Latest / Big Talk About Small Business / Ep. 25 - Steering through the Challenges of Family Entrepreneurship

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Ep. 25 - Steering through the Challenges of Family Entrepreneurship · Big Talk About Small Business

0:04
Mark Zweig: Hey everybody, this is Mark's Y again.
0:07
Mark Zweig: I'd like to welcome you back to another episode of Big Talk about Small Business.
0:14
Mark Zweig: I don't have my partner, eric Howard, in the studio today.
0:20
Mark Zweig: I guess he's on some exotic vacation or doing something like that.
0:24
Mark Zweig: Eric lives a life of leisure along with about 10 businesses.
0:30
Mark Zweig: But I do have a very special guest here in the studio with me today.
0:36
Mark Zweig: This is one of my former students, nick Kilgore.
0:45
Mark Zweig: Nick and his brother, chris, have a car business which the name of it is Market Auto.
0:55
Mark Zweig: Is that not right, nick?
0:56
Mark Zweig: That's correct.
0:58
Nick Kilgore: Yeah.
0:59
Mark Zweig: So, nick, tell us a little bit, just to give you an idea where Nick is.
1:03
Mark Zweig: Nick, what are you about?
1:04
Mark Zweig: 22, 23?
1:05
Mark Zweig: I just turned 23.
1:06
Mark Zweig: Okay, just turned 23.
1:09
Mark Zweig: You graduated from U of A but in… this is last spring.
1:15
Mark Zweig: Last spring, this is bringing up 23.
1:17
Mark Zweig: Okay, great.
1:17
Mark Zweig: And just to give you guys a little bit of background, nick comes from a great family here.
1:24
Mark Zweig: They are entrepreneurs, they own multiple businesses and have had all kinds of things, both parents and grandparents.
1:35
Mark Zweig: His grandfather is a friend of mine who is a very interesting guy.
1:39
Mark Zweig: He's a real character who was a Methodist minister, was a test driver for tires on a track, has bought and sold businesses.
1:52
Mark Zweig: Very interesting character.
1:55
Mark Zweig: Everybody knows your grandpa around this town, bob Cantrell.
2:01
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, he was a pilot as well.
2:04
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, he built a crazy, crazy story, actually built his own gyrocopter and then chose to actually fly it.
2:13
Mark Zweig: That'll give you an idea about what Bob's like.
2:15
Mark Zweig: So, nick, and his brother, chris is Chris, your little brother or older brother?
2:22
Nick Kilgore: No, he's older.
2:22
Nick Kilgore: He's five years older than me.
2:24
Nick Kilgore: Okay, I never knew that I never asked.
2:29
Mark Zweig: I've only met Chris in the last six months or so.
2:32
Mark Zweig: So Nick and his older brother, chris, have a used car business market auto.
2:42
Mark Zweig: How did you get into this business?
2:45
Nick Kilgore: Well, so initially my brother and my dad.
2:49
Nick Kilgore: They started doing that whenever I was in I don't know junior high they started selling cars.
2:55
Nick Kilgore: My brother had always sold phones, those kind of a thing.
3:01
Nick Kilgore: He'd fix them up and sell them all, whatever he was looking.
3:05
Nick Kilgore: I'm talking like eight years old starting out.
3:08
Nick Kilgore: He would try to buy broken phones off of people or just have them bring their broken phones to him and he'd fix them.
3:15
Nick Kilgore: Then he would buy some of the broken ones that people didn't want to get fixed and he'd actually sell them on Craigslist.
3:21
Mark Zweig: That's wild.
3:21
Nick Kilgore: He did pretty well with that All the way through high school and he moved into other tech and stuff and then he started just jumping into cars and everyone in my family is super passionate about cars, except for maybe my mom.
3:32
Nick Kilgore: It's just like we all just enjoy driving Ever since I was little.
3:39
Nick Kilgore: The only reason I mean I always wanted to make money, but the end goal was always to make money to buy cars, more or less.
3:46
Nick Kilgore: So I never really you were there, I understand that.
3:50
Nick Kilgore: I didn't really care about getting it for any other reason.
3:53
Nick Kilgore: So, that was kind of the end goal.
3:55
Nick Kilgore: Once I got in I mean I think I was 14.
4:00
Nick Kilgore: I started going tagging along in the auctions with them and I had saved up a little bit of money because ever since I was little, my dad had always told me it's like hey, you better start saving now, because I'm not going to buy you a car.
4:12
Nick Kilgore: He knew that obviously that's something I was interested in.
4:15
Nick Kilgore: Sure, he's like you just better save every penny you can.
4:18
Nick Kilgore: So I'd saved up some money At some point.
4:21
Nick Kilgore: Whenever I was younger I was trading stock, which is a weird thing to be doing whenever you're like 14.
4:25
Nick Kilgore: That's smart.
4:26
Nick Kilgore: I was doing well with it.
4:28
Nick Kilgore: I did well for a while and then I kind of put in the penny stuff and that didn't go so well.
4:33
Nick Kilgore: So I lost most of that.
4:34
Nick Kilgore: But I had like $1,000 saved up and went to the auction, went and bought a cheap car and I just sell that.
4:40
Nick Kilgore: I never touched the money and I just roll it continually.
4:43
Nick Kilgore: I did that all throughout high school.
4:46
Nick Kilgore: Once I got into college I was doing it a little bit here and there, but I'd mostly tied up all that and just like what I was driving at the time.
4:55
Mark Zweig: But you had a 9-11 cab relay, so obviously you worked your way up the car automotive food chain.
5:02
Nick Kilgore: Well, I think I got paused around.
5:05
Nick Kilgore: So when I was in high school I bought an BMW M3.
5:08
Nick Kilgore: That was what I tied all that up in and I kept that for a couple of years.
5:14
Nick Kilgore: But then when I started flipping again, basically I'd sold that car, bought something a little cheaper, a little Porsche Boxster, and I drove that around.
5:22
Nick Kilgore: But I had some money left over and I was putting that in the stock again, which at the time was doing really well, which not so much anymore, but I was the market's back up again now Not for me, but maybe you got to stay in the whole.
5:36
Mark Zweig: Key to stock investing is don't take your money out.
5:39
Nick Kilgore: I think, where Merman's located right now.
5:42
Nick Kilgore: I don't think it's going anywhere, but, that being said, it's still there.
5:47
Nick Kilgore: It's just where it's a small fraction.
5:51
Nick Kilgore: But no, I just started flipping again a little bit and then towards the end of school you actually presented me that and it was someone I knew.
6:03
Nick Kilgore: Robert Parker was moving out of his location and I knew him.
6:08
Nick Kilgore: I knew him.
6:08
Nick Kilgore: I'd met him a couple of times through the auctions and stuff and we bought and sold some cars through and with him.
6:14
Mark Zweig: Sure, he knew your dad and he knows your dad.
6:17
Nick Kilgore: Absolutely, and so Mark had presented me the opportunity to take over the lease, essentially, and at the time I was kind of just like dude.
6:25
Nick Kilgore: I don't know how I'm going to finance this because at the time I had been doing everything in cash.
6:31
Nick Kilgore: Anything I was flipping, it was purely cash, and most of the time I was registering the vehicles.
6:36
Nick Kilgore: I didn't have a dealer's license personally, so I would just register the cars.
6:40
Mark Zweig: She was in your brother and dad Didn't even let you tag on there.
6:43
Nick Kilgore: Oh no, they'd helped me out with that.
6:45
Nick Kilgore: I was really on and I was doing that a bit more, but later on I wasn't running the same volumes I was whenever I was in high school.
6:51
Nick Kilgore: So I just registered it for a month, drive it around and sell it just to make a quick profit and have a little bit of fun with it, because I always buy stuff I like whenever it was personal.
7:02
Mark Zweig: Where did you find the cars that you bought?
7:04
Nick Kilgore: A lot of them.
7:05
Nick Kilgore: Well, back in the day it was Craigslist Some of them, I'd get an auction, like I was saying, I would tag along with them, but a lot of the cars probably Facebook Marketplace.
7:13
Nick Kilgore: After that became more of a big thing.
7:16
Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's replaced Craigslist, don't you?
7:17
Mark Zweig: Oh yeah.
7:19
Nick Kilgore: Whenever I was little because of cars and I used to like sometimes I'd host meats and stuff and I'd go to all the car meats.
7:27
Nick Kilgore: So I knew everyone in that community and so I had a lot of friends that were actually in positions to buy some of the stuff that I was eyeballing, and I'd always look at stuff I couldn't afford.
7:36
Nick Kilgore: So I'd get on all these websites and I'd be just looking at $200,000 cars and I'd go and find the best deals on them and I'd hunt every site and I'd just scour the US for these things and I'd end up finding stuff that my friends would then like people that I knew would end up picking up just because I was like, hey, this is a really good deal.
7:55
Nick Kilgore: And sometimes they would be close enough to where I was, like I could weasel my brother into it and be like, hey, man, you should go in with me on this and we'd do stuff like that here and there.
8:05
Nick Kilgore: But it was just purely for fun, honestly, and I knew that obviously I did it to make a profit, but also it's just an excuse to buy stuff that I already wanted to mess around with.
8:17
Nick Kilgore: So I was the same way.
8:19
Mark Zweig: So I mean, I totally understand it.
8:21
Mark Zweig: That's part of the reason why I've had over 400 cars is when I was younger I'd just buy them all the time and sell.
8:28
Nick Kilgore: Oh yeah.
8:29
Nick Kilgore: I mean, it's just fun working on them too and just seeing it come together.
8:33
Nick Kilgore: One of the most satisfying things for me is like Improving them, yeah, picking something up.
8:37
Nick Kilgore: I love buying them when they're dirty, because if you buy a dirty car, a lot of times you get a better deal on it.
8:42
Nick Kilgore: No kidding, people look at it and they're like, oh, this thing looks dingy and it's like you spend a couple hours cleaning it up and it makes a massive difference.
8:50
Mark Zweig: I tell everybody clean your car before you go trade it in.
8:53
Mark Zweig: You'll always get more for it if they think they can just stick it right on the lot.
8:57
Nick Kilgore: No, absolutely.
8:59
Mark Zweig: So, yeah, you follow the market, I mean just like any business.
9:03
Mark Zweig: I mean you make money when you're buying, and you make money when you're selling.
9:07
Mark Zweig: You got to know what something's worth and be able to buy it for less than that.
9:12
Mark Zweig: No, absolutely.
9:13
Mark Zweig: That comes with familiarity, I guess, right.
9:16
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, I mean I think that one of the biggest I think that was probably one of the biggest factors that's helped me in this business is just the fact that, at least for the stuff I'm buying, I already know the market.
9:27
Nick Kilgore: It's like I know what it should be worth and usually I can eyeball it and just I mean, obviously I have my books and stuff, I have resources to use to value these things, but a lot of times those aren't incredibly accurate, especially with some of the more niche stuff.
9:42
Nick Kilgore: For example, whenever I went to go sell my M3, it was a 58,000 mile E46 M3, and it was like a really crazy color and super rare car at that mileage and everyone would message me whenever I listed it who didn't know what they were talking about and they're like oh well, kelly Blue Book is this and I'm like it's one of 202 in that color, it's got 58,000 miles, it's just I'm not going to get this away.
10:09
Nick Kilgore: I'm getting a decent amount of money out of it.
10:11
Nick Kilgore: But I was cracking up at some of that stuff because I mean you're always going to get that and you're always going to get the people that just message you specifically to tell you that you're either overpriced or I know it's a good life.
10:24
Mark Zweig: why don't you?
10:24
Mark Zweig: I never understood that.
10:26
Nick Kilgore: You got to wonder sometimes like what's the yeah, what's the purpose of doing all that?
10:31
Nick Kilgore: No, back to how we got started with the actual business.
10:35
Nick Kilgore: Essentially, Mark presented me with the opportunity.
10:39
Nick Kilgore: He told me that Parker was wanting to move out of his lease, and so I sat on that for a minute and I was like I really would like to do this.
10:49
Nick Kilgore: I think this is a really good opportunity, but at the time I didn't even know about floor plans or any other ways that I, as someone with very little credit and very young not a ton of money to my name could essentially stock that lot and keep up with the burn rate.
11:05
Nick Kilgore: Basically.
11:07
Mark Zweig: Burn rate being the overhead you're talking about Exactly.
11:10
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, so like the rent and then whatever other associated costs are with actually keeping the lights on whatnot.
11:18
Mark Zweig: I don't mean to interrupt you, nick, but I think what this was.
11:22
Mark Zweig: These kinds of opportunities are out there if people keep their eye open for them.
11:27
Mark Zweig: This was an established business for 40 years at one location where you're basically paying nothing for the business and it's got a history there.
11:36
Mark Zweig: That's a long history Now, absolutely, and so if people can get those kinds of opportunities to take over existing businesses that have gone out of business and this one hadn't gone out of business, but it was going to, essentially it was going to be a long run law, it wouldn't be in it any longer those are some good opportunities for people.
11:59
Nick Kilgore: No doubt, and I mean so.
12:01
Nick Kilgore: Basically, what ended up happening with that was that I, market asked me, is like do you want to do this?
12:07
Nick Kilgore: I'm like I want to, but I can't.
12:09
Nick Kilgore: I can't figure out how I'm gonna fund it, more or less because and at the time I wish I'd known more about certain other ways of getting capital that I was unaware of in that particular market, like like floor planning and stuff like that but so I basically turned it down.
12:27
Nick Kilgore: And Then I get a phone call about a week later and market told me he's gonna pass it on to someone else.
12:34
Nick Kilgore: Well, I had no idea that someone else was a friend of mine.
12:37
Nick Kilgore: I was actually a someone I'd known from from hosting meats and stuff.
12:42
Nick Kilgore: Back in the day, ryan Malone and I Get a phone call from from Chris and he's like hey, ryan just called me and he's wondering if if I wanted to do this Dealership thing with him, and I was wondering if you want to do it with me, and I was like, yeah, absolutely, I mean this.
12:59
Nick Kilgore: And we kind of came to some terms on you know how we were gonna.
13:03
Nick Kilgore: Basically, he was gonna be primarily the capital guy, right, and we were gonna be the.
13:10
Mark Zweig: Operators yeah, run it.
13:11
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, I mean we, we know, already know how to do that.
13:13
Nick Kilgore: Chris already had a dealers license and everything and right.
13:16
Nick Kilgore: Even though it was small, they had an established dealership, even though maybe a three to five car lot at them sure, at the very most and yeah, I'm in it out at five.
13:25
Nick Kilgore: I mean they had more cars but they keep them off to the side and one right, keep them tucked away, yeah, but um, behind your grandma's building there.
13:33
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, right, either that or yeah, they were parked in my parents house.
13:36
Nick Kilgore: Sometimes I keep cars parked over at my house.
13:38
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, this is a whole tangent of itself.
13:41
Nick Kilgore: But one time my my mom gets so irritated and my brother was parking cars at Her house that they got into an argument about getting it out.
13:51
Nick Kilgore: It was an old Mercedes SL and it was bashed in in the front.
13:54
Nick Kilgore: It was undrivable.
13:55
Nick Kilgore: It was sitting on a trailer in their yard.
13:57
Nick Kilgore: And I'm just sitting there at the kitchen table listening to my dad, my mom, my neighborhood right.
14:02
Nick Kilgore: I'm just sitting there listening to my parents and my brother argue about this car and him getting it out of there and I got sick of hearing it and I said I said, let me just buy it, I'll go put it in my house.
14:13
Nick Kilgore: I'm tired of hearing this.
14:15
Nick Kilgore: And so I bought the car from him for like what he had in it.
14:18
Nick Kilgore: He kept the hard top, so that's the profit for him, because what tops are.
14:22
Nick Kilgore: They're pretty expensive and I ended up I mean it was cheap.
14:26
Nick Kilgore: It was like I paid him like 200 bucks for it.
14:29
Mark Zweig: And wow, that is a change emotion a week, though.
14:31
Nick Kilgore: I listed it for like 500 and how to get a cup, pick it up and needed a motor and got it rolled, but I didn't have it too long.
14:38
Nick Kilgore: I just remember bringing it home one day and my roommates are like, hey, why is there wrecked Mercedes in the yard?
14:43
Nick Kilgore: Am?
14:44
Nick Kilgore: I don't worry about it, I'll get it gone.
14:46
Mark Zweig: That is.
14:46
Mark Zweig: I mean, you sound like me.
14:48
Mark Zweig: When I was in college, I always sold cars out of my front yard, oh yeah.
14:52
Mark Zweig: And when I was in, when I was in high school, I brought home I had 255 Ford's.
14:58
Mark Zweig: I had one that was a show car that I redid completely and I parked it in my mom and dad's garage and and wouldn't let them park their cars in there.
15:07
Mark Zweig: We'll, needless to say, when, when Thanksgiving came my first year of college, my dad calls me up and says, hey, son, I'm like, yeah, he goes, get your blankety blank car out of my garage.
15:19
Mark Zweig: I need to park in it.
15:20
Mark Zweig: I parked it in the middle so they couldn't door ding it.
15:23
Mark Zweig: Oh my gosh, that didn't fly.
15:26
Mark Zweig: But no, I had, I had that car.
15:29
Mark Zweig: Then I had a 55 Ford Two-door wagon that we were gonna turn into a hot rod and that was parked alongside my mom's house.
15:38
Mark Zweig: When I brought home a third 55 Ford, parked it in the garage, rip the seats out, looking for change, which is always the first thing we did whenever we bought a used car.
15:48
Mark Zweig: Yeah, my mom started crying.
15:50
Mark Zweig: I mean, I've only seen her cry like three times her whole life.
15:54
Mark Zweig: Okay, another old car.
15:56
Mark Zweig: So I can identify with you.
16:01
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, yeah, my mom is certainly had her share of grievances with the stuff that that we end up bringing home.
16:07
Speaker 3: Yeah.
16:07
Mark Zweig: I'll bet, I'll bet so.
16:09
Mark Zweig: So anyway, you and Chris Teamed up on this deal with Ryan, the late Ryan Malone, who's also was a guest on the show Shortly before he died.
16:22
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, you know, I Didn't know him too well going into it, like I met him more than a few times and I Knew everyone he knew, which is kind of one of those weird things that happens whenever you're just in all those circles and so you feel like right someone, just because you know everyone around them.
16:41
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, to a certain degree, yeah, I hadn't really sat down with them too much.
16:45
Nick Kilgore: So, you know, we sat down, we had some meetings, you know, just discuss some terms of what we were gonna do and everything and, and you know, just start hanging out a little bit more and quickly became friends.
16:56
Nick Kilgore: He was, it was one of those people that you know, right, it could have not like him.
16:59
Nick Kilgore: Everybody love Ryan, one of them, one of the nicest guys I've ever met and really was super helpful, and I mean anything that we were trying to fix, because I mean, we understood, like the, the dealership side, we understood the car side, but the filing, you know, doing everything for getting it ready with the as far as taxes are Concerned, ein number, llc formation, all that right um, that was Ryan.
17:23
Nick Kilgore: So, ryan, he knew his way around businesses and yeah, that was a huge part of the reason we wanted to work with him, to be sure, just cuz I mean, he knew exactly what he was talking about whenever it came to that, and Well, he knew a lot about cars and he had a good network.
17:37
Mark Zweig: Oh yeah, like he would have, you know, put some of his expensive stuff through there, which would upgrade your image.
17:43
Mark Zweig: Oh, and then all the lambos and Ferraris.
17:46
Nick Kilgore: He's that, that he liked, and I mean, it never hurts to have a passion for it too.
17:50
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, and that was another huge reason I wanted to work with him.
17:53
Nick Kilgore: It's just cuz I mean right something, if I'm you know, I would want someone to be very passionate to that business, to want to work with me in that business.
18:02
Mark Zweig: He knew a lot about car.
18:03
Mark Zweig: I mean, ryan would buy those Lamborghinis.
18:06
Mark Zweig: I think the last one he bought, well before this one that he was killed in, he bought one I don't know that he ever even picked it up.
18:13
Mark Zweig: He told me made like twenty seven thousand dollars or something.
18:16
Mark Zweig: On the car he bought it it was sitting at his buddy's place in st Louis, the dealership, and somebody came along and offered more for it.
18:24
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I don't know if you heard that story.
18:26
Mark Zweig: No, I didn't.
18:27
Mark Zweig: That was just the kind of stuff Ryan did all the time.
18:29
Mark Zweig: Everything he did he turned to touch, turned to gold.
18:32
Nick Kilgore: Oh, absolutely, he was a real operator.
18:35
Nick Kilgore: No, he knew what he's doing and, yeah, he knew how to do it in a way that everyone ended up happy to mm-hmm.
18:41
Nick Kilgore: It's like never, never heard it.
18:45
Mark Zweig: Oh well, because he was just a great guy.
18:47
Mark Zweig: He would always do like you'd go the extra yard.
18:50
Mark Zweig: No, absolutely.
18:51
Mark Zweig: He's one of those guys that whenever you went out to launch your dinner with him, he paid.
18:55
Mark Zweig: Yeah, you know, and he would fight you on Getting allowing you to pay.
19:00
Mark Zweig: I mean, it's really unusual, very generous guy.
19:04
Nick Kilgore: No, definitely.
19:05
Nick Kilgore: But yeah, I know we don't.
19:07
Nick Kilgore: I mean we were, we were open, for I mean, when we first started out, man, I was out.
19:13
Nick Kilgore: It was killing me because you know, here we are starting out with zero cars on the lot and we have to stock this and you know it's a it's a lot larger operation than what I was used to.
19:24
Nick Kilgore: So we were running all the auctions and stuff and all the headaches that come with that, you know, just driving around all over the place going to pick stuff up, and I'm granted, there's still a lot of that.
19:33
Nick Kilgore: But Whenever you have to secure all that volume all at once, it's a little different than replenishing it, as you go Exactly.
19:41
Nick Kilgore: So when we first started out, I I mean it was rough like we were.
19:45
Nick Kilgore: We were all over the place trying to pick stuff up and you know, sometimes you, you get a good one, sometimes you get one that maybe you get a little unlucky on or something.
19:55
Nick Kilgore: Then, obviously, the market's been a little bit weird past couple months in general.
19:59
Nick Kilgore: I mean the last two years you used cars as a whole.
20:03
Mark Zweig: They went crazy.
20:04
Mark Zweig: Yeah unheard of, and now they're starting to go back down again.
20:07
Mark Zweig: Oh, yeah, and it's it's come down pretty fast.
20:10
Mark Zweig: That's what I was gonna say.
20:11
Mark Zweig: Yeah, every so often, you know, my wife's got to get something new, like every three or four months, yeah, and so I'll submit those car facts or not car facts.
20:21
Mark Zweig: Who are the people that that by you know?
20:25
Nick Kilgore: the car on car Vana.
20:27
Mark Zweig: I did.
20:27
Mark Zweig: I do, yeah, so submit her car to car Vana and then they'll give me a price that I've never sold them anything.
20:32
Mark Zweig: They came close one time, yeah, but it's so all these cars that I ever submitted there.
20:38
Mark Zweig: They keep sending me emails on them and I'm just watching the pricing just Dropping like a stone out there.
20:45
Nick Kilgore: So oh no, I get the.
20:46
Nick Kilgore: I get the same thing.
20:47
Nick Kilgore: You know it's funny.
20:48
Nick Kilgore: It's funny you say that sometimes this is a little habit I picked up on.
20:53
Nick Kilgore: Whenever I'm actually looking for inventory is if I'm on a website say like Backlot or I think it's called, open the car buyers now if they change the name reason, this is one for dealers your time.
21:04
Nick Kilgore: Yeah yeah, it's a, it's a dealer site.
21:06
Nick Kilgore: But, um right, whenever I get on the site, sometimes if I see a car that looks like something we could buy but might be a little bit hard to move quickly and Looks like a good price, I'll just ballpark the price based on what car mono pay.
21:20
Nick Kilgore: So I'll just go and I'll send it in like I'm trying to sell it to him.
21:23
Nick Kilgore: I say, and if that number comes up higher, then I know there's money to be made.
21:29
Mark Zweig: Good point.
21:30
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, that's an interesting because I mean they're buying it for you know it's a sellout, a profit, right.
21:34
Nick Kilgore: So if they can, if they're willing to pay you know more than what I can pay I mean shoot, I'd be happy, even even if I only make, you know, couple hundred bucks or thousand bucks on a car, or whatever it might be right, be more than happy to turn in the same day.
21:49
Mark Zweig: You sure it's worse profits, profit you know, yeah, so I mean, but isn't it risky buying these vehicles at auctions and online?
21:57
Mark Zweig: I mean, oh, very, I Mean.
21:59
Mark Zweig: I know you can do things like run car faxes on them to find out what the history is, but it's not always accurate.
22:05
Nick Kilgore: I'll tell you what the um, then in my opinion, what the the Least risky way to do it is actually buying it online, is it?
22:15
Nick Kilgore: Why is that so?
22:16
Nick Kilgore: If you go to an auction and you actually test drive a car, let's say um, and you know, you do your due diligence, you look it over.
22:22
Nick Kilgore: What not?
22:23
Nick Kilgore: Um, I Don't know if it's the, I don't know, I wouldn't say it's the least risky, but it's um.
22:30
Nick Kilgore: It feels less risky to me, specifically because of their arbitration policies.
22:35
Nick Kilgore: So let's say you got an auction, you go test drive a car, you're test driving it in there a lot and you know right area.
22:41
Nick Kilgore: You have maybe a hundred yards to accelerate it.
22:43
Nick Kilgore: You can get sure, depending on if it's a man, you're like you can get through maybe one, two, three gears right, right.
22:49
Nick Kilgore: So you get up maybe 40 miles an hour at the very most right.
22:53
Nick Kilgore: Sometimes issues don't show up at 40 miles an hour.
22:56
Nick Kilgore: Whereas you buy a car on, say, you know, one of these auction sites, they go and they run their own inspection on it and they give you little check marks on everything they've tested and they tell you exactly.
23:07
Nick Kilgore: You know what should be working and tell you what's not supposed to be working Right Now.
23:12
Nick Kilgore: If those two things don't match up and they had specified that that works and you get the car and that issues they have some liability there.
23:18
Nick Kilgore: Exactly, and so they're gonna end up paying for that or they're gonna buy the car back Right, whereas a lot of the auctions, their arbitration policies, just aren't very great.
23:27
Nick Kilgore: We had one day and I mean, I don't even wanna think about this day we had one day where we bought three cars.
23:33
Nick Kilgore: Every single one of them had a bad transmission.
23:35
Nick Kilgore: Wow, and it's like you couldn't tell One of them was just a mistake on our part.
23:39
Nick Kilgore: We bought it without test driving it.
23:41
Nick Kilgore: It was dirt cheap and it rolled through the line.
23:44
Nick Kilgore: It looked like it was driving okay and I can't take responsibility for this one.
23:49
Nick Kilgore: I didn't buy it.
23:52
Nick Kilgore: But Chris we picked that up and it was a little wrap for, so we're waiting on it.
23:57
Nick Kilgore: That's been a headache of itself, but because we've gone through two transmissions I guess it might be a computer issue actually, because we put it into and still it's not working.
24:07
Nick Kilgore: So I'm thinking maybe ECU, but we had that.
24:11
Nick Kilgore: And then we had a Ford F-150 that we did test drive and everything ran great on the lot.
24:18
Nick Kilgore: Turns out fourth gear is gone.
24:19
Nick Kilgore: So their arbitration policy doesn't cover that Exactly.
24:22
Nick Kilgore: You can't get it in the fourth on the lot.
24:24
Nick Kilgore: We test drove it, looked it over, everything looked good.
24:26
Nick Kilgore: And you get it out on the road and it goes three and then it just basically skips four, slams into it Whatever it wants to do at that time.
24:35
Nick Kilgore: So that's a full rebuild.
24:38
Nick Kilgore: And then we had a Tahoe.
24:39
Nick Kilgore: That just it felt fine.
24:41
Nick Kilgore: I mean it drove fine, but it was just only when it was cold you could feel it was kind of a little bit almost vibrating.
24:48
Nick Kilgore: It turns out it's a torque converter and so we had to get that replaced and stuff.
24:52
Nick Kilgore: So it's just sometimes you can't tell just based on driving them.
24:55
Nick Kilgore: But it's really nice to have that assurance whenever you have an arbitration policy that lists out the things that you're supposed to do and this is auctions you're talking about that.
25:03
Nick Kilgore: Do that, or online sources.
25:05
Nick Kilgore: The online sources are the ones that do the inspections.
25:08
Nick Kilgore: I see the auctions.
25:09
Nick Kilgore: They don't really inspect them.
25:10
Nick Kilgore: They only inspect them if you send it to arbitration and it's something that's covered under their policy because they're very specific as to what they cover.
25:18
Mark Zweig: Okay, when you say online, you're talking about these online wholesale sources.
25:22
Nick Kilgore: Yeah.
25:23
Mark Zweig: That the average person does not have access to.
25:26
Mark Zweig: Is that right?
25:27
Nick Kilgore: More or less.
25:27
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, I will say, if you're buying a car from, say, facebook marketplace or you're buying it as an individual, and whether you're looking to flip it or keep it, if it's worth any amount of money, I highly recommend a PPI because essentially, it's giving you that same thing.
25:42
Nick Kilgore: What's a PPI?
25:43
Nick Kilgore: So that's a pre-purchase inspection, okay, and there are all sorts of companies that'll do it, some of them, I mean, you could just take the car to Mechanic and have them do it, right.
25:52
Nick Kilgore: But if you're not there, yeah, so that's what you're buying online.
25:55
Nick Kilgore: Right, and I've done this for personal vehicles before.
25:58
Nick Kilgore: Basically, you call a company out there and some of them are nationwide I can't remember the names of them off the top of my head and it's flat fee, couple hundred bucks.
26:08
Nick Kilgore: Maybe They'll send a guy out there.
26:10
Nick Kilgore: They'll go run through it, list every single thing they can find wrong with the car.
26:13
Nick Kilgore: They'll test drive it for you.
26:15
Mark Zweig: Man, I wish I'd done that with my rolls, the last one I bought.
26:18
Mark Zweig: It's a lifesaver, saved me so much grief.
26:22
Nick Kilgore: Before I bought the 911, I was gonna buy a Cayman and I sent a guy out for a PPI.
26:28
Nick Kilgore: At the guys at the dealership told me oh yeah, it's great, nothing wrong with it.
26:31
Nick Kilgore: Yada, yada, yada.
26:32
Nick Kilgore: You know it's pretty how there's no problems.
26:34
Nick Kilgore: And I'm like, what about that curb rash on the wheel?
26:36
Nick Kilgore: And they're like, oh, I didn't even notice that.
26:38
Nick Kilgore: And so I'm just kind of like all right.
26:39
Speaker 3: I'm gonna send someone out there.
26:41
Nick Kilgore: They pointed out probably 25, 30 issues that were not disclosed, and I mean they weren't incredibly major, but some of them were, you know.
26:50
Nick Kilgore: Sure, they were big enough to where it was gonna be very expensive to fix and I just dropped the deal entirely right there.
26:56
Nick Kilgore: I was like no.
26:57
Mark Zweig: Oh, that's good advice for people.
26:58
Mark Zweig: So back on the deal here.
27:00
Mark Zweig: So you and Ryan and Chris started this business.
27:05
Mark Zweig: When did you start?
27:08
Nick Kilgore: So we started like working on it in, I wanna say, july.
27:12
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, that's what I thought, yeah, this year In July we started work on the property and whatnot.
27:18
Nick Kilgore: We, you know, power washed the lot started, getting the place repainted, retiled the floors, just did a bunch of things just to kind of make it look nicer, you know, fresher, everything up.
27:30
Nick Kilgore: And since then we've done some other updates as well.
27:32
Nick Kilgore: But we didn't get opened up officially until, well, we had to get a business license, obviously, and that was part of the only thing that kind of impeding us in the beginning was the business license and getting the dealers license transferred over to where it was also in Ryan's name, right.
27:48
Nick Kilgore: So I think we opened in August, midway through, I'd say Okay, and our first month was actually really good and we'd done really good at the options, we'd bought a lot of good cars.
27:57
Nick Kilgore: And I wanna say month one and bear in mind we were paying for expenses backdating, like essentially a month and a half prior, so two and a half months expenses.
28:10
Nick Kilgore: I wanna say that I mean we netted pretty good profit first month and that was and I'm not saying it was surprising, but I mean it was.
28:20
Nick Kilgore: You know, we had half a month to work with and we more than covered our expenses for two months and had a strong profit, so I couldn't complain there.
28:29
Nick Kilgore: And unfortunately, though, two weeks after we opened, our third business partner, ryan, ended up passing away in a car accident, so that kind of threw everything off a little bit.
28:43
Nick Kilgore: We were on a good start, good roll.
28:46
Nick Kilgore: Obviously, everyone around us.
28:49
Nick Kilgore: We didn't know what was gonna happen, what we were gonna do, and obviously we didn't have all of the inventory that we had planned on having at that point Right Little bit less capital to work with.
29:02
Nick Kilgore: But I mean, at the time, obviously that was very bottom, that wasn't even in my mind, but it just it makes it a little bit.
29:12
Nick Kilgore: It made it a little bit harder continuing, but we're starting to kind of get a feel for it again and get the hang of it.
29:19
Nick Kilgore: But a ton of people stepped in, helped us out and gave us some guidance on the backside, so I can't complain.
29:27
Nick Kilgore: I mean obviously for that again, because Ryan was a good friend of ours by that point.
29:32
Mark Zweig: Sure, that was bad.
29:33
Mark Zweig: You were the one that, in fact, you called me.
29:36
Mark Zweig: I think I was at the country club that day and you called me to tell me it was shocked.
29:42
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, I mean.
29:42
Nick Kilgore: I think it was for everyone, Just because I mean, the guy was so young, yeah, so good, 31.
29:48
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, I mean.
29:51
Mark Zweig: Such a great guy.
29:51
Mark Zweig: But so now you've got the aftermath, though, of Ryan's passing, which is like not a real great LLC operating agreement.
30:03
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, so one of the things about Ryan is I would trust a man with my life 100%.
30:10
Nick Kilgore: No, I get it.
30:10
Nick Kilgore: I did too.
30:11
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, if we shook hands on something, if we agreed on something, I would 100% take that to heart.
30:18
Nick Kilgore: I would believe it.
30:19
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, I understand.
30:22
Nick Kilgore: So I never really.
30:24
Nick Kilgore: Whenever we went through our original operating agreement and everything although it was a little confusing, a little bit vague, he kind of ran us through it and I was good with everything and I actually remember reading through it with him and there was a and this isn't funny but there was a clause for death and he read it through it and he was kind of explaining it to us and I said, well, I don't plan on dying anytime soon.
30:46
Nick Kilgore: We all threw it like, well, me either the ride.
30:51
Mark Zweig: Just unfortunately, it seems like it's not going to happen.
30:53
Mark Zweig: Yeah.
30:54
Nick Kilgore: It's one of those things.
30:55
Nick Kilgore: But of course, after all this has happened, it has been a little bit hard just because our operating agreement wasn't the LLC formation and everything wasn't super well documented and some of the things.
31:08
Nick Kilgore: So it has been a little bit hard, just kind of picking through that and trying to explain to, obviously, everyone involved.
31:16
Nick Kilgore: You know how things were structured originally.
31:19
Nick Kilgore: Right, it's been a little bit messy, but you know we're getting all that figured out, so it's Right.
31:25
Mark Zweig: But again, I mean you go back to when you know.
31:27
Mark Zweig: I hate to say I told you, so You've got a student of mine.
31:32
Mark Zweig: How often did I hammer on these poorly drafted LLC operating agreements?
31:36
Nick Kilgore: Quite a lot, quite a lot, yeah, no, if I have one piece of advice, listen to.
31:40
Nick Kilgore: Listen to this, why it definitely gets your get your ducks in a row when it comes to an operating agreement.
31:47
Nick Kilgore: I thought it looked good, honestly, at the time, but you know it's I'm involved with one right now that I think.
31:53
Mark Zweig: thankfully we don't have any problems now, but they did have.
31:56
Speaker 3: Yeah.
31:57
Mark Zweig: And we're converting it to a corporation.
31:59
Mark Zweig: So we've got stock that we can buy and sell and bring employees in and it just does a whole lot of things to have that stock.
32:07
Mark Zweig: Yeah, not having everybody sign off on the LLC operating agreement.
32:11
Mark Zweig: Now we got to get everybody to sign off on the fact that we're converting to a corporation.
32:16
Nick Kilgore: See, maybe that's what we should do Sell us.
32:19
Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's, it's anyway.
32:20
Mark Zweig: I've just seen the aftermath.
32:23
Mark Zweig: It's like if you went to the dentist city just constantly gave you candy bars every time you were there.
32:29
Mark Zweig: Yeah, you know, it's kind of these lawyers that do these poorly written agreements, or people get them offline where they use the last company's agreement that they had and copy it.
32:42
Mark Zweig: It's just not a good way to go.
32:44
Mark Zweig: Spend the money you got to spend.
32:46
Mark Zweig: Get some professional advice from people who've actually done it.
32:50
Mark Zweig: You know, and not every attorney is good at this stuff.
32:54
Mark Zweig: No, you know, that's another one I've always hammered on is specialization is the rule of the day, no matter what your legal needs are, find somebody who does that and that's all they do.
33:08
Mark Zweig: Is stuff like that, yeah.
33:09
Nick Kilgore: I do know an attorney wrote ours, but I know there's just a lot of details missing, yeah yeah, it's common.
33:17
Mark Zweig: I mean it's a real common issue.
33:19
Mark Zweig: So where are you gonna go with this business, you think?
33:22
Mark Zweig: Next, I mean you guys sort of have kind of a product orientation, I would say, with what you buy and sell.
33:31
Mark Zweig: I see a lot of BMWs, I see a lot of Toyota Land Cruisers and vehicles like that in there.
33:41
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, so we have a bit of a niche and the niche is kind of carried over from our previous dealership and Porsches, of course.
33:49
Mark Zweig: You love the Porsches.
33:50
Mark Zweig: We do like Porsches.
33:51
Mark Zweig: Who doesn't?
33:53
Mark Zweig: I mean everybody likes.
33:56
Nick Kilgore: Porsches.
33:56
Nick Kilgore: If you haven't driven one and you're listening to this, I highly recommend it.
34:00
Nick Kilgore: It's one of those things where you don't understand it until you actually spend some time in one.
34:05
Nick Kilgore: It's a completely different car than what you would expect or probably anything else you're driven.
34:12
Mark Zweig: And not only that, they hold their value so well, particularly if you go 911 route.
34:18
Mark Zweig: I mean, I had a student of mine and his boss bought a new 911 and drove it for three years and either got a thousand less than he paid or a thousand more than he paid for it After three years of ownership and use every day.
34:32
Nick Kilgore: See, there are people that make a good living off of buying those cars new and selling them.
34:38
Mark Zweig: That's crazy, it's wild.
34:39
Mark Zweig: It's just the price of entry is high, but the operational costs because of depreciation is very low.
34:47
Nick Kilgore: Oh yeah, no, I mean you hear about the flippers and stuff.
34:50
Nick Kilgore: If you can get into some of the specialty stuff they make.
34:53
Nick Kilgore: I mean I wanna say that whenever the GT2 RS came out in 2016 or 2018, whatever year it was they came out with the most recent one, msrp was like 230 or something and those cars were selling open market for 500K.
35:09
Nick Kilgore: Oh my gosh, it's insane.
35:12
Nick Kilgore: It's like I mean you could double your money if you just bought it and sold it.
35:16
Nick Kilgore: The only problem was getting the piece of paper that says you can buy it.
35:18
Nick Kilgore: So what do you see?
35:21
Nick Kilgore: And having the money, up front.
35:22
Mark Zweig: Yeah right, what do you see as the future of the used car business?
35:28
Nick Kilgore: I mean, I think we're gonna start seeing a lot more EVs.
35:36
Speaker 3: Uh-huh.
35:37
Nick Kilgore: I'm not sure I'm too incredibly keen on that, but Seems like the market's not all that keen on it either.
35:44
Mark Zweig: The pricing is really dropping fast.
35:46
Nick Kilgore: You don't have noticed that I was looking.
35:47
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, I actually saw a Tesla run through auction not too long ago.
35:52
Nick Kilgore: Granted, it was not in good shape, but it was Model S and it was real beat up, bear in mind but I think it sold for seven grand Wow.
36:03
Mark Zweig: That is cheap.
36:03
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I was enticed.
36:05
Mark Zweig: It's a long way.
36:06
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, but no, I mean I'll see them.
36:08
Nick Kilgore: Cars that were listed for 120 last year and they're listed for 65, 70 now.
36:13
Nick Kilgore: Holy cow, some of those and I mean part of it's just the whole used car market dropping.
36:19
Mark Zweig: But I know my wife's car has dropped perilously.
36:23
Nick Kilgore: I do think that it will.
36:24
Nick Kilgore: It will shock, solidify again and level off, and I think we're getting close to that point.
36:30
Nick Kilgore: I think everything's come down enough to where we're getting close to where we were pre all of this craziness.
36:35
Nick Kilgore: But, of course, used cars always appreciating asset, unless and that's part of the reason we like the niche stuff Right but May not be depreciating.
36:44
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, there is a certain turnaround point After a certain amount of time.
36:51
Nick Kilgore: just, some cars take longer than others, like, for example, say, a Honda S2000, bmw M3, porsche 911.
36:58
Nick Kilgore: After 20 years those cars are going to start coming back up.
37:04
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, there's just history.
37:06
Nick Kilgore: It's not going to fall back again.
37:08
Nick Kilgore: I mean you might get incremental dips here and there.
37:11
Mark Zweig: Right, but the trend line is up.
37:12
Mark Zweig: Is what you're saying.
37:13
Nick Kilgore: Exactly, but I think, as a whole, the car market's just I don't want to say it's super unstable, but it's volatile.
37:22
Nick Kilgore: It's volatile, but I don't think that it's going to ever just fall out.
37:26
Nick Kilgore: I mean, the thing is, at the end of the day, I look at them as just purely physical assets and it's going to retain some kind of value as long as it works, or even just material cost.
37:39
Nick Kilgore: It's always going to retain some kind of value, right?
37:43
Mark Zweig: The risk is sort of lower because of that is what you're saying.
37:46
Nick Kilgore: I mean me personally I prefer to have cars over cash.
37:49
Nick Kilgore: Then I just maybe it's a little harder, it's less liquid, but at the end of the day, with the current inflation rate, I think that my money is safer in a car that is on an appreciation curve, like an older car like that, like, say, for example, the 911.
38:08
Nick Kilgore: Right, I think it's safer there than it would be in cash.
38:11
Nick Kilgore: Right, because cash is just going to keep.
38:13
Nick Kilgore: The value of the dollars is going to keep dropping, whereas that's going to retain some kind of value.
38:20
Nick Kilgore: But I understand, obviously, certain specific things, like the stuff that I like to buy tends to it's already on the way back up.
38:27
Mark Zweig: Yeah, yeah.
38:28
Mark Zweig: So what advice do you have for anybody who's thinking about starting a business right now?
38:35
Nick Kilgore: I would say definitely get a if you're going to do a business.
38:38
Nick Kilgore: definitely get a very good operating agreement.
38:40
Nick Kilgore: Make sure that your paperwork is flawless.
38:43
Nick Kilgore: That's probably the biggest thing I could suggest.
38:48
Nick Kilgore: But also, don't be afraid to number one and another one.
38:53
Nick Kilgore: One of the big things that I've learned that I knew this going in.
38:57
Nick Kilgore: But nobody wants to work for anyone, and that was one of the things I always said when I was growing up is I was like I never want to have to, always, I mean, I don't want to spend my whole life having to work for someone else.
39:11
Nick Kilgore: I want to work for myself, sure.
39:13
Mark Zweig: Well you did work for the family businesses that I know.
39:17
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, I mean I've learned tons of odd jobs and done all sorts of random stuff, but I mean I was doing Door Dash for a while, anything I could do to scrounge up some cash.
39:26
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I was working for You're a hustler buddy.
39:29
Nick Kilgore: Anything I could do to make some money, I'd do it, and I mean for a while.
39:33
Nick Kilgore: I was moving stuff for people.
39:34
Nick Kilgore: I was doing Door Dash, uber Eats, flipping anything I could get my hands on.
39:40
Nick Kilgore: I was flipping dirt bikes.
39:42
Mark Zweig: Nick was a front row student.
39:44
Mark Zweig: Everybody.
39:45
Mark Zweig: He always sat in the front row, which is always where the best students tend to sit.
39:49
Mark Zweig: I can't say I've ever had a bad student in the front row.
39:53
Mark Zweig: I've had some good ones in the back row too, but yeah.
39:57
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, no, but what I was going to say is what's funny is you always say you want to work for yourself until you realize that you're the worst boss to have.
40:07
Mark Zweig: There's nobody to turn your notice into.
40:09
Mark Zweig: That's the other problem.
40:10
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, I had joked about that the other day.
40:13
Nick Kilgore: I said, man, my boss is a jerk.
40:15
Nick Kilgore: I'm talking about myself, because whenever you start a business, you have to expect that you're responsible for everything.
40:23
Nick Kilgore: There's no one you can go to whenever you have a problem and say hey, there's a problem, I need you to fix this, right.
40:30
Nick Kilgore: It's like if there is a high level problem, that's your problem and you have to be prepared to solve that.
40:36
Nick Kilgore: And I don't know if I mentioned this, but I guess that's why I mentioned it.
40:39
Nick Kilgore: But I've been running car washes for my dad.
40:44
Nick Kilgore: I ran one of his car washes for the last seven or eight years and well, I started helping out with it and I more or less took over running it for him later on.
40:54
Nick Kilgore: And that is where I really learned.
40:57
Nick Kilgore: That lesson is just because you'll get calls at all hours and everyone wants to own or manage their own business or whatnot.
41:05
Nick Kilgore: But you have to understand that if you want to do that.
41:08
Mark Zweig: You've got to be on baby yeah.
41:09
Nick Kilgore: You're always on call.
41:10
Nick Kilgore: There's never really a full day off, unless I mean I don't know you're gone and you have someone else to take care of that.
41:19
Nick Kilgore: But I mean it's never going to be the same either.
41:21
Nick Kilgore: You never trust anyone the way that you trust yourself.
41:23
Nick Kilgore: No, I understand.
41:25
Mark Zweig: It takes a while to build up that kind of talent and you've got to have a certain scale of a business to get there.
41:32
Nick Kilgore: But yeah, it's possible.
41:34
Nick Kilgore: And that's been kind of another hurdle in the last two months or so Because we didn't open that long ago and about a month after Ryan passed away my dad actually had a really bad stroke and he was in the hospital and rehab for about two months, I'd say.
41:53
Nick Kilgore: And yeah, he's still not walking or anything like that, but he's improved vastly.
41:58
Nick Kilgore: But because of that he was running the Springdale location and because of the dealership I was dialing back a lot on working at the car washes.
42:07
Nick Kilgore: I'd hired someone to help out a little more and I had him more or less stepping in for me a lot and I mean I'd still show up there, usually once a day, but not for very long, just to check everything out and make sure it looked good.
42:22
Nick Kilgore: But because of that I more or less had to take over everything he was doing over there Because he's been in bed and he has been able to do that.
42:33
Nick Kilgore: So I've been juggling a little bit trying to, because I'm running both locations now and before.
42:39
Nick Kilgore: He would order this stuff, and anytime there's a major problem, call people whatnot, and so that's kind of all fallen onto me and so I'm sorting it out.
42:48
Nick Kilgore: But it's definitely been a bit of a hurdle and you can't always expect everything to go the way you expect it to.
42:56
Mark Zweig: I mean, you can never expect anything.
42:57
Mark Zweig: Bad stuff happens, yeah, bad stuff happens and you've got to step in.
43:02
Nick Kilgore: And it usually happens at the same time.
43:04
Nick Kilgore: The way that it tends to go.
43:07
Nick Kilgore: It's like if one bad thing happens, you better watch yourself.
43:10
Nick Kilgore: And it's funny because my dad said that very thing to me after Ryan passed away.
43:14
Nick Kilgore: So he was like, yeah, you better watch out Because you know these are coming for you.
43:19
Mark Zweig: That's crazy.
43:20
Mark Zweig: So how many hours a week are you working?
43:23
Mark Zweig: Are you just basically working seven days a week now?
43:26
Nick Kilgore: Well, all the time.
43:27
Nick Kilgore: So basically I have a.
43:31
Nick Kilgore: I mean, I've always worked seven days a week, but it's the hours that are kind of varied.
43:37
Nick Kilgore: But that being said, I'm going to be working seven days a week.
43:40
Nick Kilgore: So I get up and go to the dealership.
43:46
Nick Kilgore: This is just Monday through Saturday.
43:51
Nick Kilgore: I get up, I go to the dealership, I work there until six, seven maybe, and then I usually go and try to do some rehab stuff with my dad, try to help him with exercise and try to get Sure, and then after that I'll go to the car wash, or sometimes before the dealership, and a lot of times I have to leave during the day at the dealership and go between the car washes and check on them, but not including helping him out, because obviously that's not work for the businesses by any means.
44:24
Nick Kilgore: But I've had to dial back a little bit of the time I'm spending there just because I do have to help out with them too.
44:29
Nick Kilgore: Sure With my dad.
44:31
Nick Kilgore: You're a good son.
44:32
Nick Kilgore: I appreciate that it's a bit much, but I'm getting the handle on it.
44:38
Nick Kilgore: I usually get home at night like nine or 10, though, and then at that point I'm just ready to crash.
44:44
Nick Kilgore: Are you dating anybody now?
44:47
Mark Zweig: Not currently.
44:47
Mark Zweig: I was going to say I wondered how that was going with this kind of work.
44:51
Mark Zweig: I mean it's got to be a put a strain on that.
44:55
Nick Kilgore: It's done that.
44:55
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, it makes it a little bit hard to find the time for it for sure.
45:00
Nick Kilgore: I do have Sundays off for the dealership though off being not open.
45:05
Nick Kilgore: Sometimes I still sell or show cars on Sunday and I'm still over there getting things done or just online stuff, just shopping for them and things like that.
45:15
Nick Kilgore: But I try to spend as little time there on Sundays as I can because that's kind of my catch-up day at the car washes too.
45:22
Nick Kilgore: So realistically it's not really a day off, it's just a transfer of where that work is going to, and sometimes I could find a couple hours to squeeze in, go do something fun, hang out with a friend, whatever.
45:33
Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's a lot of work, though I mean this is what people need to know.
45:37
Nick Kilgore: It's definitely, and I mean when we first started out, I mean it was just pure like 12, 14 hour days, I mean relentlessly, and I mean granted, not that I'm not still doing that to a certain degree, it's just it's transferred where that's going and it feels like less work whenever you're in different places.
45:55
Speaker 3: Yeah.
45:57
Nick Kilgore: It's like you wake up and you go to one place and you moved to another.
46:01
Nick Kilgore: I'd much rather do that than be stuck at the same building, working at the same spot all day long.
46:05
Nick Kilgore: I understand, but it also gets a little exhausting, because I'm running in.
46:09
Nick Kilgore: Farmington, springdale, fayetteville and then just back and forth.
46:12
Nick Kilgore: It seems like every time you leave one of those places I think it was Tuesday I left the Springdale car wash and I just fixed a door, which it's a huge pain.
46:23
Nick Kilgore: I mean it's like it's one of those overhead doors and it's a roll-up door.
46:26
Nick Kilgore: Right we had an issue with the pole essentially sliding out of the gearbox and it's just the place you stand is pole, because you can't get a ladder in there.
46:36
Nick Kilgore: You have to stand on this vertical pole on top of the pole to actually service this and you have to hold the tension while you're pulling everything over.
46:42
Nick Kilgore: And I can't really explain it without visuals, but it is the most obnoxiously difficult thing that I have had to service there and I've had to do it like three times.
46:54
Nick Kilgore: And essentially I had just left from doing that and I'd just gotten all the way back to the dealership and I was over there and I get a phone call and a guy's like hey, there's a problem over here.
47:06
Nick Kilgore: This thing's taking money and it's not given any time.
47:11
Nick Kilgore: Sometimes these machines are so complicated they just or people spray the bill acceptors or something and just glitches it out.
47:20
Nick Kilgore: And so I went over there, reset it and whatnot.
47:23
Nick Kilgore: But I was just like man, I just left here Right Like literally five minutes ago.
47:27
Nick Kilgore: I mean not five minutes at this point, because I'd already driven back, but maybe 15.
47:32
Mark Zweig: That's the life of the small business owner, and the multi-small business owner just compounds it.
47:39
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, it's good fun.
47:42
Mark Zweig: But you guys are able to carry everything on in your dad's absence right now.
47:46
Nick Kilgore: I'm doing my best.
47:47
Nick Kilgore: I'm certainly behind on fixing certain things, mostly because I've just been crammed at the dealership.
47:54
Nick Kilgore: I mean I'll be stuck there and I need to make phone calls to people before a certain time to get things ordered, or they'll send me the wrong part or something or just wire connections, whatever it may be.
48:04
Nick Kilgore: Something's wrong and it's just.
48:07
Nick Kilgore: I gotta make these calls or at least get out there and go repair this stuff.
48:13
Nick Kilgore: Some of it is really hard to do by yourself too.
48:14
Nick Kilgore: Some of it I need another person, and we do have another guy who helps out at one of them and we do have a couple of people to help out at Springdale, but I only have one for Farmington and my Farmington guy.
48:25
Nick Kilgore: He's got another job too, because obviously I can't employ him full time there.
48:29
Nick Kilgore: It wouldn't make sense, right?
48:34
Nick Kilgore: So it's a little hard to sometimes get the two-man jobs done.
48:40
Nick Kilgore: Whenever you both are working outside of that in different hours, it's difficult to balance.
48:49
Nick Kilgore: But I'm certain that within the next year or two I'll have it balanced out a little better.
48:55
Nick Kilgore: At some point I'll find out about a work-life balance.
48:59
Mark Zweig: I'm not sure that.
49:00
Mark Zweig: Eric and I have talked about that a lot on the show and we're big advocates of work-life integration, because the balance is going to be impossible to achieve, it seems, and the work should be something that you enjoy, which I know you for the most part do.
49:20
Mark Zweig: That's your nature.
49:22
Mark Zweig: But, nick, I don't worry about you because so I'm saying that.
49:28
Mark Zweig: Could you restate the question?
49:29
Mark Zweig: I'm sorry my watch is asking questions, but no, I don't worry about you because you are a hard worker and I know you're a really conscientious guy and you care, and I just have to believe that if you have those two characteristics, those are going to serve you very well.
49:51
Mark Zweig: You know, I appreciate that, you're used to it, you're used to working hard, you always have and you're going to get through this and at the same time you're demonstrating that you're a good son and you're helping out your mom and dad and you get to work with your brother and that's nice.
50:10
Nick Kilgore: You know, definitely I mean it's cool getting to work with him, because I mean you know it's just I've always looked up to Chris.
50:16
Nick Kilgore: He was always growing up.
50:19
Nick Kilgore: He was always very savvy with that kind of stuff, like just getting stuff flipped or whatnot.
50:27
Mark Zweig: He seems like he maintains his composure really well.
50:30
Mark Zweig: Oh, definitely so.
50:32
Mark Zweig: That's always a nice characteristic to have if you're under fire, to be able to stay calm.
50:38
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, it's funny, chris and I are the we have our strengths and weaknesses.
50:45
Nick Kilgore: I'll say that anytime there is a confrontational situation, that's me.
50:49
Nick Kilgore: I got to step up for that and, weirdly enough, they seem to happen more than you would think in any of these businesses.
50:54
Nick Kilgore: You know, it's still important.
50:55
Nick Kilgore: It's always difficult.
50:55
Nick Kilgore: I never thought what, as of today, I think I will do better.
50:57
Nick Kilgore: I think I don't have not a choice, not feeling better Altogether having an experience to work with them.
50:59
Nick Kilgore: That's right.
51:00
Nick Kilgore: You know what?
51:00
Nick Kilgore: It's.
51:00
Nick Kilgore: A funny thing also another piece of advice that any small business is that people will get unreasonably mad over small things, it's like, and you have to know how to de-escalate that.
51:09
Nick Kilgore: Sure, and when necessary, I mean I always try to make people happy, but you know it's a you can't always win.
51:19
Nick Kilgore: Sometimes you can't make them happy.
51:20
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, you can't win every battle with that, but I do try, yes, like so.
51:25
Nick Kilgore: People will get unreasonably angry and you know you just got to find ways to de-escalate it and, you know, calm them down.
51:32
Nick Kilgore: And I've had plenty of situations where people come in real hot and I'm like, I'm like dude, I just want to make it right, that's sure, that's all I want to do and usually most reasonable people will kind of, you know, calm down and they usually leave happy, you know Right.
51:47
Nick Kilgore: I give something extra for whatever it was.
51:49
Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's an issue Besides my philosophy too?
51:52
Mark Zweig: Yeah, give them solve their problem and give them something extra.
51:56
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, I mean, like you know, say, for example, at the car washes, anytime that there's a problem or someone.
52:01
Nick Kilgore: You know, sometimes if someone goes through a wash and the next person's already paid for a wash, that person might back up all the way and they'll run over the paddles again and it'll just think that it's washing the car and it'll run the whole wash again.
52:14
Nick Kilgore: But it'll those be taken, other persons wash and then someone will call me and they'll be all mad.
52:18
Nick Kilgore: It didn't give me a wash.
52:19
Nick Kilgore: And I'm like, did someone back up in front of you?
52:21
Nick Kilgore: And they're like, yeah, and I'm like, okay, look, I'll be out there in five.
52:23
Nick Kilgore: You know, just right, just zoom over there.
52:26
Nick Kilgore: And you know I'll get them there washed and I'll give them an extra one or something.
52:28
Nick Kilgore: You know, give them a coupon.
52:30
Nick Kilgore: Sure, free $12 wash, whatever, just anything.
52:33
Nick Kilgore: Or if they're not there, they can't be there, I'll mail it to them.
52:36
Nick Kilgore: But you know I always want to make everything right, which it always kind of cracks me up.
52:40
Nick Kilgore: Anytime I see like a bad review or something, I'll like message them on the review and I'm like, hey, you know, give me a call, I'll get you taken care of.
52:47
Nick Kilgore: And like I, one time I saw a bad review from someone I knew from high school and I used to be friends with, and I was like I messaged them on there and then I hauled them and they just didn't even.
52:57
Nick Kilgore: They just completely ignored me.
52:59
Nick Kilgore: Like I shot him a text and they just ignored it and I was like I just I just want to make it right.
53:03
Nick Kilgore: I appreciate you pointing that out.
53:04
Nick Kilgore: There was a problem there.
53:05
Nick Kilgore: I got it fixed.
53:06
Nick Kilgore: I wouldn't have known if you hadn't told me, and so I want to do something for you and they just didn't respond.
53:11
Mark Zweig: I was like okay, well, sometimes people aren't as good as they should be, but but it's, it's all part of it.
53:17
Nick Kilgore: You know you gotta yep you anytime you do own a small business.
53:21
Nick Kilgore: You have to.
53:22
Nick Kilgore: You have to be prepared for all of the eventualities because anything can happen.
53:27
Nick Kilgore: I mean I think the very probably will.
53:29
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, the very first car we sold, we actually that there was a lien at some point back in 2008 and the lien was it already been paid off?
53:39
Nick Kilgore: Obviously years ago?
53:40
Nick Kilgore: And any cars that go through the auction they can't have a lien on them.
53:43
Nick Kilgore: That's like one of their policies, so it should right lien to begin with.
53:46
Nick Kilgore: Well, sorry, I had to clear my throat.
53:50
Nick Kilgore: The guy who bought it had to um take it to uh register it, but he waited two months to register it.
53:56
Nick Kilgore: And so after he registers the car, we get a call, and very, very upset call about there being a lien on the car.
54:04
Nick Kilgore: And so I said I'll get that taken care of.
54:07
Nick Kilgore: There shouldn't be a lien, there's no reason for there to be, and so we call the um.
54:12
Nick Kilgore: They end up showing up to the dealership yeah, we call the DMV, we call the bank that had the lien on it.
54:18
Nick Kilgore: We got balls rolling on that, but the bank is slow.
54:21
Nick Kilgore: We just needed a document that said they had no interest in, and right, it ended up taking like three or four days.
54:27
Nick Kilgore: We gave them a dealer tag to run on the car in the meantime and you know whatever we could do to help, but the whole time I've just they were so mad like I mean the threatening to sue us, coming in screaming at us.
54:39
Nick Kilgore: I'm like right, and the guy was just like I acknowledge this isn't your fault, but since you're the one sold to me, you're the one I'm going after and I'm like great, that was your first one out of the gate yeah, I'm like, oh my gosh.
54:52
Nick Kilgore: And we ended up getting him sorted out.
54:53
Nick Kilgore: It's funny because he told me he was going to drop it off and you know what?
54:57
Nick Kilgore: I demand his money.
54:57
Nick Kilgore: Back to the day that we ended up getting the document in.
55:00
Nick Kilgore: He said if I don't have it by today.
55:02
Nick Kilgore: And then they called me in there like, yeah, we got it.
55:04
Nick Kilgore: They faxed it to us, we had it ready for him.
55:05
Nick Kilgore: He didn't pick it up that day, picked it up the next day, and so I had a good laugh out of that.
55:10
Nick Kilgore: I was like man for somebody so impatient you'd think it showed up the same day, right.
55:13
Nick Kilgore: And when he came and picked it up, he's like, oh, I didn't really mean any of that.
55:17
Nick Kilgore: I just I just wanted to uh, well, people get upset.
55:20
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, no doubt.
55:21
Nick Kilgore: I just wanted to uh, get, get you moving on it.
55:25
Nick Kilgore: I might do.
55:26
Nick Kilgore: I had it moving on the second.
55:28
Nick Kilgore: You called me initially sure.
55:29
Nick Kilgore: I.
55:30
Nick Kilgore: The only reason that we got this today is because of that day, right?
55:33
Nick Kilgore: Um, it took them a while to process it, essentially because the bank they don't care.
55:38
Nick Kilgore: I mean sure it's some bank in California we have.
55:41
Nick Kilgore: No, I mean we have yeah no connection with yeah yeah, I mean, the only reason there was a problem is because the state of Oklahoma never got the documentation.
55:48
Nick Kilgore: Uh, the document was.
55:50
Nick Kilgore: If they'd registered in Arkansas, it wouldn't have been a problem.
55:53
Nick Kilgore: Yeah, but just Oklahoma's.
55:55
Nick Kilgore: Their system is not up to date with some stuff, sure, but it's, it's wild, it's uh, it's uh.
56:02
Nick Kilgore: I have fun with it, though.
56:05
Nick Kilgore: I like cars.
56:06
Nick Kilgore: So you know, getting to drive and work on these things and you know, fix them up and eventually sell them to someone who and I love selling the stuff to people and they're excited about it yeah that's that's.
56:17
Nick Kilgore: My favorite is whenever you know someone's actually excited to buy it, and that's why I like to sell stuff.
56:21
Nick Kilgore: That I think is fun, because I like to see other people, kind of you know, get that enjoyment out of it too hey, I bought a used car for a minute.
56:27
Mark Zweig: I didn't even need it, so, uh, yeah, I would, if you're here locally, check these guys out at Market Auto and what's your website, nick?
56:37
Nick Kilgore: uh, it's MarketAutoARcom.
56:40
Mark Zweig: MarketAutoARcom.
56:44
Mark Zweig: So, nick, I really appreciate you being here today.
56:47
Mark Zweig: I appreciate you having me on as busy as you are.
56:49
Mark Zweig: Hopefully our listeners got some good insight from you, and so that's what we're all about here at Big Talk about small business.
57:01
Mark Zweig: So, in any case, I hope everybody has a great holiday coming up here as we record this, we are what three days away from Christmas, so I hope that goes well for those of you and you don't find it too stressful and you can actually find some time to to settle down and and appreciate what you have and and ponder all the the good blessings that we're all graced with here, and and we will see you again next week on another episode of Big Talk about small business.
57:42
Speaker 3: Thanks again thanks for tuning into this episode of Big Talk about small business.
57:53
Speaker 3: If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, wwwbigtalkaboutsmallbusinesscom and click on the ask the host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show.
58:07
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