我的个性。但就个人而言，我可能拥有最多的是这些袋子，袋子，一流的11号。它们保值很好，人们喜爱它们。而且它似乎是一个永恒的品牌。你知道的，这也是我拿什么入门的。所以理想情况下，我已经连续15年几乎每天驾驶那辆11号了。所以只是要求真的，哦好吧。

So I want to move on. I want to move on to some macro before we wrap up. I'm just curious from your perspective, like, what do you what do you see for the future of the exotic car space? And when we think about like the next five years, right, like, do you think that the space is going to keep heating up? Like, what's going to change? How do you how do you, how are you kind of forecasting the future here? Yeah, you know, our crystal ball is still a little foggy, right? More amazing educated guessings just like everyone else. I do think and you already have seen it, there's been some consolidation of the market. Good better otherwise with the cost of capital increasing, the smaller entities, I think are struggling to pay for floor plan.

所以我想要继续前进。在我们结束之前，我想要转向一些宏观问题。从你的角度来看，你对豪车领域的未来有什么看法？当我们考虑未来的五年时，你认为这个领域会继续升温吗？会有什么变化？你如何预测未来的发展呢？是的，我们的水晶球仍然有一些模糊，只能像其他人一样进行精确的猜测。我认为，正如你已经看到的，市场已经出现了一些整合。在资本成本增加的情况下，较小的实体很难支付库存融资。

And, you know, it's not lost on us either. Money's expensive. So caring inventory is is is always a burden. It wasn't for the last few years when money was relatively free. So I think you'll see some consolidation. I also think you are, you know, when I started in the business, call it 15 years ago, average person went to three car dealerships, right? Now it's down to like one page. So you're seeing a really informed consumer that does a ton of research and that really knows what they want. So in my opinion, having a customer, you know, centric focus on the experience, I think is what's going to provide value moving forward. There's a lot less selling going on and what we like consulting, right? Like radiation, I've got a quarterly dollar just bed. Is it a turbo S or is it a 48 or? And that's something that I think is unique in our, in our setup, you can kind of come drive all three or four cars in that segment and find out what you want. So focusing on the client, recognizing there's going to be some consolidation and really just focusing on operating a transparent business, I think will be what drives success, success moving forward. Those are our kind of focuses, right?

同时，你知道，我们也没有忽视这一点。金钱很贵。因此，保管库存始终是个负担。在过去几年，当金钱相对充裕时，这并不是个问题。因此，我认为你会看到一些整合。我也认为你知道，当我开始做这个生意，大约15年前，普通人会去三家汽车经销商，对吧？现在只剩一页了。因此，你会看到一个非常了解情况、做了大量研究并非常清楚自己想要什么的消费者。所以，在我看来，以客户为中心的体验才是未来提供价值的关键。销售的过程大大减少，更像是咨询，对吧？就像辐射一样，我拥有一个季度的收入就能补足。是Turbo S还是48呢？这是我们设置中独特的地方，你可以试驾这个细分市场中的所有三到四种车，找出你想要的。所以，专注于客户，认识到将会有一些整合，并真正专注于运营透明的业务，我认为这将是未来成功的推动力。这是我们的主要关注点。

Are you are you looking to keep expanding the business regionally or like physical footprint or are you going to consolidate more? What are you thinking? You know, we're open to adding in all opportunities. Right now we're focused on the two rooftops we have. There's a couple, you know, other locations that are top of mind, but we're trying to just refocus and navigate this market and see what's going to happen. It's been an interesting road over the last year. And you know, we've seen in the last two months demand is coming back prices are normalizing. So I'm curious to see what fourth quarter looks like as we roll into, you know, an election year and how that impacts our business.

您是希望继续在地区或者实体方面扩大业务范围，还是更倾向于巩固业务？您有什么想法呢？我们对所有机会都持开放态度。目前我们的重点是我们目前的两个销售点。还有一些其他地点也在考虑之中，但我们正在努力重新聚焦和导航这个市场，看看将会发生什么。过去一年是一条有趣的道路。我们发现，在过去两个月，需求正在回升，价格也在趋于正常。因此，我很好奇进入第四季度的情况，特别是在大选年中，看看这将如何影响我们的业务。

So dude, you're an artist, man. This is good stuff. Well, you definitely yeah, you're doing something that not many of us here in the, you know, the use card game are too in tune with. So it's pretty impressive. And I love your website. Very clean, very clean. Yeah, we try to make it, yeah, we took, I guess, influence and artistic cadre from high end websites where we like to shop, right? So we try to make it easy. There's not a lot of their fluff on there.

兄弟，你真是个艺术家，太厉害了。这些东西不错。嗯，你绝对是在做一些我们这些玩卡游戏的人不太懂的事情。真是令人印象深刻。我喜欢你的网站，非常简洁。我们试图从高端网站上购物时的设计感和艺术风格中获得灵感，所以我们努力让它简单明了。没有太多繁琐的内容。

What you and your partner, like what's the relationship there? Like who does what or like what are you better at?

你和你的伴侣之间的关系是怎样的？像，你们各自负责什么，或者你们在哪方面更擅长？

What is he better at?

他在什么方面更擅长？

Yeah, you know, it's been interesting because having a good partner makes all the difference, right? So there's Chris is a great salesperson. He's wonderful a follow up. He's got a tenacity and the propensity to follow up for a client with a client for a decade before they buy a car. I'd like to think up to Nacias about that to Nacias.

是的，你知道的，有一个好的伙伴真的很重要，对吧？所以有个叫Chris的人是个出色的销售员。他非常善于跟进。他有毅力和倾向，在客户购买一辆车之前就会跟进客户十年了。我想对他的这种能力表示赞赏。

So his his structure is really on the sales side that he helped and had our heavy hand on our marketing, especially out of the gate before we brought somebody on our team to do all that. And then, you know, kind of operationally and then on the vehicle acquisition side, that's that's why I focus.

因此，他的结构确实是在销售方面帮助我们，并且在我们聘请团队成员负责这方面之前，他对我们的营销有着重要的作用。然后，在运营方面，以及车辆采购方面，这就是我专注的地方。

So you're more the numbers and whatnot and make sense. For sure. He's not, but I get it.

所以你更喜欢数字和各种东西，并且有意义。当然。他不是，但我理解。

Yeah, that seems like a good partnership. Well, good stuff. Love to see what we're doing. And if anyone wants to learn more about tactical fleet yourself, where can they go?

是的，这看起来像是一个好的合作伙伴关系。不错的东西，喜欢看到我们正在做的事情。如果有人想更多地了解策略舰队，他们可以去哪里呢？

Go to our Instagram, which is practical. We're a tactical fleet.com. I'm going to go to Instagram right now, actually. So it's good to know. We tried to keep the cards.

快去我们的Instagram，它很实用。我们是一个战术舰队网站。实际上，我现在就要去Instagram。所以很好知道。我们尽力保留这些卡片。

Well, thanks, Jason. And this has been fun. Like I said, we haven't delved into exotic cars and whatnot till now. So this has been great learning experience for me as well. It's truly like a sort of like an opaque part of our business. So super interesting.

好的，谢谢，杰森。这真是一次有趣的经历。像我说的那样，直到现在我们都没有涉足过名车等等。所以对我来说这真是一次很好的学习经验。它确实像我们业务中一种神秘的部分。非常有意思。

Well, thanks for coming on, man. This was awesome. Talk to you. It's easy.

嗨，谢谢你来参加，伙计。这真是太棒了。跟你交谈很轻松。

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.

好的，希望你们喜欢这一集。请给节目评个分吧。考虑订阅这个节目，并查看节目笔记中我们讨论的内容的链接。感谢收听。下次见！