Dangers Of Car Dealerships with Tony Marzullo

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome the Money in Wealth with John Hobryant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey,
this is John Hobriant, and this is Money and Wealth
on the Black Effect Network. And we're at iHeart Atlanta

(00:23):
headquarters today because today I bring in my first official guest.
Now that must mean this dude is pretty special. Could
be a lady, by the way, this particular case, it's
a dude. It's my dude. It's my friend Tony Marzulo,
and Tony Marzulo, who I've known for about fifteen years.

(00:47):
It's a car Fishinado. And we're gonna talk about pimping today. No, no,
not that kind of pimping. We're talking about those in
the automotive industry who by here, pay here, basically finance here,
and then I would say repossess here. I'm getting ahead
of myself. Let me. It's gonna be a this is
gonna be an on and popping episode. So everybody, I

(01:09):
want you to tune in and tell your friends and
sit back with a cup of tea and let's have
a real conversation about how things work. Now, you know,
I would say, if I was in front of you
something other than how things work. You can figure the
rest of it out how stuff works. That we saying,
how does this economy work? Like we're gonna unpack all

(01:30):
of this, We're gonna demystify the economy, demystify free enterprise
and capitalism. And I talked in an early episode about
generally speaking, how the automative motive industry works at the
car dealership level. I talked in general terms about the
three businesses within a car dealership at the part that

(01:51):
sells the car, the part that finances the car, the
part that maintains the car. But I'm not a car guy.
I'm not I'm a car guy. I don't own a
car dealership. I don't own I'm not in the business.
We have credibility walking in front of us. This is
one of the good guys. His name is Tony Marzulo.
He is the proprietor the owner of Gas Motor Cars

(02:12):
and Marietta, Georgia. I have bought and sold more cars
with him and through him than i'd like to admit.
There's also a really cool story that we'll tell about
a group of cars, a bunch of cars I bought
at one time. I just called him out of the blue.
One day. We'll talk about that, but let's talk about
him first, and we're gonna get into something really, really
inspiring in the midst of this drama and tragedy that's

(02:36):
so bad even the La Times rode a three part
series on this buy here, pay here business. Now, by
the way, is everybody in this business bad people? Of
course not. Are there good people in this business? Of
course there are. They're good people in the check cashing businesses,
good people in the payday lending business, and good people
and almost every sector. That's not who we're talking about today.

(02:58):
So let's talk about one of the good guys. Tony Marzulo.
You've been the distance for twenty five years.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Twenty five years, and tell him a little.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Bit about where. I know you think you're honorary black
or something, but you're Jewish, right.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Half Jewish, half Italian Black by adoption.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Who adopted you other than you?

Speaker 2 (03:18):
But I did do the twenty three and meter and
it says I am one percent African, so well was
in there somewhere.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, yeah, that accounts for your coolness factor. He's my
brother from another mother. I love this dude. He's smart
as a whip and funny, I mean not intentionally funny,
like irreverent, funny like get out of my face, I'm
tired of talking to you. Kind of funny like he
like he like, was that just disrespectful? Did he just was? He?

(03:43):
Was he actually rude? Yeah, he's not only rude, he's
gone like he hung the phone up, like, look good
to have a customer in front of your goodbye click.
So uh, this is a really good guy and we're
talking about a really bad set of business practices that
luckily doesn't include him. You may not like Tony Merzulo,
but you'll never say he tried to screw you. And

(04:05):
that's a really important part of life. Now we're talking
about pimping. We're not talking about the pimping that happened
when I grew up in South central LA or Compton.
We're not talking about that kind of pimping. We're talking
about financial pimping. We're talking about people who are this
car industry part the part of the car industry where
you buy here, finance here, pay here, and I'll add

(04:25):
gets repoll here, get the car back here, and they
love it. This is the business model we're to talk about.
Where these companies actually love when they take back the car.
Most lenders don't want to take back the car. That's
how they make them money. But this is a whole
different situation. Now, let me clarify. We're not talking about
everybody in the automobile built industry. We're not talking about
most people in the automobile industry. We're not talking about

(04:48):
most people in the secondary automobile industry. We're talking about
a select group of people who prey on folks who
are financially illiterate, who have too much month at the
end of their money, who have broad, big, deep aspirations,
maybe some challenges with self esteem that get gets communicated

(05:08):
through their credit card or their car they're buying or whatever,
because they want to feel good about themselves. Nothing wrong
with that, but somebody's taking advantage of that, and that
angers me, and it also angers my brother Tony, and
we were just talking about this last week and I'm like,
we got to talk about this on the show. But
before we get into that, let's get into you just

(05:28):
real quickly. Why do you give a dang? Why do
you by the way, nice watch, why do you care
man like like you can always tell by the way
a really a really rich dude. He's got on a
raggedy T shirt, you know, a secondary hat that's that
or this this hat has his logo on it, of course,
and he just promoted it. He's got he's got on
some raggedy jeans and some not impressive shoes and a

(05:51):
great watch and nothing and no jewelry, no nothing else.
But you can guarantee the watches bang it right. That's
how you can tell a really really rich dude, right.
And I guarantee this is not Tony's only why she's
I'm talking about multiple Okay, we gonna start picking on.
So tell me how did you become like a decent
human being? Your Your wife is kind and gracious. She's
got more add than you though that's hard to do,

(06:13):
but she's kind and gracious. Your kids are really respectful
and kind. And I was happy to come to what
was the official I don't want to say it was.
It wasn't a bar mitzwell mitzell b missa. So I
got right with your daughter, which was beautiful. And I
haven't met one jerk around you that that is associated
with you. Everybody I've met your village. It's my village.

(06:35):
They're kind of my kind of people. Just met Craig
at Butler Tied just a really cool guy. Right, So,
how where did your decency come from?

Speaker 2 (06:42):
You know what I think growing up in Atlanta, being
native Atlanta and then and then owning and operating in
a business in Atlanta for twenty five years. I'm constantly
surrounded by other people in my village, and I kind
of lived by, you know, a sense of me and
and a code of ethics where I didn't want to

(07:04):
ever have a hard time sleeping at night. So I
kind of just make the decisions, multiple decisions every day,
knowing that I'm doing the right thing because I don't
want to get woken up in the middle of the
night thinking I didn't do the right thing. And I
also have family that's here. And the last thing I
ever wanted to hear was, Hey, I had dinner with
this guy last night. He says he bought a car

(07:26):
from you a couple of weeks ago, and you screwed him.
I don't need that coming back.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
To me, So bad juju, bad karma, bad juju. You
know you don't have any bad juju. You want to
make sure that you know your karma is cool. That's
that's so, that's one answer to why you operate. But
that really wasn't the question I was asking you. I
wasn't you know, you've given yourself a lot of credit
for running a good business. I know, I'm not talking
about that. You're not responsible for you your parents as somebody,

(07:55):
somebody made you a good dude, Like there was somebody
who I'm not giving you that credit. Who in your
life I've made you decent?

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Definitely my parents. Yeah, my dad was an entrepreneur. He
was a pharmacist, independent pharmacist. Also always did the right things.
Name with John, always did the right thing. Sometimes people
would come in and they didn't have enough money for
their co pay for their prescription, and he would just
give it to many ways and say, just pay me
back when.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
You have the money.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
So and I used to work there as a kid,
and I kind of I just picked up on that.
And you know, even and then his father, whose name
was Paul, one time we had a religious conversation. I
had a Jewish mom, I had a strict Italian Catholic dad,
and I had a grandfather who didn't really believe in God.
And I asked him one time, I said, what's up
with that? And he said, God's not gonna tell me

(08:42):
how I should or should not live my life. It
was just be a good person, do good things, and
don't be an ahole and don't be it just stuck.
And that's just kind of how I've always done, and
that's kind of what I try to instill in the
guys that are working for me at the dealership.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
I just.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Do the right thing. It's easier, there's plenty, and it's
profitable to do the right thing. It's a huge pie
with a lot of pieces, and everybody can eat. Especially
in the Atlanta market with the high end luxury car market,
everybody can eat. There's no reason to cut corners. There's
no reason to not just do the right thing to
make just that little bit more money because eventually it

(09:23):
runs its course and that karma does come back, and
karma's a bitch. It'll come back and it'll get you.
So yeah, we just sleep good at night doing things
the right way.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
So on that point, again, not everybody in this business
are bad people, but there's some real pieces of work
out here that are planned folks in this whole buy here,
pay here, finance here, I would add repossess here business again.
The La Times just did a three part series, not

(09:53):
just did, but did a three part series on this,
which I'll make sure that people can get a link
on so they can read it. But you had a
personal experience that sort of woke you up. You called
me last week and told me about the situation with
this young lady. I think she's afric American, correct, And

(10:14):
she came into the dealership. Is that right? No.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
So I'm involved with, and have been for many years
involved with a charity called Giving Grace, And that's exactly
what they do, is they give grace to people who
are just down on their luck and having a hard
time getting grace. And it may be something as minuscule
as somebody's thirty dollars short on their rent and if

(10:38):
they can't come up with the thirty dollars by tomorrow morning,
they're gonna be homeless. And I've been involved because you know,
a few dollars here and a few dollars there, when
you have an aggregate and a whole bunch of people
giving that thirty dollars here thirty dollars, that adds up
and it I think has been impactful. I know it's
been impactful. It's helped lots of people. So given the
fact that what I do for a living and have
been doing for twenty five years, I'm kind of the

(11:00):
go to for when these people that need grace, and
it's the majority are single moms, and if they need
help with something automotive, anything automotive, that could be we
have a mom that needs a set of tires. You
can't drive her car to work safely anymore. I've kind
of fallen on that sort and said, you know what,
when stuff like that comes up automotive, you guys call me,

(11:22):
and as much as I can do, I will do,
because I do feel that giving back is the best
way to live your life. I think everything comes full
circle and you pay it forward. So specifically to my
phone call to you last week.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
By the way, it's not like you have nine thousand
employees and five locations. You have one primary location. How
many employees.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Small family run operation. We've got a dozen employees.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
Right, but four or five primary employees that I see
around there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Yeah, we have in our main office, the kind of
the front of the house sales office. We've got three
dedicated sales guys, an internet guy and a back office man.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
The point of this is you don't have to be
a big business to be philanthropic and charitable. You can
be most businesses in America small businesses. And Tony's showing
you can do it as a small business. So all right,
so this you running this situation.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
I get a phone call from someone involved with the
charity that says, we've got a single mom. She's got
a vehicle that needs an engine, and we feel that
the cost of the engine is in excess of the
value of the car. Can you step in and try
to help this person out? And I said, sure, get
her on the phone, get the details of the story,

(12:30):
and is short, and there's no way a short version
of this story. So here is a lovely young woman
who has it together, in my opinion, has a job,
is doing the best she can.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
May not be financially literate. Let's just let's just.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Say she's not financially literate like many people, like many people.
And told me a story, and this is how the
story goes. In twenty eighteen, she needed an automobile, she
had a job, she needed a new car. Her credit
score did not put her in a position where she
could go to a mainstream tier one type of facility.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
The deal you being so polite. Her credit score, her
credit was toe up from the floor credit.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
I didn't get her credit score, honestly, but assume it
was totally jacked do.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
This is not how he talks to me. By the way,
when he's off camera, he's been very sweet. Anyway, She's
a nice lady, sweet lady with.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Credit was to lady with bad credits.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
So which doesn't make her a bad person.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Just doesn't make her a bad person, just maybe had
a bad financial decision some point in time in her life.
And she bought a vehicle in twenty eighteen. She bought
a three year old automobile from a from a buy here,
pay here a lot, one of the larger ones in
the country, so not a not a small one kind
of corner a lot. This is a massive it's an operation,

(13:46):
massive operation, the billions and billions of dollars in revenue.
And I'm not saying all people within the organization are
bad or the organization as a whole is a bad
There are bad apples and there are bad players in
that game. So she buys a car for twenty one
thousand dollars is what I recall.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Now, listeners, I want you to now pay close attention
to these numbers. This was twenty eighteen. She buys a car.
She's a mother, right, she's a mom. She's a mom.
She's got a job. She's not geting lazy about her
She's doing her thing. She's being responsible, she's paying her taxes.
She's a great American citizen who's just need transportations. She

(14:22):
buys this, She goes in a lot. She trusts these people.
She spends eighteen thousand hard on eighteen thousand, I think
twenty one. It happened in twenty eighteen. Yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Buys a three year old Nissan Altima, I believe. And
I don't recall what the mileage was, finances it. I
don't even know what the term was. I just know
that where we were at as of a week ago
was she had been paying five hundred dollars a month
at a twenty seven percent interest rate.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
Woozers, wow, wow.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Wow, twenty seven percent. It is just watered every two weeks,
so paying every two weeks. Every two weeks. No, no, no,
it's just two fifty every two weeks. So she's paying
five hundred bucks a month. So COVID hit. She lost
her job, which a lot of people did, she got
behind in her payments. Instead of repossessing the vehicle, they
just added an exorbitant amount of late fees and penalty

(15:17):
fees and put it back into the loan. Therefore, it's
accruing interest and compounding on the penalties as well.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
So let me translate what he just said in English.
So she owed two dollars and then she on the loan,
she owed another fifty cents on unpaid balance because she
had lost her job. They charged interest on the fifty cents,
compounding at twenty seven percent plus fees and probably acceleration

(15:49):
fees tied to a default, and they compounded that on
top of compounding that, on top of compounding that on
the original two dollars it was owned. So you can
get rich quick on compounding, and you can go broke
quick on compounding. Are you as you guys have heard
me say, you make money during the day, you build
wealth in your sleep. And if you hang around nine

(16:11):
broke people, you'll be the tenth. And so if you're
compounding in the reverse direction, you go broke real quick.
Think about sharecropping, like, no matter how hard our ancestors
worked back in the day, oddly enough, you just never
made enough money to earn a profit beyond what it
costs for the supplies on the farm you're on. And

(16:36):
you certainly never earn enough to buy get out of
debt with the owner of the farm or the alan
try to buy the property, which was the original deal.
This is a sort of a modern day version of that.
That's just prettied up. So she buys a car in
twenty eighteen, twenty one thousand dollars, and Jesus, six years.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
Later, six years later, she still owes fifteen thousand dollars
on this car.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
And she bought it for twenty one thousand dollars. Correct,
this is unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
She claims that her total amount of payments thus far
were thirty eight thousand dollars once you include the penalties
and the interest and the late fees.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
So again, tell you slow roll that for me again.
I need everybody. Don't veer off the road when you
hear this, pull over and listen. This is crazy. You
heard this properly. The principal ballance has balance has gone
down since twenty eighteen about six thousand dollars. She's paid
thirty eight thousand dollars. Thirty eight thousand dollars. The annual

(17:40):
interest rate is twenty seven percent. You literally can't get
out of this.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
No, she could have bought a Maserati instead, literally for
that kind of money thirty eight thousand dollars already paid,
still has a brand with a warranty, which yeah, still
has a balance of fifteen thousand.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
So do the math. And then the engine fell out.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
The engine fell out, so the costs of replacing the
engines about five thousand dollars. The car's fair market value
today just using standard automotive metrics to do fair market
values five grand.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
So the engine costs is the vehicle.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
Costs correct or in excess up because just the the
engine was not the only problem. She also told us
that the car has just been nothing but problems since
the day she had it. But she was she's kind
of chained to it. She didn't have a lot of options,
and to get this car, and to go with this
company that would approve her and put her in this
share cropping style loan, she's tied to them. So she

(18:40):
starts getting threatening phone calls and emails that they're going
to finally come repossess the car. They immobilize the vehicle.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
Oh they can do that remotely.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
They can do it remotely. I had offered to fix
the car. So from a philanthropy point of view, what
was I going to do for her to help? I
have a network of really really good mechanics all over
the city of Atlanta that are willing to help people
that need it and deserve it. And I was just
going to have a friend of mine that owns a
shop help fix the car. And I was going to

(19:09):
pay whatever it costs. So, whether it's replacing an engine,
fixing the engine, diagnosing what else could be potentially wrong
with the car, I was willing to do that to
keep her on the road, because guess what if she
doesn't have wheels, she can't get to work. She can't
get to work, she ain't gonna have a job, have
a job, She's not gonna be able to pay her rent.
Then she's gonna be homeless again. The woman has she
did tell me she has been homeless twice in her life.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
So I donated a car to her that we had
well well.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
Be Becka held on running by me again you did.
You're a for profit business.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Right, I'm a for profit business. You're a capitalist, right,
You're I'm a capitalist. But but but I felt that
it charged me.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
You always charged me full of freight.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
Yet but I didn't donate her a Bentley. I donated.
I donated a car that could get her from A
to B. It's not pretty to look at. It's something
that we've actually we bought years ago to use as
an extra vehicle, like a shop vehicle, right, because it
was more cost effective for her and for me, for
me to do that than try to fix her car,
which she'll never get out of.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
It is also very sweet of.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
You to never get out of the car.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
So yeah, and what I said, I appreciate that. I
know that. I know that people think you're just a
hard nosed business person, but that's actually, let's just take
a moment.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
I'm a softie.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
It was very sweet. So uh.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
And there's a couple other pieces of this puzzle. So yeah,
I mean the business model is and once again preface,
not everybody that's in the subprise i'm buy here, pay here,
arena is are all bad. But specific to this this
one most recent case that i've heard about. I know
how the business works. They sold her a car that

(20:45):
was not good from the get go. That car when
it breaks and they know it's going to break. This person,
she or anybody else in a similar situation, is faced
with some really awful decisions. Your live paycheck to paycheck.
Your car needs to be fixed. So what do you
do do You put the money towards fixing the car

(21:07):
so you can still get to work, but then you're
not gonna be able to make a car payment, at
which time they'll repossess the car, charge you storage fees,
flatbed fees, repossession fees, and then you got to go
get the car back. Anyways, that's option one. Option two,
they repossess the car, you don't ever come up with
the fees the money to get the car back. Then
they just sell somebody else, do it all over, and they.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
Jam up your credit In the midst of all this
correct which makes which makes.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
A bend situation even harder to get another.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
You look like a dead beat. Reality was you were
set up to fail from day one. This is modern
day share cropping.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
This is are stacked against anyone that gets into these
types of equations. And when we're talking. I'm hoping I
can give some insight on how to If you are
listening and you are someone that does have terrible credit,
you don't have to be scared of going to all
buy here, pay your hair lots there, just is there
is a standard operating procedure when buying any that should

(22:00):
be applied when buying these types of cars, and she
did none of those. And I'll get to that in
a second.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
Let's take a sanity break for a minute. So Tony
is about to get into both deeper good and deeper
bad on this situation. But what I want everybody listening

(22:24):
to this and watching this to understand is this, in
every situation, you have a table and on the one
side you have let's just call it the capitalist. On
the other side, you have the consumer. The capitalist job
is to extract as much money from you as they
can the highest price while delivering the least value for
that thing. That's their job to make a profit. Your

(22:44):
job is to extract the most value from the capitalists,
the producer, the entrepreneur, the manufacturer, whatever, the seller for
the least price. You want to get the least price
with the most value. They want to get the most
the biggest price with the least value. This is called
a negotiation, and it happens all the time. It's just

(23:05):
when you go into a store, it's pre negotiated. The
store has come up with through research what that price
is that they think is the sweet spot that you're
going to buy that thing from. But when you're going
to do something that is emotional, oftentimes people play on
your emotions and you add on financial illiteracy. So they

(23:25):
want to play on your intellectual or financial ignorance, emotions, ignorance,
low self esteem, desperation, whatever, And whenever you make a
decision emotionally, it's a bad decision. Now you have an
unweighted or out of balance negotiation because the person on
the other side, the capitalist in this example, is practicing

(23:46):
bad capitalism. They know they can pray on you. They do.
That's what Tony's about to explain. But don't get mad
at folks for doing what is their mission to do.
It is your mission to get the lowest price in
the highest value. It is their mission to get the
highest value and the lower extract the lowest and to
give you it well, the highest the price and the

(24:08):
lowest value, and a great negotiation is when both people
leave sort of unhappy because that's probably a pretty good deal, right,
Nobody got hosed and nobody got rich. It was, you know,
an okay deal. And that's not what he's about to describe.
But don't get mad at like how the world works.

(24:30):
That's just how the world works. And by the way,
but it doesn't work that way. If he can't make
a profit, then he can't pay his employees. And employees
can't pay their rent, they can't pay their car note,
they can't go to a restaurant. The restaurant goes broke,
the car the car lot goes broke, the state goes broke,
and there's no taxes. I mean, we all need the
system to work, but we don't need the system to
be working us, right, So this is the system that

(24:52):
was working over this lady, and now we're you're in
the middle of this thing. Back to you.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Yeah, So back to what I was saying. I feel
so terrible that because of financial literacy, people get in
that type of position. So do I make the car
payment and keep the car? Do I fix it and
can't make the car payment? Do I make the car payment,
then fix the car and not pay rent and potentially
get kicked out of mouse. You're screwed anyway, there's no
way out of it, and you know, so for this

(25:21):
specific individual, we felt it was the best move for
her to just give the car back, Just give it
back and start over. And that's what we did, gave
her a car.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
Did you try and negotiate with this company?

Speaker 2 (25:34):
I did not. I coached her on how to try
to negotiate once was getting also to the point of
getting the car un immobilized so I could actually get
it to a shop and get it diagnosed and see
if it's actually.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
The mobilized means that the car the car seller can
basically turn the car off while you're driving it.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Correct. Yeah, that way, it makes it easier for them
to repossess the car and then sell to somebody else
do the same thing all over again. So it's sad
because not only did she not understand the contract she
was getting into when she bought the car new, she
also didn't know what she was buying because she didn't
really do any research on who she was buying it

(26:17):
from or what she was buying, which is as two
key parts as to how she got in that position.
She bought a car that really wasn't that great out
of the gate.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
And it was a piece of crap.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yes, they or it could have been. But what I'm
getting at is is these a lot of these vehicles
that are sold at these types of places are designed
to fail, and the sooner they failed, the sooner they
get repossessed and sold to somebody else that they will
fail on. So from a advisor point of view, what
I can do to offer advice to anybody else who's
in this position is, if you're going to buy a car,

(26:48):
no matter where you're buying it from, whether it is
a new car franchise, Honda store, or a buy here,
pay here a lot, have a third party inspect the
car and tell you what you're buying. If you're an
automotive mechanic, great, check it out yourself. But most people
buying these cars at these types of places are not mechanics.
I'm not a mechanic. When I go buy a car,
I get it checked out. When I buy cars that

(27:08):
we're going to sell at our dealership for profit, I
get them checked out before I buy them, because you
know why, If I get them checked out and they're
really good, I'm going to make more profit if I
get them checked out and they're really bad, I buy
them for less, or I don't buy them at all.
Thus I don't put myself in a position where I'm
not profitable.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
So or somebody says that you saw me a lemon, correct, right,
So what happened with this lady?

Speaker 2 (27:31):
I imagine the car has now been officially repossessed and
they have or are in the process of selling it
to somebody else. I got her a car, But this
is another thing about being Do I gave it to her?

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (27:42):
No, no lose her job, no strings attached. She's her car,
she's driving it to work.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
Now.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
Only did I donate her car to her when the
subject matter of insurance came up, because legally I can't
sell a car that doesn't have an insurance, and I
sold the car. This is theoretically I sold the car
for a dollar. So I formed her the night before
she was going to come pick up the car that
she would need to have insurance. She has to be
legally insured in Georgia to drive a car. There's certain limits.

(28:09):
She said, okay, fine, people listen to this, and she
showed up the next morning and I said, do you
have insurance? She kind of gave me a face and
I said, so, what's up. She said, I found a
company and get insurance with but I can't pay for
it yet because I don't get my paycheck till the seventeenth.
This is last week. I said, how much is it?
She says it's two hundred and ninety dollars a month.
I said, fine, I'll pay for it, so you're legally

(28:31):
because I have some liability. I didn't want her driving
run around insured car, and you can pay me back
when you want. Oh no, no, I just said, I'll
just pay for it. And then she said, well, I
get paid on the seventeenth and the seventeenth I can
come give you the money for the insurance. I said,
that's up to you. I don't expect you to do it,
and I don't want you to do it, but if
you feel it's what you need to do, then sure
come back.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
And by the way, everybody, you have to have me back.
You have to have at least liability insurance. That's the law.
You want to have comp and collision if you can,
you know, if you can afford it. But because that's
the part that gets your car repaired for you, but
you have to at least have liability for in the
case you have an accident and it's your fault.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
So I asked her who she'd gotten the insurance through.
She said, some blah blah blah. It's a blah blah.
It's an app. It's not a company I've never even
heard of, and I've been doing this for twenty five years.
I get on the app just to call because I
wanted to see if I could pay and how I
could pay. So there's no phone number on this app.

(29:30):
So in my mind, I'm like, well, what if she's
on the side of the road and she needs to
call her insurance compan because she's been in an accident
or maybe utilized roadside service or whatever. There's no freaking
phone number. So I told her, let's investigate this.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
So this is if you search on the internet for
car insurance, you're gonna get like this entry come up,
and you may you may end up paying for this
because everybody's app a tized these days, app obsessed and
getting a situation where you actually have a situation and
you can't call the company. There's no number, no phone.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Number, just a live chat so I said, let me
just stop this. I called a universally known I'm not
going to advertise for them unless they want to send
me a hat or a T shirt. A universally known
insurance company picked up the phone, called there one eight
hundred number, got a lovely lady on the phone. Explained
to her the situation. I said, ma'am, I am donating
a car. It's worth about five thousand dollars. This lady

(30:25):
needs to get the bare minimum insurance to be legal
to drive in Georgia. What is it going to cost?
She gets a conference in or she's actually at my desk,
So we put her on speaker, gives her driver's license number,
her social Security number, her address, the last vehicle she owns,
so forth, and so I'm within three minutes. She spits
out a quote of two hundred and forty dollars a month, which.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Is which is considerably less than what she got off
the internet.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
Less with a more reputable company, right, with good reviews
and an actual phone number you can call. I then asked,
is there a discount for a pre payment and if
we were to pay six months in advance, which I
knew that the answer would be yes, but I wanted
to see what that discount was. It was a ten
percent discount, So then the insurance goes down to like
two hundred and twenty bucks a.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Month, maybe in a good driver discount.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Maybe correct. So I got softer and felt more than
it was my need after looking into this girl's face.
I mean, look, I'm very blessed. I've never been in
a position where I didn't know where I was going
to get two hundred dollars for my car insurance right,
and I decided to just prepay her insurance for six months.
Maybe it was the Jewish and me I felt better

(31:33):
by getting the discount. I don't know what it was.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Maybe you sow six cars that day and you make
you feel guilty because you made so much product as
you wanted to give back. Whatever it is, we are
thankful I.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Went ahead and prepaid her insurance, and that, honestly, I
think changed her life or her quality of life for
the next six months. And now she's fully insured with
the reputable insurance company with nothing to worry about, nor
does she have to worry about making payments for this insurance.
So I left work that day feeling good and bad.
I felt good that I had done something nice for
somebody who, by the way, was hysterical crying in my

(32:03):
parking lot, because I don't think anybody's ever done anything like.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
This for her without any strings attacks.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
No strings attached. I even went into my desk and
I even got a little extra gift for her, put
it in the center console. Didn't tell her about it.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
And Okay, okay, you're gonna just walk right past that,
because I know what it is. You're gonna walk past that.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
I felt that it would be in our best interest,
and it made me feel I was doing the right
thing by giving her a little bit of a cushion.
And that cushion means God forbid something else goes wrong
in her life or with that car, or with her rent,
or her refrigerator stops working next week, that she could
just go on a vacation from financial distress. So I

(32:45):
gave her a thousand dollars and I put it in
a center consols.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
What.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, I gave her a grand center console US currency
one hundred dollars bills.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
Yeah, that's beautiful, man.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
And I didn't tell her about it, and I waited
a minute for her to get home, and I sent
her a text saying, because I was like, oh crap,
if I forgot that, if she doesn't know what's in there,
she here car get broken into it, the car washing.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
The car wash is getting the money.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
So I texted her, check the center console before you
get out of the car. And you know what I know.
I know that I impacted her life and helped her tremendously.
And as far as I'm concerned, now, it's only been
a week, but this is a week that she's probably
been sleeping better. She's able to get to work, she

(33:28):
doesn't worry about how to put food on the table
for her for her nine year old son, and she
doesn't have to deal with this predatory by here pay
here company ever again. So what I told her I
wasn't trying to be her daddy or her teacher. I
did recommend that she she engage with Operation Hope and
and try to get more financially literate. But I did say,

(33:53):
I've given you a little bit of a of a
cushion for these next six months of not having to
pay insurance, squirrel money away. Try to save some money
for a rainy day so the next time she needs
a car and let's be honest. The car I gave
her is old. It may not last forever. It's probably
good for a few more years. But in a few
more years I want her to be in a position
where she's able to get her credit score up, she's

(34:16):
able to have a lot more longitudent latitude of what
to buy and in more options. And it hopefully I
did that.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
I can't.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
I don't know. Well, I'll talk to her in a year.
We'll see how it goes.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
So, first of all, kudos to you, man, and I
love you brother. One of the reasons I like you
so much. You do well and do good at the
same time. It's a good capitalist. Now, good capitalism is
what this is. That was a good example of that.
Now you've given her dignity, You've given her hope. What
you can't do is give her a lifeline for life.

(34:47):
You can't have just having her calling you every six
months saying, you know, hey, remember that good thing you did.
I needed to do it again, which which is why
is important you refer to her to Operation Hope to
get financial literacy counseling. She doesn't want to hand out,
she wants to hand up. But it's what We don't
know that, we don't know that's killing us, but we
think we know and we think that asking the question

(35:07):
of what's the payment is the right question. No, it's
what's the interest rate? Anything over one thousand dollars and
you're financing it, you don't ask what the payment is.
You don't ask what the payment is an interest rate
attached and it's over one thousand dollars, you want to
know what's that interest rate? That twenty seven percent interest
rate was gonna destroy her as a time bomb. You
go on a lot and you get a Mercedes and
it's eighteen percent interest. It's not a Mercedes, it's Mercedes payments.

(35:32):
So kudos for you doing that, and thanks for referring
her to Operation Hope. And let's make sure that we
follow up with her and follow through because we got
to give her a life of self sustainability and so
in resilience and hopefully she pays it forward, hopefully she
gets to a point where she can help somebody else.
Is this example, though, is just so common? Unfortunately? Right,
So let's now talk about this industry, this business, this,

(35:56):
this this is These people aren't they aren't going They're
not get up with the morning and saying ooh, let
me hurt poor people. They're just trying to get paid
any way they can't, is my sense? Is that right?

Speaker 2 (36:08):
I think, once again to what we said a minute ago,
not all of them are bad. Yeah, people get up
and work. People get up in the morning, get dressed
and go to work to make money. We all can't
be nonprofits, so we are a for profit company. My
business is a for profit company, and in these by here,
pay here types of car dealerships are are our for profit.

(36:30):
But there has to be a happy median, at least
of my objective or naive opinion, because I don't know
a tremendous amount of specifically how the back of the
house operates with one of these places, Like do they
even take the time to qualify when they're assessing a
twenty seven percent interest? Is there someone that comes in
there that has less lousy credit that gets a twenty
six percent interest? And is there somebody that comes in

(36:52):
there that has even worse credit than I heard the
pay twenty eight percent. I don't know what data points
they use to come up with what the going to be.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
Are you breathing? Do you have a job right? Now
that we can confirm, is there a bank account. Is
your credit score somewhere above four hundred and fifty or
five hundred, We can't get you financed in place else
we know that we got you held hostage here financial hostage.
And you need a car for transportation. So I really
have you. And I've got an immobilizer, which means that

(37:24):
I don't have to chase you around and repossess this car.
I can just turn it off, and I can turn
your life off. I can turn your credit off. I mean,
is it is? They know exactly what they're doing, and
really they make their money correct me if I'm wrong
a lot on the maintenance shop, because that car is
gonna break down. They're gonna fix it in charge double
or triple what it's worth. The repairs they got to.

(37:46):
Everything just gets plussed up. The interest rate gets plussed up,
the payments get plussed up, the fees get plussed up,
the maintenance charges get plussed up, and you get to
a point where you give the car back, which they
probably don't mind because they're gonna resell.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
It over and over and over again. It's like like
dogs in the dog pound. Somebody takes it home, it
ain't the right dog. They just bring it back, they
give it to somebody else, and it just it just
is just over and over and over again. You know,
as far as like my opinion of the industry or
how much I know about the industry, I do remember
years ago, twenty plus years ago, when I was new

(38:20):
in this industry, met a guy who's a good guy.
He explained to me, you know, at a very fourth
grade level, how he ran his buy here, pay here
a lot. He said he would go to the auction
and he would buy cars, not necessarily bad cars, but
he would buy a car for eight hundred dollars, twelve
hundred dollars, fifteen hundred dollars, bring it back to his lot,

(38:42):
and put it up on the market. For it doesn't
matter what you're asking for the car. When the person
comes in, it's all about the payment. It could be
it could be a four thousand dollars car, or it
could be a forty thousand dollars car. As long as
the payment, if it's in their budget, they're gonna take
the car.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
Even it also is important to the car it looks nice,
so they've painted it, or they've watched it or detailed it.
Clean it up, sure, you know, painting over the rust
and the crack and the frame because it was in
three accidents.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
But what he explained to me was that the money
down that he would get was what he owned the
car for.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
So if he had bought a car auction for eight
hundred dollars and he was selling it on paper for
four thousand dollars, he would get his his equity out immediately.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
So eight hundred down, and then you can pay it
over a certain amount of time. Then to look the
rest is profit. Yes, a conventional auto term is five
years or sixty months. Sometimes people will stretch to seventy
two to get the payment down. Rarely will they go
to eighty four to get the payment down. Anything past
that is insanity because the payment will outlast the car. Right,

(39:50):
these types of cars, they're not gonna last seven or
eight years. This is it's it's like once again, you're
screwed either way. So he kind of explained to me
that's how the business worked. And then you know, other
people I've spoken to over the years, and I I
hear the stories from from both the consumer and from
the dealer of yeah, well, you know, we sold it
for X, the person defaulted after the first ninety days,

(40:12):
we took it back, we sold it to somebody else again.
So you know, they're selling the same car over and
over and over again. And I'm not saying all people
in the industry, but I know many people in these
true many people in the industry purposely sell bad cars.
First of all, you can buy a bad car cheap,
and then when you sell it, it's going to break.
And then once again it puts that person back in
the position of do I fix the car and not

(40:34):
make the payment. Do I make the payment and let
the car sit in the driveway, or do I fix
the car and make the payment and then get kicked
out of my house.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
I mean, you said, you said something. They're really powerful
here about auction. I mean, by the way, you had
to also think about why is a car at the auction.
It takes a lot of effort for a car to
actually get to the auction. It didn't sell to a
end user, it didn't sell to another car dealer, it
didn't sell to a wholesale car serplus. Yeah, if he

(41:01):
got to the auction, I'm not saying it's a bad car.
I'm saying it's interesting.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
And it's a cycle. I mean, before COVID, before the pandemic,
there was there, or there were enough cars at auction
where they all weren't bad. And I'm saying they're all
bad now. But yeah, the cycle you're talking about is
a car comes into a dealership on trade, the used
car manager at or off lease for example, that manager

(41:27):
decides if he's gonna keep it because it's a nice car.
He knows he can turn a profit and sell it
that's good merchandise. If it's a little dodgy, he's gonna
then give it to a hostsaler, and that hohstsaler is
going to try to place that car somewhere amongst any
other dealership. Let's just just say in the Atlanta area.
They may even call me and I'll look at it
and say, yep, you know what, that's not for me.

(41:48):
So after a certain amount of time, that whostsaler will
then take the car to auction, and it may actually
sell that auction to another dealer. Once that dealer is
unsuccessful in selling that card to your sixty days, they
take it back to the auction again and then somebody
else buys it. A good car is going to sell quick.
It's not rocket science. A great house is going to

(42:08):
sell quick. So anything that has there's a supply and
demand where you've got more demand than you have supply
and if it's good, it's gone.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Is an auction car. Again, one of the genius things
you said to me today which I did not know,
is it Oftentimes, if you're buying a car auction at
the lower end level, you're selling the car for what
the down payment is what you paid for that car.
So if you're in so you've made your profit. Everything
else after that pure profit. It's pure profit. So you
make three four payments, it's all profit. You come back

(42:39):
and get the car repaired, it's profit. You know, I
chase you and add on at additional fees you pay
that it's profit. I nail you for I would say
I'm damage your credit if you don't pay me, you know,
three months to settle this. That's also profit, right, So, uh,
that's fascinating. The Carfax does Carfax track a car are

(43:00):
that's sold at auction?

Speaker 2 (43:02):
Yeah, Carfax and auto check Carfax. When a car runs
through the auction, we'll say if it was sold at auction,
or it'll just say, at auction.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Does it say that whether it was in an accident?
Does that history there?

Speaker 2 (43:14):
So carfax is a very valuable tool that we use
in our industry. It is just a tool, though, so
it may not be.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
If somebody's fallible, if somebody's lying, then it's only as
good as information is going in.

Speaker 2 (43:27):
It is still upon the consumer to do their own
research and due diligence to make sure they're what they're
buying is good. Tons of cars have clean carfax reports.
Carfax only reports the information that's given to them. So
there are occasions where a police agency neglects to report
an accident properly, or an insurance company neglects or mistakenly

(43:53):
reports a vehicle that may or may not have been
in a flood, and we see it every.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
Day, Well, may or may not have been in a flood.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Yeah, Look six and nine sometimes get transverse ones, and
l's sometimes get transverse. So sometimes you could be looking
at the carfax of a vehicle that's not actually accurate
for that specific vehicle, and then you buy it without
getting it checked out by a third party who actually
knows what you're looking at, and then you have all
kinds of problems a month two, three months later because

(44:22):
the car was in a flood, because it could have
been in a flood of fire, a theft recovery of
a horrific accident. I mean, we've heard it all. We've
seen cars with bullet holes in them that were covered up. Wow,
swear to god, can't even make it up. Yeah, And
I mean I had a range Over years ago that
was getting serviced at Rangeover because the seat wouldn't move

(44:43):
up and down. And the service writer called me and
he was very calm and collected, and you just said, hey,
we're gonna need you to come down here and look
at this this issue here with the seat. We've diagnosed
what the issue is, but we're really not at liberty
to discuss it over the phone. And I said, this
has got to be good. So I drove down to
the rain Drover dealers. Should they take them back in

(45:04):
the shop, And they show me a non millimeter slug
lodged in the seat track, right, So somebody died in
this car, but the person that bought it didn't know that.
So they just brought it to us and said, hey,
can you help me get the seat fixt.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
That the new owners driving around in a coffin.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
Yeah, it's like, don't wear a dead man's boots. They
were driving a dead man's rovers. You just you not
to be confused with it. It just gets back to
what I said, or and I keep saying over and
over and over. Just just do your research and check
out what you're buying. Like I mean, you go on
a date with a prospective male or female, you get
to figure out if that's something you want to spend

(45:39):
some time with, get your car checked out, figure if
it's just something. Look, your car's your second biggest investment
and you spend a lot of time in it.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
And if you're going out on a date with somebody
asking what the credit score is, exactly if you're serious
about them, I'm I'm serious. Is that this is your
partner for life?

Speaker 2 (45:53):
Well I don't see that goes away. I don't see
that going to a second date. But but but yeah,
I mean.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Just just credit score, she asked me mine, not on
the first date.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
That's a that's a black that's a black thing. We
don't we don't do that. We don't do we ask
if you like you have you're nut allergy or dairy allergy.
Are you gluten free.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
Well, you got to be smooth about it, like, oh, look,
you seem like you're really like on top of your game.
I'm just fascinated with, Like, you must have a great
credit score, like what you might tell me what it is?

Speaker 2 (46:24):
Why why don't you pay for dinner sweethearts? So I
can see what kind of credit cards you have? Exactly,
equally romantic, exactly they pull out a black card sold
death married right, I'm on one knee immediately.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
So so you've seen some crazy stuff come through. By
the way, you heard that Tony did a great, great thing.
He also does great business. And he's referred me to
people who also are not bums, like, uh, Adam Maryland.
Adam Marland is not a decent guy. A man over
at Atlanta Motorsport is it motor Cars of Atlanta?

Speaker 2 (46:59):
Brandon good friend, good guy? Yeah, not all. Not all
people in our industry are bad dudes. There's plenty of
good ones. I like to consider myself one of them,
and I like to surround myself with the good ones.
And you know, you know something I've been saying for
years when I'm when I'm looking at a car for
a good friend or a client or a family member.
I always asked the prospective seller, would you or would

(47:22):
you not sell this car to your mom? Would you?
Would you not sell this car to your next door neighbor?
And based on that answer is if I'm going to
proceed or not. And a lot of people don't think
to ask those types of questions.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
This talks about dreams and dramas. So in your business.
One of the dream calls you got was from me,
and I want to know it was any dream call
better than mine. I called you one day. Normally I
call you and and I just give you a headache
because I've talked. I want to talk to you infinitum
about the details. And that's when I get the click
and he says, I'm sorry, I got it. You don't

(47:53):
see I'm sorry. He just hangs the phone up.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
I'm a capitalist. I actually have to make money at work.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
But one day I called you after I had sold
one of my companies, Either Blue, and I said, I
wanted you to find I think it was eight or
ten cars for my twelve twelve twelve cars for my
employees for my nonprofit because they didn't get a bonus
and they couldn't didn't get stocked on stuff. So they'd
been working hard, and I wanted to buy them all
a car, and you found them all for me within

(48:21):
a week to ten days or some crazy thing.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
We typically need a thirty day lead time when someone
comes to us for one car for a car, unless
it's you, and then it was I need a dozen
cars and I need them yesterday. Oh and by the way,
here are the specific colors, colors optionspes. Yeah, but my
team did it. We bade it our priority. We knew

(48:47):
it was a good thing to do because you were
doing a good thing by giving these cars to these
people that forgive me for saying it this way put
you where you are. They supported you every step of
the way. You rewarded them for it, and we were
really happy and blessed to be a part of it.
And yeah, it was it was fun. It was Uh,
it was a good day delivering you know, some brand

(49:10):
new cars. Some were older, kind of bucket list dream
cars for some people. You know, everybody kind of had
their everybody had their own personal spin on of their
own personal taste of what they wanted. And you know,
you had a couple of people that were just straight
up practical, like I just want to an act your MDX,
That's all I really want. Okay, So we got in
a mac your MDX, conservative, practical, reliable, good car holds

(49:30):
its value. Then you get other guys like well, I've
always wanted to Portion nine eleven, Gabriole, get him his car.
And then one girl's like, well, I'm I'm a little
bit of a hippie, so I want an electric car.
So then we get the electric car. Uh. It was
it was a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
So any other dream situations that happened like that at
your place? And I want to get to the horrors
the dramas. So those are the teaching moments for people.
But I mean.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
We we love or I I have managed to turn
a hobby into a career, and and that that's the
dream right there is I mean I get excited to
go to work every day, and that that's that is
a dream. As far as anything exponentially more impactful than
you gifting all those cars to people, We've been involved
in a lot of a lot of happy moments. You know,

(50:16):
a lot of uh you know, the second generation uh
give backs where you have a blue collar mom and
dad that supported their son who's become monumentally successful, and
then he was finally at a certain age in a
position to buy his dad his dream car. So we've
been able to do that, and we've been able to

(50:39):
get involved with some wonderful charities as well. So I mean,
you know, donating this car, I've done this more than once.
This was just the most recent time I've done it.
And there's other times where we've been able to utilize,
you know, our connections and and our access to these
neat cars to to give them up for whether it's
a raffle or or any sort of philanth that raises money,

(51:01):
or just some bling to park in front of an event,
or people that need rise. People need to borrow a
car for something, whether it's some sort of medical need
or whatever. Like we we do this stuff all the time.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
You saw me a car that went into a movie.
What was it, The Fast and the Furious.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
You had a car that was in Fast and the Furious.
We we've had a bunch of cars that we've rented
out to the movie studios over the years, and that's fun,
that's just cool. I mean, I don't know if I
don't know if that's giving back because we get paid
for that. But but it's it's just cool, like we've
we've met a lot of cool people, have met a
lot of really important figures in history and celebrities, whether

(51:40):
it be an athlete or somebody the music business or musician,
people in TV, film theater, whatever. I mean, it's it's cool,
Like every day is exciting at the shop and you know,
you just you don't know, but yeah, but you know
where you're going with this is the the nightmares. Every
every day is a nightmare too.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
So you so people walk in people, people walk in
to gas motor cars with a dream, and that dream
may not match their financial propriety, their financial situation. Give
me a couple of examples of the thing that just
that just tears your heart up. It frustrates the bajeeva's
out of you that you see all the time coming

(52:18):
into your high end mostly high end shop with folks
who may not have a balance sheet and income statement
of a credit report or financial resource to match. Give me,
give give our listeners a few examps.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
I have people coming to don't know what a balance
sheet is. Sty'll think balance sheet is like a It's
like a piece of paper that you're trying to put
on top of a soda can so it doesn't fall
to the left or the right, Like they don't know
what a balance sheet is, not all but a lot,
And yeah, I mean it's a it's a pretty common
occurrence that somebody comes in and we do not just
for the record, we do not judge books by his
or her covers, so we do not pre qualify. So

(52:53):
everybody's a potential buyer.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
Translation, they get rappers running in walking in there. You
never know, if you're not following a rap who they are.
But he's like, hey, you never know who that is.
Be nice to me. You get you might come in
with overalls or you know, the light from the country.
You never know that a person may own the dealership
down the street.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
You never know.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
Yeah, so don't judge anybody.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Yeah, And so we get people to come in on
a daily basis and they have the intent they want
to buy, they want to fulfill that dream, but they've
not taken the time to figure out how he or
she may be able to pay for that dream. So
we'll spend time with them and hours, yes, showing them

(53:44):
whatever car they're interested in, explaining to them the ownership experience,
what they need to look forward to if they're buying
a certain type of car, may have a higher maintenance
expense that they need to be financially prepared for. And
we've gone times where we've had people with good credit,
or let's just call it good enough credit approved for

(54:06):
a seventy eighty one hundred thousand dollars automobile. H However,
banks they want you to have some skin in the game,
so it'll ask for a down payment, maybe a thousand bucks,
maybe five thousand bucks. And I'm not joking. I've had
as recent as last week gentlemen got approved for a
Tesla and eighty three thousand dollars Tesla. The bank wanted

(54:27):
fifteen hundred dollars as a down payment. He did not
have the fifteen hundred dollars, could not even put it
on a credit card. But he's about to sign up
for close to a two thousand dollars a month car payment.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Let's run this one more time. Eighty three thousand dollars
car approachase two thousand dollars a month payment, haven't even
gotten to the insurance or whether there's a warranty, which
will be without the warranty there's going to be maintenance
coming up. Having gotten to that two thousand dollars a
month car payment on this car, and this person did
not have fifteen hundred dollars for the down payment.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
You can't say this person. These people, it happens every day,
and I am not their financial advisor. Once again reiterating
I'm a for profit business. I want to sell cars.
That's how I feed my It's how I feed my family,
how my employees feed their families. We do do it
in a very fair way. And I have at certain
points in time become a financial advisor to some of

(55:20):
these people. They're not going to be able to afford
the ownership expenses. So when you're buying your dream car,
may be a certain year Jaguar, Mercedes, Spence, Partia, anything
European when it's ten twelve years old is expensive to maintain.
It goes with the territory. You got to pay to
play right. You want to drive a Jaguar, you want
to drive a Mercedes, you want to drive a Bentley,
a Rolls Royce, a Lamborghini, you have to be willing

(55:42):
to put forth the maintenance expense because if you don't
maintain them properly, then they will die and then you're
stuck with a two thousand plus dollars you know, more
than that monthly payment for a car. You can't even enjoy.
That to me's just foolish.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
So when you tell, when you tell somebody you going
from car salesmen to financial advisor, you know, from car
you know, from car presentation to care compassion counselor did
they get upset with you? Do theyre like, hey, man,
I want to buy this car and I'll be you know,
do they think you're discriminating against them, by the way
or somehow?

Speaker 2 (56:15):
I've never knowing them, never picked up on discrimination. I've
kind of picked up on the I don't care or
mind your own businessess. But you know, I feel good
about it. When I talk somebody out of buying a
car that I know they can't afford own, and then
I objectively counsel them into the right car, I feel
a lot better about doing that. They still look, they look.

(56:36):
The basis of sales, in my opinion, is trust. If
someoney trust you, you can sell them any You could
sell ice to an Eskimo if they trust you. So
why not just make that the genesis of The relationship
is trust and I think you're going to have a
long standing relationship. Is my entrepreneurially advice. Let your client
base trust you and you'll keep them.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
Forever relationships over transactions.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
If they don't trust you, they're not coming back.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
I've called Tony a dead set on buying X. I
want to get X. No, John, you're not buying that.
I'm not selling it to you, and you shouldn't buy it.
It's stupid. Here's the reason it's stupid, and it will
give me all the reasons why it's stupid. Or I'll
call him because I've I've got a you know, a
car that's fifteen years old or whatever, and he's like, well,

(57:24):
what you're expecting it's fifteen years old. Of course you're
going to have a maintenance issue, not one now, it's
going to be in the future. Like it's not it's
not a flying carpet, it's a car, right, So you know,
he's very he's very It is an end of the story.
Can we please start there. It's sort of Tony Marzoula,
which is beautiful. So you often will run into people

(57:45):
who get approved but don't have the stroke, the down
payment or who spend a lot of time talking about
a very high end vehicle, who can't get approved every
day every day, the dress nicely, good jobs, but.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Jacked up credit. And you know, it's funny how many
of them, you know, you you know they're full of it.
I'm not saying all, but oh my god, I thought
my credit was great. I did forget about that car
that was repossessed last year, and those two credit cards
I haven't made a payment on in six months, and
the house that was foreclosed on.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
But other than that, other than that, I'm doing it.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
Other than that, I pay my Macy's card every month.
So yeah, I mean, I once again, I understand it.
I get it. I'm I was raised differently. I mean
I had I had. Look when I the first not
first car, but one of the one of the first
cars I bought when I, in my mind, was successful,

(58:39):
was I went to BMW and I leased a brand
new BMW and I was so excited. Was in my
mid twenties, and I was so excited. The payment was
like like nothing back then. It was like two hundred
and twenty five dollars a month, and I drove, I
wanted to. I was so excited. I wanted to go
home and show. I wanted to gona home. I wanted
to go show my dad. So I drove to my
tat's house and he said, that's a nice car. Where'd
you get that? I said, I bought it the dealership.

(59:00):
He said how much was it? I said to twenty
five a month. He slapped me in the face. I said,
you don't have the money in your pocket, don't buy
the car. So you know, I get it. You're seen
in your car. Your car to a lot of people
is their identity and it is their way of proving
that they've made it. Like you could spend that money
on amazing house, but if you're a single dude, you

(59:21):
can't pick up a girl in the house. So the car,
or as a buddy mine used to alway, he's from La,
he say, Man, it doesn't matter where you live, because
in LA it's all about the stoplights. People don't see
you in your apartment, they see you in your in
your car. So I understand the drive to have the
flashy car or or the you know, just the nicer

(59:43):
car because you're seeing in it. However, I I you know,
I always really rely on you to educate me on
how some people do get to such a point where
they're so financially illiterate, and they do get themselves in
these Ferocia high car payments that they can never pay,
and then they just get to a point where they
can't pay it. Then they have to give the car

(01:00:04):
back that destroys their credit. Then it makes it impossible
for them to get another car and not get preyed
upon or ever buy a house. I mean, we're Another
horror story we're seeing right now is the market is
going back to normal for the first time in four years.
You know, the economy has been on cocaine and steroids
for four years. Everybody had to have a Mercedes during COVID,
and it was all it took was three months of

(01:00:26):
being locked in your house and not being able to
go out and shop and eat and travel. Everybody had
a by July of twenty twenty, everybody had the down
payment that they never had before, and they all wanted
to go out and get cars. Well, guess what, manufacturers
weren't building cars for a period of time either, So
you had six x amount of time amount of people

(01:00:46):
that wanted to buy cars with no cars to buy.
So what happened The manufacturers or the dealerships started selling
new vehicles at above MSRP, at a premium, massive premium
pacific to the high end luxury market something. Let's just
go acute specific. A Mercedes G sixty three with an
MSRP of two hundred thousand dollars at.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
Its peace is a manufactured record.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
Suggested retail price correct was selling for three hundred thousand
dollars to a lot of people that didn't have three
hundred thousand dollars for the makewe hundred. So now fast
forward to where we are right now, You've got somebody
with a six thousand dollars a month car payment and
maybe his or her visit. Yeah, that's not uncommon in

(01:01:31):
the high end luxury car not even remotely uncommon. Now
they're in that car, and maybe they woke up yesterday
and decided that six thousand dollars payment was a little aggressive,
Maybe maybe we should dial it back a little bit.
So they've been paying on that car two years, three years,
whatever they may oh to twenty five. Well, guess what

(01:01:52):
now that the used car market has gone or not
totally back to nore, but is normalizing going back to
what things were like before the pandemic. That car is
only worth one hundred and twenty five, and then Mayo.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
To twenty five, so triganization.

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
There was negative equity pre pandemic, one thousand, two thousand,
maybe five thousand bucks maybe the most. I think the
worst we'd ever seen was twenty thousand dollars negative equity.
We've seen multiple transactions or multiple potential transactions in the
last six months where they're fifty sixty seventy five thousand,
hundred thousand dollars negative, oh, one hundred thousand dollars more
than what your car's worth. Tryed it forever.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
I remember you told me this guy did really doing
really well, bought a g Wagon or something, you know,
at a premium, didn't care, I'm going to buy it,
and he brought it back to you a year later
to try to sell it back to you to buy
something else, and you're like, well, here's the price, and
he got upset with you. But you told him from
day one, this is overpaying for the car. But he

(01:02:52):
never he didn't understand the market had shifted, and still
thought that everything was selling at a premium. You're getting
a lot of that. This was a highly success full,
highly sophisticated, seemingly financially literate individuals. So we're not, by
the way, when we talk about financially illiterate here, people
need to understand. If you're making one hundred thousand dollars
a year, half of those people are living from paycheck

(01:03:13):
to paycheck. You're making two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
a year today, a third of those are living from
paycheck to paycheck. Seventy percent of this country is living
from paycheck to paycheck. So whether you're white, black, red, brown,
or yellow, you want to see some more green. You
got too much month at the end of your money,
and you're living through this situation of not having a

(01:03:33):
budget but having a payment schedule, and you're basically asking
can I make these payments, which is the wrong way
to go about this. And Tony is being forced to
negotiate your budget for you in reverse when he can.
Sometimes he's running so fast he can't. And what he's
in his job, by the way, is to make a profit.

(01:03:55):
So at some point, if you're dead set on running
yourself into a wall, it's a free country. And so
during the pandemic, all these prices inflated a lot of demand,
not a lot of supply, the price goes up. Now
lots of supply, lower demand. Prices have come down for
not just average cars, but for luxury vehicles.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
Yeah, so all cars, especially the luxury market. And even
it's actually now touching what we would call the collector
car market as well. And here's the funny thing is
has it happened forever since automotive let's just call the
automotive retail market started with Henry Ford, you know, where
you could go to the dealerships and buy a car.

(01:04:39):
And Mercedes Benz technically invented the car, but Henry Ford
would kind of put what we still to this day called,
you know, just a conventional auto market.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
And also created the middle class.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
We're good, yeah, correct, And so you know, in twenty fifteen,
if you would go buy a brand new anything, let's
not even go to ultra luxury, a rand new Honda
Accord for thirty four thousand dollars before you got home,
forget next year, before you got in your driveway, you
had lost ten to fifteen to twenty percent. Right, That's
how it always was, and no one ever seemed to

(01:05:11):
care then during the pandemic, the used car values went up,
meaning you could go buy a car, drive it home,
and sell it for five thousand dollars more than you
paid for it because there was somebody foolish enough to
do that or just had to have it and everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
If you want to know why inflation went crazy, that's it.
You can buy in the stimulus payments. We never had
stimulus with a T in front of it in the
history of this country. Trillion. We had nine t'es, nine trillion.
Now you've got supplied demand issues. You got cars you
can sell for more than you paid for you got
I mean, it is just nuts. Watches were at a premium,

(01:05:46):
art was at a premium. Everything real estate was at
a premium. And so the federerserve really had no choice
but to raise interest rates to take the froth off
of this market, or it would have imployed at a
pump the brakes at the breaks.

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
Why wouldn't you go buy a four hundred thousand dollars
car if you could get it at zero percent interest
or zero point nine percent, it's almost free money? Why not?
But you know it's it's correct, it's over, I mean
it is now.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
They got to actually work at, you know, work at
doing something we've.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
We are working harder than we've ever worked because not
only are we having to still try to do our
normal day job, which is buy and sell cars and
try to make people happy, we are also having to
explain to them reality and we also have to explain
and convince them that a couple things I didn't create
this market. I also didn't build the car. So I

(01:06:42):
may be Italian, but if you bought a Maserati and
it's broken, it's not my fault. And I'm certainly not German.
So if you bought a BMW five years ago and
you can't afford to put a transmission in it, don't
call and yell at me because I sold it to
you seven years ago or five years ago, because I
didn't build the car. And that's what we do every
day now. So that it's another thing that we're seeing is,

(01:07:02):
you know a lot of people that bought vehicles they
cannot afford are letting them go into disrepair. Then they
get to a point where they're unsellable, so then they're
just trapped with the car. They don't have the five
to ten or even sometimes fifteen twenty thousand dollars to
get the car back on the road. Yes, but they
still are making a payment on it. Yeah, So it's

(01:07:24):
a vicious cycle and it's I don't know how to
fix it. That's your job.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
And Tony and I have great Well, this has been
a great conversation. We have lots of great conversations. We're
wrapping this one up. This is we covered so much
beautiful ground and hopefully you guys have been educated and
inspired and shocked and dismayed. But also you're smarter than
you were when you first start listening to this about
the automotive space. And you know there's an honest broker
here that actually wants to do well and do good,

(01:07:53):
but he also still needs to make a profit, and
you should want him to make a profit, no different
than you want to make a profit for your home.
Even if you want to distribute money like a socialist,
you got a first collected like a capitalist. It funny
how that works. So we've had a fambulous conversation here
in public. I need you to know. This is the

(01:08:15):
nice version of Tony. Tony will call and lovingly curse
me out about some decision I made going to make
didn't make taking too long to make about a car.
I will tell you I'm really good in many areas,
but making money with cars is not one of them.
The only time I ever made money with the car
was Tony Marzoulo, and it was only because I listened

(01:08:37):
to his advice. And it was a very complicated series
of transactions. It involved multiple vehicles, but timing was really important.
And he's like, John, you got to pull this trigger
right now. But the market is changing. This is a
great car, but I don't control market values, and it's
going to change in six months. And he was right.
It did change. Nothing changed with the car. Nothing changed

(01:08:58):
the car, the same beauty car, the same roads, the
same environment. But the price shifted because the market shifted,
and luckily I listened to him. So, look, you don't
have to be trapped in your world. You can create
the world that sets you free. But you've got to
live within your means, and you've got to deal with reality,

(01:09:20):
and you have to understand that there's somebody out there
trying to separate you from your wallet. And that's most businesses.
That's not just this one. That's most businesses. And you've
got to be your own family defender. And when you
have questions about whether it's something a good deal or not.
And this cannot be the whole nations like counseling line,
but when you have questions about whether there's a good

(01:09:42):
deal or not, give Tony a call, give us people
a call. They really do care. Over at Gas Motor
Cars and there's and if you're in a city where
Gas is, you know, he's not you're not in Atlanta,
or you're not trying to do a transaction for a
unique vehicle, He'll refer you to somebody that he trusts
in a local area. He'll tell me all the time, Nope,
don't do this with that. I know those people with

(01:10:02):
their bumps. No, don't, don't John, turn around and walk back.
Don't walk out of the dealership. Back out of dealership,
because you turn around, they'll have their hands in your
back wallet. Like, back out of that dealership right now,
and then click. Then he hangs the phone up. Any
final words, Tony.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
No, I mean thank you for having me on the show.
This was a lot of fun. I truly truly hope
that I'm going to be impactful and help somebody with
what I just you know, vomited all over this microphone.
You know, it's not useless information because if somebody can
use it, so therefore it's useless. And you know, John

(01:10:43):
has been roasting himself a lot, but he is one
thing he does well. He knows how to get what
he wants.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
It's something that I call selective hearing. So I will
tell him the same thing over and over and over again,
and about the tenth or fifteen times. Sometimes he'll agree
with me and say, yeah, you got it. So yeah,
anybody else that needs help call me. I'm not going
to give you fifteen chances to convince you. I'm gonna
give you one. But I do, truly, you know, come

(01:11:12):
from a good place where I want to help people.
And this is if this is what I can help
people with, this is my skill set, then that's you know,
that's why God put me here. I mean, you know,
I can help people with their card needs.

Speaker 1 (01:11:21):
Yep. And and evidently he's also an underground philanthropist because
they also help somebody with their heart needs, their dignity needs,
their their compassion needs, which was the young lady who
walked into his life through a charity he was involved with,
who just needed a hand up, not a handout. She

(01:11:42):
just needed a break. She just needed a She needed
a moment where she could believe that all the world
was not set up against her. Thank you, Tony for
being a blessing and for being a good guy, even
though we don't want anybody to know it. And you're
not completely a hard no, you actually have a heart
underneath that hardhead of yours. Thank you for all you do.

(01:12:06):
And this is John O'Brien. This is Money and Wealth
on the Black Effect Network podcast series on iHeart. This
is where we make it plain and help you understand
how stuff works. It's John O'Brien. Let's go change the world.
Go to Operation Hope and get your financial literacy coaching
and counseling. Tell your friends to sign up to this

(01:12:26):
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is the number one best selling book in economics and
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and a Mary America money and stress and it can

(01:12:50):
also be a stress reliever. When you decide to work it,
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(01:13:12):
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Dangers Of Car Dealerships with Tony Marzullo