Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Never Quit: Chris Miller's Business, Boxing, and Addiction Recovery Journey | Auto Industry

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Never Quit: Chris Miller's Business, Boxing, and Addiction Recovery Journey | Auto Industry · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories, where leaders
• 0:07
  share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
• 0:10
  how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
• 0:13
  they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
• 0:18
  the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their
• 0:21
  experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
• 0:25
  by how they've overcome adversity.
• 0:27
  My name is Anthony Kotaspodi, and today's guest is Chris
• 0:29
  Miller, president of Dutch Miller Auto Group, A collection
• 0:33
  of 13 different car dealerships across West Virginia.
• 0:37
  We'll hear how Chris's grandfather overcame a tough
• 0:40
  childhood to find his way into the car business.
• 0:44
  We'll also get to hear about Chris overcoming struggles of
• 0:47
  his own and how he and his brother grew the business from 2
• 0:50
  to 13 dealerships in the past 10 years.
• 0:54
  And he's not just a leader in the car industry.
• 0:57
  In 2022, he was rated number one in the country by USA Boxing for
• 1:02
  his weight class and age division.
• 1:04
  They own 26 different businesses, not all of them in
• 1:08
  the car industry. And Chris recently ran for
• 1:11
  governor of West Virginia, and he plans to run again and win.
• 1:16
  Now before we get into all this good stuff, today's episode is
• 1:19
  brought to you by my company, the Add Back Benefits Agency,
• 1:21
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• 1:25
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• 1:27
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  qualifies, contact us today at Add Back benefitsagency.com.
• 1:46
  Now back to our guest today, the President of Dutch Miller Auto
• 1:49
  Group, Chris Miller. I appreciate you making the time
• 1:51
  to Share your story today. Tickle pink to be here.
• 1:54
  This is going to be a lot of fun.
• 1:55
  All right, so Chris, let's dive in with the story of your
• 1:58
  grandfather, Dutch. Was this a guy predestined for
• 2:02
  success? Smartest kid in the class.
• 2:04
  Absolutely not. My grandfather was born on a
• 2:08
  dirt floor in Bear Creek, Kentucky.
• 2:11
  And when his, well, when he was five, his mom died and his dad
• 2:15
  remarried. And Dutch's new mom didn't want
• 2:19
  him. And so they sent him away to
• 2:21
  live with his sister, who was 18.
• 2:24
  And the only. So the only thing he knew was,
• 2:25
  you know, death and abandonment from the time he was a kid.
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  He's also dyslexic. And that was kind of back before
• 2:31
  they really figured out exactly what that was.
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  And so he had a learning disability.
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  And so they just told him he was dumb.
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  You know, all throughout school, he was really athletic and
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  charismatic and, you know, used his personality to make his way
• 2:45
  through stuff. And then when World War 2 popped
• 2:47
  up, he decided he's going to fight for his country.
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  And the Marine Corps figured out he was that he was way smarter
• 2:52
  than anybody realized. And they taught him how to fly
• 2:54
  airplanes. So he flew flew for the Black
• 2:58
  Sheep Squadron during World War 2 and the Korean War, which was
• 3:01
  a legendary fighter pilot group that were the Renegades.
• 3:05
  They were the ones that could do the stuff of the airplanes
• 3:06
  nobody else could do and kind of March to the beat of their own
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  drum. And, you know, we're a, I don't
• 3:12
  want to call it a ragtag militia.
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  These guys were really, really smart, really, really
• 3:16
  aggressive, incredible pilots that made waves in World War 2
• 3:20
  and the Korean War. They were known throughout the
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  Pacific as, as being just absolutely feared by anybody
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  that came across. And my grandfather fought in
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  World War 2 in the Korean War and then came back home and met
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  my grandmother. And she was, you know,
• 3:39
  interesting history of acting and modeling in New York City.
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  But she was an Ashland, KY girl named Betty Ann Sheets.
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  And her parents owned a car dealership.
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  Her dad owned a dealership in Ashland, KY.
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  So the first thing that her parents told her was, you know,
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  whatever you, whatever you do, don't you date that Dutch
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  Miller? So she started dating my
• 4:00
  grandfather and then the next thing you know, they got married
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  and Dutch didn't want to work for his father-in-law.
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  So he went across the river from Ashland, KY to Huntington and
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  started working at Rodger Dean Chevrolet, worked his way up
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  from sales to management and then eventually general
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  management. And we got our shot moving into
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  the automotive space and owning car dealerships because Roger
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  Dean wanted to buy stores in Florida.
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  And General Motors said, that's fine, but you need to sell this
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  store to Dutch. And so he's my my grandfather's
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  also the only guy to ever buy out Roger Dean.
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  And Roger Dean's long gone, passed away.
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  It was a mega dealer in Florida for a long time.
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  So that's how we got into the family business.
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  That's how Dutch Miller Chevrolet started, which is the
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  flagship store for our group. And you know, we we've been in
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  the business ever since That was 1963.
• 4:51
  Wow. What a fun story.
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  What a what a neat background of your grandfather, that
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  trajectory he took into the military.
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  And it sort of took that for somebody else to discover how
• 5:03
  bright he was and where some of, you know, some of his talents
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  had kind of been hidden by the fact that, you know, he was
• 5:10
  dealing with dyslexia, which was largely misunderstood at the
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  time. Incredibly so, yeah.
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  And it it all worked out in the long run, right?
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  But it's the whole fall down seven time stand up eight thing.
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  And that's kind of, in my opinion, the essence to life is
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  to never, ever, ever quit. So the business went from your
• 5:30
  grandfather to next generation and were you and your brothers
• 5:35
  working at the dealerships from a young age?
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  No, we did eventually. I've been working since I was 10
• 5:43
  1/2 years old. When I was 10 1/2 I told my dad
• 5:46
  I wanted a pair of Air Jordan tennis shoes and when he found
• 5:50
  out they cost $125.00 he told me to get a job.
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  The the the only job I could find was a paper route and so
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  woke up every single morning delivered newspapers didn't have
• 5:59
  us raining or sleeting or snow outside.
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  You had to get the job done and did that for 2 1/2 years.
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  Eventually did start working in the family business my my dad.
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  My dad had me and my brother going to 20 group meetings from
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  the time that we were kids. And so we would sit in these
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  meetings and just, I guess learn stuff through osmosis.
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  Because when you're, you know, when you're 12 years old, you
• 6:21
  don't necessarily understand the financial statement of the
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  business, but you learn stuff and you pick up stuff and you
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  hear things eventually as well. I started selling cars.
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  I got to rewind real quick 'cause I did some, did some
• 6:33
  other stuff before we got into the car business.
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  Right, let's hear it. My parents bought farm.
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  My dad decided that he wanted to teach me and my brother what
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  real manual labor was like. And so my dad bought a farm and
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  put bison on it. And my brother and I worked
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  every summer from the time I was 14 until the time I was 18 doing
• 6:51
  manual labor on a farm. And we built the entire
• 6:54
  infrastructure through this thing from, you know, running
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  barbed wire fence all around 500 acres to building, you know,
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  wooden fences to cutting down locust trees and skinning them
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  and curing to make fence post corners.
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  And I don't, I don't know if you've ever done that or not
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  been anybody that's listening to this mess around with wood.
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  Locust is an incredibly dense hardwood and it makes the
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  absolute best fencepost corners you will ever find.
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  But you have to let it cure and then skin it, take the bark off.
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  And when you take the bark off, it's got this layer of slime
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  underneath it that smells like sewer and it gets all over the
• 7:27
  place. It's, it's awful.
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  But those fencepost corners are still there today.
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  And this is back in the, you know, mid 90s when we were doing
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  this stuff and. Your father, I'm going to guess
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  like he wanted you to learn the value of this manual labor so
• 7:44
  that you weren't just sort of handed, you know, the, the
• 7:47
  dealership, the family business and not understand the value of,
• 7:51
  of hard work. There's no doubt that that was
• 7:53
  part of the method, the to the madness.
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  The other part is I'm a pretty high energy guy to begin with
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  and I think he was kind of exploiting that.
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  And my brother's similar and he, you know, turned us loose.
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  We got stuff done, man. We worked 8-9 hours a day every
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  single summer, Monday through Friday just on that farm.
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  And our friends would come up and help with us.
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  Sometimes if they needed extra money, they'd come work for a
• 8:15
  week and we're exhausted afterwards.
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  But it it, you know, became a family affair too.
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  We we still have this bison farm and still go worm bison
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  quarterly as a family. Wow.
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  Yeah. Lots of hard physical labor
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  there. In your teenage years, when did
• 8:34
  you get involved in boxing? Because I'm going to guess this
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  would have been really good training, physical training.
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  Boxing is always, yeah, boxing has always been a part of our
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  family. My dad was a boxer, my uncle was
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  a boxer, my grandfather Dutch was a boxer and also a Golden
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  Gloves announcer. He just had this legendary voice
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  and the Golden Gloves used him for years to announce boxing
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  matches. So boxing's always been a part
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  of our family. And I always, you know, we
• 9:03
  always played around. We were always kind of gritty.
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  I mean, I was always a, a, a tougher kid and was never, you
• 9:08
  know, shy from anything. And later on, I got into boxing.
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  I had lots of experience because when you when you're a kid and
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  you're learning from, you know, when you're 5 years old, you're
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  hitting the mess with your dad, you know, you pick some of the
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  stuff up through osmosis. And so when I did finally start
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  competing later on in life, it was because I'd realized, man,
• 9:31
  you only go around the sun so many times.
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  And why in the world would you want to say what if?
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  Because I've been a huge boxing fan my entire life.
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  And so I found out there was a masters division in USA boxing
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  for 35 and up. And that's when I started
• 9:44
  competing was. Not until you were 35, correct?
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  You hadn't done it up until that point, OK.
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  Correct. And I, I think I, I really
• 9:52
  started competing when I was about 38 or 39, but you know,
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  regardless like that, that's what I started doing and
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  absolutely. I mean, that's a pretty, that's
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  a pretty quick 'cause we were saying you were at one point
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  the, the top rated boxer in your age and weight class like to, to
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  not even have started until you were age 35 and reach that.
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  That's that's that's a pretty fast process.
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  The muscle memory thing, the fact that I've been doing it
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  from the time that I was a kid, that always helps.
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  I just never really competed or trained.
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  And there's a difference between knowing how to box and then
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  actually training and competing. There's a difference and you
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  have to, you have to get yourself an incredible shape.
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  And that's the, that's the funnest thing about boxing to
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  me, is that the, the discipline in managing your weight, getting
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  into incredible shape that it, it's what wins fights, quite
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  frankly. You can fight someone that is
• 10:50
  way more talented than you, but because you have an aerobic
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  capacity that can take them in the deep waters and drown them
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  in the later rounds. And that was always one of my
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  strategies. So high energy, relentless work
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  rate and just go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
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  I I can't tell you how many fights I've won just because I
• 11:07
  was in better shape than the other guy.
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  You were just able to take more punches, huh?
• 11:13
  Yeah, keep moving, right? Because part of the thing in
• 11:15
  boxing is you don't want to get hit.
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  So it's it, it takes a lot of effort and energy in your legs
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  and in your cardiovascular system to keep moving your head
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  to avoid getting punched. And so, yeah, I've, I've, I've
• 11:26
  got a chin. I can take a knock or two, but I
• 11:29
  use my brain for a living so I don't want to damage it too
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  much. So did you hang up the gloves
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  eventually or are you still competing at all?
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  That is a topic of discussion in our family as we speak.
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  And I, I'm, I'm, I'm married, right?
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  I've been married for over 20 years to a fantastic woman.
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  We have 3 kids. I've got a what is now a 17 year
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  old son, a 15 year old son, and then a 12 year old daughter who
• 11:55
  I think we're all going to wind up working for one of these
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  days. But you know, my wife is my
• 12:02
  favorite person on planet Earth, and she's also one of the
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  reasons why I'm sober to this day.
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  And you know, like I said, I've been married for 20 years, but
• 12:12
  my, my first year of marriage, I had to choose between drugs and
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  alcohol and my wife. And it was a very, you know, it
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  was a very direct decision. And so I locked myself in my
• 12:23
  apartment for two weeks, went through the detox and
• 12:27
  everything. And then, you know, it was a
• 12:31
  struggle for about a year and a half because you mess with your
• 12:34
  brain when you're using narcotics and drinking alcohol
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  and excess. And you know, it takes an
• 12:41
  adjustment. Your body's got to learn how to
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  recalibrate itself. And that's kind of hard too,
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  cause up until you get right in the mind where you don't have to
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  worry about ever using again there there's all these fears
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  because you get temptations coming from everywhere.
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  And you have to remain incredibly disciplined and
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  incredibly hard headed up until you figure out that you know,
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  you've got it all under control. And it took me about a year and
• 13:05
  a half or two years, so. Can we talk about a little bit
• 13:09
  about maybe what led you there? Like were you like a party guy?
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  Were you trying to cover up some internal pain?
• 13:17
  Did it just kind of come on without, like slowly without
• 13:19
  sort of like realizing where you were going with all this?
• 13:22
  I think it, I think it's genetic and it's personality driven.
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  If I'm being totally honest, I'm probably a dopamine junkie.
• 13:28
  And you know, I'm good at math, good at risk mitigation and
• 13:32
  calculation. And that's one of the things in
• 13:34
  business that I'm, you know, always go, go, go grow, grow,
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  grow, do do, do part of that is the probably the dopamine junkie
• 13:40
  in me. But that's also the same reason
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  why in my 40s, running a bunch of businesses, I'm getting in
• 13:45
  the ring and fighting people because it is the greatest rush
• 13:49
  I've ever experienced in my entire life.
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  It is greater than any high I've ever experienced.
• 13:55
  There's something about the adrenaline rush and the
• 13:57
  incredible focus that you have to have when you're in there in
• 14:00
  that ring that it, it's awesome like nothing else but.
• 14:07
  Even with somebody pounding your head like it's still like
• 14:10
  you're, you're loving this. Absolutely it it is the greatest
• 14:14
  rush ever. But that's also my personality,
• 14:17
  right? And it's also why I got addicted
• 14:20
  to drugs and alcohol pretty quickly.
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  So I I have that that go, go, go kind of personality.
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  And if, you know, 1 beer was great and 36 had to be
• 14:29
  fantastic. And the next thing you know, I'd
• 14:32
  be running down 4th Ave. into leopard print thong, screaming
• 14:34
  screaming anarchy, you know, just bad combination.
• 14:40
  Yeah. And so at some point your wife
• 14:43
  said, hey, you got to choose here.
• 14:46
  Yeah, And my wife, I, I'd love for you to meet her one of these
• 14:49
  days. But she's a very, very strong
• 14:52
  willed, but also has a unique way about her.
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  And she didn't ever give me that like definitive deadline.
• 14:59
  She did not say this is it. And it, it took me.
• 15:03
  What what happened was is that she actually pulled me out of a
• 15:06
  bar one night and I told her I was going out.
• 15:09
  You know, she was teaching, I was working, told her I was just
• 15:12
  going to go out and sing karaoke and not drink at all.
• 15:15
  Of course, lying my, you know, lying through my teeth because
• 15:17
  that's what addicts do. And I went to a bar and started
• 15:21
  drinking. And she just had that suspicion,
• 15:24
  you know, that that instinct. And she found me and walked into
• 15:28
  the bar and looked at me and said, I thought you weren't
• 15:31
  going to drink. And I looked back at her and I
• 15:33
  said, well, those aren't mine. And then that thing in my head
• 15:37
  clicked and I was like, wait a minute, man.
• 15:39
  You just lied to the most important, important person in
• 15:43
  your life over a liquid, a liquid.
• 15:48
  And that was the the moment in my head that I knew that I had
• 15:52
  to stop. And I stopped that day.
• 15:53
  And that was April 1st of 2004. And I haven't had a drink since.
• 15:58
  And so you did this detox at home?
• 16:01
  Yeah. I did.
• 16:03
  With some assistance or 'cause I mean what I've heard like that's
• 16:06
  a pretty brutal process. Can be.
• 16:09
  So I never really used drugs unless alcohol was involved.
• 16:14
  I never just sought them out, but it was, it was always the
• 16:16
  catalyst. If I boil it down to what it
• 16:18
  was, alcohol is always the problem and I just did what I
• 16:23
  know how to do, which is OK, let's beat this and it's all in
• 16:26
  the mind and went through the whole process.
• 16:30
  By yourself? Yeah, with your wife.
• 16:32
  She would wake up and check on me, go to work she taught, come
• 16:39
  home, check on me. And it was kind of funny
• 16:43
  because, you know, you think about it, alcohol really turns
• 16:45
  into sugar in the bloodstream. So those next two years or so, I
• 16:49
  had this crazy like affinity for drinking vanilla pepsis.
• 16:52
  And I probably put on 10 or 15 lbs because I had this rampant
• 16:56
  sugar craving. And at that time, I didn't
• 16:58
  correlate what was really happening inside of my body with
• 17:01
  it. But all I knew is that I gotta
• 17:02
  have something sweet. I gotta have something sweet.
• 17:04
  So I, I started drinking massive amounts of Pepsi and vanilla
• 17:08
  Pepsi in particular, for some reason.
• 17:09
  I like that a lot. And then a couple of years
• 17:11
  later, I was like, OK, enough of this.
• 17:14
  You're drinking six or seven of these a day.
• 17:16
  That's a problem, so cut that one out.
• 17:20
  So for that that year and a half after you went through detox and
• 17:24
  you talked about it being pretty rough, what helped you through
• 17:27
  that? Who were you able to lean on
• 17:30
  what processes or help groups or what?
• 17:33
  What did that that process look like for you?
• 17:36
  My, my uncle is an alcoholic and an addict as well.
• 17:39
  And so I had him to kind of rely on and talk to him through
• 17:43
  things and he tried and tried and tried to get me to go to
• 17:45
  meetings and I just never would I in my mind.
• 17:48
  All right, so the, the in, in a, a, you have to 1st admit that
• 17:57
  you are powerless over your addiction and you have to
• 18:02
  surrender yourself to God. And that is the only way that
• 18:05
  you can then gain control over the addictive substances that
• 18:10
  run your life. And I was at the point in time
• 18:14
  in the whole God conversation, separate conversation.
• 18:16
  But at that point in time in my life, I thought, well, that
• 18:20
  doesn't make sense to me because the only person that's going to
• 18:22
  be in charge of this end of the end of the day is me.
• 18:26
  And I don't want to go listen to a bunch of people make excuses
• 18:29
  about stuff because I need to hold myself accountable for my
• 18:32
  behavior. And so I, I didn't do the a a
• 18:35
  thing. And looking back, I don't think
• 18:39
  it would have hurt because having a place to go and talk
• 18:42
  about things and camaraderie and realizing that we're going
• 18:46
  through that's not unique to you is beneficial to people when it
• 18:49
  comes to healing and actually getting a handle on stuff.
• 18:52
  But I didn't and I just, it didn't make sense logically in
• 18:57
  my mind that that, that progression.
• 18:59
  And so I thought, uh huh, that I'm not doing that.
• 19:02
  I'm in charge. I I do have control over this.
• 19:04
  I I'm going to fight it and I'm going to be the one who beats
• 19:06
  it. Exactly right.
• 19:08
  And I, I literally believe that we're living in a time right now
• 19:12
  as well where we're taught that something happens and your
• 19:14
  emotional reaction is OK and justified because it's the
• 19:18
  trigger that caused it. And I think that that's leading
• 19:21
  to like creating a, a culture and a way of living that makes
• 19:27
  people addicted to their own emotions.
• 19:30
  And that's another form of an addiction.
• 19:33
  And literally at the end of the day, we can, the only thing that
• 19:36
  we can control are our own thoughts and our own feelings.
• 19:39
  We're not taught that, but it's the truth.
• 19:42
  And there's a, there's a chemical process that happens
• 19:44
  inside of the body to elicit every single emotion in some
• 19:47
  way, shape or form. Hypothalamus produces peptides
• 19:50
  and then rushing the bloodstream bind with cells that creates
• 19:53
  that particular reaction. That's kind of the over
• 19:55
  generalized process behind it, but it is the exact same thing
• 19:58
  with addiction and. The more that you do something
• 20:02
  and the more that your cells are prone to have the receptor sites
• 20:05
  of those particular peptides as they grow, then the more you're
• 20:08
  prone to have those particular emotions.
• 20:11
  And I'd rather control that. So I can't stop what you're
• 20:16
  doing. I can't control what you're
• 20:17
  thinking, control what you're doing, but I can inside of my
• 20:20
  own body. And you can't.
• 20:22
  You can't control if I cut you off in traffic.
• 20:25
  Nope. You can control what your
• 20:27
  reaction is to that. Exactly.
• 20:29
  Right. What are the techniques that
• 20:31
  you've employed to to help steer your reaction to outside events?
• 20:38
  Boy, that takes a lot of work and a lot of practice in having
• 20:41
  to be very, very honest with yourself.
• 20:43
  Because I, I, I think we all kind of innately, you know,
• 20:48
  deceive ourselves and our minds sometimes.
• 20:51
  And you have to be really brutally honest with, you know,
• 20:54
  why you're feeling a certain way and understanding it before you
• 20:57
  can even correct it or fix it. But it takes a lot of, of
• 21:00
  awareness and work. It's not something that happens
• 21:01
  with the snap of a finger and then all of a sudden BAM, you
• 21:04
  know, I'm now a Stoic. Doesn't work that way.
• 21:07
  It takes a little just like, just like business, right?
• 21:11
  Just like anything else that you're doing in life, it takes
• 21:13
  constant work and focus for it to, you know, be effective.
• 21:19
  Everything's a process, right? Whether it's personal
• 21:21
  development, recovering from an addiction, building a business.
• 21:24
  You know, a lot of people from the outside look in and they
• 21:28
  think it's a flip of a switch, right?
• 21:30
  Oh, look, look at Chris. He owns all these car
• 21:32
  dealerships. Like he just overnight, he just,
• 21:35
  you know, everything was successful.
• 21:37
  Nope. There was a lot of work that
• 21:39
  went to get there. Oh, look, Chris, he used to have
• 21:42
  a problem with substances, flipped a switch and now he's
• 21:44
  off. No, they don't see the in
• 21:45
  between, right. There's there's a lot of work
• 21:47
  that goes into it. The, you know, when it comes to
• 21:49
  work, the, the 14-15 hour days, I can't tell you how many times,
• 21:54
  you know, when the, when the recession hit in 2008, how many
• 21:58
  times I cut my pay just to make sure that all my people and then
• 22:02
  I can make payroll and pay all my people.
• 22:04
  You know, there's a lot of discipline and sacrifice that
• 22:06
  goes on behind the scenes to get stuff done.
• 22:08
  And, and you know, then the other thing is it, it takes a
• 22:13
  lot of resources to actually open a business, get it
• 22:16
  operating cash flow business and make them functionally run.
• 22:20
  And so it doesn't come from the sky.
• 22:22
  You've got to actually create that some way to then have the
• 22:25
  option to do it. So man, what one of one of the
• 22:30
  most memorable times I had in the business or just in business
• 22:35
  in general, was operating car dealerships through the the
• 22:39
  recession in 2008 because it teaches you like it's, it's the
• 22:42
  hard things that teach you the best lessons.
• 22:46
  And one of the best lessons I've ever learned in business is
• 22:48
  learning how to manage to cash in recession.
• 22:51
  And when you make every single decision, managing to cash, the
• 22:55
  business always operates better. But sometimes doing that,
• 22:58
  they're not easy decisions. It's everything goes.
• 23:01
  What does this do to the cash position?
• 23:04
  Why is this the right thing to do?
• 23:07
  And through that, you know, process, you know, you, you
• 23:12
  learn a lot of stuff like how to staff apartments, how to, how to
• 23:14
  create pay plans that are directly tied to human behavior
• 23:18
  to make sure that the people that are doing their, you know,
• 23:20
  a good job are rewarded the right way.
• 23:22
  It teaches you how to perfect just every single step in the
• 23:25
  process when it comes to paperwork, you know, because in
• 23:29
  our business we're dealing with banks, you have to perfect
• 23:31
  liens, you're dealing with titles.
• 23:33
  You know, you think about one $50,000 car that you're selling
• 23:38
  and you might make $2000 off of that, that you also have a trade
• 23:43
  in that's worth $20,000 and it's got a payoff of $25,000.
• 23:48
  So that one transaction because of 50 and a payoff of 25, I'm
• 23:54
  shucking and jiving around $75,000 in cash plus making sure
• 23:59
  the taxes are all paid, all the fees are paid and everything
• 24:02
  like that just to perfect liens and secure one transaction to
• 24:07
  make $2000.00. So it's a, there's a complicated
• 24:11
  little dance there and you have to dial that system in very,
• 24:14
  very quickly because you can't wait and be hanging because you
• 24:17
  missed a document and don't get your $75,000 back.
• 24:21
  So some of the best experiences I ever learned in the business
• 24:25
  came from managing through really hard times.
• 24:28
  Was there ever any thought that you might have to close up shop?
• 24:32
  No, OK, no, no, it wasn't an option.
• 24:37
  It it was not an option. Don't like to fail, don't like
• 24:41
  to lose. You had employees who were
• 24:43
  counting on you. Exactly.
• 24:44
  You had your own family that was counting on you to provide.
• 24:47
  Exactly right. And the challenge, right.
• 24:50
  There's something about the challenge that's just a lot of
• 24:52
  fun. Yeah.
• 24:53
  When did you get Chris your first opportunity to own a
• 24:58
  dealership? 2008.
• 25:01
  OK, right, Right. In the recession.
• 25:03
  Right in the recession. It's kind of funny how that
• 25:05
  worked out. We had a Kia dealership in
• 25:07
  Barboursville, WV and we were in the middle of buying a Hyundai
• 25:12
  store. Me, my brother and my dad in
• 25:15
  Charlotte, NC and Wachovia was right there in Charlotte.
• 25:20
  And that day they announced the whole Wachovia fiasco and the
• 25:24
  Wells Fargo thing and the bottom dropped out and we had
• 25:28
  discovered the business we were buying.
• 25:31
  We weren't given honest information during due
• 25:34
  diligence. We figured that out.
• 25:36
  And so we backed out of that deal and came back up and had a
• 25:42
  general manager at our Barbersman location that
• 25:44
  resigned. And so I was running our
• 25:48
  Chevrolet, Hyundai store and used car department at that time
• 25:53
  and told my dad I want to go fix that Kia store, but I want a
• 25:56
  shot at ownership. Well, because of the recession
• 26:00
  and the position that we were in with the businesses, the value
• 26:03
  had been diminished to the point where I was able to buy 24 1/2
• 26:07
  percent of the stock for a very small amount of money.
• 26:10
  And I say small amount of money for me at that point in time,
• 26:13
  you know, coming up with $15,000 or whatever it was, was a lot of
• 26:16
  money. But you know, everything has to
• 26:19
  be legal and done the appropriate way.
• 26:21
  So I acquired the stock and went up there and started running.
• 26:25
  And I think my dad loved the fact that I was ready to take a
• 26:28
  risk and take on a challenge. And then through a lot of work
• 26:32
  and blood, sweat and tears, we created a team that then turned
• 26:36
  that Kia dealership into one of the most, one of the highest
• 26:40
  market penetrations with Kia in the country.
• 26:42
  There's there was a point in time in Barboursville, WV we
• 26:47
  sold more Kia Sorentos than any other dealership in the country.
• 26:51
  Why? How?
• 26:53
  What? What was?
• 26:54
  What were you doing? It's always about the people.
• 26:58
  It is always about the people. It is always about the team that
• 27:02
  you're able to put together and the people that you're
• 27:05
  privileged enough to work with. And will you create the right
• 27:07
  synergy with the right leadership and the right
• 27:09
  mindset? That's when the magic happens.
• 27:13
  And we we, I was selling 120 Kia's a month and another 60 to
• 27:18
  80 used cars on a regular basis out of a small Kia dealership in
• 27:22
  Barboursville, WV. Went through the recession,
• 27:25
  learned a lot about real management and then built A-Team
• 27:29
  and we turned it into a monster. And it was the creation of that
• 27:33
  and several years of managing those businesses that put us in
• 27:37
  a position where we can start buying dealerships and growing
• 27:39
  and expanding. So I want to peel back the layer
• 27:43
  of the onion here just a little bit because, you know, there are
• 27:48
  a lot of people who might have been in a position where, right,
• 27:51
  they get their first shot at owning a business and man,
• 27:56
  they're hit with some headwinds like you were with and something
• 27:59
  that was totally out of your control with like the recession.
• 28:02
  And they may have just looked at that and thrown their arms up
• 28:04
  and be like, well, I guess it just wasn't meant to be throw in
• 28:07
  the towel. But as I'm hearing you talk,
• 28:10
  you're like, no, that was never even consideration.
• 28:13
  It wasn't, it wasn't an option. I'm curious if there's a way to
• 28:18
  sort of quantify where that sense of your being comes from.
• 28:26
  Is it something that you were born with?
• 28:28
  Is it something that was taught through, you know, your
• 28:32
  upbringing? Was it the hardship of going
• 28:35
  through, you know, overcoming the addiction?
• 28:38
  Like not everybody would have been in that spot and decided to
• 28:42
  persevere and push through and do the hard work.
• 28:45
  I've never been asked that question before in my life.
• 28:47
  And it's interesting. I, I think it's a combination of
• 28:50
  all three of those things. You know, it's, it's
• 28:52
  personality, it's upbringing, it's circumstance and a lot of
• 28:59
  hard work. But I don't wanna say I'm lost
• 29:04
  for words, but I don't it's a mindset thing.
• 29:11
  It's a mindset thing. I, I've met a, a lot of
• 29:14
  incredibly brilliant smart people that, you know, they
• 29:19
  might be able to do a, you know, write an incredible research
• 29:23
  paper on chemistry, but can't do that kind of stuff because
• 29:28
  that's not either A, what they're wired for or B, don't
• 29:33
  really understand the risks. And I've seen people over and
• 29:39
  over and over again, really, really smart people talk them
• 29:41
  out of doing something. They will talk themselves out of
• 29:44
  doing something because of the risks or the potential
• 29:48
  possibilities. And yeah, risks exist in
• 29:51
  anything that you do, but the idea is to create a plan and to
• 29:54
  work incredibly hard to minimize all of those risks.
• 29:58
  There's risks. We can walk out in the street
• 29:59
  and get hit by a car tomorrow. There's a risk.
• 30:02
  There's a risk in putting on your shoes and going outside
• 30:04
  every day. Doesn't stop people though.
• 30:06
  But there's there's something about really doing the hard
• 30:10
  things though, that some people just don't want to do it.
• 30:15
  Working 15 hours in a day is hard.
• 30:17
  Over and over and over again it's hard.
• 30:20
  But if that's what you have to do to win at that point in time,
• 30:24
  that's what that's what I'm going to do.
• 30:27
  So talk me through a little bit about how you guys grew so
• 30:31
  quickly. There were like one or two
• 30:32
  dealerships in the family and you guys are now at 13 and sort
• 30:36
  of a span of 10 years. Is that right?
• 30:38
  So, yeah, we've done all that without private equity or any
• 30:42
  sort of, you know, financial backing either.
• 30:45
  And we have a really simple, you know, principle of philosophy,
• 30:47
  and that is pay your people well, staff each department like
• 30:53
  it's one man short. And when it gets to be two men
• 30:55
  short, that's when you add a person and manage your expenses.
• 30:59
  Don't overpay yourself. A lot of car dealers live, you
• 31:03
  know, luxurious lifestyles. We don't do that.
• 31:05
  We don't ever pay ourselves. We keep all the money in the
• 31:07
  business. And then that put us in a
• 31:10
  position to grow. And, you know, we did it with
• 31:13
  conventional banking and, you know, good old fashioned elbow
• 31:17
  grease. But we are living through the
• 31:19
  age of the death of the mom and the pop car dealer as well,
• 31:22
  which is interesting. Why is that happening?
• 31:26
  Lots of factors. Each manufacturer has
• 31:29
  capitalization requirements for owning a car dealership.
• 31:34
  So not only do you have to be an experienced car dealer and you
• 31:37
  have to go through an approval process with the manufacturer to
• 31:39
  actually get a dealership. And that's after you buy it, by
• 31:42
  the way. So you have to pay for it and
• 31:44
  have expertise to do it. And the prices of everything
• 31:49
  keep increasing. Now the regulations and stuff
• 31:51
  that we put on cars that have made them safer and also more
• 31:54
  efficient dramatically drive up the price and then all the
• 31:58
  inflation and everything else that's been baked into our
• 32:00
  system over a long period of time drive up the price.
• 32:03
  The capital requirements from the manufacturer are a formula.
• 32:06
  And so as the cost of cars goes up, the amount of cash that you
• 32:09
  have to have that you're required to have to run the car
• 32:12
  dealership also goes up. And so that's kind of what has
• 32:16
  pushed out the mom and the pop car dealers.
• 32:20
  The other thing that has is you've got private equity and a
• 32:23
  lot of publicly traded companies that have professionalized the
• 32:26
  automotive industry itself and they're flush with cash.
• 32:30
  And they can make, you know, a couple of years ago, they can
• 32:34
  make 3% in the money market account or make 4% of sales
• 32:38
  owning a car dealership and owning the real estate and in
• 32:42
  theory make 4% in sales. But you got to be good to do
• 32:44
  that and it takes a lot of work. And so there's always mistakes
• 32:47
  that happen along the way, but that's the gist of the
• 32:50
  mathematical equation and why that's happened.
• 32:53
  So you've got all these big, huge publicly traded companies
• 32:55
  and these big groups going in and acquiring all these things.
• 32:58
  So guys like me have to be very, very smart because I can't
• 33:02
  compete with paying seven times earnings on something.
• 33:07
  So we've got to be smart about it.
• 33:09
  And, you know, we, we've, we've done it with, I don't like to be
• 33:13
  beholden to anybody. And so we have a great banking
• 33:17
  relationship, but I'm not beholden to private equity.
• 33:20
  I'm not beholden to any bankers. I'm not beholden to anybody at
• 33:24
  all. And I get to have the autonomy
• 33:26
  and the free will to do this stuff on my own.
• 33:28
  And I'd rather do that than, you know, I could go buy 10 more car
• 33:31
  dealerships tomorrow with somebody else's money.
• 33:35
  I don't do that. That's just me.
• 33:38
  Are you looking, are there growth opportunities?
• 33:43
  Always. And yes, always looking at the
• 33:45
  right market. And the other thing you really
• 33:47
  have to do to grow is you have to have people.
• 33:50
  You have to have people that you can trust that understand how
• 33:53
  you do things and and understand the why behind what we're doing.
• 33:57
  And it is always the people that make a business successful.
• 34:02
  So what's what's your secret to finding and holding on to good
• 34:06
  folks? Don't be a dickhead.
• 34:13
  Be good to people, man, and take care of them and listen to them.
• 34:18
  You gotta make tough decisions sometimes, but when you set it
• 34:21
  up the right way, those tough decisions are are evident plain
• 34:25
  as day. You have to have expectations.
• 34:28
  You have to manage the expectations, but you gotta be
• 34:30
  good to people. And I do believe that we're
• 34:33
  moving into a time of what I kind of call capitalism 2 point
• 34:36
  O, which is, you know, from my perspective, no business is a
• 34:45
  business is only as good as the people that are in it.
• 34:50
  And it is a privilege to run that business.
• 34:54
  And it is also directly attached to any sort of community that
• 34:58
  that business is in. And that business also has a
• 35:01
  moral and a social obligation to use its growth and its revenue
• 35:06
  to help make the community that it's privileged enough to do
• 35:08
  business and better. And that's just kind of how I
• 35:12
  see it all. So we're very, very active and
• 35:16
  heavily involved in all the communities that we're a part
• 35:18
  of. It's just the way it should be,
• 35:22
  man, you know? Are there many opportunities
• 35:26
  that come available in the auto space?
• 35:30
  Always, always. They're always popping up all of
• 35:33
  the time, and you've got to evaluate them the right way and
• 35:36
  do what's you know right for you.
• 35:37
  You got to have the people in place.
• 35:39
  You have the resources to acquire it.
• 35:43
  You also have to have the connections.
• 35:44
  You have to have the strategy getting yes to a $70 million
• 35:48
  deal. You know, there's a, there's a
• 35:49
  science behind it and there's an art to it too.
• 35:53
  So I'm always looking we, we are in the middle of a couple of
• 35:56
  them right now that are turning out to probably work out.
• 36:01
  And it's going to be a lot of fun over the next couple of
• 36:03
  years, too. I understand you've got an
• 36:07
  interesting take on monetary theory.
• 36:10
  What's that? OK.
• 36:12
  So follow me here. Couple of months ago you
• 36:15
  remember when the Federal Reserve cut rates and by 50
• 36:19
  basis points and then rates went up.
• 36:22
  Well, here's how that happens. The Federal Reserve sets a rate
• 36:26
  target and then they buy and sell 10 year Treasury securities
• 36:30
  to get to that market rate. And so they control the supply
• 36:34
  and demands to make sure that the overall return that they
• 36:36
  want to pay is there. Well, why in the world did that
• 36:42
  not happen? There were two things that
• 36:43
  occurred. 1, the Chinese were dumping Treasury securities
• 36:46
  because they need cash. They need cash big time.
• 36:49
  Their one child policy has put them in a declining population
• 36:55
  scenario, but they have GDP reporting and growth that they
• 37:00
  have to constantly manage to maintain or it affects a lot of
• 37:02
  stuff. And so the amount of
• 37:04
  productivity per person that they're gonna have to maintain
• 37:08
  just to stay stable is ungodly. And the Chinese are different
• 37:13
  than us. You know, the we, we America's
• 37:16
  founded on these judeo-christian principles and it functions into
• 37:20
  our reasoning. The Chinese are different.
• 37:22
  They kind of think that they're the center of the universe.
• 37:24
  And it's like, I am strong and you are weak.
• 37:27
  I am right and you are wrong. Therefore, anything I do to you
• 37:30
  that you can't stop me from is righteous.
• 37:34
  It's just a different mindset. And you might want to Fact Check
• 37:37
  this one, But I don't think that there is a word for liar and
• 37:41
  Mandarin like there. There's something about that
• 37:43
  culture where everybody just lies.
• 37:45
  It's just part of the expectation.
• 37:48
  So the Chinese have been stocking some stuff
• 37:51
  geopolitically because they have to because their backs are up
• 37:54
  against the wall. And the other funny thing is
• 37:57
  that the Chinese calculate their GDP like Enron estimated RNS
• 38:03
  kind of the only way I know to summarize that Enron used
• 38:05
  something called mark the market or look the book accounting.
• 38:08
  And so they'd create a power plant in India, book all the
• 38:10
  profits, stock prices go crazy and then they'd start building
• 38:14
  it and then amortizing off the difference.
• 38:17
  And so then they just throw two more projects on the book They.
• 38:19
  Started they started the book the profits before they were
• 38:21
  even built the the facility. That's how Enron did what they
• 38:25
  did. So that's how the Chinese
• 38:27
  calculate their GDP in the United States.
• 38:29
  We calculated on the sale. China, they calculated on the
• 38:33
  value of the bill. So they've got all of these
• 38:37
  other institutional issues. So back to the monetary theory
• 38:40
  thing, China's one thing. Investors around the world in
• 38:44
  the United States were going because of all the inflation.
• 38:47
  You know, the United States, the Treasury security, still the
• 38:49
  safest investment on planet Earth, is backed by the sanctity
• 38:53
  of the United States government. Yes, But with all the inflation
• 38:56
  and all the national debt, we're just not interested in that kind
• 38:59
  of return. You know, it's just not good
• 39:01
  enough for us. So that's one of the things
• 39:04
  that's happening most of the time when the Fed cuts rates,
• 39:08
  sets that target and then they can't effectively do that.
• 39:10
  Those are indicative signs of a recession or depression.
• 39:15
  Could be scary things, but the dollar is still incredibly
• 39:18
  strong, which is fascinating. And the Chinese, by the way,
• 39:23
  also are doing everything they can to remove the dollar as the
• 39:26
  reserve currencies of the world and the Petro dollar.
• 39:29
  And that's deliberate strategic as well.
• 39:32
  But back to America. I think that Bitcoin is
• 39:39
  definitely going to be a major player in the economy globally
• 39:44
  moving forward. And it's because what I've seen
• 39:47
  is, is that that the dollar is a Fiat currency.
• 39:51
  There's no more gold standard at all.
• 39:52
  And it's backed by the belief in the United States government.
• 39:56
  And in a world of cow pies, the United States of America is
• 39:59
  still the best Patty on the field.
• 40:02
  But we have all of this debt. We got about 40 trillion in
• 40:06
  debt. And that doesn't even include
• 40:08
  the unfunded liabilities of the Social Security trust fund and
• 40:13
  the Medicare trust fund. So Social Security, bunch of
• 40:17
  boomers retiring, less people my age paying into the system
• 40:20
  eventually gets upside down and you start paying out more in
• 40:24
  benefits than you're bringing it in taxes.
• 40:26
  And that over the next 20 years is going to turn into a probably
• 40:29
  a another 45 to $50 trillion in insolvency.
• 40:35
  And it's the same thing with Medicare.
• 40:37
  And those numbers are probably going to be even bigger.
• 40:40
  And so there's some structural stuff.
• 40:42
  You know, we're in great shape compared to the rest of the
• 40:44
  world, but there's some structural stuff we're going to
• 40:46
  have to deal with. And Bitcoin, I think, is turning
• 40:49
  into something that is nothing more than a commodity that is
• 40:52
  gauged on potential for inflation, relationship of the
• 40:56
  dollar to the rest of the world in gold, and in particular, the
• 41:00
  money supply and the money velocity inside of the United
• 41:03
  States. And it's kind of gonna just be
• 41:06
  like pork belly or soy or corn. And it's just another commodity
• 41:10
  that's used to hedge against anything with the future.
• 41:13
  And it's built on an incredibly fascinating technology.
• 41:16
  The blockchain's fascinating because it's secure and at least
• 41:21
  before artificial intelligence breaks it apart.
• 41:24
  But I do think that we're in this really interesting time
• 41:29
  financially where particular crypto currencies are going to
• 41:33
  be a very impactful value because of what's happening with
• 41:37
  the United States economy. But at the same time, the rest
• 41:39
  of the world isn't going to be able to keep up.
• 41:42
  So that's my SO. Some people get really excited
• 41:46
  about Bitcoin and Ethereum and, you know, some of these other
• 41:49
  digital currencies there. Some people are still naysayers
• 41:53
  and say, well, they're just speculative things.
• 41:56
  You know, it's sort of like the Tulip craze with the Dutch back,
• 42:00
  you know, hundreds of years ago. There's no practical value to
• 42:03
  them. And you're clearly in in the one
• 42:06
  camp that says, no, there's there's use here that this is
• 42:09
  this is going somewhere good. What I, I hear your point about
• 42:13
  the commodities and like this is something that, you know, people
• 42:17
  invest and they trade in and it's sort of a signal of what's
• 42:20
  going on in the bigger economy. Do you also see there being more
• 42:25
  everyday real world practical uses of these different digital
• 42:31
  currencies in the underlying blockchain technology?
• 42:35
  I think a lot of a lot of the digital currencies are just
• 42:38
  nothing more than like pyramid schemes.
• 42:40
  And if you look at how they're designed, they just are.
• 42:43
  The fascinating thing about Bitcoin is that there's a finite
• 42:45
  number of tokens that will ever be produced.
• 42:48
  There's a finite number of Bitcoin.
• 42:50
  So there's rarity or scarcity and that also plays a part in
• 42:54
  its value. But I mean, what is the dollar?
• 42:58
  It's perception and value is all that it is.
• 43:01
  And as long as the world and and, or any market sees
• 43:04
  perception and value in something because of a devaluing
• 43:08
  of something else, then it's going to grow.
• 43:11
  And so it's nothing more than another hedged vehicle against
• 43:16
  what's happening with the current state of the economy.
• 43:18
  And that really is what Bitcoin is.
• 43:21
  A lot of the other cryptocurrencies, there are a
• 43:23
  couple of them that are interesting, but they don't
• 43:25
  excite me to the same way that Bitcoin does because there's a
• 43:28
  finite number of them and. It's that scarcity that gets you
• 43:35
  particularly excited about this. Being built on the blockchain as
• 43:38
  well is very appealing because it's secure and it's impossible,
• 43:42
  at least at this point in staging technology to reverse or
• 43:44
  change that at all. And every single transaction is
• 43:47
  recorded in instantaneous time. So with cell phones and all of
• 43:52
  this digital ability we have nowadays, Bitcoin will be
• 43:55
  something you can use anywhere to bypass exchanges and stuff.
• 43:58
  You know, remember, think about traveling to Europe in the 80s.
• 44:01
  You either had to buy pounds and, you know, here in the
• 44:05
  United States and take them over with you or take your cash and
• 44:07
  exchange them or, you know, do it through American Express.
• 44:10
  But there was always a scoop that happens right coming and
• 44:14
  going. There's always commissions that
• 44:15
  have to be paid to do that. So you're never with the same
• 44:18
  exact value. And if I look at any sort of
• 44:20
  successful technology, any sort of successful anything, they
• 44:24
  solve problems. And what Bitcoin does is solves
• 44:27
  the problem of taking out the middleman.
• 44:30
  And so it's directly through you and me.
• 44:33
  And so we can use our phones to actually exchange a fraction of
• 44:36
  the Bitcoin immediately. So that's the problem that I
• 44:39
  think Bitcoin is solved. And it's one of the interesting
• 44:42
  things that's going to, you know, legislative changes can
• 44:45
  happen. You know, regulatory
• 44:46
  environments can change, but it's kind of tough to regulate
• 44:50
  that aside from just telling people it's illegal to hold it.
• 44:52
  And good luck with that. So back to the whole, I don't
• 44:57
  like people tell me what to do. It's one of the other things
• 44:59
  that I'm. Kind of there's a common thread
• 45:00
  here we're weaving through the story.
• 45:03
  So Chris, you, you've got 26 businesses, there's 13 car
• 45:08
  dealerships, there's a, a bison farm.
• 45:10
  Any others that are worth kind of mentioning here?
• 45:14
  We're in insurance and reinsurance.
• 45:16
  I've got a, a data company as well that don't, don't let that
• 45:22
  fool you. I mean, it's not like I'm, I've
• 45:23
  got a whole bunch of guys in a big room analyzing data all the
• 45:27
  time. It's actually kind of easy to do
• 45:29
  nowadays. And you can figure out trends
• 45:31
  just by finding the data, knowing how to buy it or acquire
• 45:35
  it and extracting it and assimilating it.
• 45:37
  And so this data company that I've got, we kind of use it for
• 45:42
  digital marketing and that kind of stuff.
• 45:44
  But it's taught us a lot of things too.
• 45:47
  And there's like, we're in the middle of a demographic shift in
• 45:50
  our country, and it happened because of the pandemic.
• 45:56
  Anytime throughout history there's been a pandemic, it
• 45:58
  doesn't matter it was influenza or bubonic plague or the Spanish
• 46:00
  flu, 1919, yadda, yadda, yadda. It's all the same thing.
• 46:04
  You get a ruling government entity that creates a set of
• 46:06
  guidelines that human beings have to respond to.
• 46:09
  And So what happened during the pandemic was we locked a bunch
• 46:12
  of people down in urban areas surrounded by concrete, and they
• 46:15
  couldn't go to church, they couldn't go to the gym, they
• 46:17
  couldn't get their hair cut, they couldn't go to comedy
• 46:19
  shows. They couldn't see their friends
• 46:20
  and their family. You had to be mashed up.
• 46:23
  It made people really uneasy because that's not natural for,
• 46:28
  you know, humans. I mean, we learn more
• 46:31
  interacting with people directly one-on-one than than we do
• 46:35
  anywhere else one. But but we are very social
• 46:38
  creatures. We're social by survival
• 46:41
  mechanisms. I mean, we gathered in groups of
• 46:44
  50 when, you know, we were out competing with the Neanderthals.
• 46:47
  And that's kind of how we were able to out compete them.
• 46:50
  And it's that unique kind of tribal collection that is, you
• 46:55
  know, part of humanity. And you can't take people away
• 46:58
  from that. So locking them all down in
• 47:01
  urban areas surrounded by concrete made them uneasy.
• 47:04
  And so there's some social and some cultural stuff that's
• 47:06
  driving the movement. There's also economic stuff
• 47:09
  that's driving the movement. So three of the four fastest
• 47:13
  growing states post pandemic are Tennessee, Texas and Florida.
• 47:16
  And they all have one thing in common.
• 47:18
  That's a zero state income tax. The Trump tax cuts got rid of
• 47:23
  the SALT deductions. And so it used to be that you
• 47:25
  could deduct all your state level taxes from your federal
• 47:27
  ticket before you sent your check in.
• 47:29
  Well, the rates went down, but all those deductions went away.
• 47:31
  And so it states very, very high tax states.
• 47:35
  It became even less appealing to live in them from a financial
• 47:38
  standpoint. And then like you've kind of
• 47:42
  seen it with this most recent election, but getting to the
• 47:44
  social, social and cultural stuff that's creating a lot of
• 47:46
  the movement in our country. You know, the news media and
• 47:51
  what's happened with free speech and what's happened with
• 47:55
  reporting and what's happened in what the propaganda the media
• 48:01
  has been telling us versus what everyday Joes see on the ground
• 48:05
  and understand to be truthful and not truthful have been so
• 48:09
  disconnected for so long that there's a large distrust there.
• 48:12
  And people want to get away from urban areas.
• 48:15
  They want to get away from larger cities living there.
• 48:19
  They don't want their families to be a part of their, they kind
• 48:21
  of want to get back to the, I don't want to say the Mayberry
• 48:23
  lifestyle of a smaller town, families, yards, that kind of
• 48:27
  stuff. But that is an appeal to people.
• 48:29
  So people want to move away from places that don't literally look
• 48:35
  at the world the same way that they do.
• 48:36
  And they want to come to places where people do look at the
• 48:39
  world the same way that they do. And there's this kind of natural
• 48:42
  movement. We've seen it in the most recent
• 48:44
  election, but it's in the data and it's been in the data for
• 48:46
  the past four years of getting kind of back to old, good old
• 48:50
  fashioned values. And that's kind of coming.
• 48:53
  So it it's, it's really interesting the stuff that you
• 48:56
  can learn just analyzing data. And So what, what are you doing
• 49:01
  with this data? Are you using it?
• 49:03
  Are you collecting it, analyzing and reselling it?
• 49:05
  Is it what's? What's the purpose?
• 49:08
  I haven't done anything with it at all to that extent.
• 49:11
  And you know, when I did this back in 2020, this was a lot of
• 49:15
  elbow grease. We were just, you know, bored
• 49:17
  during the pandemic and figuring out stuff.
• 49:20
  Artificial intelligence has come in.
• 49:22
  All of the other big players have gotten involved and started
• 49:25
  looking and figuring the stuff out.
• 49:26
  So we basically back in 2020, started figuring out that, hey,
• 49:29
  it looks like there's going to be a demographic shift coming.
• 49:31
  And now here in 2024, moving into 2025, all that stuff kind
• 49:35
  of played out. And quite frankly, it takes an
• 49:38
  incredible amount of money to invest to be able to keep up
• 49:41
  with all of the other technology companies out there.
• 49:43
  And it's really not the smartest use of my resources.
• 49:45
  It's more of a it's a fun place to go to learn stuff you know
• 49:48
  fast than anything. So it's clear from a lot of the
• 49:54
  comments that you're making that you have an interest in
• 49:59
  politics. But I've got to ask you why
• 50:04
  you're you're a nice guy. You've got successful
• 50:07
  businesses. Sounds like you've got a
• 50:08
  wonderful family. Like, I don't know, maybe I've
• 50:12
  got the wrong view of it, but I see politics is just this dirty
• 50:16
  place to play. Like what's?
• 50:17
  What's your attraction to it? How much time you got?
• 50:21
  How much time you want to spend on it?
• 50:23
  It, it would be very, very easy for me to keep my head down, be
• 50:27
  involved with my family, grow businesses and, and live a, a, a
• 50:32
  life under the not really under the radar.
• 50:34
  Because one of the things that we did to really grow our
• 50:36
  businesses is that I did a bunch of crazy, wild, entertaining
• 50:39
  commercials. And I've done them for years and
• 50:41
  years and years and years. And in an age where people can
• 50:44
  Fast forward through commercials, we figured out if
• 50:46
  you do something just crazy and entertaining enough, it makes
• 50:49
  people want to slow down and look at the car accident.
• 50:51
  And so entertaining marketing has always been a part of what
• 50:54
  we well. Like chicken soup kind of thing
• 50:56
  or what? And then some you should go
• 50:58
  check, go onto YouTube and check out Dutch Miller Kia
• 51:00
  commercials. You'll, you'll laugh for, for,
• 51:03
  you know, a couple of hours. But it, it, it would be easy,
• 51:07
  right? That that would be an easy thing
• 51:08
  to do. And I think that if you have the
• 51:13
  aptitude and the ability and you see a serious set of problems,
• 51:17
  then you are morally and socially obligated to get
• 51:20
  involved and fix them. And so I'm not ADC guy.
• 51:24
  I don't like that place at all. That's not anything that is a
• 51:27
  part of what I want to do. But I do look at the state of
• 51:30
  West Virginia that I love with all my heart.
• 51:32
  And I see a serious set of problems.
• 51:34
  And the politicians, one, weren't smart enough to figure
• 51:37
  it out. And two, they don't have the
• 51:40
  aptitude and the ability involved to do the things that
• 51:43
  are necessary at the exact time that we are in right now with
• 51:47
  humanity. So layers of problems.
• 51:50
  But with the state, we've been declining in population and have
• 51:54
  an aging population. And it's going to create the
• 51:58
  perfect storm where eventually the bond ratings get cracked and
• 52:03
  dramatically raises the cost of government.
• 52:05
  And we have a state that has too much government to begin with.
• 52:09
  And so there'll be some deep austerity and that will be a bad
• 52:13
  day for West Virginia. It'll be bad.
• 52:16
  The flip side, we know there's a demographic shift in the country
• 52:20
  and we know there's movement. And the way to really solve
• 52:23
  what's happening in West Virginia is to grow the
• 52:24
  population. Well, how do you do that?
• 52:26
  You have to grow the economy. And people that are best at
• 52:30
  growing the economy are business people.
• 52:32
  And I know with the exact unique time that we are in, no one else
• 52:37
  could do what needed to be done. I lost the election that I ran
• 52:42
  in, but I'm going to get right back and do it all over again as
• 52:44
  soon as the opening happens because it's the same thing.
• 52:48
  The problems still haven't changed.
• 52:50
  And West Virginia has been extracted for a really long
• 52:53
  period of time. We produced a bunch of coal.
• 52:57
  We powered basically the growth of our country from, you know,
• 53:01
  World War 2 on and and even before then and don't have a lot
• 53:05
  to show for it. And so we've kind of been
• 53:08
  extracted. And if you think the world that
• 53:11
  we're in right now, you think about it, we're witnessing the
• 53:14
  formation of technological oligarchies, NVIDIA, Facebook,
• 53:20
  Meta, Tesla, Starlink, Amazon, Google, and when artificial
• 53:25
  intelligence comes into all of this stuff, I'm not involved in
• 53:29
  the coding. I'm not involved in the
• 53:31
  ownership. You're not involved in the
• 53:32
  coding. You're not involved in the
• 53:34
  ownership. And the single entity that is
• 53:36
  going to impact humanity more than anything else that we've
• 53:38
  ever done since, you know, interchangeable parts.
• 53:43
  We we aren't West Virginia is not going to have any say in
• 53:46
  that. But we do have value added.
• 53:49
  And our value added in what the emerging 21st century economy is
• 53:53
  going to be is the ability to produce massive amounts of
• 53:55
  power. So we have an incredible amount
• 53:58
  of coal. We have an incredible amount of
• 54:00
  natural gas. We have more water that passes
• 54:03
  through the state of West Virginia than any other state in
• 54:05
  the country. Is that right?
• 54:07
  Yeah. And we also own the Ohio River
• 54:09
  to the high watermark of Ohio. So the greatest wars of my great
• 54:15
  grandkids lifetime, it's not going to be fought over diamonds
• 54:17
  or dollars or gold or cryptocurrency.
• 54:19
  It's going to be fought over water.
• 54:21
  That is the single most important entity of life on
• 54:24
  planet earth. You think about what's happening
• 54:26
  out West. Lake Mead's drying up, the
• 54:29
  Colorado rivers drying up. Dams in Nevada are shrinking to
• 54:32
  the point where they're uncovering bodies the mafia
• 54:34
  threw in there to build Las Vegas.
• 54:36
  California's got its own unique water issues, and we're the
• 54:39
  birth place of water for the East Coast, and there's also
• 54:42
  this underground ocean underneath us.
• 54:45
  And so it should be leveraged and it's something that we
• 54:50
  should capitalize on. What's the underground ocean?
• 54:53
  What? What's?
• 54:54
  That so there's an aquifer system you can get online and
• 54:57
  check them out. There's aquifer systems that are
• 54:59
  underneath the ground that show the flow and availability of
• 55:02
  water. And there's a huge one under
• 55:04
  West Virginia. It's like a big, huge ocean,
• 55:06
  basically. And for you, the the importance
• 55:08
  of water is not just the hydropower that you can extract
• 55:12
  from it, but also just what we need to use water to live, to
• 55:16
  consume and to water our plants. Is that right?
• 55:19
  Manufacturing chips takes incredible amount of water and
• 55:23
  the water's contaminated afterwards.
• 55:27
  That is a reason why the second one is water is the essence to
• 55:31
  life like you touched on. It's perpetual power that we
• 55:34
  aren't harnessing properly. It's all of that stuff.
• 55:38
  And so it's realizing that we've got something the rest of the
• 55:41
  country is going to need and the rest of the world's going to
• 55:43
  need, and we should leverage it to do something to benefit our
• 55:46
  people for once. So the the grand idea that I had
• 55:49
  was to leverage all the coal, the natural gas, all of the
• 55:53
  water, and then geothermal power.
• 55:57
  According to the Department of Energy, we can produce more
• 55:59
  power with geothermal heat than Saudi Arabia can generate Btus
• 56:03
  of natural gas in West. Virginia.
• 56:06
  In West Virginia for geothermal power, yes.
• 56:10
  So when you Add all that stuff up, I think that we could
• 56:13
  dramatically increase the production of power and also
• 56:17
  drive down the cost dramatically for our people and use that as
• 56:21
  the foundation of, you know, all of our economic growth in the
• 56:23
  future. And I'm talking about reducing
• 56:25
  power, you know, cost by like 80%.
• 56:28
  And that would make a competitive advantage for West
• 56:30
  Virginia, and it would bring people and businesses to us.
• 56:33
  Draw the factories in, because who wouldn't want to take
• 56:36
  advantage of that much less expensive power?
• 56:38
  Exactly right. And so with the water and the
• 56:42
  power thing as well, artificial intelligence is going to require
• 56:44
  an incredible amount of power, incredible amount of power
• 56:48
  you're going to have to keep producing.
• 56:49
  That's why they're already looking at buying up nuclear
• 56:51
  power plants to fuel a lot of the artificial intelligence
• 56:56
  growth that's going to happen. And the rest of the country has
• 56:58
  power needs big time. And so we need to be able to
• 57:03
  provide power. We've got a dilapidated utility
• 57:07
  grid system in our country that's going to have to be
• 57:09
  refurbished because we like in the automotive business, just
• 57:14
  the one, the one decision to try to turn 10% of the cars on the
• 57:18
  road today to electric vehicles would cause rampant brownouts
• 57:22
  and blackouts countrywide, 10%. So there's a game to play here
• 57:29
  because we, the technology that's coming, we need to play a
• 57:33
  part in it. And the way that we can do that
• 57:35
  in West Virginia is by power and natural resources.
• 57:39
  And my thought is instead of being a state that's been
• 57:41
  extracted that's very, very poor, doesn't have a lot to show
• 57:44
  for it. I want us to be a rich state
• 57:46
  that manages the state more like a business and looks at where we
• 57:50
  are and makes calculated strategic decisions to benefit
• 57:54
  the value added we can have in the emerging 21st century
• 57:57
  economy and at the same time, take care of our people.
• 58:00
  Because, you know, you think about cutting power by 80%.
• 58:04
  You know, yeah, businesses will come to us.
• 58:06
  That'll be great for economic activity.
• 58:08
  But our state is very poor, too. And so you think about Jim and
• 58:11
  Susie Adkins, and both of them are on Social Security and
• 58:14
  they're 70 years old and they're living on a, you know, a double
• 58:16
  wide with a white picket fence. You cut their power bill by 80%.
• 58:20
  You've done something incredibly impactful for their lives as
• 58:22
  well. And that's what I think good
• 58:24
  government is. So those are all the reasons why
• 58:29
  I wanted to get involved. So, Chris, you're a guy who
• 58:33
  likes to win, is accustomed to winning.
• 58:36
  What was it like for you losing that election?
• 58:40
  It hurts something that happens in a very public way.
• 58:43
  Yeah, losing hurts. I've got pretty thick skin and
• 58:48
  there what really got me was there was an outside group that
• 58:51
  spent $20 million in the primary, the governor's primary
• 58:54
  in West Virginia. 90% of that was spent attacking me, I guess
• 58:59
  because I was the, the, the dangerous entity.
• 59:01
  I don't know but I this is the. Primary election or the main
• 59:06
  election the. Primary election.
• 59:09
  I ran in a primary for West Virginia and there were four of
• 59:11
  us. I was the only business person,
• 59:14
  and there was this big large pack from out of state that had
• 59:17
  a favorite candidate that was running, and they spent all this
• 59:21
  money attacking me. And they used to talk about the
• 59:23
  crazy commercials that we've done to grow the business.
• 59:26
  They, you know, used all of that stuff and just said all kinds of
• 59:29
  terrible things about me that weren't true.
• 59:30
  But that's politics, so. And so you want to get back into
• 59:34
  this, You want to go back into this dirty cesspool in politics.
• 59:39
  I got thick skin. I really don't care what people
• 59:40
  say about me. I just want to do the right
• 59:42
  thing. And there was a large group of
• 59:44
  people that really thought I was going to do a great job as well.
• 59:47
  And now the one thing that I had that was a problem was I didn't
• 59:50
  have name ID all around the state.
• 59:53
  Well, when all that money's spent attacking you, guess what
• 59:56
  you've got now, Name ID. So I now have more money that's
• 1:00:00
  been spent saying my name all around West Virginia than
• 1:00:05
  anybody else. So there's a benefit to it.
• 1:00:09
  You just got to find the upside. So there's a common thread here,
• 1:00:13
  your personality and the, the course of your life.
• 1:00:16
  You, you don't give up, like throwing in the towel, not an
• 1:00:18
  option. So you're, you're coming back
• 1:00:20
  for round two. What's the game plan this time?
• 1:00:23
  What did you learn the first time around that you think gives
• 1:00:27
  you a better shot at being successful?
• 1:00:34
  Did a lot of things right. Politics is kind of a fickle
• 1:00:38
  thing. I would craft the campaign
• 1:00:44
  around the culture that I've created inside of the businesses
• 1:00:48
  and replicate that. That's what I would do
• 1:00:52
  differently. I would take what I know works
• 1:00:56
  and what I've always done and replicate that inside of the
• 1:00:59
  structure of the campaign. That's what I'd do differently.
• 1:01:03
  I'd make it less sterile and more fun and warm and
• 1:01:07
  entertaining. But it was, you know, you make
• 1:01:10
  mistakes, right? Anything you know that that's
• 1:01:15
  new or different, you have to learn as you go.
• 1:01:18
  And you rely on really, really smart people and consultants to
• 1:01:22
  guide you and you make decisions and that creates, you know, what
• 1:01:29
  the culture of the campaign is. And I'd much rather be directly
• 1:01:32
  involved in those decisions and that controlling that culture
• 1:01:35
  moving forward. And that would be the one thing
• 1:01:38
  that I do differently, I think. Is there any way to proactively
• 1:01:43
  combat what I'm going to assume is more negative attacks coming
• 1:01:47
  your way? Clearly they see you as a
• 1:01:49
  threat. This is probably the pattern is
• 1:01:52
  likely to repeat itself. So I've got some tricks up my
• 1:01:57
  sleeve that include copywriting and trade marking that I didn't
• 1:02:02
  quite pull out previously, but now we've got it all set up to
• 1:02:06
  where it's going to be very, very difficult for that to
• 1:02:08
  happen again in the future. Is it appropriate to say more
• 1:02:12
  about that at this time, or is that better left unspoken?
• 1:02:15
  I better left unspoken, but I I guess I dare you.
• 1:02:24
  Come and get me. So Chris, you're a father.
• 1:02:28
  You've got three kids. I think you said two teenage
• 1:02:31
  boys, 1517 and an 11 year old daughter that you're all going
• 1:02:35
  to end up working for someday. How do you take and teach your
• 1:02:39
  kids all of the experience, the knowledge, the wisdom that
• 1:02:44
  you've accumulated over the years?
• 1:02:46
  What's your approach to parenting like?
• 1:02:48
  I married a fantastic, fantastic one.
• 1:02:52
  My wife Cassie is absolutely the best thing about me, and she's a
• 1:02:56
  better person than me and she's a fantastic mother.
• 1:03:04
  She's the reason why I'm sober and I'm her biggest fan on
• 1:03:10
  planet Earth. And watching her be a mom's like
• 1:03:12
  watching, you know, Da Vinci sculpt, you know, she's just
• 1:03:17
  really, really good at it. And I get to at least help him
• 1:03:19
  take part in it. You'll, you'll laugh at this.
• 1:03:21
  My daughter when she was like 3 or 4 years old, really instantly
• 1:03:24
  saw, you know, Daddy's the boss at work, Mommy's the boss at
• 1:03:27
  home. Like, she saw that and got it
• 1:03:28
  really, really quickly and. From the mouths of the I'm.
• 1:03:32
  I'm I'm five, 10511 and about 210 lbs and my wife's 5 foot
• 1:03:37
  nothing and 110 lbs soaking wet and she's probably the only
• 1:03:41
  human being on planet earth that I'm scared of.
• 1:03:44
  She's a she's a tough little cookie and it she's a great mom.
• 1:03:50
  And you know, my job is I talk to the kids all the time.
• 1:03:54
  I talk to them like they're real people.
• 1:03:55
  I talk to them about real world experiences.
• 1:03:58
  And you know, we have a parenting philosophy that we
• 1:04:00
  want to raise honey Badgers. I don't know if you've ever seen
• 1:04:03
  the honey badger videos there. Honey Badgers are these
• 1:04:06
  creatures in Africa that will like fight lions and they'll
• 1:04:11
  like bite the heads off of cobra snakes after they've been
• 1:04:13
  getting bitten. And then they'll pass out from
• 1:04:15
  the venom. They'll wake up and eat the
• 1:04:16
  snake. They'll, you know, they'll,
• 1:04:18
  they'll, they'll grab, you know, beehives and just eat all the
• 1:04:22
  honey while the bees are stinging them.
• 1:04:24
  Pass out from the bee stings, wake up and keep eating the
• 1:04:26
  honey. They're just, they're incredible
• 1:04:28
  creatures and they're just relentless.
• 1:04:30
  And my wife and I figure that if we just raise honey Badgers that
• 1:04:32
  are nice to other people, they're going to be OK.
• 1:04:36
  And in the world that they're coming up into, they're not as
• 1:04:42
  they're not as tough as our. You're a Gen.
• 1:04:44
  Xer, aren't you? I don't know what cat.
• 1:04:47
  I'm 50 years old. I forget what your bucket that
• 1:04:49
  puts me. In I'm a Gen.
• 1:04:50
  Xer, I'm 45 and you know, we're pretty tough generation just on
• 1:04:54
  the aggregate and the generation that's coming up, I think a lot
• 1:04:57
  of these kids are smarter than anybody realizes.
• 1:04:59
  That's probably the smartest generation in human history
• 1:05:02
  that's coming up. But they're also emotionally a
• 1:05:04
  little more called, a little softer.
• 1:05:07
  And so, you know, everybody's staring at screens all the time,
• 1:05:11
  yadda, yadda, yadda. Figured we just make our kids
• 1:05:15
  relentless hard workers that are good to other human beings, that
• 1:05:18
  it's going to be easier for them to be successful than it was for
• 1:05:20
  us do. Your kids work with you at all?
• 1:05:24
  Do they get to see how you engage in a work setting?
• 1:05:26
  All the time. They, they see me work from
• 1:05:29
  home, you know, they, they see me at work a lot.
• 1:05:34
  They know what you know, what Dad does, and we talk about it a
• 1:05:37
  lot. So how do they feel about your
• 1:05:42
  political ambitions? They got it.
• 1:05:46
  They got it. They understood.
• 1:05:48
  And their relentless kids, they, you know, handled it really,
• 1:05:52
  really well. So we talk about these things at
• 1:05:57
  dinner all the time. We talk about life, we talk
• 1:05:59
  about the world. We teach our kids, you know,
• 1:06:02
  everything that we, you know, everything that we can.
• 1:06:06
  And part of that's being brutally honest, right?
• 1:06:08
  You can either look at the world the way that it is or the way
• 1:06:11
  that you wish it to be with, you know, unicorns and rainbow
• 1:06:14
  sprinkles. And the only way that you can
• 1:06:17
  actually turn the world into the way that you wish it to be is to
• 1:06:20
  truly understand the way that it is.
• 1:06:22
  And that's that. And people are the most amazing
• 1:06:26
  things on planet Earth. But also at the same time, can
• 1:06:29
  be challenges and how you treat people matters, but also being
• 1:06:35
  very, very, you know, factual about stuff when you're talking
• 1:06:38
  about educating your kids really does matter.
• 1:06:41
  One of the things, yeah, don't sugarcoat it.
• 1:06:44
  And any scenario that happens, one of the first exercises we
• 1:06:47
  always go through, we're talking about it is follow the money.
• 1:06:50
  So this is happening. This is what's being reported.
• 1:06:52
  But what's really going on here, what's really happening?
• 1:06:56
  And then digging into the details to show, I show my kids
• 1:06:59
  that really most of the stuff that happens in the world today
• 1:07:02
  is about money in some way, shape or form.
• 1:07:04
  And that really is what influences how decisions are
• 1:07:06
  made. When you understand that, you're
• 1:07:09
  better off because it is what it is.
• 1:07:14
  Chris, I've just got one more question for you, but before I
• 1:07:16
  ask it, I want to do 2 things. Everyone listening today, you
• 1:07:19
  loved today's content, I'm sure. Please hit the like, share or
• 1:07:22
  subscribe button on your favorite podcast app.
• 1:07:24
  Chris, I want also want to let people know the best way to get
• 1:07:27
  in touch with you, whether it's they're interested in what
• 1:07:29
  you're doing in politics, they're interested in some of
• 1:07:32
  the business stuff that you're doing or the boxing crew,
• 1:07:34
  whatever it is like how should they connect with you?
• 1:07:37
  I've got emails c.miller@dutchmillerauto.com if
• 1:07:42
  you want to e-mail me personally, I'm on Facebook.
• 1:07:45
  I'm on Instagram. I think you know, my Facebook is
• 1:07:48
  my name Chris Miller. There's also still a Miller for
• 1:07:51
  Governor Facebook page is up there.
• 1:07:53
  And all the consultants told me you need to get rid of that.
• 1:07:55
  I thought, let's just see what happens.
• 1:07:57
  So it's still up and running. And I'm on Twitter as well,
• 1:08:02
  which is Chris Miller of West Virginia or Chris Miller?
• 1:08:07
  Chris Miller of WV and I'm on Instagram as well, and that's,
• 1:08:13
  and I gotta remember what that one is real quick.
• 1:08:15
  When's the next election? That depends.
• 1:08:20
  If there is a vacancy in the governor's office, then they'll
• 1:08:24
  be a special election that occurs.
• 1:08:26
  And a vacancy might happen because he moves on to a
• 1:08:29
  presidential appointment or. Or runs for Senate with an
• 1:08:34
  opening in a Senate seat and then if not, it's four years
• 1:08:38
  from now. OK, so.
• 1:08:41
  Like 4 years is sort of the scheduled time, sooner if
• 1:08:44
  something else transpires. Correct and it's Chris Miller of
• 1:08:49
  Dutch is my Instagram handle. OK.
• 1:08:50
  We'll have all those handles and e-mail addresses and everything
• 1:08:54
  in the the show nuts for folks. But Chris, the last question I
• 1:08:56
  have for you is, I'm kind of curious as you look into your
• 1:08:59
  crystal ball, what do you see being kind of the big changes
• 1:09:03
  coming to the car industry in the next couple of years?
• 1:09:07
  Technology's gonna streamline stuff.
• 1:09:11
  It's not going to change the way that people think.
• 1:09:13
  It's never going to be Walmart. Technology will influence and
• 1:09:19
  improve what happens with the availability of financing.
• 1:09:22
  It will improve a sales person's ability to sell a car faster and
• 1:09:29
  with less management involvement.
• 1:09:32
  And so kind of where I think it's one of the next five years
• 1:09:34
  is that sales people are going to be walking around with
• 1:09:36
  tablets and scanning and information, loading it in.
• 1:09:39
  The computer algorithms are going to prepackage and let you
• 1:09:43
  understand exactly the right car that that customer needs to be
• 1:09:47
  at based on their own credit criteria.
• 1:09:49
  And then there's just gonna be clips and clicks and stuff.
• 1:09:51
  And the documents will be all done through thumb drives or
• 1:09:54
  emailed and be electronic. And it'll be a faster system
• 1:09:58
  because one of the things that you go, anybody goes around the
• 1:10:00
  country, buys a car right now, it takes too long most of the
• 1:10:04
  time, you know, in in the instantaneous world, we want
• 1:10:08
  stuff done now. And you know, you've got all of
• 1:10:11
  these different things that take time, Bank applications,
• 1:10:14
  submitting your information to a bank for approval, finalizing,
• 1:10:18
  you know, any sort of liens on anything else that's out there,
• 1:10:21
  making sure you're moving around the money to perfect the
• 1:10:24
  transaction, perfect the liens. Those things just take time.
• 1:10:27
  And so narrowing the three hour window it takes to buy a car
• 1:10:31
  from start to finish down to 15 minutes is one of the things
• 1:10:34
  that I think is is going to be coming in our in, you know, in
• 1:10:38
  our industry over the next five years.
• 1:10:40
  That will be the most impactful thing.
• 1:10:42
  The rest of it is though, it's a car.
• 1:10:45
  There's new ones and there's used ones and there's the free
• 1:10:47
  market and people get to choose what they like and we get to
• 1:10:50
  help them do that. So that's the.
• 1:10:52
  Dealership model itself changing or going away.
• 1:10:56
  Tesla's obviously decided not to go that route, but most of the
• 1:10:59
  other major car manufacturers are using it.
• 1:11:02
  Do you do you see that structure modifying it all or that's here
• 1:11:06
  to stay? Anything can happen, but I do
• 1:11:08
  think that it's here to stay. And one of the things that
• 1:11:10
  really makes that so appealing is the amount of cash that it
• 1:11:14
  takes to operate a car dealership and perfect all the
• 1:11:18
  liens with every single transaction.
• 1:11:20
  And so that's one of the reasons why Tesla, for example, hasn't
• 1:11:23
  grown way further when it comes to this dealer distribution
• 1:11:26
  points. And because they're they're
• 1:11:28
  doing it themselves, right? That's one of the reasons why is
• 1:11:31
  because it would take massive amounts of capital and cash to
• 1:11:35
  be able to do that even further. So yeah, that that that's kind
• 1:11:43
  of what I see happening with the industry.
• 1:11:44
  And I don't think the franchise model is going away very often
• 1:11:47
  because or very soon because it it makes sense.
• 1:11:52
  It makes sense for the stage that we're in.
• 1:11:55
  And one of the things that car manufacturers have always taught
• 1:11:59
  us is that they're really, really good at building cars.
• 1:12:01
  They're not really, really good at selling cars.
• 1:12:04
  So back in the 90s, Ford bought all the car dealerships, all the
• 1:12:08
  Ford dealerships around Indianapolis paid a premium for
• 1:12:12
  them and an experiment where they wanted to run everything
• 1:12:14
  and see if they could use that and expand it out through the
• 1:12:16
  rest of the country. And they failed miserably.
• 1:12:19
  Why? Because there's a difference
• 1:12:22
  between building a car and manufacturing and selling a car,
• 1:12:26
  and in particular, used cars, which fluctuate in value all of
• 1:12:30
  the time. And you've got to get that right
• 1:12:33
  every single time when it comes to how much you appraise a used
• 1:12:36
  car for and what your liquidation strategy is.
• 1:12:40
  Because if you put $15,000 in a car that is worth $10,000 and
• 1:12:46
  then hold it for too long and go to sell it, you're going to have
• 1:12:49
  a larger loss than $5000. And so it's those decisions like
• 1:12:54
  that that, you know, became their, their issue in their
• 1:12:58
  Achilles heel. And so they're two totally
• 1:13:00
  separate businesses. They're they're different art
• 1:13:02
  forms. So one of the large
• 1:13:05
  manufacturers has tried to sort of take over the franchise model
• 1:13:09
  didn't work. They're seeing, as they have for
• 1:13:13
  decades, a lot a great deal of success with the current model,
• 1:13:17
  it's likely to stay put. Yeah, One of the other things
• 1:13:19
  that is is pretty impactful all around the country with car
• 1:13:24
  dealerships in mid sized and smaller communities in
• 1:13:26
  particular, not as much in large cities now, is that they have a
• 1:13:30
  direct connection inside of a community.
• 1:13:31
  And so all the employees that are there are members of the
• 1:13:34
  community. Their family members were part
• 1:13:35
  of it. They sponsor baseball teams, you
• 1:13:39
  know, Little League, Little League stuff.
• 1:13:41
  They do, you know, food drives. They help out with charitable
• 1:13:45
  giving. They're just directly involved
• 1:13:47
  inside of communities. And that's also important.
• 1:13:51
  And big business, big manufacturers don't do that at
• 1:13:54
  all. So that's one of the other needs
• 1:13:55
  and the differences. Well, Chris, I want to be the
• 1:13:58
  first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your
• 1:14:01
  story with us today. I'm really grateful for it.
• 1:14:04
  It really enjoyed the conversation and man thanks for
• 1:14:07
  thinking of me. This was a lot of fun.
• 1:14:10
  Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
• 1:14:13
  podcast. Thanks for learning with us
• 1:14:14
  today.