Wake up, Buy Here, Pay Here people. It's a beautiful day. Go grab yourself another cup of joe and say hello to Jim and Michelle Rhodes on the Buy Here, Pay Here morning show. Take it away, you two. Good morning! Hey! Happy Friday, y'all. Yeah. Good to have you here with us. Yeah, I'm happy to be back in the home studio. So those of you who have been out there waiting for me to return emails and all of the other things today, I'll be doing that. Yeah, it's been a whirlwind for you for sure. I was away. And then yesterday we had such a great afternoon and got to watch our nephew graduate from high school and experience that it like it brought back a lot of really just like. Memories of times like when I went through high school and graduated and when I watched my children do the same thing. And my brother's quite a bit younger than I am. And so his his kids are I think he still has a junior high student. And and so he's you know, he's got two more left to graduate. And it just was really interesting. It was beautiful to just sit there and reminisce, which actually ties very well into our topic today after we finish the announcements. Yeah, I also quite enjoyed watching the nephew go through graduation. It's just always fun to sit there and watch all these young people and where will they go with their lives, right? You watch them and you kind of say, that one looks like it might be a doctor. Yeah, and it's like, oh, there's the football guy because he's like, boss. Because they had this thing set up so that as each name was read, they were standing at a camera because it was in a huge arena. And so up on the big Megatron, you could see the student holding their diploma. And as they read their name, which we didn't have when I went through high school, it was just, you know, you just watched a parade of people. And so it was really kind of fun. And it was fun to see. like potential, potentiality, like fear in some of them. It's like, and, you know, some are like, dude, I got just this really interesting energy from them. This, you know, you'd look at them and you go, oh man, this was a big fish in a little pond. Or this was a little fish in a big pond. And it's like, it's so interesting to watch. It was pretty easy to spot the class clowns too. Oh, it was. Oh my gosh. Some of the things that we saw were hilarious. hilarious but it was about you know just for me it was like thinking back and remembering when I graduated from high school and you know when which was like frick that's been it's been forever ago and to reminisce on growth yeah yeah and change and things like that it was really lovely yeah so I had a chance last night we had a v8 group meeting and um I was actually able to bring out this photo that we're going to show today and and it just kind of sparked it kind of inspired I really want to hear all of the, uh, like the comments, like what, what were people's reaction when we show this photo of, of, yeah. So you, you, this, this is you, you take the, how you want to introduce this. Yeah. So, okay. So, so let me just kind of tell the backstory before we actually show the photo. So I came across in some archives, you know, I've been cleaning up Google drive stuff and rearranging this and that. And, uh, and came across this old photo, uh, And it just blew me away. Like I, I, it seems like, I don't know. It seems like it wasn't that long ago. When I look at the photo, I just look so young. I guess you can go ahead and show the photo. All right. I'm bringing it up. You ready? Okay. So this photo is terrible. Okay. Well, it's yeah. It's y'all. Yeah. So anyone who is listening today on the syndicated podcast podcast, please go to youtube so you can see this yeah because I've seen this photo before and I was just like oh my goodness he's just so little yeah such a kid look like a junior high kid practically but um yeah it just cracks me up to think about because I told you this morning like I look at the photo and I think man that's like 23 years ago and it's like it looks to me like you know um more like 30 or 40 years of of change you know in the the amount of gray from what I was back then but then the beard is new yeah yeah and you know it's just it's kind of as you kind of reflect on these stages of your life I think you know at that point this photo was taken probably in early 2001 and by that time I had I think it was 1988 that I opened my first business. I was a partner in a business when I was 24 years old. So this is something. Oh, let me put that back up there. This is something that we were talking about this morning. And when this photo was taken, you were about how old? About 38, I think. About 38. And even when you look at this and you think about everything that happened prior to that. Yeah. I'd lived a lot of life already by then. I had a lot of experiences. I'd had business. I'd had business succeed and had a business fail by the time that this photo was taken. And I was a consultant. So maybe we back up and kind of tell the story. When I shared the description on the show today, I said that this was... At the time this was taken, I was starting to write articles. So I was a green consultant. I had started as a... So let me kind of back up and give people the chronology. Because I had owned sporting goods and pawn shop businesses. I was a partner in the business for five, five and a half years. Partnerships split up because we had different ideas about where we wanted to go. And I sold out of my piece and went and opened a sporting goods store, which was a terrible idea. It was very seasonal. It was a small enough market. And in retrospect, it's like... It was it was a flawed strategy. And so that business tanked. And I went to not to mention the other lesson that is still very, you know, might as well been yesterday. The lessons of, you know, how burnout I became. I was working six days a week, sometimes six and a half. And I had young kids at home, and I just was, you know, on that hamster wheel we talk about. It just was killing me, and I thought, this is not worth it. Like, I'm barely breaking even in my business, and it's like, it's not worth it. I'm writing, I'm taking notes, because it's like, there's some really good nuggets here. Go ahead. Yeah, and so I think this is all still kind of, when I think about some of those lessons from early on, like, some of the stuff very much forms the... you know, the strategies and ideas that I bring to clients now. And so this is stuff that, you know, I was experiencing some of this stuff way back. But in 95, after closing this sporting goods store, I went down to the local Dodge dealership. Back then they had, you know, these Dodge Rams that were starting to get popular. They had Dodge Caravans that everybody seemed to be driving. Oh, do you remember when Dodge Caravans were new and they were like, oh, these are so... Because before that, it was like the big kind of like conversion type vans. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. The minivan. The minivan. Yeah. So when the minivan came along, that was about the time that I was, you know, talking about 95 and I stepped into a new car store. And it was there's a whole story around that when I was actually hired. But but again, I was I was, you know, young, but I'd already had businesses. And so I stepped into that situation. And that was in Oklahoma City area. I worked there for about a year. It was a really great learning experience. We told that story on the podcast before. With new car. New car experience. Yeah, new car experience and the training that I received there and kind of the introduction to, you know, the car sales, like traditional sales. And I think the part that's relevant there is even back then, I knew right away as a salesperson that I wanted to be the kind of salesperson who earned, who built up a clientele that earned repeat and referral business, who did business by appointments. I knew from the very early days, that's what I wanted to be. You know, one of the things I remember you talking about, cause you know, we've, as we reminisce, which we do, you know, you were talking about how, uh, you know, the high pressure sales of a lot of the other salespeople and that, that like, you know, there was a typical percentage that would get unwound because they oversold over promised over whatever. And people came back and they were like, I do not want this. This is not what I told it was going to be all of that. And I remember you telling me that you had incredibly low rewinds. Oh, none. I don't remember one. Don't remember one. Did you all hear that? Don't remember one. And it was because even at that time, you found such value in being transparent, in being honest, in being open, and knowing what it was that, you know, being able to educate people along the way. Yeah. And I was a salesperson. Sure. That was my title or whatever is on the business card. But I always viewed myself more as a kind of consultant advisor, even in that. And sometimes, you know, they would say sales consultant right on the business card. But that was I was, you know, and all for all practical purposes, I was a salesperson on the front line with all these other and the. Great learning experience because that dealership that I was with for that year went through major changes in the year I was there. And I actually witnessed kind of as a business person, watch what happened there. And there were some lessons in that as well. But then in 97, I'd already transferred to another dealership closer to where I lived. And, uh, And that dealership had four Dodge and Chrysler stores around the state of Oklahoma. And they came to me one day and said, would you please go open our buy here, pay here store across town? And that time they already had five of them. Did you know what buy here, pay here was? No, they had to put me on a plane and give me a little booklet and they sent me out for intense training. So this is where. Tommy Brandes and the Rick Reeves story. You went to Rick Reeves training camp. Yeah. And it was very much, it was an intensive, it was like five long days of training and I learned an awful lot and it, I came back and it just fell in love with that business. One, the hours were better. Like I was going home earlier and I had a young family still. Right. And so this was all part of, um, you know, the, the transition for me, but that's 1997 that I started managing a buyer payer store after a couple of years in new card and kind of works. It was like a trainer slash senior salesperson did some desking of deals and sales management. So I was exposed to those things. I never worked FNI. I probably could have had a good career in FNI, but, um, I was back to the sales part. I just, I knew early on, like I wanted to, I, I was, I was helping people buy, but I wasn't overselling. Right. And so that's why my, my, my customer satisfaction index ran super high or sales satisfaction index was always super high. And so it just was the nature. That was my approach to sales. And it still is really, as you know. Well, and it's one of the things that we were also talking about this morning that you mentioned, and I've heard you say this so many times. I'm not a car guy. And it's like, yeah, I can see that. You're not a car guy. You're... a finance guy. You're a problem solver. You're a, you know, it's, it's very different. The, the approach that you've taken in your career around the industry is it's like, it's not about cars and it's, you know, I'm not a car guy. Well, and if it were about cars, I would have been out of the business a long time ago because I don't know cars. And I said that to our V8 group last night that came up and I just said, you know, here I am 20 plus years around the industry, but I still am not a car guy. I still don't know cars, you know. And so we had to involve other people when it came to buying cars and evaluating cars and that sort of thing. But I'm just a finance person. Like I definitely latched onto the finance side. I could make sense of that and help people kind of find a financing solution that fit. But then it's also just about people. So if you go back to my retail and sporting goods days, I mean, here I am 24 years old and a partner in a business that's very successful and we're building a nice business. And I remember back in those days, I definitely felt like this is really more about people than it is about products. It's about for people to come and choose to do business with us. Some of it's marketing messaging. You've heard me talk about I've been interested in marketing. messaging, especially the messaging element of marketing since my earliest days and even sitting back in college courses. Right. So I just think that's part of what kind of shaped how I viewed all of these things, you know, as I moved through that career. But after managing that store in Oklahoma, the Buy Here, Pay Here lot for about two and a half years, I was at a conference and and the people who provided us training and software kind of pulled me aside and said, Hey, we're going to be hiring some consultants. Would you have an interest? And so that's, that led to me picking up the family and moving to Sarasota, Florida, which is about when this picture was. Yeah. Probably I've been with that company about six months, maybe when this picture was taken. Yeah. Because you were now writing and they needed some kind of a headshot for you to be added to articles that you were writing around, um, Yeah. In the, in the buy hair, pay hair magazines and things. Yeah. And I've told part of those stories. Like I started, I started working with dealers who, you know, even the managers that I was working with, many of them had much more experience than I did. And they knew it, you know, and I knew it. Yeah. I didn't necessarily bring more experience. So I had to find my own way to bring value in those conversations. And it took me a little bit, but I settled in pretty quickly. Yeah. Yeah. So this actually, you know, the journey from here to here is really not the topic. It's not let's go down memory lane and talk about Jim's journey. But it's about a question that we were asking ourselves. Um, and, and you've been thinking about this and I was, while I was in Mexico, um, there's some things that I'm working on that are kind of like my soul's work. My, you know, the things that I really, this is, this is this, the buy here, pay here and the coaching. This is very much so what you just feel very called. Yeah. And, you know, to do and, and, and I, I'm, I'm working on developing the things that I feel like I really want to do. And so I was, I was with my best girlfriends and, and they, and I was talking about, I am, I know what it is. what it is overall, but I'm not sure how to approach. And so one of my friends who is a multiple published author, she actually was in a magazine recently as one of the top, and I think it was Maxim Magazine, one of the top 2024 influencers to watch, female influencers. And And she she she's done a lot of public speaking and all that. And she said, I had a coach once that that asked me this question. And she says, once I understood this, that all of the things kind of fell in place. And it's like, what are the top 10 things you've learned? Like, what are the top 10 things that you've learned in your life? that just have really shaped who you are. And so I was like, and I took a lot of time to just sit back and go, what are the top 10 things that I've learned? And once I kind of tapped into that, it was like, and it made sense, but it was also so incredibly beautiful and to think back because we don't spend enough time celebrating where we are today um you know and it's like all of the things that we've experienced and the growth that we've experienced and the because we're always so stuck in today and it's like oh it sucks I'm not I haven't made enough this or I need to do this and it's just like stop for a second and look back at what it is that you just, and it's about gratitude as well, but it's like, what are the things that you've learned the top 10 things? And so I shared this with Jim while I was on the trip and he'd been thinking about this in a different way. And so this is kind of like, when you look at, we'll add this, when you look at this person who's green around the ears or whatever, and he's still not, I mean, he's already had what? more than a decade of experience working with people. What is it that you see in those, in those eyes that are just like, Oh my goodness, if I could tell you the stuff you're going to learn over the next couple of decades. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we're going to cover that coming up. Like I think, um, what I anticipate we're going to cover this over a couple of episodes because you know, there, there are a lot of things that I can say that, um, I feel like I understand today differently. Like that's going to be fun to kind of talk about the things that I feel like I now understand that I didn't understand back then. For today, I thought it might be simpler to stay with the stuff that is things I feel like I knew back then that are still true. And so that's really about this whole customer service, customer success side. And I think the other part of it, I just still remember, you know, my approach to all of these things was that, you know, I enjoyed the customers. Were there customers that were difficult? Of course. Did did I let that ruin, you know, my attitude and approach to the next customer? No, I can honestly say even back when I was managing that I didn't. And I think it's it's part of how you if you're going to continue to serve and produce business. And if you really think of yourself as providing a service and you're really trying to solve a problem for people, then you're going to you're going to shed those, you know, those the. the influences of the problem customers, you know, and the bad situations. And because if you bring that attitude into every customer, you, you're going to stunt your business. Yeah. And, and, you know, after this photo, after you stepped into consulting, you also had a period of time where you were a dealer, you owned your own buy here, pay here dealership. And you you went through the crash of 08 and, you know, like the lessons learned through that and and and found, you know, when I listen to your story, it's like you found that I can I can. I can. How do I put this? Being a dealer is such an important role that we play. We play a role of being able to help people that are unbankable. And there's a lot of different models, a lot of different ways that people do that. And as I've observed you, this is just my take, is that you recognize that you could help the customers more. by helping dealers be better and learn how to run a tighter ship, how to, you know, all the straight lines and all the squiggly line stuff. It's like, I can teach and, and help others be able to, to, to, be good to their customers and to help, help customers be successful and to learn about how do you find repeat customers? How do you get referrals? How do you do these things? Because you were very successful at that with your dealership too, about repeats and referrals. And it was just like, these, these are proven things and their philosophies that you have taken and, all through your career, whether it be in buy here, pay here, but it's just there are threads of that through all of it. Yeah, I can't say that, even though I certainly talked about things that would be in the category that we call squiggly lines. And for those who might be hearing us talk about that for the first time, you're mostly talking about the intangibles of business, right? There's the black and white stuff that shows up in numbers and financial statements. And then there's the things that are less tangible and that certainly still have an impact on our business so that's all those things like culture and trust and you know that the repeat and referral part you're talking about so that was that was definitely a thing I think the other part that is relevant here is like when I think back to my own time and owning a dealership and the own the fact even when I came into consulting before I owned a dealership I still was mindful of the um the entrepreneurship element and, and in particular, the, the courage that was required to step into entrepreneurship in this particular space. So I, you know, in 2005, after this consulting period, like this, about, about four years, four and a half years, maybe after this photo was taken, I was opening my own dealership and there's a story there about how that even came to be. But, uh, cause that really wasn't in the plans. It's just another one of those twists and turns in life and found myself situations let's just go just just you know let's go open one you know and so I just kind of moved into that and um but it was there's a there's a courage element right there's a there's some courage required in any level of entrepreneurship you know just to step out there and run something on your own it's going to live or die by your own successes and experience and then and by your pay here there's a an additional level of courage because you're stepping into this space that is You know, it's just high risk. It's perceived as high risk. And certainly if it's not done right, it can end badly. And so there's that element, too. And I'm mindful of that, you know, in the work that we do and working with consultants or working with dealers. Rather, they're out there taking that risk and they're providing an important service. We talk about that some. And I think I was mindful of that even back then. And I've shared this, I think, on the podcast in the past. But I think when I see that picture of that guy. i remember I think the part of the story that's particularly relevant as it go yeah no that's particularly relevant is you know I i stepped into the role of director and of training and consulting at about the time this photo was taken and so why because I was kind of the only one around to take the job I mean, I was really true. By default. There's a whole story there, but it's not, it's not that I was. Those of you who are familiar with that era and all of that will kind of understand that, but it's just like, Jim's just like, yep, I'll do it. Well, for you young people, you can just Google search the.com bubble because that was, that was, we were writing the.com bubble and that photo was taken about the time the.com bubble was bursting. And I was kind of the last person in the room and I became the director of chain consulting. And so it's, It was a great learning experience because I stepped in there again with that attitude of repeat and referral business. I told the story about how back then we had fax machines and all these cancellations were coming in because the company was kind of in this, you know, weird kind of transition. And so it was understandable. And I remember that I really approached it and I tried to let those dealers out gracefully. I just kind of said, look, we get it. I understand from your perspective why this. And so just know that we're going to be over here working to provide value and we hope to see you back here one day. And little by little, we brought many of those back over the years. May I ask you, side squirrel, had you been ungraceful about it, do you think they would have come back? Well, I mean, I guess I could say that maybe if you're providing value, you know, maybe they would find you, they worry to you if you're providing value, period. But certainly it increased, it made it easy for them to come back in. To step back in. Right. Yeah. I just try to make it, yeah. Hey, still got a place for me kind of thing. Yeah. So I was professional and graceful about it, you know, and trying to, you know, let them out and just try to reassure them that we would be working to, to, uh, you know, rebuild the thing. And so we set about doing that and we were small, you know, we shrunk to a fraction, but, but our, our personnel was also a fraction of what it had been. And so, uh, so we were successful in that department and we slowly built it back up and it just, you know, little by little as we create a value. I think the relevant thing for me is, um, So this is advice really for anybody who's new in consulting and working with people in business. Where I had success was not that I showed up and went to these meetings with dealers. Some of these dealers have been in business for a decade or more and had well-established businesses. So what's this young kid who's just been a manager for a couple of years, what's he going to tell me? that I don't know about my business already. And so what I recognized early on is what I had to do was make sure that I understood their numbers well, that I got inside their numbers. I've always been a bit of a numbers person. But I think the most significant thing that I did in those days was I created what we called weekly initiatives. So that was just sort of project management and identifying I had to work with the management. Often those meetings had the manager and the dealer there, or at least a manager and a general manager. And so we're working with them and we're identifying, okay, what's the thing that we most want to fix? So maybe that's aged inventory. Maybe that's delinquency. Over the course of like, usually it was like the next week, you might have longer initiatives, but it was usually broken down by what are the initiatives of the week? Yeah, so these were ongoing engagements with dealers in different parts of the country. I traveled all over the eastern half of the country mostly in that time. We had clients as far west as Idaho, I remember, and Utah, but also all over the East Coast. I can see how when someone is feeling the pinch of... um the the need for improvement um that very frequently it's just like I'm gonna throw everything at the thing and see if it works and I can see this weekly initiatives because I've worked with you in this is that it's the tortoise approach it's like it's not that you're not moving but I'm going to focus on one thing so I can celebrate the one thing measure the one thing And then move on to the next thing instead of, I'm going to try 17 things. Because I heard, I put this out there and asked people and they all said, you should do this, you should do this. So I'm going to try them all. And I can see that that's just kind of your style. It's like, all right, so let's make a list of all of the things you want to do. What are we going to tackle this week? Right. And, you know, at the end of the week, it's like, did we get it done? Did we not get it done? Do we need more time? Is it worth the effort to do the thing? And then you come and it's like, what do you want to tackle this week? And it's such a beautiful thing that you bring to just helping people break stuff down and take it one bite at a time. And slowly, let's fix the thing. Many of those folks would say that, you know, especially if you take some of those general managers, they learned. through watching us go through that process. Not that I knew buy here, pay here more than they did. What I knew was if, if I can keep us on target in this meeting and we can set targets that are, I used to tell them, we're going to set these initiatives and I'm going to work with the general manager to set these targets at a, at a place where we're going to achieve them about 80% of the time. So that's, that's kind of what we were striving to set the target. That 20% creates growth and the 80% creates growth. accomplishment. You want it achievable. You don't want people to get frustrated about it, but you, you got to set it high enough that it's, you know, it's going to stretch a little bit and it's going to make people go do the thing. And so that's where that, that photo of that guy, that's what that guy did. That's how we were able to have some success and kind of build the department. And you started to see dealers who they'd been in business 10 years and their, their line of receivables and their portfolio size looked like this. Well, after we did this approach for week after week after week, you start to see these things go up. You start to see delinquency improve. It requires less of our time in management. We're able to focus a little more of our time on sales or whatever. And so you just start to move the needle. And so this is where I didn't have to be the smartest guy in the room. I didn't have to be. the expert who knew more than everybody you know and so and I can say that I didn't bring a lot of ego to those in those days I was pretty modest I knew that most everybody I was working with had a lot more experience than I did and so this was the approach and so now you know I look forward and I can say that there's so many things obviously that I can say that I that I have a perspective about now that I didn't back then one of my favorite stories and we can wrap up but it's like I've told the story. You've heard it so many times. I met a dealer. I was on a consulting visit, which wrapped up early. And on the way back to the airport, I had a couple hours extra. So I swung by a dealer who was on my roster that I'd never met. It was a dealer who was kind of using our software maybe. And I just stopped in to say hello to him, chatted with him for a little bit. And as we started to kind of wrap up, I told him, you already know the story. You know what story I'm going to tell. But It's an example of the kind of lessons that I was able to learn just by being out there in the field and working with people. And I still say, you know, back then, and it's still true, when I do these consulting visits, I often learn as much as I teach. Typically, that's true. If you step in the spirit of teaching, I mean, I agree. As long as we talked about the ego thing, if you're teaching without ego, you're not you're there to learn too. If you teach with ego, you're there to dictate. And, and it's like, it's like, I am the authority and this is, and when you teach to learn, you ask questions in the process of teaching and you learn things from each other. And that wasn't the case here. I mean, I wasn't there to coach. I was just there to meet this guy and we chatted for a little bit. And I just, in my kind of young bravado, I said, you know, I think I could probably help you, you know, increase your business here and increase your sales. And he kind of looked at me funny and just, you know, without smiling or He wanted to pat you on the head and go there, there. Okay. So he's like looking at, he's looking at this and he's patting him on the head and he's like, there, there, there, there. He said, Jim, he said, yeah, it was real kind of, Jim, I appreciate that. He said, I sell 25 cars a month and I don't want to sell 26. And I just, I learned something just like that in that moment. Like it's just. More is not what everybody should or wants or needs. Right. And there were other dealers that I talked to that had a similar approach. They liked stable. They liked consistent. They wanted to make sure that they were sticking to their practices. And so there's validity in that. Right. But I think that's, that's what I remember about that young consultant is I just, I, there was a lot of really great lessons that I learned in, in that early on. And so, you know, we can sometimes get a little tangled up in business models and strategies and why it should be one over the other. And it's so fun in these V8 meetings, like we had six or seven people on the screen last night and you had all these bar graphs and like they're all over the place in terms of, you know, business approach and percentage of down payment and all these different ways that they do business. You know, will they all learn from one another? And maybe eventually those lines will be closer together, perhaps. But they're all in business for a while. But they create questions. And so you're able to have a conversation and learn. That's what teaching is really. It's like, so what did you do here? How did you do that? And so, yeah. But I think the math is the math. Learning from each other. So this is one of the things I shared with you that I think one of the topics that I'll be bringing forward in the coming weeks, whether it's through blog posts or the podcast or both, is this idea that... you know, people talk about cash is king and I'm going to say, look, I don't know if cash is king, but I do know that cash is cash. And I think if we when we can get used to just kind of we get so tangled up and all these KPIs and all these ratios and all these other numbers and it's like, you know, the way I said it in our meeting last night is, you know, we can't meet payroll with contracts. We can't, you can have a big portfolio of contracts, but you can't use those contracts to pay your people at the end of the week. Or your light bill. Right. Or whatever. And so it's like, we, we got to, so I just focus on cash and cashflow and I have dealers out there who, you know, are grateful that I bring that approach, but I'm like, I'm just focusing on the math. And we're working through the math and we're just saying, look, we're not out there to just create receivables that we're never going to put in the bank. You know, so this is kind of this was all part of my approach back then. And it just it just kind of evolves. But I think, you know, in future episodes, we'll talk more about the things that I've learned. I think that when we talk about where I sit today as a coach, I think you're going to find there's more of the squiggly lines pieces. There's a lot more of the heart element that comes into business now in my coaching than it would have been before. you know, that we would have had back then. And, um, you know, it all matters. It's like, you know, to some, some they're on a hamster wheel and, and they're just focused on buying cars and selling cars and what have you. And with some of them, I'm, I'm successful in getting them to step off that hamster wheel just long enough to really think about what are we, working toward here, you know? Yeah. So that's more of the coach. And I would say like from Michelle's perspective, from the topic, take a minute, take a minute or actually more like 20 or more. But take time to reflect on what your 10 greatest lessons have been and like the things that have made you better and the things that have made you kinder, the things that have made you more approachable, the things that have helped you to be able to be the place that people like to come. Just take the time. And it's important, especially when we are... We're getting into the minutia. We're getting into the day-to-day. We're getting into the stress of the stuff and that weight of all of the things. And sometimes it's really healing. It's really, it just kind of resets you to just take some time and look at all of the great things and to remember, it's like, don't be too hard on yourself, but look at all of the great things. And then, you know, those great things are the things that, that, you know, if, if, if we've learned big lessons, those are the things that really, we have a great opportunity to teach others. Yeah. And I think, again, in a future episode, we'll go into more of the stuff that I feel like we know today. I think some of the stuff, again, that we knew back then was that you can't really keep doing the same things and expect a different result. I wrote that down. Yeah. So that's part of where the weekly initiative thing came from. Yeah. We show up here and we talk about the same thing. That's part of what I came into the consulting thing is it looked like the thing was almost canned. Like it's almost the process at that time was everything was kind of regurgitated. And you said the kind of the same things week after week. And I think that doesn't bring any value to anybody. I don't enjoy it. The dealer doesn't enjoy it. So you start to step out of that and start just pick pieces and do that. So I just think you don't change the thing. You want to make progress, but you can't keep doing the same thing week after week and expect things to shift. What do they say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result? Right. And I think that young guy in the photo, I think I knew that back then. Yeah. I think I was aware and I thought, we don't need to keep doing the same thing. It's not changing anything. What a beautiful lesson. And so, yeah. So it was a way that we helped dealers kind of see their business in a new way and start to help them learn how to fix the stuff themselves. Yeah. You know, now after I stepped out or disengaged, did they fall back into their own habits? I don't always know, but, but it's like, this is part of where I was trying to affect change as a young consultant. And so it made a difference to some. And so again, we'll talk more in the future about, you know, kind of what the gray haired consultant knows today that I didn't know back then. Yeah, I love hearing the stories and I'm looking forward to them as well. And so thanks so much for joining us. It's Friday. Yeah. And there's you've got a great, beautiful weekend. It's Memorial Day on Monday. And so, you know, I'm already all planning out with my mom. We've got to go around and and. um yeah all of the things uh but it's a great time to remember too and so this is really a perfect time for you to sit back during memorial day weekend and spend a little time reflecting on what are the greatest lessons I've learned good and um so there's your little challenge for for the for the weekend um have a great weekend Enjoy your time at your dealership with your employees and your customers and with your family. And we will see you on Monday. Monday, Monday. Thanks guys so much for joining.
