Andrew Street
If you are here to hear a conversation between me and one of our evangelists, a, a great longtime customer and who’s become a friend who’s working on some innovative stuff at his dealership, I’d like to introduce you to Miqueias with Leif Johnson Ford. I’m Andrew Street, owner of Dealer OMG.

You’re listening to Word on the Street, and we can kind of jump into just how things are going. Cause we just started up with, with Miqueias recently at Leif Johnson Ford here in Austin. Miqueias, how are you? 

Miqueias Braganca
I’m doing great. Good to see you again, Eddie. It’s always a pleasure to be with you, Andrew.

Andrew Street
Yeah. So, not only is Miqueias a car guy, general manager he’s immigrated from Brazil with a really interesting story, but he is got a mind for digital marketing, for leadership, for growing. And then sounds like good parenting too. He was just saying that. He’s got a, a daughter in Baylor that’s now in Singapore, is that right? 

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah, that’s right. She’s she’s done a study abroad in Singapore business, especially in digital marketing. So she’s gonna be there for a couple of months. So miss her already. She’s been there for, you know, 15 days, exactly two weeks now. 

Andrew Street
So, Dude, that’s good parenting too, is what I was trying to tell you. 

Miqueias Braganca
Appreciate it. 

Andrew Street
Well, tell me how are things going at the store? 

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah. Things, are going good. We had a really good month last month. You know, we, for the first time in the last, I would say probably 24 months we broke over 150 new vehicles with only 180 in stock. So it’s almost like flipping the whole new inventory and 30 in a rolling 30 days, I guess you could say. So it’s it’s good to see what’s happening and looks like we’re gonna have a do over again cuz you know, the June is shaking up really strong. 

Andrew Street
So what– how long have you been general manager there now?

Miqueias Braganca
So, since the first of the year. I came back here June of last year from, from my, a field adventure in Florida. You know, sometimes you don’t always make the right choices, and I learned that one real quick. But I was pleased enough that felt like I’d done a good job here at Leif Johnson prior to and paths crossed again, me and the president of the group, Jeff, but, and I had the opportunity to come back. So I came back as a GSM in June last year. I left as a GSM, came back as a GSM used cars, was struggling back there, and so, we ramp it up, used car sales to almost 150 used cars a month, put the used cars back on a, on a map. And and then I had opportunity. I was offered the position this year. So really excited about it. And now it’s time to put everything that I learned into works, you know, the last 20 years in the franchise business.

Andrew Street
Well deserved. And it seems like, and before you were GSM, is that right? 

Miqueias Braganca
I was a General Sales Manager. Yeah. 

Andrew Street
And then you also had like your hand in, as a GSM, you have your hand in a lot of departments besides just, you know– 

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah. I guess to say that technically it was overall over You know, three sales departments, new, used, and we have offsite satellite location off 71 by the airport. That was under my supervision as well. But once you start submerging yourself in used cars, you spend a good amount of time in service, make sure you cars are reconditioned right in a timely manner. And So you, you end up spending a lot of time with those guys and finding the right parts, the cheapest parts. Make sure you can recondition the car, don’t cut any corners, but also keep it affordable so you can have a competitor price in the marketplace. So, yeah, I guess that– 

Andrew Street
Seems like, like some of the stores that you’ve worked with too, you’ve been given kind of like the reigns and and autonomy on working with marketing.

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah, I was, I was very blessed in the prior auto group prior to Lief Johnson, which is a local Ford dealer. I was for blessed enough, I worked at that store for 14 years started as a sales consultant. And I was able to move to F&I finance which was short lived cuz they knew I had some prior experience I in in Northeast before I moved to Texas. I ran a small dealership in a repair facility. So I kind of had a good understanding of used cars so from finance, I was short live a new car manager because as soon as they promote me to manager, I was trying to raise the trades for them and you know how that guy is and they was like, well, we probably need you to do use cars. So they swapped me with the used car manager, put him in new cars and sent me to used cars. And from there I mean it’s, what I love. My backbone is used cars. I think I spent eight years. Then I went from used cars to used car director, also running offsite facility that this previous store had as well under our rooftop. And from there I became a GSM at that store the local Ford store, and from used car manager to Director to GSM. I was hands down, involved in, in my digital marketing, probably one of the pioneers in getting out there and really getting understanding the benefits of digital marketing even before it became a thing. So yeah, I was probably one of the first ones to stop printing advertising. I was like, let’s just go all online. This is where it’s at. So I was able to see the tsunami even before. You know, it came close to to shore, you know, and we were always ahead of things. I had a pleasure to meet with you at, you know, meet you at the previous store which we did great things there as you well know. And the reason why I came to Leif Johnson Ford and still working with you is because of all the great things we accomplished at the operator store. So, I’m thankful for that.

Andrew Street
Thank you! Yeah!

Miqueias Braganca
‘Cause, you know, so that was a good thing and a great friendship came out of it. So that’s definitely a plus. And also very important in this business.

Andrew Street
It’s always like one of the biggest compliments in my career when a, when a customer leaves a role and moves into a another store and is able to bring us along. And then it’s just like, my job is to make you look good for bringing us along. Yeah. Then let’s sell cars. Let’s get ROs, let’s recruit, let’s do some outside the box thinking.

Miqueias Braganca
Absolutely. And I guess when I came to the store in 2019 It wasn’t only this store, but I brought the blessing to all the stores, right. As you know, with multiple rooftops in town. And we ended up signing up OMG to all the stores and everybody was able to reap the benefits, right? And then unfortunately, you know, came Covid, right? And everybody thought, “Why advertising, we don’t even have cars, right?” People just start pulling the plugs from all the advertising sources and it just so happened that they’re no different, no discrimination. You guys happen to be one of them, right? That we just cut everything off and I came back last year and trying to shape things up and I keep being that water drop in the bucket, right? I was like, I wanna get back with Dealer OMG. And fortunate enough we reconnected a few months back. We had full-blown launch campaign last month, which I can say we’re getting great results again. I had a one of the– last month we had in the last 24 months as far as volume, right, because I was still able to beat last year’s performance gross wise. Not by much, but I had to sell twice as many cars that I sold May last year, right, to put up the same growth that I had made last year. And I still surpassed that by you know, like $20,000 just in new cars. But cuz new cars is, it’s the biggest difference we can see now cuz now we, I can’t say I have plenty inventory. Right. I used to operate with 400, 500 units in stock now with like 180 to 200. But with 180 cars I was able to sell 150 new cars last month. So that was a good thing.

Andrew Street
And beat the gross from last year? 

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah – new car, new car gross. 

Andrew Street
Were grosses were through the roof already? 

Miqueias Braganca
Yes. Yeah. And now we seeing a new set of challenges. Right. That’s our business. We constantly gotta adapt and feels like used cars is, it’s the struggle now, right? Getting used cars. Right. It’s, it’s not easy. I think everybody’s seeing that right now. The market is very competitive. Right. It’s Rates ups in new cars. People are not buying as many new cars, which two things happens, right? They gotta keep their car longer and they gotta service their cars, right? Which that fixed operations right now is through the roof. What we saw for the last 24 months happened to the variable side. Now it’s happened in reverse, right? We’re still fortunate enough, we’re still selling some new cars, struggling used cars and fixed operations just through the roof, right? Because if you’re gonna have to keep your car longer, you’re gonna have to service your car. So, and again, and like I say, and who who knows what’s next, right? So, but are we constantly trying to be ahead of the curve? 

Andrew Street
Yeah. And if it, like, if, if the industry and the market and whatever didn’t change constantly, we’d probably, I’d probably be out of a job. Cause it’d be easy, it’d be like, let’s just run the same couple carousel ads that everybody else in the market is running. 

Miqueias Braganca
Right.

Andrew Street
Opposed to like, let’s think about this, like advertising and then my, my entire goal is always to have my team to, when we’re talking with you or with any of the customers, it’s like, Are we doing from our desk what’s aligned with what the dealership needs? Like let’s make sure that when we’re talking to Miqueias, it’s not just, Hey, our click through radar reach our frequency, blah, blah, blah. Right? It’s okay. They are having issues getting stocked with pre-owned inventory. Let’s go after everybody driving F-series that bought from us. That’s 20,000 people. Okay? That’s gonna cost $2,000. And then, okay, if we have more budget, let’s go after everybody who drives F-series that didn’t buy from us and get those messages of, “During the month of June and July, we’re stocking the lot” and make sure that with what budgets we have, we’re able to flex it to what your store needs.

Miqueias Braganca
Right. 

Andrew Street
And yeah, and it, and then a lot of the advertising is just gonna start with like your database. You have a gold mine data of people who not only know who you are, not only know who Leif Johnson is, but they’ve shopped with you before they bought from us before. And that’s where it’s gonna start. Like that’s where we need to be really prudent on once somebody buys, not just sending them OEM incentives and leasing specials and inventory, but saying thanks for buying and then introducing them to the fixed-op department, and then I was just talking with Miqueias a second ago, but we are doing a good bit of branding with his dealership right now, I think it’s cause we’re relatively new with launching things. We like to see people watching the video and then move them down to the next level. And it’s not something that…it’s easy to talk about in a dealer to say yes, but then once they see one campaign that’s not delivering a lot of website traffic or leads, they’re like, let’s get rid of that one. 

Miqueias Braganca
Right.

Andrew Street
Is that the feeling? 

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah, and it’s funny ’cause my first reaction, I actually fired [off] emails with Sheila and. And then I was like, well, I’m, I’m better than this. Right? But it’s that car guy that comes out of you, right? And again, first month you guys delivered great numbers, great performance, right? I was really excited. But I don’t just look at with the 10,000 foot bill. Oh, they’re doing great, right? Yeah. As you know, I’m that analytical guy. Alright, line by line. How we doing here? Right? So, CPO campaigns, used card campaigns, right? And I see branding. Well, most of the money is going to branding, right? We getting a lot of impressions, right? We got the frequency is high, but you know, since we don’t have a call, a call to action on branding, right? Because it’s, again, you just wanna do what it, that means you just wanna brand yourself. There’s no click through rates. My eyes went all the way to the right. I was like, well, maybe I shouldn’t spent that much money in branding. Let’s put that money towards something else, right? But. To your point, right? If you get in front of him, they watch the video, and then you follow up with the actual total action ad, which causes the click through rate. People are more likely to click on it, right? You see one thing for the first time. I mean, how much stuff you see online these days. You’d be like, I, this is bogus, right? But then you keep seeing it. Eventually click on it, be like, okay. Right. So you’re more likely to engage the call to action. They click through right through a call to action, right? So it all makes sense, but overall was a great performance, right? So you guys came up I mean, with a fraction of the budget that I spent in some other channels came up in third, right? So I was really glad to see that, right? You guys all perform a lot of Big names out there, right? That I’m, I’m spending three, four times as much more money and surprisingly for the return on investments you guys surpass. So, and that’s from all seats. Now we gotta look at it like, is he worth spending X to get Y results? Right. It’s it’s also interesting why haven’t done it before, right? And I guess when I send the report, some people are like, Oh yeah, that’s pretty good. Right? I should have done that before, like try to get it done before. Right. But overall it’s get great results. I’m also excited to see what the Spanish campaigns will do. That’s, you know, that’s also you, that’s part of our plan, right? Plan of attack. I could say. We have gained about 5%. In Hispanic market share with Ford in the last six months, right? Just through some things we do on our own. So if I can get the same message and say, here we go, Andrew, this is the message. Help me get out there. I’m really excited to see what those numbers are gonna look like here in a couple months. 

Andrew Street
I don’t know this for a fact, and I like, and in marketing it’s, it’s kind of convenient sometimes when the, when, when business is going great, it’s like, okay, cool. What we’re doing is working really well, and if business is bad, it’s like, well, you should spend a little bit more perhaps. You know, it’s like that’s always the language where it’s like, it’s good that we’ve got some early results and then something that’s happened to the Spanish and Austin, I think it’s, there’s like two big dealerships that are other domestic players that we were doing heavy advertising in Spanish with, who’ve been acquired by some of the Publix. 

Miqueias Braganca
Mm-hmm. 

Andrew Street
Who just fell into these cookie cutter campaigns that aren’t doing Spanish ads, and now it’s like, okay. Let’s get the, let’s, let’s, let’s cater to that audience, Miqueias.

Miqueias Braganca
Let’s, let’s capture on it, right? 

Andrew Street
Mm-hmm. 

Miqueias Braganca
It’s and without even you saying the names, I didn’t know exactly who they are. You know, they own the market, right? They own the market. So, and, and it is also kind of like the little reality check, right? You never own the market. There’s a reason why you own the market, right? And the moment you take your eye off the ball, The market is no longer yours, right? It’s a commitment. It’s, it’s a relationship that you build as, as a customer service provider to the customer, to the consumer, right? The moment that link gets disconnected, broken, the machine just don’t run as well, right? You never own the market. Nobody has the luxury. Say, well, I own the market, right? Gotta look back and see what are all the things that I’m doing right? That’s given me. The right to own the market right? It’s, it’s kind of like the, it’s the reward of everything that you’re doing. The moment you stop doing it, which right now the reason everybody’s started tapping in the market is cuz the market itself is diversifying, right? They’re not just going to A and B Motors, right? So it’s, we are seeing more and I’m just happy that I gained 5% in Spanish market share. And that’s even me starting this campaign. So, Really curious as to what we’re gonna do. 

Andrew Street
Yeah. And that’s when it’s like it’s smart for us to have something besides just the same carousels with the inventory going through people’s feeds and trying to get a lot of cheap traffic to the VDPs. Cause like I’ve talked to a thousand dealers now. And two of them are you? Three of them are you, but, but it’s like they, when I’ve always asked like what makes our dealership special? Like why should people come to us instead of one of the other stores? And it’s never been because of our inventory and our price. Nobody’s ever said that. 

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah. 

Andrew Street
But then that’s what everybody starts to advertise through paid social. It’s the inventory and the prices. And so by the time somebody commits to coming to our store, it’s like, okay, I’m coming to you guys cuz of your price and cuz of the inventory. And then it’s starts to commoditize the store where if we can effectively brand and cater to the community and have some of the innovative stuff that you’re doing at your store that you can’t quite talk about yet because, It’s pretty innovative Like it’s, it’s new. 

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah. We definitely have some, some things in, in, in the words like guess I can say, I can’t just quite speak about it as of yet, but some of the things that, we’ve seen that, right, and people just, they want more just than a store that they can buy the car, right? They, they want a store that they can trust, right? That’s, that’s been a big part of, of branding, right? 

Andrew Street
Mm-hmm. 

Miqueias Braganca
We wanna make. You’ll process as easy as possible. Shop. Simple, right? You, you can literally go on my website right now, pick a car. You can ask questions to the finance department, ask questions to managers. If you don’t wanna ask any questions, you can literally start your deal from A to Z right online. So you should basically put information you set up based on the FICO score. It goes to the banks that you selected and finance managers just follow up with you. Email you all the docs sign and the car shows up in your doorstep, right? We trying to make it easy as possible, right? It’s part of a spiel that somebody calls and bought a car. Well, we offer to take the car to them just for a test drive, right? Cuz and some people, people sometimes people appreciate that because I always talk about it and everybody heard this a million times, but sometimes we just don’t quite understand what it means. Right. Number one, luxury being time. No matter how much money you have, that’s one time. Then nobody can buy more. Therefore, makes it number one luxury item. Right? It’s time. So a lot of times people just, they want that service, right? Other things that we have as far as time and mobility, we probably one of the pioneers that have two full blowing, full size vans that we call mobile service, right? We’ll go to people’s house performance oil chains, recalls. We offer free pickup and delivery. Something you get in luxury brands, you, you gotta hear every single car, right? You could drive a 2010 Ford Focus to $120,000 GT Shelby GT 500, and you get the same level of service, right? They call in for appointment. Oh, I’m busy. Well, how about if I send you a vehicle? Right? I’ll send the driver, pick a vehicle, leave a vehicle in your driveway. When your car is ready, I’ll drop it back off and pick up the, the rental back. So, it’s some of the things that I think that it doesn’t show with me the results, but I believe that we being a pioneers in a, in, in a lot of things as far as respecting people’s time, right? Because. There’s an old saying that people rather go get a root canal than have to deal with car people. Right. And unfortunately, it’s a reputation that was built for ourselves. Now it’s our jobs are innovators, our jobs as disruptive to change that perception. How you do it, you don’t have to come in at all. Right. How two o’clock sound. I’ll have the vehicle on your front doorstep so you can test drive it. Right. We, we probably do a good 40% of what we sell our home deliveries. Right. Car shows up in the doorstep. Right. And go over all the futures and benefit of the car. And people don’t even come in. You know I got a cool story to share. My, my brother-in-law was in Brazil and he, he walks in attack field and he covers the whole south America. So they got a big acquisition there in Brazil and he had to stay there for six months Right. To, to get this thing going. Both him and his wife. And so he sold the car, right? And he was like, don’t have any car. Don’t need a car. For six months, went to Brazil. And while in Brazil he started talking to me about a Ford Broco. I said, yeah, I got one. Here’s some of the options. He picked one, picked the finance plan. All that. Finance manager calls him, go over the final details of the contract, emails him the link, he signs the deal remotely. Ryan Dock signed and he calls me up. Say, Hey, I’ll be at the airport on Saturday. I’ll just uber it directly to the dealership. I say, don’t bother. Salesforce will be waiting for you at the arrival with your car ready to go. So he bought a car, he was overseas, bought a car, comes out of the terminal, the cars there expecting him, big Bo, congratulations, shook hands, gave him the keys, drove home on a brand new car. That’s how easy we trying to make, not just cuz it’s my brother-in-law. This is the thing, we make it easy for everybody. So shop simple is our message. You gotta keep it simple and give the consumer the control. 

Andrew Street
And it’s like for, for a domestic dealership, for you guys to like exceed the expectations of what a customer’s gonna expect from the experience of buying.

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah. 

Andrew Street
It’s there. 

Miqueias Braganca
It’s, it’s there. And I was, I was gonna follow up in a simple fact that we don’t fight so hard to be the number one in volume, right? To be, have the bragging rights number one dealer in Austin or in Texas. We do have the bragging rights to say we are the number one dealing in customer satisfaction. Right? President’s award sitting right behind me. Right here. Right. Those plaques, we got 14 of those. Right. And it’s the most pretigious a award that you can win from Ford as a Ford dealer. Well, we’ve done it 14 times. Right? We’ve done it for the last four years. That’s one thing that will have the bragging rights and that is just not volume. You gotta get the volume, you gotta do everything. 

Andrew Street
Mm-hmm. 

Miqueias Braganca
You’ve got to do everything right to be a President’s award worthy dealership. Right. We’ve done it for the last four years on the roll. Right. It’s so, we do have that bragging right, that we will take care of the customer, we will make sure we are respectful of customers’ time, trying to facilitate as much as possible. I think COVID era brought us a lot of things that. Not just in our business, every business, right? We look back and say, why haven’t we done this way? Right? We could be so much more profitable and be so much ahead if we, if we were to take the time to understand what customer needs, that whole mobility thing there was done it through covid, right? Everybody became mobile. Nobody needs a, a skyscraper these days, right? Why? Why do I have to keep that real estate? So it’s a lot of things that people look back and say, why we haven’t done this way. It’s because of the blindness that put in us. Oh, we always done it that way. And that’s one thing we’re trying to disrupt. We trying to be innovative, trying to do things completely different. Right. And we may fail in some areas, but you know what? We fail forward. Right? So it’s never, it’s never, 

Andrew Street
Mm-hmm. 

Miqueias Braganca
It’s never like a bad thing. Right? So either, yeah, either you win or you learn. 

Andrew Street
Right. Yeah. And good. It sounds like you’re carving out that spot right now and it’s six months into being a GM and it’s kind of building the puzzle together and figuring out Exactly. You know, if it’s not number one in volume yet, it’s, you know, it’s like, me, you, you say that I’m number three. I’m like, cool. I don’t, yeah, I don’t, we’re not, you’re not spending a fortune with us. And, and even like, even if we’re looking at traffic to the website or something, it’s like, I want that to be organic traffic. That means you’ve got good branding. 

Miqueias Braganca
Right.

Andrew Street
I want it to be, you know, paid search. I want some things to fall above me and then have us fall in right there. Because if it’s like, there’s some stores where I’m number one in traffic, I’m like, we shouldn’t be number one.

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah.

Andrew Street
There’s, there’s some problems going on with 

Miqueias Braganca
No, you’re right. 

Andrew Street
With branding, with traffic.

Miqueias Braganca
I guess you would be the number one paid, right?

Andrew Street
Yeah.

Miqueias Braganca
Because the other ones branding. We’re lucky to be, you know, here in in Austin for 65 years. This particular store been here for 65 years. So yeah, that’s speaks volume, right? 

Andrew Street
Yeah, that store’s got some stories. 

Miqueias Braganca
Organic [and] search are the two that are beating you right now. So as far as paid lead, provider or it, you’re technically number one, right? Because. But again, due to the branding people, everybody knows Leif Johnson around Austin, right? 

Andrew Street
Mm-hmm. 

Miqueias Braganca
Nobody knows what it’s been here for 65 years. Right? So I’m blessed to be part of that. So, and you know, I’m, I’m, I’m glad we briefly talked about it for a little bit, that the, the 20 years prior of being a GM also gave me enough backbone to understand, have a good understanding of what’s required of a General Manager to do the job. So I don’t think it was too long. I just think came in the right time because I have a full understanding of what needs to be done, right?

Andrew Street
Mm-hmm. So can I ask you 20 years, like over 20 years ago, this story, that is one of the reasons I love this industry, but of when you walked into your first dealership and what you were doing.

Miqueias Braganca
Well, yeah. So you’re gonna take me back in the, in the memory lane now. So, yeah. So back in 1996 I got married. I was 19 years old with intentions of getting outta Brazil come to United States for better opportunity. I was blessed that I had some pioneers in my family that was here before. I had two sisters and a brother here in Boston, Massachusetts. So, I was like, why not? Right? So, got married, came to the United States and started speaking a word of English, and I remember got here on a, on a Saturday. My brother takes me to apply for a job at a restaurant in Salem, Massachusetts called Salem Beer Work. Very well known place there. And so going to apply, they’re like, yeah, we really need a dishwasher. Can you start it now? So my brother left me there, so me without really understanding and speaking the language, and I started washing dishes, that’s what they told me to do, right? So one job, 40 hours wasn’t enough and. I got another job in the city next to Salem, Massachusetts at another restaurant, a dishwasher. So clicking on another 40 hours, right? So I was working 80 hours a week at at dishwasher. That was my first welcome to America. Well, welcome to your America Dream. Right? But I always had a concept hardwork individual, whatever you do, make sure you do a hundred percent. So I start working there and kind of better myself. I work at a, a dry cleaning store. Then I start walking at a a Greek restaurant is, they had a bunch of ballrooms and I did a little bit of dishwasher there for a short period of time, and, I became a waitress for, for events and that I did for a while. And at that point, with two years a year, we had enough money to save and my brother and I venture in a partnership and we opened a repair shop, Brazil. My dad had a fleet of taxis. We always working on own cars, so I grew up around cars. So we opened a repair shop and that went really well with. A couple of years after that I was like, Hey, I need you to buy me out or I’m gonna buy you out. So he ended up buying me out and I open up another repair facility and started going to auctions, buying cars, fix it up and selling it. So Massachusetts, they watched that really close end up getting the state’s attention. They came in and gave me a warning to the repair facility. It was like, Hey, you can’t retail more than three cars a year. I was like, wow, that’s gonna be a challenge. And so I start finding ways to apply for license. There’s no license available. Basically it’s X number of license given out, so I had to find an existing dealership with the dealership license to buy it and bought into acquisition. I bought this small car lot and that’s what the whole retail experience started happening. So bought this retail lot, was selling 30, 40 cars a month. It was my own gig. And went really well. Ended up getting a body shop and I had a tow truck to pick up the car. So kind of had a little bitty segment of a repair shop, body shop, tow truck, and a car lot, right? Well, one guy running all that. So I was again, grow, grow, grow, grow without having the infrastructures, the example of failing forward, right? So things just started getting a little overwhelmed. I was the only one and I had an offer to sell the business. I want to get out of Massachusetts cuz a Brazilian kid in Massachusetts, you know, you guys can picture what the winner’s like. It wasn’t my thing at that point. I already had two kids. One was four years old and the other one was one. And came visit Austin fell in love and at that time, and I applied at this dealership that I was referenced to, that I spent 14 years. They hired me on the spot. I literally flew back home, put everything in a box truck and move here. That’s how I, little prior to the car business, that’s what I, what I done. So, and got in this dealership and again, just walked my way up and here I am today cuz I guess that story from there to now. I, I, I share prior to the story, prior of me getting in the, in the auto industry here. So, but I’m blessed. I, it was a good thing. I’m blessed. I got a beautiful kids, beautiful family. Really excited my accomplishment. Like I said, I don’t feel like it took too long. I just feel like it’s the right time. I think I’m, I’m definitely the better version of me now than I was even last year or two years ago. Right. 

Andrew Street
Yeah. 

Miqueias Braganca
So…yeah. My life is good, a lot of good things.

Andrew Street
Yeah, I mean it’s res, it’s resilience. It’s big and scrappy. It’s entrepreneurial and I feel like there’s like each role at a dealership, you have kind of like a level of owning your own destiny and it’s a meritocracy of you keep doing well, you’ll rise up. 

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah. For sure. 

Andrew Street
I like your story of, of going from not speaking English and washing dishes to be in the gm.

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah. 

Andrew Street
A freaking growing big legacy Ford store. 

Miqueias Braganca
I’m I’m actually, like I say, I look back at I’m, I’m very blessed, you know, great kids and my oldest one graduated Baylor and pre-med and she’s actually working in the field right now. So it’s, it’s just, it’s just good. Right. It’s one of those things that when you look back, you just gotta be grateful, right? Who I ever thought as a 19 year old kid getting paid $3.25 cents in 1996 an hour $3.25 was state minimum, right? I would’ve ever dreamed to be able to send, to give my kids the best education possibly that money can’t buy, you know, and they went to Baylor here, Texas, which we all know it ain’t cheap and, but I just served some things that back then it would be like, yeah, that’s completely like crazy, right? Never get there and graduate. My oldest one with without a single paying that student loans and so she’s debt free. It’s just. To me, that’s the legacy I’m living for them. Right. That, that, that education be able to look back and, and see that things that I never thought would be possible, not only possible, it’s done. Check. Right. And no, I’m, I’m, I’m very blessed. I’m very thankful for, for every step of the way, every milestone, even from the dishwash jobs that they gave me the first sight of what America was right. 

Andrew Street
I like to think of those being formative, like those when I have, like when I did things or you know, school or jobs, I’m like, that didn’t, why did I do that? That was, and I was like, you know what? That was super formative. Like-

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah.

Andrew Street
-Somebody waiting tables or being a bartender or busing tables, like that’s dealing with people. 

Miqueias Braganca
It builds a level of respect for, for every industry and for when the individuals performing the job. Sometimes you go out, you sit down, you got a nice meal, but you have no idea what goes behind, right. Those walls and, and In a restaurant kitchen and the people there, there walking their butts off, right. Washing the plates and make sure everything’s clean, nice and neat. Right. And it, it, it definitely, when you cross paths with people like that, it just, you treat them with the most ultimate respect. Right. Because you know what it’s like. Right? I know what it’s like being the dishwasher. Look at the restroom floor, all the fancy people eating, and it was like, I’ll never get a seat at that table. Right. It’s, it’s. Kind of gets me emotional. Right. And now you go and you get to sit at those table, right. But you have the ultimate respect for that kid that’s back there in the kitchen. Right. So 

Andrew Street
I love it. Miqueias. Thank you. Thank you dude. For, for the kind words you said, I, I didn’t know you were gonna be able to give us a, a good testimonial at the same time. 

Miqueias Braganca
It’s the truth 

Andrew Street
I thought you were gonna beat me up whoever the branding campaigns were running, but- 

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah, I’m not saying that I’m satisfied though. We can do better. 

Andrew Street
For sure. 

Miqueias Braganca
We can always do more, right?

Andrew Street
Yeah. I’ve never talked to a dealer when I’m like, okay, how is it going? They’re like, oh, we we’re, we’re, we’re at the top. Yeah. 

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah. I like to celebrate the small wins. Right. And you guys can strong the first month. And again, now we gonna diversify our focus a little bit and put a little more focus and a little more funds into it, and, Sky’s the limit. So, but it’s always, it’s always a pleasure. Yeah. You know, love to talk to you. It’s always a pleasure. 

Andrew Street
All right my friend. I’m gonna stop recording now. It was good. It was good chatting with you on here though. 

Miqueias Braganca
Yeah. I didn’t know you’re gonna get me emotional.