How Malcolm Beatty’s One-Acre Dealership Wins with a Better Website, Simple Photos and 1,500 Google Reviews

In this follow-up chat, Simon sits down again with Malcolm Beatty of MB Motors in Northern Ireland.
They talk through the practical things that keep a small, independent site busy:

• Building the right website – why Malcolm walked away from a free template, paid for a fully custom design and ended up with an award-winning website.
  
• Indoor photo booth – one set of lights, one background, and every car looks the same online, whatever the weather.
  
• Getting reviews the easy way – a printed QR code on the desk means most buyers leave a Google review before they drive off. They’ve passed 1,500 reviews at 4.8/5.
  
• Looking after staff – a small on-site gym, go-kart nights and “Employee of the Month” bonuses help keep a 15-person team pulling in the same direction.
  
• Hiring by video – every applicant records a short clip; it weeds out time-wasters and shows who’s comfortable on camera for walk-around videos.
  
• Warranty and goodwill – how the team deals with the odd used-car problem and why a polite customer usually gets extra help.
  
• Stock decisions – why they’ve parked most Land Rovers for now, and what would have to change before they start buying EVs in volume.

If you run (or want to run) a small dealership, this is a straightforward look at the day-to-day choices that turn browsers into buyers – and keep them coming back.

About Symco Training:

Symco Training was founded in 2000 by Simon Bowkett and it was his belief that the business had to offer its clients something different. That difference was clear to Simon from his days in the dealership when he experienced many sales trainers who had all the answers, but were unable, unwilling or both to actually show the delegate how they could be implemented. It remains the ethos of the business today. You see, Symco only employ trainers that are committed to delivering not only in spiring and insightful training, but are equally as happy to demonstrate these skills and techniques with real customers in your own showroom. We believe in order for sales training to be effective and in Simon’s words ‘real world’, it needs to be tried and tested in the only place it matters the showroom floor. There is no room for theory when your goals are for your team to sell more cars, hours or parts and retain more profit. In dealerships around the world the focus applied by many of the sales executives is to try and sell a deal. Symco specialise in getting your teams to focus on selling themselves, the product and then supporting this with the deal.

To find out more visitwww.symcotraining.co.uk

Time, welcome to the Selling and the Motor Trade podcast in Association of Car Without. The online car-changing destination. Together we share tips and ideas on how to sell more cars, improve your service department, and generally put more profit into your department, dealership or dealer group. I'm your host, Simon Bowkett, or some of you might already know me as Skippy. First thing, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Well, let's get on to this website because this is where I wanted to talk to you. Okay, award-winning website. Okay, I believe you've got the website of the year. I don't remember there was a 2023, I think. Last year.

Okay, okay, most user-friendly website. It really is. I looked at it. My first gut feel was, what's that cost? Now, I don't want to know the figure there, but the business case, how does it stack up because it can't be cheap? Okay, it's a lot of thought has gone into that. It wouldn't have been cheap. And what role has that website played in the dealership's success? So can you tell me a bit about how you come to the decision not to take just an off-the-shelf one with one of the providers there, which would have been quick and easy for you? So this sort of came about last year when it was changing DMS because the DMS data kit don't work with the website provider that my other DMS, so I had a DMS and website all together.

And it's what you just said. It was a template. You went on to my website and 10 other card data websites that all looked the same. I get it. If you're starting, I get that. It's a basic thing. You need a website. You get it done. I just record a new promotional video. To go on to YouTube, I've always done promotional videos over the years about how the site has grown and whenever the extension was done, I need to get another promotional video to show people we've got a massive new workshop and we put in a staff gym and we've done all this different stuff. I thought, right, we'll need to do this promotional video.

And just as that, I was changing DMS provider who said, well, we need a new website provider to here. If you want to work with us, I was like, right, okay. So they recommend it to website provider 67 degrees and start with media both super super and what they do. But I chose start with media group girl, Joanne, who was absolutely superb. It's like, what do you want from the website? We have templates. Do you want to go fully customized? Here's some examples of customizing. We can change this from this and put this and this and I love the idea. I can make this my own website. I had just done the promotional video. I just got loads of images done off the side.

And I'm not a fan of library images. You want my website. There's not one library image. It's all of cars or in my yard that people know right if I go on the website, I go and visit the website, it looks exactly the same. And that's what pushed me to do the website. And we just start with the guys there. That's right. I like that. I don't like that. Can we move that here and can we have the video planning? I think the video plan. Yeah. I haven't seen many other companies. It just gets your attention, doesn't it? Just really. My handsome face. It grabs your attention. And the guys that start with just on a server job and I'm thrilled with it.

And it's just it's so easy to use. Customers can navigate round easily enough and we can promote what we need to promote. We can promote our use card and promote the car buying, source it, service. You can book your service online. It's just phenomenal. And I was chuffed to be on the stage at the Cardiac Awards in London last year picking up that award just with the icing on the cake like so was. Yeah, it was. And also, in your video booth, if I don't booth, you've had that for a while, I'm guessing you've always believed in getting the images right. I'll take how long have you had the video booth now? Yes. We came on page two of the tension that I was like, I'm fed up, a dull bright day.

I used to go the day for taking photographs of cars. And then the sun came out and that image looked different from that image because it was the sun and then it was raining. I can't take photographs today. So we'll do 10 tomorrow and then I was snowing. I was like, I'm going to take photographs and it's snowing the cars in 60 days with actually it. Yeah. Three months ago. And I just want to, I want a photo booth. That's one thing I want. I want somewhere inside to put the cars every photograph looks exactly the same. And again, that was a game changer for me and a lot of people comment on how good it looks.

And it is, it doesn't matter what the weather is doing. We can stuff photograph cars and every photograph looks exactly the same. And I think that's important. I think so. On your website and they're seeing 56 to 80, whatever number of cars you have in stock and going, oh, these are all the same angle, they're all the same background. I just think that's more professional appearance. It really does because people aren't just buying the car. They're buying the premises and everything else. And are they going to be there? I learned that from our good friend Umech. People actually do buy Umech in these operation. And when you hear his story and where it comes from and it's all on his website there.

And it's not just a fat for, it's not just like BS. It's real. It really is amazing. It's one of the most, like again, and it was, I was going to say, his most genuine person you could meet. He genuinely is so well respected throughout the motor field. He picked up one of the life law achievement awards that they've owned there. Well deserved to. Oh, 100%. It does so much to help other dealers as well. But he's just got such a nice wee dealership there. And he does things perfectly. If you look at a perfect dealership, it's amazing that the quality of stuff that houses is superb. Yeah, well, it's quite funny with the supplying of used cars.

You'll go to the auction. Okay. And Umech won't do that. He says, no, no, no, I just buy all my cars independently. And I said, Umech, independently? Yeah. Yeah. People know me. But by the way, and they do. In the local community, they do know him. They do want to sell a car. Okay. And he'll go through and say, now, when you're ready to sell that, make sure you come and speak to me. Yeah. He talked about his raving fans and it's so great. He does have raving fans up and down the country who know I will get a good price from Umech. I know the sort of stuff that he buys and I bought that from Umech.

And he's looked after me and I'll go back there and the stuff that he has as pristine. You know, no matter what age, it's going to be a good one. It's going to be a little owner. It's going to be a little maze, a new well-spaked. And that's what he's built and fair place here for Deona. Yeah. So with your website, your reputation, your views, just have a look at your website. You've got 1500 five star reviews online, 4.8, I think it was out of 5 on Google, which is outstanding in the, let's be honest, we're selling a used car, which sometimes they break. It's no one's fault. You don't want it to break, but people get upset, don't they?

They get frustrated afterwards. What is your approach on building such a strong review process? Are you asking for the reviews? What are you doing there to get so much? You mentioned quite a lot there in that statement. You do sell, you use cars with moving parts and aeroplanes and it is hard getting it right all the time. It is so hard to, there's electronics in cars. It's just so hard to get it. And some customers, thankfully the minority, expect the car to go forever. It's never going to break down and it's never going to give this to the other. My model has always been if it's broke, fix it. If there's something wrong with the car and it's within the warranty period of ever, we fix it.

And I've even seen that times, maybe been outside the warranty period and the customer's been nice. Some customers are going to just go raids and show you that you're swearing out in the phone out and all that. You're not really asking for my help here, are you? They just want to vent. Yes. There's a certain way of asking for help. And Sonic Vonn would be nice and decent at the point in that this is how it will come to do to sort it out. And let's go for it. As far as asking for the reviews are concerned, something that we got a couple of years ago now, do we QR code on the desk? Those guys will ask for it.

They'll be making excuses until I'm going to grab a textbook here and get your keys. There's the VQR code. Would you mind scanning that? There's an evens way review to make a lot of customer have even left the review before they've even left the business. And there are some people going, no, no, I want to drive the car for a week or two. And then I'll leave your review and go, yeah, that's fine. No problem. It used to be Facebook. We used to push Facebook reviews quite a lot. So that's about so much in Facebook. But then over the last few years, Google is sort of over. And Google seems to be the way forward to constantly just been trying to build and build on the Google reviews.

Don't ever know if there's bargains I'm there to. I always think you have to have a few bad ones in there. Otherwise, people don't believe everything else. Yeah. I always make a point of replying the in-bod reviews to a professional client and going, you know, some, okay, that's in, we got it wrong. Yes, haven't that havened or sometimes look, you've done this, this, this. So therefore, that's why the car has done that. And there's time, hospital, say, like this car don't trust anymore. This is no problem. We'll take the car back. Do you want your money? Do you want to move in to something else? So when someone else is reading that saying, listen, the car went wrong.

Okay, but he's offering to give the person the money back. And the guy's still saying, I don't want no money back. There's nothing else. Some people just want to vent. Like one of my per reviews, I sort of read that person's reviews. And I just had a news me so much, like, again, someone was in a review, wanted you to read someone else's review. No, I did. So you go to Google, you can go on to somebody else. Yes. Sorry, I'm with you now. Yes. We have reviewed. So I'd have curious, I always go and anyone who gives me a bad review, always go into their reviews and see who they have left review for.

And they just, oh, I just that this one, I shared it with a few guys. This one actually blew me away. Like, and the lag of human interaction when they went to the cinema, you know, which was all automated to get their tickets and things again. And a screenshot that closed, and wouldn't take our last order within 15 minutes of closing and just like, you're never going to please that customer. That customer is just out to leave bad reviews, like human interactions. And I'm like, why do you buy your ticket? You go and watch the film, you walk out again. You know, what what me does are, and it's just like, yeah, you just can't please.

That's like, we have quite a lot of really great customers over the years, who love and come back and buy cars from us and tell other people about us. Yeah. I'm just wondering, is because people have done what you and I have done, and we've had the dealing with that customer who's upset. If I'm upset, and you know, we've all had bad service. You just get so much better by the way you speak and someone saying, listen, what can you do? Because this is not exactly what I expected. You just get so much further with that, then yelling and screaming. It just doesn't work. But yes, a minute, we're a customer who bought a Volkswagen C60 off my bag and January, and the engine has went on up.

Now, the customer, to a certain degree, has driven up with the oil light on it, bagging forward. And you're like, I can potentially go listen. I'm sorry, but you drive that car with the oil light on things and has seized because of it. But that guy was so nice. He was nice to a service manager, like C service managers. They don't get enough credit. Whether it's France, Aisworld, or independent word, everybody gives them grief. I was like, they didn't build the car. They're just there doing their job facilitate. And sometimes, Amy, who works too many, the stuff she listened to in the phone from customer, big C is not going to work with you that.

This guy has commend it. So nice. Can you give me a car? Yeah, no problem. Transfer, insurance, or whatever. Yeah, no problem. What can we do? And I'm splitting the cost button. Let's get that done. And that's just the attitude of the customer means so much when you come in with an issue, because you want to help that customer. Do you do? Yeah. I guess we work with some Land Rover businesses and a great deal of grip. I know you said you wouldn't buy Land Rover before, but I get that. But I'll go to a service advisor in a Land Rover business. I just, they're absolutely sensational. The way they have to deal with that customer spending, a lot of money on high price servicing, on something that now again, lots of those customers go into it with their eyes wide open.

I get it as an independent, would I want to stock that use Land Rover? We have lots of dealers who have made your decision and saying, maybe not at the moment. Do I want to do that? Which is a shame because I have a large over defender myself as my first bagel. Great cuts. They are great. And I got discovery sports of books. I used to sell them by buckets loaded. But it's just they caught so unreliable. They were just causing me so much headaches. It was causing issues with customers because the obviously cars were lying down. I just want, I need to make a decision here to go right. I'm not scalloping up or running or which is a shame because they're such a good product.

And you wonder why they can't get it right. You know, there's such a history of making great vegels. Why can they not get it right? Hopefully they won't change it because they're such a good product. Yeah, they do. They do. But again, customers just go into it with their eyes wide open sometimes. Yeah, of course you get complaints everywhere. But I can remember one particular dealership, Swansway organization. A customer is kicking off so much about his disco. I don't know what the car was, range over. No, it was a discovery actually. It was in the showroom and like, I'm sick of this car, blah, blah, blah. I spoke to the head of business at the time.

I got a John Nimley. I said, you got to get that customer off the showroom floor. Because he finished it. Malcolm said, so I'm fed up with that enough. I need to buy myself another one. Walk straight over to the sales month. I said, I need to order a new car because this thing's useless. And I just think the brand loyalty that brand has is just amazing. And you get people who continually go back and buy them because they're done so well for them. Like, OK, they're not all bad. There are a lot of things too. But it's just to seem they couldn't get the things for it because they're such a good brand and spag and everyone else.

It's fantastic. I want to talk a little bit about your leadership style, your culture of the company. Because we said already that people buy people. We always say there's three thousand any sale. You go sell yourself first, the product second, and then the deal of the numbers. The poor salesperson tries to sell the deal first, the deal second, the deal third. OK, you've got to sell yourself first. And that comes down to your culture, your leadership style. So I want to talk about your culture to start with. OK, and how do you make sure when your values are instilled into your whole team? You've got 15 people that need to live and breathe your culture.

Culture was always something that I just went, well, sure, you know, this is who I am. This is why I do people who knew who I was. We have a very laid back sales approach. We don't have pushy sales people. I've always said we don't have pushy sales people. We will ask for the business 100%, but we don't want to push, push, push, push. And a few months ago, I started working with a business coach through action coach, which are a great company. And one of the things he wanted to do was make a culture statement. And I was a culture statement, what's that? It's all websites of culture statement about who your business is.

And I think how do you know what I know what I stand for, how do I know all the rest of the staff stand for? And we come up with this idea. Let's have everybody put them put into the culture statement. So I literally give all the staff pieces of paper and says, right, I want you to know, write down what you like about the business and what we stand for and what I'm like as a boss and be completely honest and transparent. You're not going to get into baller about it. I just want to know what you think we stand for. And I put it all in together and come up with a culture statement.

So the culture statement we have on our website is all from staff, which I think is very important that people are seeing who we are. Yes. But also the staff we keep. I've been known to be quite good to my staff, but I think that's very important because if your staff like coming to their job, they're going to give the customer a better experience. If you're coming to your job every day, I don't want to be here. I don't like the boss and this boy's chipping, whatever else. The customer is going to get that experience from you. If you're coming to your work every day, okay, not everyone likes coming to work. Let's face it.

But if it's slightly enjoyable, that's going to rub off on the other staff. That's going to rub off against the customer who's coming in to see you to buy a vehicle or get a service done or whatever. And then grass rate, a customer's team is actually very important. What does our business stand for? And let's have the input from the staff to go, here's what we're giving to our customers. A lot of the input from the staff. You haven't just said, here's our culture. Here's our culture. Here's what I stand for. You're going to do the same. Are they going to buy into that? No. Hopefully not. So is every customer speaking to me? No, they're not.

They're speaking to all the other staff. So it's important to get their feedback to go right. Let's see what we stand for as ambient orders. You said as well, not everyone wants to come to work, but you want to try and make it enjoyable. I get that. And you still need to make sure they do the job. It can't just be a daycare center or a theme park. They've got to still do what they need to do. But I'm just thinking, is it harder? Is it harder with a relatively small team? You said 15. I don't mean to offend you at all with that. But is that harder? Because in 15, if you have Billy or Jenny has had an argument over something, it must ripple through the whole business a lot quicker than if you got like 150 employees.

I have learned a lot over the last eight years, personally. Billy and Jenny had an argument seven years ago about a first day. What's going on? Right. I've learned to look, take a step back and go right. Let's hear both sides of the story. Let's get them in together. If they have an argument or an issue, let's come in to the office and tell them what's going on. Let's get it sorted. So I'm very quick and definite in the pod as soon as something happens. Something is done somewhere. And to be fair, it doesn't have them very often in the business. Everybody, I always tell people we're like a small family, and we are all like we go.

Socializing together, I try and have events throughout the year to get everybody together, to go out for a bit of dinner or a go-karting or something just to get everybody together. And I try and push everybody. I want you to come to this here. I want to have some fun together out of work and time. And the guys know if you come to work to me, one thing I say in interviews, if you don't want to be here, I don't want you to be here. If you get to the stage where you don't want to become to your work, I don't want you to be here. It's not the place where you get time for you to move on to something else.

If you do your job, I will leave you alone. So if you know what to expect, you go and do it to the base of your ability. And we're standing with a big web going, get this done, get this done. If you do something wrong, then I'll have a chat with you. And thanks. I don't have to have too many chats. The guys all go on with what they need to do. Sometimes we brought every night and again to wagging them off or something, but normally they're great. And I'm very thankful for the staff that I do have. They're such a great team. We all go on so well together. So on that interview, then, what are you looking for?

When someone's sitting in front of you, they want a job. Now you picked up the yellow pages. And I came if you're younger than Melkam, myself, go and Google that. But I used to love a left Australian 95 doing the backpacking thing we Aussies do. We're so often a good mate, Pat Casey. And I'd sold cars in 17 in Australia. So I knew the motor trade. And we just went knocked on doors in high wickam. And by the, you know, it was one afternoon, we had a job. You did the same thing with the yellow pages there. I just don't know if that happens anymore. My commitment, I always got a failure for something to like up until I started working with the business coach.

I just went out there, they'd be like, CV, you're in the CV, you went right, okay, we'll call that person in front of you. You're trying to make that decision on a five, 10 minute chart with somebody. They give me a great idea. In January, I want to employ three new people. I want to employ a salesperson, an extra salesperson, a trainee salesperson, and a social media expert manager, whatever you want to call them to take photographs of cars. And I said, well, why not get the three videos? I said, what do you mean two videos? Send them the CV, then ask them to do a video, three questions, what about themselves, three questions, and why they should up the job, blah, blah, blah.

The amount of people that cut out of the CV process, yeah, the point is they don't want the job, if they don't want to do the video. And I'm actually trying to hire a business manager at the minute, and I've done the exact same thing with that. And the amount of CVs I've got for this business manager, who's going to recommend the business to help me, some of the CVs, you go, why have you even applied for that job? You know, it's not in your Fort Het Hall. I then ask people to do the video. And again, that has then caught the CV down even more, to go right, well, you actually want that job, and it was up to me then to make that decision on, well, not on the video, but get them an infra interview, you sort of get to know somebody's personality in the video and how they come across and they're highly present themselves and how they got there.

So you then get them in for a chance and go from there. And you hope you make the right decision to come in the business. Because again, when you've got a close-knit network of staff, you don't want somebody to recommend who's going to upset the Apple Card and create a product. So it's getting that, I hope you imagine they're all going to be halfway forward together, you know. But especially car sales people, we need to do the seat now videos on the car. We always train and advocate, start with yourself. Okay. Hello, Mr. BT. Thank you very much for inquiry on this portion on 11, blah, blah, blah. Okay. We always want people to start with yourself because people buy people, man, I still get the resistance.

Malcolm say, oh, no, I've got a face for radio, or don't make me do that. But it's like, no, no, no, the hit rate goes through the roof when you start with yourself because people buy people. And I love what you're doing with that. Start with, if they're not as a salesperson now, if they're not going to send a video to you, they're not going to send it to your customers. Yeah. Yeah. Then I was a great idea. I think it's a massive stuff. Turn over here. We do try and look after staff as best we can. Listen, some people leave to get the grasses, green, or another side and things like that. But you try and look, I certainly try and look after them as best I can when they're here.

And why some say, oh, you're far too good to staff. No, like, well, staff can never leave me saying he done this and he done that. Or, you know, if I treat them right, then it's up to them how they act and work. And if they stay or go and think they don't have a high start. Well, this is a conversation we first had. You wanted two people training. I said, listen, we normally work with OEMs, dealer groups that they're big enough. They can get enough people in room to quite frankly make it cost effective. We're not the cheapest training company in the world. And I remember at the time, you said, no, no, but I still need the same training for my guys.

OK, what do we do? You do invest in them. You do invest in the business there. Yeah, you could make more money. I'm sure by not spending what you are with us, for example. OK, but you know, I was a thing that sort of caught me when you and I started talking, I was like, right, I want somebody to provide training. Because whenever you're in the franchise, we're like, I used to spend, I have a good friend, Paul Cobber, who trained me when I was in Pugetown days back over in Comrey. And we were doing videos and we were looking around all the Pugetown products and he's such a nice guy and him, I still came contacting Facebook and he maybe takes some of my success down to his training, let's say.

He's a server server guy. But that was in the franchise world. Last year, I was thinking, right, well, I'm an independent. I want to give the customer the best possible experience. I want my staff to be well trained. Who did I go to? And this is why we're doing the partnership with yourselves now, because the independent guys employ staff all the time. They employ sales guys and girls all the time. But they do need that wee bit of training. Should it be Colin that you're doing the training sales process? Should it be Conrad, who's come in as an experienced sales guy, but not necessarily in cars. Those guys need a wee bit of training. And if you want the best out of your sales guys, I'm going to blow your head up here.

You want the best training company. And you guys offer such a superb thing through your training programs. And you get what you pay for. That's as simple as that. And the guys are the two guys that put on it this last three or four months there. Absolutely love them. Well, listen, I really appreciate that. But the point I'm trying to make and I do take those and thank you so much for that. But for your size of business, you do invest in the website, in the photo booth beforehand. That's what really makes you stand apart, I think. And the customers must see that. And it must flow into the profits you can make. It must because the cars are displayed right, the website looks good.

People have the confidence there. There is a business case for it. I'm certainly there is a business case for it. There is like, I got a lot of people coming to me, God, I didn't realize this place was the size it was and look how clean and tidy it is. Like there's no weeds growing. It's top bike and the stones. Man, that works to me. It's out in the brush of the short stones off the tarmac every day. The presentation is key. Whether you come to buy a five grand car or a five grand car, that five thousand pound means as much to that customer as it comes to buy the 25,000 pound car. I've always had that in present.

I want to be the best. I want to be the best at what I do. I want to give the customers the best possible experience. I want to be the best car leadership in Northern Ireland, UK. Who knows? But you have to invest to get that bag out again. You're talking about private cars. You invest the money and the cars because the customer can't come and pick holes on it when they come to see it. You want the best in your sales guys. You want them to approach the customer the right way so you have to spend the time investing in their future. I've said to my guys before, I don't care how much money you earn every month because if you're doing a good job, you're earning money for yourself and you're earning money for the business.

Therefore, it all works. As I talk about the big weight of somebody in the business isn't pulling their weight. That week, COVID in the big weight doesn't work properly. It's a bit maximising your profit per unit. You need to invest in the product that you're selling. The photo booth was at an investment of time. Yes, of course it was. It's now five, six years down the line from it. And the photographs look superb, which leads on to the good website. How many people look at your website before they come and buy a car? Everyone. They're not going to do it. They're not going to do it. They're not going to do it. They're going to get your Facebook to see who you are and what you do and Instagram, whatever.

Then what they do on the Google, that's read as reviews. Everybody knows about you before you come to the Ag weight. It's like, well, you're well, I've seen your face and social media and I'm like, yeah, it's not something I feel comfortable doing, but it gives people who we are. I've encouraged the sales guys to go and put your face out there and do videos. The guys are getting more and more comfortable doing the videos about cars and the rest of the day. They're getting more confident doing it, but it's letting people see who they're coming to do with. Yeah. That's a great key bit to tell on cars. But it also helps when you're trying to recruit people.

Because you try and recruit people. They know that. As you said before, you do the go-karting nights. You do the look after stuff. Did I hear right? 15 people there and you put the gym into the dealership there. But stuff like that, that really helps when people see that on Facebook and TikTok, I suppose, nowadays for the younger generation. That's going to help. They're much younger than us too. I even do an employee of the Monster Award. I got that from Jim Reed. You know Jim. He doesn't employ the Monster Awards. That's a great idea to acknowledge who does really well in the Monster. I get in the war and give me bonus every month.

And it's just, they all talk about who's going to get it this month. And even the new staff that's come in and see, well, they're acknowledging the staff that does well. They give something to aim for every month. I really enjoyed doing that, so do. So EVs, who managed, by the way, had the exactly the same philosophy as yourself. But I want to talk about electric vehicles. The revolutions on the way you mentioned before, I'll stay away from that at the moment. And I suppose I get that. In the franchise world, there's lots of different manufacturers that they've had to go down the V-RIT. You're going to have to, at some point, if this 2035 comes in, no ice vehicles.

What are you doing to, what's your thought process about thinking about EVs in the future? I know at the moment, I think on auto traders, something like 7% of the cars on auto traders this morning, electric vehicles, it's not great. But that's going to keep growing, right? What's your thought process on the whole EV world? I don't know that it is going to keep growing. I was invited over to car data live earlier this year to be one of the guests up on the stage. And the whole day was with EV. This is absolutely draining me like an EV bar. It was just EVs all day. And I think, I get the government, it frustrates me.

The government years ago made manufacturers make these environmentally friendly diesel. Your diesel car, you were showing it was zero road tax or 20-point road tax because it was so environmentally friendly. Oh, hold on. Let's bring out EVs. And it's like, what need is there for EVs? There's not then, especially in Northern Ireland, there is just not the infrastructure I feed through the UK for electric vehicles. I had a Tesla last year and brought it in just as he looked like. And they talk about range anxiety. Boy, it's really a thing. I took it home and I've taken them at my kids' daily holiday Bible club and realized, oh, I have enough opportunities to actually take them there.

I can't pull into the payroll station to fill up 20 quid. What range was it? Nothing? I left here. I'm 25 minutes from the business. I left here and I was at 60%. When I got home, it was 19%. And I put on the reindeers and the things with the kids. They thought this was great. The reindeers and the screen are on the business. And the other place was five minutes away and I got back. It was 9%. I go, right, am I going to be able to go back and lift them whenever it's finished? Or do I need to plug it into the charger here now from it or two? And then anyway, I brought it back, put it up for sale.

Guy came out to test drive it. Bart was flat. I never thought to myself, well, actually, that's just like an iPhone. Your battery's going to die sitting out there in the yard. So that I was learning that, okay, need to keep these things charged. Well, I want 100 EV vehicles out there having to constantly charge them now. Definitely not. Yeah. They're just the petrol and diesel engine are so environmentally funny. What need is their free base? They're not even charging road tax EVs. So what is the benefit of having an EV? The car developed a recipe to charge them at home. I just personally don't say it. They keep pushing this, do it back. I can see that continue getting pushed back to go.

I think they like having the chat about it. Maybe they don't have anything else to talk about other than let's do something with EVs. But I just can't see me having a full yard of EVs. And I would probably speak for most of the independent guys. I think if you listen to Umesh's podcast, I think it was very similar to what you said there. And it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out. Because if 2035 happens and the manufacturers don't produce, now having said that, you have got some of the big manufacturers already saying, we just can't get there. That's not going to happen to be interesting to see. But at this stage, it's just not a bit easier.

So I think a car dealer, I think one of the guests was bald. But I think bald was now 100% EV. You're just like, again, that's your big XC90 and your XC60 is such a great family car. Where are you going to go when you're family company trips and your XC90 and an EV? It'll take you two days to get there. It's going to have to plug in and charge every two or three hours. Yeah, I just don't see it. I don't see it. The ones I don't get on the EV world, if I'm brutally honest, is Tesla. So I'm going to upset a whole market there that we're ringing in the next hour or something else.

I just, I don't know. This is politically incorrect. But when the stickers, and it's a real thing, I see that they're there. I bought this before Elon went mad and took those stickers on the cars. But be interesting to see how that plays out there. I just want to get your views on that. And I'm going to say it's exactly the same as Umeashers. It's exactly the same as that one there. So listen, can I ask you, you've been going, well, 2001, you started selling cars. What lessons have you learnt over the last few decades there? What's the biggest lesson that you'd like to pass on to someone else who's just starting to meditate? Okay.

You know, people would say, if you could go and tell your younger self some advice when you started there, what advice would you have given yourself? And what advice could you pass on to someone else? The customer of the advice would pass on to someone else is do the job rate. Literally do the job rate. Be honest. Be open. Just do the thing rate. You know, that's why I stand for it as independent data as part of the AMDA. We do the thing rate. We treat our customers right. We buy good quality cars. You do your checks on the cars. You're not bringing stuff in that you don't know the history about it. You want to sell a product to the customer that you hope you don't see that customer nice as possible for two or three years until they want to change it.

And they want to come back and buy from you because they've had that experience because of how you dealt with them when they came in and the product that you sold them. And I think that's very important. There's a lot of people trying maybe do shortcuts and do this, that, and the other, and maybe don't tell the truth all the time. And you know, catch you out. It'll absolutely catch you home. If you tell the truth all the time, you can tell you all the truth. Talk about that a tool to do the thing right. It will stand by. I have done that from day one. And I feel that talking around with some customers will say you didn't do the thing right because it wasn't the way they wanted you to do it.

But if you know that you've done the thing right from doing your business, how you treat your staff, the product that you're bringing in, how you're prepping your stock and how you're selling the customers, I just think it'll stand by so much when you're starting off in business. I just continue that the whole way through. And lessons I have learned over the years, I'm still learning Simon. I love, I'm not a massive learner. But when I say I love learning, I love finding out new things. So I love listening to podcasts, especially your own. They're maybe picking up things going, I'm doing this for 24 years. But I never thought of that. And you just pick up wee things.

And I've been brilliant. I'm not a reader. I hear read books. I buy books. I'm going to read that there and never read it. I've started in the podcast this year and really love listening to podcasts and listen to other people's stories. It's not a bit coping. Their ideas. It's a bit how you can put that idea into your own way of doing things in business and in your own company. And so I'm constantly learning and definitely think that I'm trying to carry out to the staff as well. You know, yes, you might be selling cars for five, 10 years, but you can still learn. You can still pick up some of the go, maybe you should try that.

You know, it's all about changing what you do. Yeah. Listen, I could also ask about, and we both played hockey. I played hockey when I was young. I haven't played since I started the motor trade funny enough. 17 was when I stopped hockey. It's the motor trade working weekends and stuff like that. You still play hockey then. That competitiveness, is that still ingrained as it comes from your sporting background as well? I mean, you've got a gym in the dealership. Okay. This podcast, you said, can you please put it back later? Because I'm training in the morning. Okay. Is that competitive? Is that part of something that drives you still? Yeah, I believe it does.

I played hockey and skill, loved playing hockey in my uncle, who unfortunately got killed in the road accident after a hockey match. Well, no, I'm 40. It must be 39 years ago. He played for Ireland, hockey. So I always had the hockey in the family. And unfortunately, as you said, I had to stop whenever I started selling cards. I was working too late night. I was working Saturdays. You did stop it. Yeah, I did. I stopped when I was 16. I left school, went to full-time employment. Well, I can't play hockey because I'm working late. And then the wife, she played hockey, her still plays hockey. And she invited me along to a mixed tournament.

And one of the guys, they're like, oh, you're not actually that bad. Do you want to come and play for a party for you? And I was like, yeah, we don't work any at night anymore. And funnies work at like we only do two hours in the Saturday morning. We do 10 to 12 in the Saturdays when you write the black and make match times. And that was four years ago. And in part, few hockey clubs have been captain this last two seasons. And they're like, enjoy it. And just getting out with the guys on a Wednesday for training, just you've had a hard day in the office and you just go out and you're not thinking about cars.

And so the motor industry really does suck again. And you'll know this from franchise, whatever it really takes up all your life. You're constantly thinking about cars. Well, I was just going to say, there's people listening to this now, throwing up in their car when you said we're only open two hours on a Saturday. There will be people to franchise world. Absolutely. We're with that one. I want to be a nice, you know, whenever I started out in my own event, right, I've done 12 years. Okay, it's not a long time to go. I've done late nights. I've done Saturdays and I'm going right. I enjoy my own time. There's a lot that this business gives you a good life.

Don't get me wrong. If you do it, it incorporates your life and what you think is constantly cars. You find it hard sometimes to switch off. But I went, I'm not doing late nights. Now, someone's come and say a car at six o'clock. And we close at half five. The guys will stay on and say, yep, no problem. But we're no open data club just we have to see who drives in. Saturday morning's in here. 10 to 12 is like, I'm going to go back to my livestock. It's like a cattle market. There is people everywhere. There is people doing days everywhere. And the vibe in the place is just fantastic. Customers get the vibe too because they see people buying cars, getting data is done.

And they're like, did he buy that? Why? Right, right, why? But that's when you've two people in test driving the one car. And it's just like, well, whoever puts them only down first gets it sort of thing. And the vibe here in a certain one for two hours is class. And I say, come back to the hockey side. I think the Wednesday night, an hour and hour and a half training, your mindset started with the guys and getting the competitive. We went from a junior five leg to junior four last season, which is our two seasons ago. We've now got promoted to junior three this season. Even we're building the hockey club and we're getting more players in.

And just that competitive side of things is just phenomenal. And again, yeah, I was at the gym this morning. I go to gym twice a week, I swim twice a week. But again, she set up for the day. And I like doing it first thing in the morning because it means you come in to work and you're ready to go. And you feel so much better. Again, car business owners don't get sucked in. You have to be in at seven o'clock and you have to stay to seven o'clock. There's more to life. And I'm a family man of three young kids. You won't see them. And maybe I can back to the fact I lost my father at 16.

I want to give my kids the best possible life they have when I'm on this land. I had a massive bad accident three years ago. I electrocuted myself with overhead park tables, cotton haters at home. So I had a 11,000 Boltzmann through me on the 7th of May three years ago. Is that the scar on your right arm there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I was at our house. There's a high head and a love garden again, something different from the car in the stream. I cut the grass and with quite a few edges about the house and I like doing everything myself. I wrote this cherry picker to go up and cut this hedge down a bit and wasn't thinking the overhead park tables that were going across the corner of the garden.

And yeah, spent 17 days in the Royal Hospital. Very, very close to death. And again, I'm not saying I was a wake up clock even before that. I still had the same momentum. I won't be there for my kids and whatnot. But it certainly gives you a wake up call that there's a lot more to life than just car seals. Yeah. Yeah. So true. So true. So listen, wrapping up then future plans for MB Motors. Do you have plans to expand? Are you going to keep it as it is so you can control it? Are you going to open up an EV center? Maybe not the last one. What are your plans for the future?

Simon knew to all of that there. I'm not expanding anymore. Eight years ago, if you'd told me you're now stuck in 100 plus cars and you've got 15 staff and extended the business three times, it went really. This has really blew my mind. I'm not a big hit person. I don't mean to say what I've accomplished, what just has built up over the three years. I can never have dreamed of it. But I'm done. I think I said to you, we're chatting that at one stage last year, 150 cars. It was too big. Again, if you're listening to this here in your startup business, don't get too big because it can suck you and stay with what's comfortable with you.

We feed our sweet spot to 100, 110 cars. We can manage that better. We can keep the stock turned right. We can keep the prep right. No plans to expand. EV center. No. That would be good. Yes. I think my aim this year has been on fire. With my business coach, I've been saying, most of your team for 20, 25, this year is on fire. I want to make envy motors the best I can possibly do. I want to make a very profitable business. I want everybody to enjoy being here. I want the customers that good experience. Let's just build envy motors to be the place to go on bike cars. I really appreciate this conversation.

I've just enjoyed it. I just looked at the time that I couldn't realize how long we've been chatting. We've been chatting so long. Listen, how do people reach out to you? Malcolm is linked in the users way from to casual go to your website. What's the users way for people? Personally, if you only get me, I'm on LinkedIn just as Malcolm B as far as social media is concerned with envy motors. And I don't forget that we're on the website, Facebook, Instagram. And yes, we are trying on the old tech talk at the minute to get that younger audience. But even from these podcasts, sometimes people have reached out to say, well, what about the estimate of that?

I don't have any issues doing that. Please, don't have a look at the website there because it's a great website. Well, we'll deserve the award there. And now wrapping up, I'm still looking at the cars at the background there. What are the cars? What's your dream car then? So the money no object dream car is it going to be? So I turned 40 in April there. And my dream was always to have a red Ferrari. All who dream to have a Ferrari. Then kids came along and again, I don't mean it's the big way. I have a few cars being a car enthusiast like cars who I do have a Mustang 5-meter GT convertible. That's that photo.

That makes sense. It's not as orange. All my stuff is black and orange. So it's either an orange car or black cars. It's an orange one with a black roof. It's MB motors three and three. But I started, I used to do a bit of rallying. And I thought, if I go out and buy this Ferrari, there's two seats in it. Like three kids, no wife. It's just going to fit there. So when I bought another rally car, so I haven't rallied since my usual days. So I'm getting back into rallying. So I bought a Subaru Impreza. I'm sitting here to try it out. So the dream car is consulting things to go back on.

I'm worried about times. No, I just want to go out and blow off about a steam and have a bit of crack in between that. Obviously. Yeah, sounds good. Malcolm, I've really appreciate this conversation. And thank you so much for the time, the amount of time we spent on this one. No problem, Sam. It's been great. Thank you for our meal. That just leaves me to say that all details of this episode and other episodes on the selling in the motor trade can be found on our website simcotraining.co.uk. Go there to get a copy of our book, Words That Sell Cars. Go there to sign up to a free trial of our Sal's Fitness online Sal's Training Program.

Easiest way to get hold of me is Simon Bowkett through LinkedIn. Thank you.