wake up buyer payer 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 we're we're way late this morning well um technology I don't know I okay um I think that there's like an apple gremlin or something um that is something to do with the drones yeah it's got to have you know I don't know if everyone's been paying attention to the drone stuff but apparently we you know and then we've been we've been cyber attacked by drones I know I know people are going to want my opinion on it so I got to pay attention so Oh, that is, you know, speaking about that, that is something that we have wasted altogether too much time just like reviewing what people are saying about all the stuff that's happening on the East Coast. It's hilarious. Hey, good morning, John Lamb. Good morning, John. So John's part of the team at DCS. Oh, very good. Very good. Excellent. Thank you so much for being patient, everybody. Yeah. It just, it's like my internet wouldn't connect and I'm the one that handles all of the board. The soundboard. The soundboard and everything. And so, It was like, this is a no-go right now. And I figured that I had to restart. And don't you hate it when you restart your computer and it's like, crap. All these apps want to do updates. And it's just like, I haven't used Zoom on this computer for forever. But there we go. Thank you very much. What do we have? It's like. crunch time crunch time um I mean next friday is um the last uh podcast for the year okay for twenty four twenty twenty four um this coming wednesday is christmas is everyone ready no not everyone I was talking to my mom the other day and she's like, I used to always have all of my Christmas shopping. She doesn't talk like that. All my Christmas shopping done by October. And I'm like, do you want a brownie point? Because that has never been my gig at all. But she's always done it and she's... um this year she asked me to order a whole bunch of amazon gift cards and they came on monday and she was like oh yeah everyone from the family who that's what you're getting because she just doesn't have the ability to get out because dad's not around to drive her around and so it's kind of um and we have limited time and there's not time to christmas shop you know we're getting your groceries you know what amazon gift cards means more drones now that means more Maybe what they are is like delivering major Christmas deliveries to different people all across the East Coast. That's got to be it. That's got to be it. Yeah, it's got to be it. All righty. Shall we get down to business? I think that we should get down to business. Hey, a couple of quick announcements. So we got on Friday, we got dealer Calvin Ruth from Oklahoma will be joining us to talk about. He was featured as a dealer spotlight in the NIADA publications in the And we know Calvin. I'm happy to have him on the broadcast and have a chance to hear his story. He's been sharing a little bit on social media about he acquired some property to expand into service departments. So there's a lot of great stuff to talk about. And to kind of piggyback the same thing, we just decided on our first mastermind. topic for our V eight plus our mastermind track in January is we got one dealer is going to come forward and share his business plan for twenty twenty five and working on getting cash flow positive. And so we're going to have some dealers come in and help mastermind that business plan. I love this concept just like so much. And as we've been talking to dealers about it, they're like, oh, my goodness, this is going to be fun. Very focused, very virtual groups. And so, yeah, we're excited to get that. Yeah. So excellent. So today, Yeah. We are here to, you know, officially just like have our first DMS that has successfully tested, balanced out with us the reporting that you asked them to do. You want to talk a little bit? Yeah. Back in June, just before the NIADA conference, we... circulated an email to all the providers that we knew. We then had to add a few more, you know, as we realized we missed some, but we did that. We copied our founding sponsors on that. And we just went to the industry and said, would you folks please create what we named a white hat way portfolio summary report. And we just wanted all the DMS systems to have something because we just see, obviously in our work with V eight dealers with, you know, coaching and analytics before that, and just having been a dealer myself, we, I just see the disconnect. There's just a big void right there where dealers have, and I'm going to show some stuff on the screen today. It's kind of an illustration of that. We just had a V eight meeting last night with one of our groups of dealers with larger portfolios. It was just so glaringly apparent that it's a, it's a real problem. And DCS has taken a big step towards solving it with their users. Right. I mean, only dealers on their system will be able to benefit, but, um, But it's the first of many. There's some others that we just need to do some extra testing, and then we can get them on the show as well. But DCS is the first one to accomplish this. And so, Jim, you did a... he wasn't able to meet us or join us live. So Jim did a recording of just kind of talking about the thing. And so we're going to play parts of that and then do. Yeah. Before we do that, let me kind of give a little more background. So the portfolio summary report is, is really, we brought it forward as white hat way. You know, this is a white hat effort. Again, our founding sponsors behind the effort to, you know, get this problem solved. And so we, We're thrilled to see response. And I will just say DCS is the first one to really show us that they tested it and verify that it works. And it's supposed to work for both LHPH and BHPH dealers. So we're thrilled about that. And it's just an example of what White Hat Way can do for dealers. We're just out there working to try to make dealers' lives easier. oh yeah oh yeah so yeah we can let me let me play before you start the video let me show the screen quickly on this this thing about the uh example from this is an actual dealer from our v-eight group and this is just I just grabbed a screen grab of of their actual numbers and I know these are going to be so this is a report that would be coming you know you run it whenever you need to but we suggest that it's the end of month for um you know to look at how you they can run it for whatever date range obviously in va we're looking at monthly numbers but um yeah wherever the whatever range the dealer wants to look at that things ought to still you know produce the results we're looking for so um this is an illustration of why this is so important like it's just it's For those who can't see the numbers there, and I can't read them very well, but you've got a dealer with about two thousand accounts and about a twenty five, twenty six million dollar portfolio. And their team is compiling the numbers and sending in each month. And so let me just take folks who can't see the screen through the lines. You've got opening principal balance there, then plus new amount financed. Minus principal collected on the primary buy here, pay your portfolio, because sometimes people have different portfolios or different categories of monies. And we're just looking at the primary portfolio here. Principal collected or sorry, principal charged off is the next one. That would be the gross principal balance of the accounts at the time of charge off. And then plus or minus any other principal adjustments. If you've had any write downs or something that's not classified as a charge. And this obviously this dealer hasn't had any, but we have other dealers that there would be stuff in there. Or if they do, they don't know where to find them to report them to us. So the problem that we're illustrating here is that whether, whether this dealer actually has a problem with their software, I can't say, I mean, I'm not, I'm not in there trying to reconcile these numbers inside their software, but whether the problem is the actual software, or whether the problem is the dealer's team not knowing where to get to these numbers, either way, it's a problem. Even if it's the team, if the software does it perfectly, but the team doesn't know where to go find the numbers, then the dealer doesn't get the information they're looking for. And I'll be meeting with this dealer. And so this actual report now, because unlike the other DMSs that it's not live, So the dealers have to come at the numbers. They have to figure out, well, DCS has created. So if you're on their system, you just run this report and it knows exactly where to find the things. And it's going to balance out the way that it was designed to balance out. So I haven't gotten the balancing part of this. So what it does then is it calculates. We just do a calculation. It's a quick way for us to validate that the numbers are accurate. you know within a reasonable deviation before we move forward and because obviously in v-eight we're doing comparative stuff but this this is not really about v-eight this is about just any dealer anywhere trying to be able to run a report that will capture all the movement and principle in their portfolio which is typically the largest asset in their business right yeah so now it calculates okay this is what we calculate your closing principle would be based on those numbers and then the actual closing principle according to your report And you can see that this dealer is off by, you know, two percent. Doesn't sound like a big number, but it's a half a million dollars on a twenty five million dollar portfolio. That's why it's important. So just think about from this standpoint, this dealer sitting in a group where he's trying to compare to other dealers. We don't know that half a million. Does it belong in charge off? Does it belong in new financing? We don't we don't know why it's off. Right. We just know that something's misreported here. and the dealer doesn't know why right so it's like that's a problem and so this is what dcs has taken a step at least their users now will be able to go to the system run a white hat way portfolio summary report and be able to have those numbers tie together absolutely so well first off though if if you all are um are listening to this um please go and I'm looking for the banner please go to Jim and Michelle Rhodes on YouTube, Octane Group, and you can see the video for all this. Or if you're watching on social media, then you can as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let me see here. We're going to go to the video, right? Yep, go ahead. Okay, so I'm going to take you out of this, and then we're going to add to this. And let me get in here. So this is... There we go. You may have to share the audio from that tab once you start playing it. Hey, friends. Welcome. I've got a guest here with me today for our White Hat Wednesday, and we're recording with Michael Sanson. Michael, glad to have you here. Thank you, Jim. Very happy to be here. Yeah, so I need to give our listeners a little bit of background on how it is that you and I came together today. So Back in June of last year, we've circulated an email across the industry asking DMS providers to create a report for all their users. We asked all DMS providers and all the folks and copied a lot of people across the industry, just because I'm a guy who's been around this thing a long time. I work with a lot of dealers. I'm a numbers nerd and analyst. So we're all the time working with dealers and trying to help them figure out their their metrics and their portfolio performance. And so one of the things I've seen, Michael, in our industry is that it just, in so many systems, it's a real challenge for dealers to be able to, I call it reconcile, but not from an accounting standpoint, to be able to identify the changes in their portfolio over a given period of time. Most often we're looking at a calendar month, but I put that out there. And at the time I put out the email, I said, for those of complete that we'd love to have you come on the on the white hat wednesday episode of the podcast so we can highlight the fact that you guys created it and dcs is the first at this time the first to actually test it verify that it works and we're thrilled to be able to um you know share that with our listeners and to introduce you guys to the to our listeners as well Thank you, Jim. Obviously, it took a little bit longer than we would have hoped, but we were happy to get it done, offer those reports to any of the prospective dealers out there. And us having our own portfolio as well, definitely know that having the numbers match is honestly probably one of the most important pieces of operating these businesses. Yeah, there's so many elements. I mean, like you said, we're not. I want to pause that really. So the people at DCS are dealers as well. They're a franchise operation in New Jersey, and they acquired software some time ago, and now they're building it out. I don't think he says it here, but they've got a team of six developers, and they have both leasing and buy here, pay here. Yeah. Or lease here, pay here, buy here, pay here. Okay, so. So the story is going to be from an accounting standpoint. We think the accountants will also benefit from having this information. But we're mostly just trying to help dealers get this information in front of their hand and in front of their face so that they can actually have it at their fingertips when they close a month to be able to run that report and be able to to know kind of, hey, my principal balance started at the start of the month here. My portfolio was here. I added this much principal. I charged off this much principal and so on and so forth. We don't have to go through the minutiae of the details, but it's really a nice bonus. I think people who are in twenty groups will benefit from this. People that are in our dealer groups will certainly benefit from having this information. And then, you know, any user anywhere would benefit from having the ability to just know that their portfolio sort of balances. They know where all the dollars moved. And just, you know, here we are in twenty twenty four. That feels like such a basic, simple thing. But it's but we're not naive. We understand systems have different modules. And so collections is different from sales, which is different from inventory. It's not quite that simple. But you guys put forth the effort and created the report. And again, on behalf of the industry, behalf of dealers out there, we're grateful for you guys making time to create that. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. So let me let me kind of explain a little bit of the history. You know, Michael is the CEO with Dealer Control Solutions. They've over the years, they've been under a couple of different names. I want to explain about that because I know a lot of the history, Michael. Like, I actually worked years ago with Virginia. Her name was Witter back then. Virginia was the chief developer with a software company that I worked with the consulting division of software company way back in from like two thousand to two thousand three. And, you know, back then they were transitioning from the off space systems to to Windows. And there have been many iterations. Now you guys are a browser based system serving both buy here, pay here and lease here, pay here. But because of I knew Virginia and and and over at one point met Bill Elizondo when he was with AFS dealers. So, so Virginia and Rick Reeves worked. I wanted to just, it's browser-based. Yeah. That's a big deal. It is. Yeah. Yeah. And you don't go, we don't go any more into that with DCS, but they're, they're browser-based. The quickest way I know to explain it is that means a dealer can walk to any computer anywhere. They don't have to have it. In the world. They don't have to have software installed. They can go anywhere. They can get to the internet. They can get to their systems. So as we're trying to help dealers become more absentee dealers, that they have the ability to pop in and take a look at everything from wherever they are, as long as they have an internet connection. Okay. Together for a very long time. And they had built this product called AFS Dealers. And so that's where I met Bill again. And now. You guys ultimately acquired that. You actually developed it for your you guys are in the franchise business in New Jersey. Am I right? So you acquired that system, kind of built up what became dealer controlled leasing because you were doing a lease here, pay here model in New Jersey. And so that became DCL. And then at one point, you actually went and acquired AFS from Rick Reeves. And so now that has become DCS, which is Dealer Controlled Solutions. And I know from talking to you back when you guys... Rick Reeves. We did a whole episode on Rick back in the spring. Which was also a White Hat Way episode. It was a White Hat Way episode because Rick Reeves was actually pretty... He was a big player in, well, the ideologies that he taught were a big player in as we've developed White Hat Way, what that means, and some of those pieces. So, yeah. The idea was to move to a name that would illustrate that you were more comprehensive. You have both buy here, pay here, and lease here, pay here, and they're all browser-based. Correct. Yeah. So Bill actually was, so we started as the client of AFS dealers, operators starting our lease your pay your model out in New Jersey, Bill and Rick both have come to the stores. They set us up and, you know, we had such great success with it. Love the lease your pay your model ended up, you know, partnering with Rick and team to then distribute that to the franchise model more for as an indirect lender to yourself, similar to how we're set up at NJ Auto Lending. But then, like you said, we did end up acquiring AFS dealers, and the majority of the clients are buy-year, pay-year, lease-year-payer independent. So we didn't want to pigeonhole ourselves into just leasing because the software, I think one of the main benefits is that it does buy-year, pay-year, and lease-year-payer. Yeah. And I want to emphasize the browser-based element because I think a lot of people, when you say web-based, a lot of people, and I find that I'm not a tech person, right? So I don't know the difference. Here's the way I typically ask a dealer to differentiate. If you could walk to any computer in any hotel lobby and hop on the internet and access your system, that's what I would call a browser-based system. If I have to have my laptop and I have to have locally installed software, and yes, I still might have to get to the internet, but that's different. I have software on my device. In your case, anywhere I can get to the internet, I can get to your software, right? Correct. And so that's a big differentiator for me. And I think it's important that everybody in the industry recognize that that that solution is available. There are others, but to my knowledge, Michael, you guys would be the only ones who are fully browser-based offering both buy here, pay here and lease here, pay here. Is that correct? From what I understand, that's correct. Yes. I certainly don't know anybody, and I'm sure that our listeners already know if that's correct. Yeah, I just want to clarify on something. I learned, according to the support team at DealPack, they also have that solution for both buy-here-pay-here and lease-here-pay-here. So I want to clarify that. Yeah, just make sure that we're correct. Since we recorded that, but DealPack also has an option. Right on. You know, we're around a lot. We talk to a lot of dealers and we work with a lot of dealers, especially through our VH program. We meet a lot of dealers and we're accessing different systems. And I feel like if that existed, we would know about it. But certainly we want to, you know, make sure that folks know that that's the real difference. That's the real separator is, you know, being able to just get to your system from anywhere, which I think is just so important, you know, in this world that we live in, the ability to just hop in there and gain access and without having to have that certain laptop or that certain device with, you know, the software installed. So, so, you know, you guys would be congratulated on that, but then, you know, back to our report, I would just say that, you know, this is such an important element to be able to know that your system can identify like down to the dollar where activity is occurring in your business so that we can, for our standpoint, it's, we mostly are using that information to help dealers measure the performance of their portfolio they need to be able to know what moved in and out of their portfolio if it moved out as a charge offer it moved out as a collective payment we need to be able to analyze that and know exactly what what moved where and so this is part of what we want to uh you know to make sure that uh folks recognize that's why we requested the white halfway uh you know portfolio summary report so folks can know that if they become a DCS subscriber, if they end up enrolling with you and using your software, that they would be able to produce that report that tells them exactly where their principal balance started and get down to the penny. It sounds like a small thing, but what we see, Michael, across the industry and working with these dealers and these different systems is many of them, some of them have fairly substantial portfolios. And if they're off by three percent, You're talking about six-figure deviation and then not being able to identify where that money is in their business, right? And did it get charged off? Did it get collected? We don't really know unless that pins that stuff down. And so this is why we thought it was so important to make that request. Yeah, now in the report, it's available right now to all of our dealers. We have it in the report library for anyone that they want to run it and any future clients. It's built, so it's there. So we're excited to get some of your clients on looking at it. Yeah, sure. We definitely want to see it. I've got, I've got some slides to be able to show, but they, they actually provided us the, the, the place where the dealers can go in DCS for DCS dealers are listening now. And so I can show some of those, um, you know, we do that at the end, but I just want to pause, explain that right now you can just go into DCS and probably look up why at way, you know, and it's going to have a portfolio summary report, but I'll show the DCS folks how to find it. Uh, urge people to have a look at that. Anytime a dealer is facing a, uh, a software change and looking to make that shift, we definitely would encourage them to look at DCS because of all the things I mentioned. I mean, the ability to be browser-based and have both leasing in, buy here, pay here, on a similar and the same platform is a real win. And so I definitely think that folks ought to have a look at that. And we don't need to get into pricing here today, but I've understood that your system is a little more affordable than some. And so You know, that's another loss that folks can consider. But we definitely always would say, you know, have a look. We will make a recommendation that people have a look at that product before they make their next software pivot. And so this is why we definitely wanted to have a chance to have them have folks know this is, you know, somebody you should know and know that they're. They're able to, you know, identify that principle for you in the way that we recommend that, you know, all the systems do. Maybe talk to me, Michael, about who is your ideal client at DCPS? Who are you guys looking to really bring? I think we covered the parts that, you know, Michael wanted to share and that I certainly wanted to bring forward about the way, you know, they set this thing up. And today's Michael's birthday. Today's Michael's birthday. According to LinkedIn, somebody commented on LinkedIn. I did not know that. Happy birthday, Michael. Happy birthday. and thanks again for making time to uh to sit with us and do that pre-recorded uh conversation but I want to put on the screen uh and this is I asked michael to do this like you know we don't we don't do any pitching on the morning show or we certainly don't want vendors to come around and pitch but I asked them to prepare something if they um as a courtesy to them since they were kind enough to prepare that told me about this this morning I was like what yeah so yeah so for those who are shopping um software I can't promise anything about an expiration date on this coupon code. We didn't discuss that part. But I can say that for those who are contemplating a software shift, when you reach out to the team over at DCS, which I'll show their domain in just a minute where you can find them. Just use coupon code WHITEHATWAY and they are going to give either the option of either no setup fee or the first two months free. And that's substantial. That's huge. That's huge. So, yeah, I am, you know, considering how much a lot of DMSs charge for setup. That's, you know, that's a big one right there or two months free. And I, yeah, I, that's, that's. That takes a little bit of the sting and the headache out of doing a switch if you do a switch. Yeah. So, yeah, software transitions or migrations are often uncomfortable. But, you know, I think it's what I always tell people. It's more comfortable at fifty accounts than it is at five hundred. hundred accounts. So I would just say, you know, get in there and if you're going to do it, you know, do it sooner than later. And I think I can say the same thing about DCS that I used to say about other providers. Like, I just don't believe you're going to outgrow them. They have the capacity, you know, and the ability to scale. So I don't believe you're going to outgrow them, especially in a browser-based situation. Let me put up their domain here. This is dealercontrolledsolutions.com is where you're going to find them. And again, just mention White Hat Way and If you, if you schedule a demo or if you ultimately want to move forward with, you know, setting up with them, then just know that, that they've got that coupon code and just mention White Hat Way and get a little discount. Excellent. So did you want to talk about the, their avatar, their ideal customer? He didn't. I mean, this is just who we expect. It's an independent dealer who's of any size. I mean, I think they they are there. They're especially interested in the dealer who is smaller. He did say that, that they're kind of those people who are. You don't have the big budgets. And so if they, you know, are they're interested in working with dealers of any size, but certainly, you know, have an aim in their own. I would imagine smaller dealers, especially if they're doing a switch, because it is easier for everyone all around to do that than some of the massive, but they can handle growth. Sure. And I would say, you know, we need a new dealer, especially somebody who's brand new, contemplating getting in the business and just starting to finance their first few or even just getting licensed to do it. We typically will give them a name of three or four providers. And so certainly DCS will be on that short list of people that we would encourage a dealer to check out before they move forward. And so this is part of what we would recommend. And I should say here, there are other DMS providers in the industry that are working on it. We've had conversation with Mike down at AMS. They're working on it. They're so close. I think he told me that they really have it. We just haven't been able to verify and test it with a mutual dealer or whatever. So get that done and get Mike on the broadcast as well. But yeah, this is part of what we, we, we enjoy doing this as White Hat way on behalf of dealers that just, you know, can get out there and just, just do a little thing that we can to help make life a little simpler for them. Busy folks, right? Yeah. And we also want to just thank our founding sponsors for their, their stepping in to, to help with these kinds of conversations and to, to help, to, us further the, the mission of White Hat Way and founding sponsors are LHPH Capital. So if you're in leasing, that's, they're really great people over there. And Deloree, and they do reinsurance. And, and again, great people there. And that's one of the, very supportive of these missions. And then Pastime. And Pastime, again, great people and just really, really supportive of what it is that we are doing for the industry. And, yeah. And they're helping this advance this mission that is about trust. And they're all trusted providers. They've all been in business for decades. They're well-known. They have reputations of. I really have enjoyed, you know, as I troll Facebook. And so, you know, we, I, I will troll Facebook. I troll the buy here, pay here conversations in Facebook. And so it kind of gives me an ideas of, of some of the things that we could talk about and, and how conversations are moving. And so a lot of times it's like, Jim, have you taken a look at this? And it's been really cool to watch. There's been a couple of conversations recently, one around RFC and not RFC, reinsurance. And it was, they were asking specifically about dealery. And it's just so lovely to see the comments coming in from people that have worked with them. And it's just like, we really, really love working with them. They've been great to work with. And then the other one is, I saw one recently on, you know, who do you suggest for GPS? And Pastime just has some really great customers, again, just coming forward and saying, we've loved them. We've loved them. And I love those. And I... And I love because, you know, as we look at those, because we know who's in the industry, it's like we can go, okay, vendor, vendor, vendor, vendor, vendor, vendor, vendor, poof. And then look at the dealers that are, you know, what they're saying about the thing. And And, you know, be able to say, OK, dealers, dealers really have had good experiences with with just those are just two that have happened recently with a dealery and and pastime. Yeah. And I can say about pastime, you know, when that kind of stuff comes up, you really want to find somebody. If you're a dealer, you want to find somebody with gray hair and ask them because I would tell them, look, if you get if you get great reviews from two of them, I can tell you pastime has been around the longest. I'm just telling you, they've been around. They're the very first in our industry. And that's actually, you know, because when I look at those, it's that whole having to filter out vendors. And it's just, it's interesting because I think we've talked about it before. We've had clients that have posted stuff online. And then they get all of these responses. And then Jim hops on and he's like, half these people are vendors. And he's like, really? It's like, yes. And so it just, it makes it, it's, it's really nice for when, when we look at it and can go, all right, so what are the dealers saying? And, and that just makes, that just makes such a, such a, it's just so beautiful that it's like people that we align with, that they really are well-loved and well-respected in the industry. Yeah. So, yeah, I think, again, we're grateful to Michael and their team over there for producing that report for their current and future subscribers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that's a really good thing. And I look forward to many more years of collaboration with them. oh yeah we've got lots of opportunities yeah white hat way and absolutely there was no there's nothing transactional here they they didn't pay to do it we didn't pay them and so it's just they just did it because we made the request yeah absolutely again thank you so much and thank you everyone for tuning in to the morning show white hat way um come january one we're going to have a little bit of a shift we'll still be broadcasting on wednesdays And instead of it being the morning show, it will be called White Hat Ways. And so it will be a second podcast that we'll be doing. And so the Why Hair Pair morning show will be a Friday only thing. And then the Wednesday will be White Hat Ways. And that will be starting on January. Apologies again for today's audio issues. All right. Thank you so much, everybody. And again, happy birthday, Michael. And again, we really appreciate your support. Have a great rest of your day. And then we will see you on Friday with Cole Hitchcock. Have a great day, everybody. Calvin Roos. Calvin Roos. Sorry.
