 Hey everybody, Brett here with Summit Automotive and you are in my personal studio from my home right now. I was going to do this at work, but it's just there's too many people, too many things going on when I'm at work to do a video like this. So welcome to my studio, I guess. I've got hot wheels all over the walls and such. So it's kind of the thing I do on my days off. Anyways, so we had a, this is the year end review video, and we had a very good 2023. We had a pretty good 2022. And depending on whether you're looking at used cars or new cars, you can say, well, we had a worse used car year or we had a better new car year. But really what it comes down to is, you know, making our customers happy and delivering as many vehicles as possible so that we create that positive experience for our customers. And they keep coming back and sustain the dealership and everybody that works for the dealership. So I have a little bit of stats that I did. Just took basically some of our sales numbers from last year to this year. I also manage all the details at Summit. So I have those stats too. And I wanted to give you those stats because it's something interesting that I've noticed, direct correlation between the amount of details, full details that we do, and record to the amount of used cars we sell in a year or a month or a week or whatever. It's pretty crazy. And that correlates with, you know, how many videos I'm doing for the YouTube channel to get, you know, the most merchandised vehicles up there timely. So anyways, without further ado, let's get into the numbers here. So 2022, we sold 1352 used vehicles in 2022. That comes down to about 112.6 vehicles a month. And we actually took a little bit of a dip in 2023. We sold 1254 vehicles in 2023, which is an average of 104.5 vehicles a month. So now you can look at that one of two ways, like, oh, we had a drop in sales, the used car market is slumping. There was several factors that went into that this year. And one of the biggest factors was that we got the new Jeep showroom, which you guys have seen. And the new Jeep showroom brought an abundance of we got a better allocation of Jeeps. So we pretty much have like 100 new Jeeps on our lot right now, just Grand Cherokees. And if you want to count the Wranglers, the Wagoners, the Compasses, the Renegades, I bet we have close to 160 new Jeeps on our lot right now, which is a big increase in an inventory interest that we got to pay on that inventory. So we weren't able to expand the used cars as much as we liked. And we actually had to like contract that a little bit. So to only go down about eight vehicles a month in used, I think is a direct correlation to what happened with the new cars and our allocation, how many we got. Because new cars do take time to picture video. They take time to set up road readies, stuff like that. So when you're doing new cars, you can't do used cars. And when you're doing used cars, you can't do new cars. So we only have so many people working for us. And there's only so much space to do these road readies, to take these pictures, to clean these vehicles. So we are confined by the size of our buildings right now and the size of our dealership. So to only go down eight vehicles with the dramatic increase of new cars, I thought was probably a direct correlation. I don't think it really had much to do with the market. I don't think it had much to do with our advertising. I don't think it had much to do with our merchandising because that has not changed in the past seven, eight years since I've been doing the inventory here at Summit Auto, which was late 2016. So that's that. It was a good used car year. We sold a lot of vehicles, made a lot of people happy. You know, eventually, you're not going to get everybody happy, but you know, we had a very good year reviews wise and customers wise. So thank you to everybody that bought a vehicle from us in 2023 and 2022, of course. And we look forward to 2024 to make you happy with your next vehicle, whether that be used or new. Now getting to the new side, this is where it gets interesting because we sold in 2022, we sold 303 new cars. So traditionally new cars in Wisconsin do not sell as well as used cars. There's, you know, they're more expensive. You know, you have to, with a brand, you have to kind of have that niche of people and there's so many people in an area that buy a vehicle from you that's new because you can get a new car. So for example, you can get a new car here in Fond du Lac, you can get a new car in Oshkosh, you can get a new car in Appleton, you can get a new car in Green Bay. And you can get the same car at any of those dealerships, Waupon, Beaver Dam, wherever. If you can get a new car, a new car is a new car and you can get it from anywhere that has a new car franchise. So that's a little bit harder on the new car side to grasp all the customers in a state, especially when so many cities have their own franchise dealership. Anyways, 2022 we sold 303 new cars and trucks and that would be an average of 25.25 for 2022 on the new car side. Now, because of that increase of inventory, because of the Jeep showroom, because of a more focused approach from the dealership standpoint on new cars, in 2023 we sold 561 new cars. That is a total of an average of 46.75 new cars a month. We almost doubled our new car sales per month in 2023. So that is one of the reasons we had a little bit of a dip on the used side. But overall, now if you go to totals for new and used, we sold 1655 new and used vehicles in 2022, which came out to an average of 137 vehicles a month, 137.9. And on the 2023 we sold 1850 vehicles. So that was a very good year and we averaged 151 vehicles 151.25 for 2023. So overall, you want to combine new and used. We had a better year in 2023 over 2022. And I think a lot of that was just because we got more new cars and we had to focus our attention to the new cars because they were there and we got to sell them. So like I said, we only have so many people in our dealership and we only have so much space in our dealership. So you increase in one, you're going to decrease in the other. We'd love to increase in both, but it's just not always the case. So getting back to the thing I said before with details. So I'm the detail manager. Technically, I'm more of like the detail orchestrator. I make sure that we're cleaning the right vehicles and that they're getting on our list to get set up before they get into detail so that when they come out of detail, we can picture them and video them and just get them right on the lot. So what's interesting though, since I've been doing this, which was 2016, it's almost an identical correlation between the amount of details we do in a month a month and the amount of used vehicles we sell in a month. And 2022 was a very good example of that. In 2022, we sold 1,352 vehicles and we detailed 1,354 vehicles, which is like a .01 difference. It's crazy. And then in 2023, we sold 1,154 used vehicles and we detailed 1,219 used vehicles. Part of the decrease there I think is in 2022, we sold a lot of sports cars. Sports cars come in cleaner. They take less time to detail. We can run them through our shop. So one detailer can probably detail three to four sports cars a day where they might be all day on one truck. That's pretty dirty. So that's just kind of where we were at. So once again, we did a lot of sales this year and it was a really good total of 1,815 for the total of the store. So great job. Thanks to everybody at Summit who contributed to getting the vehicle set up, getting them cleaned up and getting them merchandise and all the salespeople that sell them and the finance people that get them approved and just the buyers and everybody up and down the board that at the dealership, the ladies in back that do all the paperwork, everything's got to flow just right for all this stuff to go good and not have a lot of problems and stay in business. The dealership world is a very, it's simple but it's complex in the different departments and how they all have to work together between service, parts, detail, sales and back office and finance and everything. It's just got to fit perfect. Anyways, so thank you to everybody at Summit. We had a great 2023. We're looking for more in 2024 of course as always because we got to keep the ball rolling. Everybody's got to keep their families going and keep their livelihoods going here too. So anyways, a little bit more on for the personal side of me on the YouTube side. So the YouTube is kind of, I started it. I manage it. Everything on there is everything I do. So it's kind of, I use the YouTube channel to help us sell vehicles and I also use the YouTube channel to promote Jeep and stuff like that. So it's kind of, sorry my screens went black there. Anyways, so it's kind of my personal thing to help the dealership to sell vehicles and so it's pretty much my channel but it's Summit, I use it at Summit pretty much strictly for work. So that being said, I thought it might be interesting to go over some of the history and like how it got started and how long I've been doing the YouTube channel. So a little bit about this just this year. So in 2022 we did, I did 961 walk around videos, new and used 961 videos. That's quite a lot of videos. I don't even know what that comes out to monthly. It's probably, I don't even know, 60, 70 monthly. I can do my calculator real quick here but it's a big commitment and you know a lot of people always ask me like oh is YouTube worth it and it's like a it's like a big, it's a big time suck and it's you know it's it's not, I'm sure you could probably make more money doing DoorDash for less time but then you're putting wear and tear in your car. You know so there's like side hustles you can do. YouTube is because I get to use it to help sell cars and it helps me, it's a win-win for everybody. So in 2022 I averaged about 80 videos a month. So that's about 20 videos a week on just vehicle walkarounds where I'm showing the vehicle, showing the cleanliness, making sure that our customers out of state can see just how clean they are. That's why I do the videos so that our customers don't have to question if a vehicle's gonna have damage to it, if it's gonna be just a big pile of junk because there's so many dealers out there that just put stuff up line, they don't fix anything, they don't make anything look good and it just they just and telling I can tell you from personal experience just at our dealership the only time we ever get bad reviews is if the vehicle gets out of service, gets a price and does not get cleaned up properly that's usually when we don't get a good review and that's just inevitable if you want to come by the vehicle right away before it even gets set up that it's usually within a week that that happens and you know we can't really help that. In 2023 we did 881 videos which was a decrease but once again I truly believe that's because we did less sports cars and that's still 73 videos a month so seven less videos a month. Anyways that being said YouTube's funny how it works because just because you put out less videos doesn't mean you're gonna get less watch time and it's really about the quality of the videos so I'm always looking to do new stuff like this new stuff like the lot walks that we did we did 26 lot walks in 2023. I'm hoping to do one a week it's just so tough sometimes I've got because I manage about seven or eight guys and girls and in my department and I got to make sure that they're working and I got to make sure that you know the dealership comes first before the YouTube channel so sometimes I'm just too busy that's what it is and anyways so getting back to the YouTube channel in 2014 I started in sales at Summit Automotive before that I worked for a dealership a family dealership that I had worked at since 2006 full time and I'd worked there previously since 1998 so I've been in the car business a long time I was doing their internet I was fixing computers I was writing descriptions for vehicles I was taking pictures and then in 2007 we started doing videos at that dealership and I was one of the first people on the internet to advertise pretty much every single vehicle on our lot with a video and I actually worked with AutoTrader to get videos up on their website and I believe they still use the same system or very similar system that we came up with years and years ago back in 2007 or 2008 I worked with a guy from Iowa named Sudhir at with AutoTrader to get those up anyways so I've been doing videos for a long time but I'm always looking to do the videos better more efficiently and just help sell cars better so anyways in 2013 I came to Summit and in 2014 I quickly realized that we had customers from out of state and we were not doing videos because I wasn't in the internet department I was actually selling vehicles so I created the YouTube channel to make videos and put them online so that I could show my customers the vehicle when they called it's just easier to upload a video to YouTube and then send them the link to YouTube so that they can watch it in HD and you don't have to worry about texting and is the file too big do they have a compatible phone put it on YouTube send them the link they're good to go so in 2014 I had 10,000 I started the channel really late in 2013 and in 2014 I started uploading videos and just for my customers and I had 10,600 views I had 283 hours of watch time and I got eight subscribers so that was and at the time I really wasn't even I wasn't looking for subscribers I hadn't really done YouTube in three or four years prior to that I had handed that off to the previous place I worked at I wasn't managing the channel anymore they weren't really using the channel anymore so I didn't I didn't know anything about YouTube other than that's where I put videos and send them to customers so in 2015 I had 18,500 views and 519 hours of watch time and my subscribers went up 19 to 27 so that was exciting and then in 2016 which was the year that my twins were born we had that's when I switched to the current position I'm in so 2016 there's an increase here because I started uploading videos I went into the internet department and merchandising department and started doing the videos for all the used cars so naturally the more videos you do the more exposure you have on YouTube the more views you're going to get so in 2016 my views went up to 48,300 and I had a watch time of 1600 hours of watch time my subscribers went up to 104 from 27 so it was a 77 subscriber increase which was exciting and then in 2017 just because of the sheer number of vehicles we were doing and how many videos I was putting up my views increased also in 2017 I believe is when they came out with the Wrangler JL but not till late 2017 and then we had a 2017 JK come out in 2017 so you could get the JK and the JL in 2018 that's how it was we had a 2018 JK that came out so the classic body style and I put that up as a brand new 2018 Jeep Wrangler it was kind of clickbait but it was the JK that video went crazy I got almost 500,000 views on that video alone since I put it up but that year my and I'm guessing that's where a lot of this watch time came from 2017 my watch time went up or views went up to 602,600 views in 2017 so it went up quite a bit and then the watch time went up to 23,600 hours from 1600 hours so it was a 20 almost a 20 times increase in watch time which was crazy to me but another big thing happened in 2017 my subscribers went up from 104 to over 1,000 I had 1,081 subscribers excuse me in 2017 and what that allowed was allowed me to monetize the YouTube channel now what that does is you can run ads on videos which we do on vehicles that are no longer in stock so basically you run ads and then Google gets a cut you get a cut a little bit so but 2017 made me realize that you know there was potential in YouTube to produce some sort of revenue so 2017 I was able to monetize the channel and that motivated me to do even more videos and better videos and increase watch time increase subscribers just to because it benefits me and it benefits the dealership the more subscribers I have the more views are on the dealership the more views are on our inventory I get people all the time that watch our videos that say hey I want to I want to come buy this or I want to talk to somebody about this so I just direct them right to sales and they talk to our sales people and sometimes we sell the vehicles we had a guy fly in from New Jersey I think bought a brand new Rubicon Wrangler from us and he's like yeah I watched the video and I had to have it so it works anyways so the more views the more subscribers the better for our dealership the better for me everybody wins so 2018 was a monster year and as far as views my views almost doubled 1,152,000 views in 2018 and we went up to 53,700 watch time hours and subscribers went up to 2,900 subscribers 2019 was very similar 1,218,000 views and 48,200 watch time hours so more views less watch time on 2019 over 18 and my subscribers though went up 4,800 to 4,800 subscribers and 2020 I decided that I was going to because I had started seeing some monetary success with YouTube in 2019 and at the end of 2019 I decided I'm going to start working on the thumbnails the titles and really focus in my focus on YouTube still do everything else with the the vehicles and everything but YouTube I was going to focus and just work really hard at that and it's pretty much become a second job for me I work all day I do the videos at night and then I edit the videos at night and put them up so it's like I'm working two jobs it's fine but hey but anyways 2019 at the end of 2019 I said I'm going to really focus on this and the results show I worked on thumbnails titles and better walkarounds better equipment I've got wireless microphones now and just everything I try to make better with the channel end screens you know you name it cards links in the descriptions better descriptions all that 2020 so 2019 I had 1.2 million views I changed my strategy in 2020 and I went up to 4.4 million views on YouTube in 2020 and I had 168,000 watch time hours that's times three over 2019 and my subscribers went up to 12,400 and 2021 4.6 million views 178,000 hours of watch time my subscribers went up to 19 four and 2022 was 4.4 million views and 156,000 watch time hours and subscribers went up to 26,000 subscribers so 2022 was a very good year for YouTube 2021 was the best it was during COVID I think a lot of people I think it was coming out of COVID a lot of people had money a lot of people were shopping a lot of people were online and that's why we had more views more watch time hours and all that but 2023 was and I attribute this to better videos scripts I guess I do better scripts when I'm doing my use vehicle walkarounds and just try to focus in more on the viewer on my new car walkarounds so that everybody sees exactly what's going on also the fact that the 2024 Jeep Wrangler came out is a huge thing too because a lot of the viewers on our channel are Jeep Wrangler fans and I know that so the 2024 Wrangler had a lot of videos on there for that and that's why but 2023 we had 5.193 million views on the channel so thank you so much I can't even believe it from all the people that subscribe that watch that watch daily really appreciate it really appreciate it I'm humbled blessed all that good stuff thank you so much and we had 187,000 watch time hours and the subscribers went up to 33,700 so it was a fantastic year on YouTube it was a really good year for the dealership it was a good year for details it was a good year for videos we really got our team dialed in for detail I'm happy with where I'm at there and we got a lot of new sales guys this year lost some veterans but I think the new guys we have a really good core of sales people that truly care about the customer are smart knowledgeable and can really give our customers a great experience and that's really what it comes down to and what it's all about so anyways I hope that was I know it was long I don't even know how long it was I feel like it was 25 minutes of talking and I can tell because my throat's all dry and stuff so anyways thank you so much for watching the video remember to like subscribe and share in the YouTube channel and here we go into 2024 comments questions concerns scathing rebuttals leave them in the comments below I answer 95% of all the comments on the channel unless I don't know the answer and then I try and find the answer in the comments on either way remember to like subscribe and share thank you so much for checking out the video and from my home studio here have a great day and have a happy and productive 2024 here we go