THE MOTOR ENCLAVE 300 garages | 1.6 mile track | 80 acre off-road track | two acre skid pad | 35,000 sf event space

Unknown Speaker  0:00  
We'll have 300 garages, a 1.6 mile performance track an 80 acre off road track, a two acre skid pad, and a 35,000 square foot corporate event space does have a membership based club I got driving schools at corporate events and sponsorship at public events, National Women's drivers club wine tastings and dinners and I take 20 couples to Europe every year to drive cars through Italy. We do charity events. And there's a social committee like they plan their own events every month at m one. We'll do the same thing here. There's an Italian night there's a food truck rally and there's a charity thing and

Unknown Speaker  0:32  
Jeff Sterns connected through cars, if they're bigwigs, we'll have him on the show. And yes, we'll talk about cars and everything else. Here he is. Now, Jeff Sterns

Unknown Speaker  0:48  
basically took the idea of creating an automotive experience center in Metro Detroit. And many people told me I was crazy and wouldn't work. And I ended up buying a former general motors factory property out of the bankruptcy in 2012, and developed a new a new version of these sort of automotive country clubs, most of them are racing oriented. Mine is more about community and camaraderie and, you know, sort of the foundation is the garage community. And we happen to have a racetrack that we don't use for racing we use for high performance driving, and corporate events and corporate entertainment and driving schools. So

Jeff Sterns  1:24  
So what's the difference between racing already got me interested in between racing and high performance driving that just that you can't pass someone and race them,

Unknown Speaker  1:32  
we can actually pass but we just don't have any, we have no competitive, you know, there's no winner. We're not we're not trying to win a race, which numerous reasons why it's, it's different. One is, it's way better on the insurance. It's way safer. And it's a different business where I've got, you know, people that pay me to be members of a club to drive their cars, versus, you know, people trying to race, you know, cars, you know, that the, I always say the auto enthusiasts, audience is massive, the racing audience is very narrow. And the reason it says money is 1000 guys in the US. So you know, unless you're in the Formula One or NASCAR game, which is totally different business, it's very hard to make a business viable. If you're based on racing. My business is based on developing a community, it's a lifestyle business where people want to come hang out, have a garage, man cave, office entertainment space, and oh, by the way, drive periodically, but the driving on my track is predominantly corporate entertainment and driving schools for non members.

Jeff Sterns  2:29  
And you mentioned driving schools, I've got a background with a number of manufacturers where as a dealer, we would go have a driving day to try out the new model, and they would have professional drivers. And they would tell us to hit the gas as hard as you can until you get to this cone and then lay on the brakes, and then make a left and here's a wet area, and I want you to try the ABS and turn Is this the sort of thing.

Unknown Speaker  2:52  
It's exactly that. And we do plenty of that actually, all the manufacturers rent our facilities for that purpose. But actually, most of our clients are not are not automotive outside our club, which is our owners, or garage owners, which are doing different driving activities. Our typical client is JP Morgan coming to entertain clients or a charity event or, you know, something where it's just team building off site board meeting type of entertainment. So like what Top Golf does for golf, I do for with driving.

Jeff Sterns  3:17  
So team building, thinking about that or entertaining a client, I'm going to assume that when someone's invited to do something like this, they don't all have a car or an appropriate car or a local car or a car in your place. So how does that work logistically?

Unknown Speaker  3:33  
So we have fleet partners, and I'm one concourse dodge was apart, and Alexis was a partner and they provided us vehicles which we use in those programs. And we're working on the same type of deals, many of the manufacturers love our business because we put 1000s of butts in seats, basically. And people get to experience the cars in a in a in a controlled environment. And actually, we know when they're when they're very focused and enjoying their passion. So we've proven that we can convert, you know, people from for rides or driving schools or driving programs into being buyers. So the manufacturer like we love to give you cars and have you use them all those different use cases. So we have a we have in Michigan, we will have here at the Enclave we'll have a whole fleet of cars. Both are on track and off road here we're building a very large off road component as well.

Jeff Sterns  4:18  
So these provided cars by manufacturers and it's understanding to I mean, what's the number one goal of a retail or a manufacturer is to get someone to actually drive it not just look at it, not just read a brochure. So for this marketing component, do they provide you the cars at no cost or just give a very deep discount for the event?

Unknown Speaker  4:41  
They actually provide the cars at no cost some companies will give you the vehicles are selling the vehicle for $1. Most the companies they're coming out of a fleet like similar to immediate fleet and their press cars, right. Yeah, and they're refreshing the cars every six to nine months, because they want to make sure they got good product there. They also oftentimes will pay for army And some tires and brakes, which is great. But, you know, obviously, you've got to deliver ROI to them. And they like it. And actually, the whole industry, you know, as you may know, is is moving towards experiential programs, we've model shows in auto shows are great, but auto shows, millions people go to take their kids to get, you know, walk around and have popcorn and ice cream, they're not transacting. So they realize what the hundreds of millions of dollars they spent on auto shows, they can spend a fraction of that and actually put truly engaged people, you know, into vehicles and have a higher higher conversion. I mean, the testament to this is Porsche was made a multi billion dollar investment building their own experience centers around the world and not doing auto shows anymore. Because they recognize that they'd rather use the old CRM model, you know, that casinos use, I'd rather spend all my money against my high value prospects, versus 90 99% of people that just come looky loos, you know,

Jeff Sterns  5:49  
right. And that's, that's a tough line to walk. I mean, I in the end, you got to measure if you're the manufacturer, what's getting something sold? I understand that. But you and I have similar background in that. We're both Detroiters and Floridians. And what a difference between, for example, the Detroit Auto Show, and the Tampa Auto Show, I think, I know, Detroit's tier one. I think and I don't mean this in a disparaging way, I think campus tier three or four,

Unknown Speaker  6:18  
and it's a great, it's actually it's a great segue into talking about MLM, because the Detroit Auto Show was in the process of transforming, they moved it, you know, from late fall to the summertime and COVID head, they're planning on big outdoor festival and more of an experiential Auto Show versus in a convention center. COVID change their plans, the auto shows actually moving to m one concours, the facility I created in Michigan in September, this year, to do predominantly driving activities with all kinds of displays around the track, and a real and a kind of a village environment, which is way more experiential and engaging. So be interesting to see how it goes, I think it's going to be a huge success. You know, obviously, you're going to not have millions of people coming through with their kids, because it's a totally different format. But you'll have hundreds of 1000s of people that are way more engaged, and there'll be, hopefully convert those people to buyers and build track. That is the goal. So it's interesting that they have finally made the decision, that experiencial is where it's at, I've always done right and drives all kinds of programs, but it's really the amount of money these manufacturers spend on auto shows. You know, it's just not a it gives you to do, because that's what they've always done. And that's sort of the industry model. But I think they're starting to realize that, you know, programs that place where you can drive in a safe and controlled environment, and that are more, you know, automotive focused. If you look at the tracks around the country, even the ones that are more racing oriented facilities, you know, they have partnerships. I was just at Monticello in New York, which is an amazing track. And they in partnership with Porsche and BMW, they're, you know, if you go to amp Atlanta Motorsports Park, they have BMW is there if you go to, you know, obviously Ron fellows driving school in Vegas, they've got Chevrolet, huge Chevrolet program, if you go to thermal in Palm Springs, you got BMWs, and some other cars. So all these manufacturers that are definitely seeing the benefit of these type of facilities. And it's interesting, now the auto shows are evolving, I think it's gonna evolve very quickly, actually.

Jeff Sterns  8:12  
Well, the speed of evolution with what happened in the end last year, I mean, really, anyone that was on the fence that they created a lot of quick evolution. Now, when you talk about the cost difference. Now Detroit, International Auto Show or New York, Jacob Javits, or Frankfurt or Tokyo a few that the big ones are LA, when you go the manufacturers are there with what almost seems like if it's a single level, almost like a half acre of cars, and maybe not, but it sure seems like that you could, as far as the eye can see for one manufacturer, or some of them even use the double or triple level with the stairways and some of the cars are mounted upside down, you know, and all of that business and that's got to be millions of dollars for for a single event. Now, Tampa, and I don't want to take anything away from the motor, Cleveland, Tampa and the manufacturer. But Tampa is I used to run the show Forgive me as the dealer I used to run my display in Tampa, the manufacturer has each dealer inside of that market bring a couple of cars and staff at so I forgot also No, no spokesmodels hired so other than the space I don't know what the what the expenditure is. But the reason I'm so excited about what you're doing here is when I was running exotic car dealership in the Tampa Bay area, I noticed that and I was at first thinking Gosh, but you get such a smaller crowd. I mean, how in the world could you possibly get that many people behind the wheel and have that many cars and have that many instructors and all of that business but anytime I could get pick a number 50 clients to either one of those events and mingle with them and watch them enjoy. And there would be a family component because a lot of people would bring their son to be or or son or daughter to be in the other seat their kid, and then have some kind of meal with them and talk to them. And then everybody who didn't know each other on the way in the social component that you talked about. Now, at the end of the day, sharing stories, and they're so jacked up, and they're so excited. There's no way that they couldn't feel an emotional connection to that make or to that dealer or to that crowd, it wouldn't matter. So I agree that I would end up if it came right down to just selling cars and building relationships, that I would sell easily, a few out of the 50 easily, and certainly build long term relationships that would turn into however many deals and service business etc. Versus auto shows that I've stood there for three days, especially at like a rolls and Bentley display. We're all day long. And God bless them. I mean, they're just trying to be funny, and I'm not judging or shaming anyone, but all day long with the gift bag from whatever brand asking me how fast does it go? How much is it? And does it come with Grey Poupon? And I'm not kidding. I mean, that would be, we would just like almost like a robot, spit out the answers. And again, I'm not saying that we didn't run into anybody that would buy but we talked to however many 1000s to probably end up with the same number of net sales at the end and legitimate relationships,

Unknown Speaker  11:28  
the Detroit Auto Show, historically, in the last 10 years, the manufacturer spent over $200 million I 10 Day event to build those displays 200 mil over the 10 years, it's per event per event.

Jeff Sterns  11:44  
Oh, despite you knock me over with a feather, I would have never thought that okay,

Unknown Speaker  11:48  
yes. And the convention center has to be closed down for four or five months while they build those displays. It's a totally inefficient model. And a manufacturer, let's just say an average manufacturer, you know,

Jeff Sterns  11:57  
nothing to think about. Yeah, I

Unknown Speaker  11:59  
mean, they spent but the big ones spend 10 to 12 million on their booth, you know, do a program with me, that's all year round, every 24 seven, you're talking about getting, you know, a million dollars in the cars, it's not, this is like, the differential is so massive.

Jeff Sterns  12:12  
You're right, they could do it many times a week, all year and not spend that.

Unknown Speaker  12:16  
So that's that's where we're heading. And you talked about, you know, sort of the network effect of that people leaving and having a good feeling. You know, now with social media and all these tools, you know, you put them in a car, and then you give them tools to post their ride and talk about it next to you know, that one track like the Enclave is all over the country all over the world. You know, you know, we have in car cameras, and we have telemetry devices, and we have things that we facilitate, to push content out that the manufacturers have to create, it's created by the customer experience the vehicle. So it's just the model is changing. And, you know, we're still not at a point where the manufacturers completely understand the ROI. I think it's getting there very quickly. And, you know, unfortunately, a lot of companies just do what they've always done. I think, like you said, COVID has really changed their perspective in many ways. And budgets are shifting tremendously into different areas. Because they can they can tell that someone transact and can you know, with the CRM tools and databases, you can sort of tell what touchpoints Did you have with Jeff Sterns, and they know, Jeff came to a driving program, Jeff register on our website, Jeff is a fan of ours on Instagram, you know, and then they the good people that really know what they're doing, they can map that data on say, Alright, Jeff's highly likely to buy the new Bronco or whatever, you know, right?

Jeff Sterns  13:32  
He's showing the signals, right? Yeah, there's all guesswork before. Correct. Now, Tampa and Nashville, what do we call them? garages? Or spaces? What do we call what we're selling in there that we have the opportunity to become a member and have the space?

Unknown Speaker  13:48  
Yeah, so I call them private garages. Some people call it car condominiums. So in both facilities, we'll have large. So first of all, the largest car condo community in America is, I think, almost 200 units. It's actually in Naperville, Illinois, it was just garages. It's a beautiful facility called iron gate. The next largest is actually larger than one Concord. We have 250 garages. But the next one iron gate. The third one is Auto motorplex. in Minneapolis, VA places. He's got 150 garages, I think there's lots of little projects that have 3040 units all around the country in many, many cities. You don't they don't portray themselves as private garages or car Canada, they're more storage facilities, but they don't become communities that people have the same interest. So my projects like it in Michigan, will be very large. You know, I always say to myself, like if you're gonna do 50, you might as well do 300 the same amount of work if you if you choose the right location. So in Tampa, it's exactly what we did in Michigan. It's sort of my version of the auto Country Club, less racing focus, more community focus, it will have 300 garages, a 1.6 mile performance track and 80 acre off road track a two acre skid pad and a 30 5000 square foot corporate event space. in Nashville, we're doing just garages, we're gonna have 200 individual private garage units in a suburb of Nashville, in both those cities I chose based on data wasn't like I just said, Oh, that a bunch of cool cars in Tampa, if I did that ago in Miami, but those are really my customers. You know, my customers are true car enthusiasts in Tampa. Actually, when I looked at the data of car registration, growth and wealth data and mash that together, Tampa revealed itself as one of the top 20 cities actually in the top 10. And people would say, well, it's not really a car town. Well, we started selling the garages four months ago, we haven't built anything yet. And we've sold 170 units in four months in Tampa. And that equates to about $60 million of selling garages, white box garage space. So clearly, there's a market here, and it's a tremendous, you know, do I meet all these people that are buying the garages, you know, go see these cars that no one ever takes out. You know, it's like guys have collections and people have amazing classic cars and muscle cars and exotic cars. And the sort of common denominator is Tampa's like Michigan, I think it's very low key, there's clearly of what I'm selling on the garage component, we have lots of ways the public can access the facility at a very low price, whether it's free cars and coffee, or a driving school for $300 or whatever, our garage entry price is $215,000. So you know that you got people who have to have some level of means to buy these garages. But you know, they're not these people don't have they're not drive around town and Ferrari's a lot of my customers come to me and go, Oh, I would love to own a Ferrari or my classic Mustang or that car I had on my wall as a kid, I would never drive around town, I don't want my you know, my people to think I'm you know, flashy. So my customers are tend to be very low key, and they love the idea of what we're doing because it's private, and they can enjoy their passion for cars, and buy those things they have always wanted. You know, it's often like, I don't have a spot my house, my wife won't let me give up her spot. You know, I don't wanna drive around town in a fancy car. Because my if my employees see me last me for a raise lots of different reasons we keep hearing. And it's exactly what happened in Michigan. So you know, back to your original questions. It's really founded, it's rooted in the garage community, tamp happens to have all these other businesses that make it a long term viable business, the garage condos are great. But it's a one time you know, it's a one time sale because they own them like a condo, and then I'm out. So Nashville is awesome. But once we're sold out that project is sort of by itself, and it's controlled by an HOA Association. in Tampa, once I saw the garage, I have a membership based club, I got driving schools at corporate events and sponsorship I public events. It's a nice business long term, just like I'm on Congress really, really was the testbed we proved out sort of what works and what doesn't work there.

Jeff Sterns  17:38  
Well, and I really loved the idea of the someone to play with component. Because one of the things in the dealerships that I ran, that was very successful, was just simply introducing clients to other clients that we thought, Oh, he doesn't really work much he needs someone to hang out with during the day. And they started meeting at the dealership is a social hub. On a Friday or Saturday night, I can't tell you how many times I had 510 15 cars parked for them to meet and then go wherever they were going to go next. So I love that idea. I think I mean, for all the reasons cited by you makes all the sense in the world. But there's got to be to meet someone else to play with, it's interested in what I'm interested in. Now, you said cost of entry 215 grand does that mean that there's different sizes are there so they can put more so Okay, so we could have a private unit up to housing how many vehicles give or take

Unknown Speaker  18:37  
that smallest unit entry point A to 15 is about a 600 square foot garage, ground floor will hold two to three cars. All the spaces I sell is a white box, whether 24 foot caught clear inside, so they could put a mezzanine in a car left a triple car left even. And then they would play with the width all 40 feet deep, but being go as wide as someone wants to go and then we can combine units. So average person's either buying a 600 to 700 or a 49 square foot box, which is really three car five car a car. And then they can combine them you know, we've got a few dozen people that bought two or three units one, one guy bought 10 units, 14,000 square feet. So it's really up to them. And we we sell them as empty box. And then we sell upgrades and build outs and packages and they can do they get on their own or

Jeff Sterns  19:22  
they can use our resources. So you'll build it out or they can bring their own contractor or from a selected group of contractors that are allowed to work in

Unknown Speaker  19:28  
either what either way we have an upgrade resource, so a lot of the owners will use our resources also because we do so many units at once that we're very competitive, but I don't like to have people's hands and they can get they got a contract or friend or relative or someone they like they can do that. But these people I mean, our garages are an order of magnitude of $325 a square foot for whitebox paste and then they're putting another 150 to $300 a foot inside. So the average buyer here you know you're talking about having, you know six $700 a square foot of garage Which is way more than most people's homes, but you're not, you know, there's only 300 of them, there only ever be 300 of them. And it's all about community and camaraderie. It's sort of I don't like to turn Country Club because it's not really a country club environment. It's more like you said, it's all about social activation and being around people with similar passion. And, you know, we don't have the kind of, you know, we don't have rules where you got to wear out sport coat, you know, when you come do stuff. So that's what I'm telling people and people got to go, you're on your mind, you're charging $300,000 for a five car garage. I can build a pole barn on my property for

Jeff Sterns  20:32  
150 grand, but no one to play with.

Unknown Speaker  20:34  
And I say Listen, I'm not selling storage, I can get to storage a lot cheaper all over town. I'm selling community and camaraderie, and I happen to have a racetrack but even a facility I'm building in Nashville has no racetrack, you know, I'm selling that exclusive environment, very high end, high end product. I mean, you can't you can't build what I'm building on your property. For even the price I'm selling it for our in our buildings are hurricane rated concrete structures with they come up, you know, dedicated 303, phase power and rooftop h vac and all kinds of different things that a normal person would not do. But I understand that the clientele and the end user, but you know, it is really about social part. No, I mean, some people do buy

Jeff Sterns  21:12  
generator, some people they can put in that but we don't have a built in. I was gonna say people, they might just go there for their hurricane power outages, but they'd have, they'd have to have that set up on their own. Okay,

Unknown Speaker  21:24  
yeah, we're actually outside the we're in the third tier, wind zone and Tampa. Sounds pretty good. We're also attached the Tampa executive airport. So it wasn't part of my business plan is just coincidental. That's where the property was. That's how I got it. Because we're between airport and freeway. And that's how we got an approved, I believe. But turns out, I'm saying garages, the guys that have planes live in Naples and Boca and elsewhere, who is saying, I'll fly my plane in 15 minutes from Naples, land there, spend the day at the track and then fly home. And that's a huge thing never wasn't, I thought, well, how many guys will have planes turns out these a number A lot of them. So that's cool.

Jeff Sterns  22:01  
And they want somewhere to go. Because it's I mean a lot of these guys because they just want to keep their book up in their flight or flying hours up. They need a destination there right now. I mean, other than needing to go between their two advertising offices between here in Atlanta is that they're mainly looking for somewhere to go to lunch on a weekend anyway in their plane.

Unknown Speaker  22:21  
And I keep saying guys it actually. I mean, it's predominately male driven the garage ownership However, it's very, very family oriented. And we actually have a women's drivers club and there's the wives and spouses and significant others are, I would say, very, very involved in all aspects. The garage, the hanging out the social activating. Some of our greatest events are not driving events. They're actually wine tastings and dinners and I take 20 couples to Europe every year to drive cars to Italy. We do charity events, and there's a social committee like they plan their own events every month at one we'll do the same here. There's an Italian night there's a food truck rally and there's a charity thing and

Unknown Speaker  22:58  
this has been Jeff Sterns connected through cars

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