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. I'm like, Jim, stop fiddling with your thing. Well, I mean, it was time. And so often we're a little bit on the delayed side. So I was like, looks like you got here in time. So let's roll. Hey, we're both wearing black today. Yeah. We don't. Oh, yeah. That's not something that we pay that much attention to. So after we're done today, we're loading up a car and heading to New Mexico. It makes me nervous when you share with our listeners that we're going to be away from our home. We have. Oh, we have. We have a neighbor who's a watchdog. Yeah. You just went to Costco. We have all these valuables. Oh, that's true. I have a year's supply of toilet paper just in case anyone needs some. We have the big, unopened bags of chips. That's gold in our household. At today's grocery prices. I think people shouldn't know about our valuables whenever we're away. Well, I have a wedding. Jim's sibling brother, his son, is getting married this weekend. And so... It's going to be kind of fun. We get to go and hang out with everybody. Jim's going to go do some man fishing with the boys as part of the activities. That's just a boys outing. It's kind of our version of a bachelor party, I guess. If there's any stags, it will be wildlife that you see roaming through. Because where we're going is a lot of wildlife. Yeah. A lot of, yeah. It's up in the high elevation mountains of New Mexico. A lot of people don't realize that they don't ever find their way to that corner of New Mexico. There's some really fantastic. Oh, it's beautiful. Beautiful. I was checking the weather and it was like, well, the high will be 75. Yeah. The day we leave, it'll be high of 70. So when we leave, it'll be colder and like 50s for cold. So I'm kind of excited about that. I had to actually pack a sweater. Yeah, no, it's not far from Wolf Creek, Colorado and some of those places. It goes to Springs, Colorado. So it's the same kind of topography and elevation and all that kind of fun stuff. So Announcement-wise, TIADA starts, I think, Sunday. And we had our V8 Group 2 meeting last night. And I didn't tell them that we need to get the word out that we've got another group that size forming. That's 500 to 2,000. So we've got some commitments on that already. So the nice thing about having two groups that size is that that lets people flow. When there's a conflict with one, they can sit in the other. So that's been a good situation for our other group of 100 of us. but anyway that's it and then you said tiada is coming up next week do they kick off on monday I um when I was looking at the conflict of our calendar it was it looked like it that the opening stuff was either tonight or monday where you know the registration and the opening cocktail stuff so um I you know I should go and look but we're not going to be there we'll miss you all yeah For sure. Yeah. TIADA is one of the really great buy here, pay here conferences. And another one that's coming up is the Carolinas. Right. And August 1st is that mastermind. Is the mastermind thing. I did confirm. Let me put it on the screen here. i did confirm with mr troy spring yes that that uh coupon code is live so um when he when we played the recorded conversation with him we talked about it and said I'm not sure you know if it's it's available but it is live and so if you're planning to go to that event you can hop on it looks like that the normal ticket price is like 49 and that that that makes it free right And so if you're in the area and, you know, or only going to go to something, then that's probably. It's an all day mastermind. Yeah. Brainstorming whiteboarding with. Jim's just like, oh my gosh, it sounds like so much fun. I would love to be there too. Yeah. Yep. Anything else? Oh, there's a lot, but it can wait. We need to get on the road. I still have to mow the front yard before we go. You have to mow the back. Yeah. We have an arrangement. Obligations. I mean, and it's like when I mentioned our neighbor, he's a watchdog. He also pays close attention to when we mow our lawns. And everybody else's lawns. We love him. Oh, my gosh. He's the best. But he's seen that movie, Otto. that's our neighbor except we're the family that has just we just love him he's just so he's so awesome but he um there's a sweetheart below that gruff exterior yeah and as long as he's you know it's included and informed it's just like melt he just melts and yeah he's he's fantastic good guy he's like 87 88 88 Yeah. So today we have the last of the recordings that we did at the National Conference in Vegas last month. And this is one that we've played the ones from our founding sponsors. And this one is with Gordy Tormullin. And Gordy, when we talked to him, it was like the day after he was no longer the president of the board, and he's now the chairman of the board. And I say something in there, Jim's like, I think that you will have lost half of our audience. I say, oh, you're the chairman of the board. We're in Vegas. How perfect is that? So I'm just going to preface that Frank Sinatra was called the chairman of the board. And Frank Sinatra was like the Vegas destination and the Rat Pack and all of that. So he was the chairman of the board. Gordy got it. And a lot of our listeners have never heard of Frank Sinatra. I think that they have, but it's like, wasn't he a singer? They don't know the chairman of the board. So I'm glad you pre-explained. Well, I mean, you're this morning when we were just kind of reviewing stuff, you're like, no one knows. Well, the young, the younger dealers don't know who chairman, who that reference. So I've explained, you know? Yeah. All right. So roll it. Yeah, we can. Let me bring this on in and do that. And then let's roll it. Okay, we are now, we're back again at the NIADA 2024 conference in this expo hall. And we happen to have a friend that we've interviewed, I cannot tell you how many times. Sometimes it's been like multiple just to get out one thing. Well, there's that. But you think you guys got wise by now? No. We're always... glad to have you here we always learn something and enjoy chatting with you anytime we get the opportunity so you just had a big gordon who's now the we didn't say like the name and then the title the title the title the title is now the niada chairman of the board and we're in vegas and it's the perfect place to be the chairman it is yes I will not sing yeah right so he got it okay very good We're happy to be in the Expo Hall with Gordy, who's just transitioned from a year of serving as the president and now moving into the chairman of the board role. And so, first of all, we don't say it often enough. We're grateful for your many years of service and all the work that you have done. And your devotion to this association is, you know, unquestionable. Well, thank you. It is a high honor. It truly is. And I will tell you this. I was taught. Yeah. about giving back from a guy that raised me, my dad. And that goes back to when I was seven years old. He taught me how important it was to care for others and do things. And he served on the Illinois Board of Directors for new car dealers many, many years ago. It just carries forward. Yeah, so I don't want to miss the opportunity to share that. I know that it's this evening that you have an event, which is the Fellowship of Christian Dealers, right? Correct. That you guys have helped to put together. And so talk to us about what the event is tonight. Okay, so the event tonight, and the purpose of this thing really is just to provide people with a little bit of a break that doesn't have car salesmanship involved in it in any way, shape, or form, but just to feed folks and so forth with a religious tone. It's not a preaching thing or anything else. You just want to have fun. And so last year we had Brett Walker, who was a Christian artist, and he sang some song for us that he was just working on that now are at the top of the charts. Oh, fantastic. Which is super cool. We heard it here first. Yeah, exactly. He tried to get us to sing it with him, but fortunately he didn't keep that tape, apparently. This year we have comedian Jeff Allen. Yeah, and we're familiar with who he is. Jeff is awesome. If you check on Facebook or anything like that, Dry Bar Comedy, this guy's got over 4 million views, and he is funny. Yeah, you guys already picked him up, right? Yeah. We spent some time with him. He came in, and he was waiting to get his room, and we drug him along, and he got a chance to meet Marcus Luttrell earlier, and then he was going to head to the pool. He said something about his Speedo, and I said, well, you don't have to come to the show. It'll be fine. We're glad to know that's happening. And I got to share with you something, and I didn't prepare you for this question, so we can come back and talk about it another time. But one of the things that just came up in our conversation with Tim Lawrence, who you probably know from LHPH Capital, the word grace came up. And I paused for a minute to think, you know, the word grace in the context of a Christian car dealer is one thing. And then those who may or may not be, you know, religious, I think the word grace is something we don't hear in the used car industry. I don't hear that, but I certainly see a correlation in terms of what we think about some of the more successful dealers. I'll thank you for the segue, but I really think grace is what we do. And buy here, pay here, it certainly is. These are people that have been thrown out in terms of the banking world. And nobody's going to give them an opportunity. And here's this car dealer who sits down and offers them respect and a relationship. And it has built a business upon that. But really, and that's why people are so loyal to buy her, pay her dealers and so forth. If you treated them well and they've had a good experience, you maybe had to eat a set of spark plugs somewhere along the line. You took care of them. They don't get that everywhere. And they're greatly appreciative of it. So we employ that in what we do day in and day out. And you don't even stop and think about it because it's who you are and what you do. I love that that word actually has been a really important word in just my life. Even before Jim and I met, I was at a women's retreat conference and we did these like little, the wet tattoos. And it was different words that were, you were backwards, so you didn't know what it was. And I put it on and it was right here on my forearm and it said grace. And I remember just, it really hit me hard that grace, that I, I personally try to navigate my day to day interactions with a level of grace. And it's, and it's also in, in how I move, how I, how I speak, how I interact, how I, how I offer a level of, of leeway leniency or whatever it is that, that just allows people to be, to rise and be their best. And without me trying to push them down and then encourage them to be better. And to me, it's like, grace is just such a, we we've been talking recently with white hat way that grace is a great word, just like love is. And I wish that, you know, that, that as we continue to move this forward, it's like, those are two words that are really important. Love, and grace. Michelle, to me, it's the practice of seeking to raise others. In today's world, we judge everybody. We say, oh, look at that. He's got goofy hair. Look at that tie. Stop that. Look at that smile. What a nice person they must be. Looking for that in others. More often than not, if you just take a minute and look for it, you'll find the positive. They have a story. They are solid and good people. Maybe not what you thought. Yeah. We were just talking with Tim Lawrence. It's like, I think I'm a little bit of an optimist. I'm a Pollyanna that I think people are good. Sometimes they just don't know how to show it or they don't have the skills to be able to let it rise out. And so we give them the opportunities and the teaching opportunities too, for them to learn. You find such grand inspiration when you talk to somebody, you dig a little deeper into who they are, but you have to have a little grace to do that. Yep. I think nowadays one of the buzzwords that you see on the internet all the time is kindness, be kind. But it sometimes is almost insincere. It's the popular thing to say. Grace is enacting that kindness in what you do day in and day out. And we talk a lot about the actions speak louder, right? And so I think You know, to kind of bring it over to our used car segments, like, you know, to operate with grace in business or in life is one thing. We think about the word graceful. And then in our car world, it's the word grace, period. You know, it's kind of a way to think about what does that really even mean? And how graceful are we in, you know, enforcing, you know, what might be a graceful? period so obviously that can have a lot of different contexts in our world and you've been a buy here pay your dealer yourself in the state of illinois for many years so you you live that and you're in a small community so I think what we're hoping to be able to do through our work is to help dealers start to connect the dots in a way that they can see when we play this long game And we treat people with grace in the way that we would want to be treated if we were in that same spot. Then obviously you can start to see some progress. And we are seeing that. We're seeing people make that connection play along. I mean, in August, I'll be 51 years in the business. I thought you were going to say 51 years of age. And I was like, good on you, man. The audit department's over there saying no way. False, false, false. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's lying. In that period of time, if you want to get in into business and just rip and roar and get out in three years, I really hope you don't pick the car business because I don't want to have you as the person that sets the image for my store. When I'm thinking long-term, I don't, there's, there's no long-term profit in selling somebody one car. Sure. I got people. I sold 30 cars too. Sure. I'm doing fine on them. And they are friends when they come in and that's, that's playing that long-term and it's, it's being graceful. Sometimes you give a little, you take a little, whatever the case might be, but you're thinking about how they win as much as you're thinking about how you win. Yeah. And I used to borrow a phrase. I remember the young man who was a very successful manager in Iowa. who had a phrase that I adopted. And basically I would say to a customer, if I had a chance to meet with them as involved in closing, I would say, look, when you start to do business with us, there won't be anything that happens during the time that you own this car that we can't work through together. If you come and sit in that chair and talk to me. So that was the part that I added, the part where he did. Just come sit in that chair and talk to me and we'll communicate through it. There's nothing that we can't. In other words, I'm prepared to show up and work through the stuff. And so I think this is where buy here, pay here is people that are new to it. They fail to connect that dot and make the determination about how that translates into success in their business and success in the customer's life. And so you obviously live that all day. The simple proposition is, do you want to sell this car to somebody and make $2,500 or three grand or whatever it is? And that's it. Or do you want to sell them four or five cars and make $30,000? And along the line, you're going to have to eat $800 in air conditioning repairs or some other such thing. Give them a loaner car or whatever the case might be, because they need that in their life at that point in time. And you're the person that's going to do it. And what's the value of all those referrals? And they don't have anyone else to fall back on. So many times, too. Years ago, I had a strange thing happen. This was back when I was a Chrysler dealer. We were also doing my hair period at the same time, okay? And we just decided that, you know, we're spending 10 grand a month in advertising. $10,000. It's insane. That was a long time ago too. And for a month I did no advertising, but the customers kept coming. And so then I decided that I would allocate a portion of those advertising dollars to policy work. No matter what anybody had, no matter what the problem, I don't care what it is. You come on in, you sit down with me, I will let you vent because it's important. It's a psychological process. I would explain to you factually that I don't have to do this. It was as is as shown. However, there's nobody more important than a customer. You're my customer. What do you need? And how can I help you? And whatever they said, I did. Because if you'd even trying to cut it in half or 10% or something, then you weren't giving them what they wanted. And it would give them the opportunity to complain. So we just did it. The first time I did that, I had a 26 and a half pathfinder and the AC was out of it. It cost me $900 to fix it. I mean, that was a loser. And I thought, what have I done? Which over a period of time. The long game. Charging that to advertising. My advertising expense was one-tenth of what my fellow Chrysler dealers were doing. And people were coming back to me. And we were friends. And they were happy. And they recommended their friends. It turned from something that was transactional into something that was revolutionary. And I took away their reason to be upset. Yeah. So we know you've got to get, we know you've got your event. Yeah, you've got important stuff, important people to see. I don't know if Jeff's going to be in there speed or not, but I definitely got a little bit of room made away. We may show up late. We may wait until it's in. Right on. Is there anything else you wanted to add before you head out? Thank you for what you guys do. Oh, you're welcome. I really appreciate it. It's a vital service. We as dealers and entrepreneurs, the more we communicate, the better we are. And you serve, you're a very important cog in that wheel. And I really, really appreciate you. Thank you. It's a privilege to be a cog in that wheel. So thank you. Super cool. And you just talk to dealers and you just, Oh my gosh. Yeah. I'll speak entrepreneur anyway. It's a separate language. It's well, we were in the, in the exit strategies. We're talking about, you know, people wanting to come in and it's like, this could make a lot of money. And then they get, they dip their toe in and they're like, Oh, A lot of work. I thought it was rather ironic that I had to exit the exit strategy. That's the time when Jeff got here. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for your, for your service too. And so we'll see you in a little bit. I'll pop in sooner or later, but in the meantime, yeah, come on and have some laughs with Jeff. All right. Thanks so much. Thank you. Okay. All right. Widely known, liked, and trusted is Gordy. Yeah, Gordy's, he's kind of like a staple in the industry. And there are a few things that, you know, I just, I found it really interesting that he, what he said about his Chrysler advertising budget. Right. And, you know, obviously, if he had been brand new in business and had cut his advertising out for the month, there may not have been people coming in because it probably required some level of creating a presence already. People were aware already. you know, that this is, this is where you can go and all of that. So I wouldn't advise new dealers to cut their advertising budgets to zero. Right. That's, um, but it's just an interesting thing that it's, it, and we've talked to Gordy about his, his dealership and he's like, I don't spend much of anything at all in marketing. Um, and people just kind of, they, they, they come back, they bring back, they refer, you know, all of that. And it's, it's, It, to me, is a testament to when you are about relationships instead of transactions, how that cog just keeps turning. It just keeps going. Yeah, and it's supporting customers, right? And so that's always an interesting line for me, and we'll spend more time on it as we go. It's part of what we can do through the podcast because that line between you've got to keep yourself in business, you've got to have policies, and bending a policy is something I've always said. Like, yes, of course we have policies, but we need to have somebody around who can make an exception to policy, who has the authority to make an exception to policy. Absolutely. A Steve Levine right now would be going, okay, but, but, but, but, but like, you know, I, at those of you in compliance have your policy there that you can have exceptions, just notate them. Yeah. And I think, yeah, what we're talking about here is really just that line. Like I see a lot of dealers with really exorbitant policy expense. And I think there's, there's a line there that of course you want to make the customer happy and you want to create, policies that are going to keep you in business, um, because we can't give away the farm, but, but I, it's a conversation for another day, but yeah, I enjoyed always, uh, you know, hearing from Gordy and he's, uh, you know, he has, he's given a lot of his career to, to, you know, given back and those, those board positions are not paid positions. Those are volunteer. They give their own hours in the interest of an industry. And you can hear from what he says is, is He has a real interest in the image of the used car dealer. And obviously that's a big part of what NIADA does. And as always, we encourage dealers to get involved in their state association because that includes your membership at the national level. And we want to see dealers do that because these conversations are going to keep going. NIADA is going to continue to work to be an advocate for dealers and also to work to make sure they improve the image of the used car dealer reputation and so on. So I just think it's all a part of what we want to be. And I know we can, we can wrap up today. I just, a couple of quick reminders. You do? Yes. We were supposed to be getting on the road. Well, I mean, I, I get that, but let me, we really, we'd have a couple of minutes. Okay. Let me get comfortable. So there were two things. One is the comic that came out and presented. So Gordy's part of an organization, Fellowship of Christian Dealers. And I really have to say that it's wonderful what they are. It's not about preaching. It's not about all of that. But there's a lot of dealers that come to Vegas, and Vegas is not their favorite place. Sure. Um, uh, it's just not, and there's others that they love Vegas. And so what they're trying to do is to create something that is free for dealers to go and get some entertainment that is quality entertainment, and that's going to be clean. Right. So, you know, that's the whole it's it's not about church or all that, but it's just about something that you could bring your wife or your your husband or if you've got your kids with you, whatever, and have them come and enjoy an evening of entertainment. And I just I really I think that that's, that's laudable. Because that, you know, they're covering the expense, and it's the person's not doing it for free. And they're doing it to give people an option to, to for some entertainment, that is that is not parental content, you know, advise stuff. So that's pretty cool. Um, and as I just wanted to, and I think next year when we, when we, uh, start getting into leading up to the conference that we'll be talking more about and get more dealers there. Cause it's, I mean, it was a really, it was a great opportunity to, to, uh, um, be entertained. We went and the guy's funny. Oh my, we, yeah. We watch dry bar comedy. And so those of you who like clean, um, clean comedy, I mean, we, we watch that all the time and just laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh. Three names. Jeff Allen, this guy who was in Vegas, uh, Josh need, Josh need is hilarious. And his Kristen keys are hilarious. Kristen actually has a, has a thing about, uh, Vegas and people watching it. She goes, she's like, so is that in Vegas? People judging, um, Y'all call it people watching, but we know what you're doing, and it's hilarious. But Josh, if you guys watch Josh Sneed, he does a bit about a garage sale. I think he's my favorite. And you have to watch him. Hilarious. Yeah, so funny. And then the last thing is... You're going to hear more about the word grace, grace and love, because they are very... When we're talking about the feeling side, you'll just hear more in the White Hat Way context, grace and love. And it's not church. It's not religion. It's just humaning. It's just being a good neighbor and being a good... being business owner and being, you know, someone that, that people that are downtrodden or that, you know, have, have less abilities financially that they can turn to and trust. Yeah. And I think, you know, we're on a White Hat Wednesday and it's appropriate to help folks know that this is what they can expect to see out of White Hat coaching. I said as much out of fun conversation with Shelly Vandiven, who we know from Agora. So Steve Burke did a recorded thing with us for our viewers earlier in the week. And so afterwards, the conversation. I'm looking forward to watching that. Yeah. So she said afterwards, you know, she really enjoyed listening to it. She said the most fascinating part was the conversation around coaching. the value of the customer versus the value of the metal, the car itself. Right. So that was kind of Steve's terminology was the metal or the, and so there's a whole thing there like around white hat coaching where, and I just shared with her, I think you can expect to see a lot more from us in white hat coaching is going down this track of, um, The intangibles, the squiggly lines, the warm and fuzzies, the things that are as much a part of your business. We just don't talk about them as much. And so I think when we can get comfortable and look, not every dealer is going to want to come in the room and talk about the warm and fuzzies. But the ones who do are especially in a buy here, pay here context are going to. You know, they're going to hear about long game. They're going to hear about how these intangible things affect the decisions that they make in a straight line context and how that affects their business, especially when they're, they're really able to talk about some of the stuff Gordy talks about. He was one of the first ones that we really heard talk about that, that um, that shift, that, uh, line between a transactional relationship and a real relationship with the customer. And so I think these are the things that you can expect to see us talk about at white hat coaching. We'll continue to contribute to the straight line things. It's just, I think we can't ignore and we're just going to keep having those conversations on Wednesdays. Yeah. And just, uh, you know, uh, Neither Jim or I are religious. We're not churchgoers. We just try to live a life where we're kind. If you look at the White Hat Way appendix W, it's on whitehatway.com. that's kind of like our compass, our, that's our, that's our moral set, I guess you would say. So we're not super religious. We're also not pop. We're not political. So it's like, you know, people say, well, it's like, no, we're just kind of, we're, we're independence with all, you know, across the board. And it's just, it's I, I appreciate that because it's because we do that. That's how, that's part of being agnostic. We're, we, we, We work and are agnostic within the industry. And we're also just, it's like we, so my point is, is that if it aligns with our Appendix W, you're going to hear about it. um and and that's you know that's that's our that's what we we um we navigate from um in our business and and and how we look at a lot of things in life so you know if that if that uh uh if you've had a chance to read it if you haven't whitehatway.com um it's in there it's uh there's like 12 13 different different points in there But that's what you're going to get from us. And those are the kind of things that we teach in the squiggly lines. It's, you know, everything is pretty well encompassed in that, of the squiggly lines. So I just... Yeah, we've talked about plenty that, you know, it's... it's common for us to introduce to a dealer, especially those that are newer to the business is how these intangibles, these squiggly lines affect the decision-making in the straight line. So we want to introduce that and have them contemplate that in the decision-making. And so that's all part of, and as you touched on earlier, the idea of humaning, that's, I think where, you know, what you can expect to see out of our coaching going forward is we're going to we're going to spend a lot more time bringing in folks who can add ideas and, and, and give perspective on the human elements here. That may or may not even be in the car industry. So let's think about something more than buy here, pay here. Let's think about something more than the cost of cars. Let's think about something bigger. And, uh, and that's kind of where I think folks can expect to see what way, you know, carve out some, uh, And we're just going to drive conversation around that. So look forward to that. And we'll be back here doing the same next Wednesday. Yes. Look for a recorded episode. Are we going to do a recorded episode on Friday? Okay. We won't be going live from New Mexico. So look for something pre-recorded. Yeah. I would say that's like a 98% chance. There's a 2% chance that we will. So yeah. Yeah. If we do, then we'll have Jim's mom and brother wave hello or something like that. So yeah. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for joining. You know, we just really do. We appreciate, we know because we, Jim was a dealer himself and that your days are busy. Yeah. And to take some time to listen. It just, you know, it takes away from other things. You could be buying cars online. Don't forget that coupon code. Don't forget the coupon code. Don't forget to join your state association. J-Y-S-A. Yeah. Don't forget to follow our YouTube channel. All right, everybody. Have a great rest of your week. And we will likely see you live again on Monday. So it'll be recorded on Friday. So have a great rest of your week, everybody. Thanks so much.
