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. Happy Wednesday. Yeah, happy Wednesday. It's a white hat Wednesday. Happy to be coming to you from North Ogden, Utah. Mm-hmm. We had a little snow pass through. It's gone now. Okay. Yeah. A little snow on the mountaintops. Oh, we have coffee in the morning and a lot of times we'll turn the television onto a YouTube visual. Yeah. And this morning it was the beach. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. I love what your brother said to you about, so you like watching other people's living rooms? Yeah. Sometimes. Sometimes we do the fireplace thing. But I mean, you know, it's it. Yeah. Because the alternative is watch the news, which is not. I do not want to do that. Yeah, that's. Yeah. Depressing and distracting. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like it's interesting. You got to find a balance of I'm informed. Right. But I'm not listening to the same bit of information through everyone's lens and and narrative. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Announcements. Announcements. Well, we've got a V eight schedule, um, squared away. A lot of stuff happening on that. Um, data is due today for our V eight dealers out there. If you're a V eight dealer, don't forget that around so we can get those, uh, summary reports turned out. And, uh, I think that's it. I mean, there's other stuff on the horizon that can wait, but we do have coming up on Friday. We have Kristen Acosta, the general manager from Iowa. We did a really extensive study on her, like almost three thousand sales. And so we it's really the focus of the study was around down payment, like percentage of down payment, percentage of the selling price. So I think folks are going to want to be here to hear that one because it's It may change the way you think about down payments. Yeah, absolutely. And then just one other thing, though, around V-Eight, the pricing is set for twenty twenty five V-Eight home groups are one fifty nine. Right. And V-Eight plus if you want to get more information about what V-Eight plus is, that's one ninety nine. Yeah. And for our for our existing members, they're getting a deal. So yeah, our early adopters, our early adopters. Thank you for early adopting. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, exactly. Should we get to the topic? Why not? We've had like lots of conversations around this at different times. And and then when we were talking about the topic for what we wanted to talk about for this this broadcast, Uh, Jim was like, I've got it. And so we've been talking about this for the last couple of days and, um, and just, you know, I'm shooting questions and asking things. And so, um, it should be a pretty, pretty interesting topic to dive into. Yeah. layers to this so as always in fact I just got to do something you didn't know I set this up I got to stream something across the bottom of it no attorneys no attorneys not offering legal advice please seek professional advice when necessary some subjects may be state specific And I think that will be true today. I'm just trying to make sure that people know that we're stepping to the edge of some legal stuff here. And this is, we know, you know, as non-attorneys, we're not offering legal advice, but we also have a perspective, obviously as a former dealer and somebody who worked with a lot of dealers. Former dealer out of Texas, no, Oklahoma. And, and so there were some of the things we've been talking about that are like, you Yeah. You know, there's a shift in conversations based on where you're at. True. That was different. I mean, I lived in Texas, owned a dealership in southern Oklahoma about thirty minutes away. And the approach was different because of the state-specific thing. So that's another thing that, you know, I put on there. It's important to remember that some of what we're going to talk about here will be specific to your state. Uh-huh. So I think the first piece, Michelle, is like we covered this and I want to find the podcast that we did before on this subject so people can go back and we expanded on this idea. We asked in a Facebook post many months ago, do you view the car that you finance to a customer in a buy here, pay here environment? Do you view that as your car or their car? And it was split. It was. Yeah. Which is interesting because there are some ideologies that can't exist with opposing ideology. Yeah. Unless there's an ideology with conversation. Yeah, and I would say that it only occurs to me just now as you say that, where you say ideology, I often use the word philosophy. And I say, you can't really write policies and procedures unless you have to kind of shape those based on your philosophy in business here. And so I think that whole thing is really something to look at. And how does that affect your philosophy and your approach to your customers in collections? Because that's mostly what we're talking about here is, Our main topic is around excess miles. We see it on Facebook and other social media threads out there that dealers are saying, hey, what do you guys do about this situation when a customer comes in for service and they've just burned up a lot of miles? And so I sit there and listen to how they react to the thing. It's fascinating sometimes to see just the gambit of just so many different things. I know I'm not alone I know there are other coaches and experts out there that are are you know watching that stuff and thinking man I can't get in on every conversation because and I saw a shout out to brett buick again I think brett in one of his responses somebody the other day said look there's a lot to learn here there's a lot to know before you can really speak to this and so this is another one where there's some things to kind of figure out but I think your your attitude around does the car belong to you or does it belong to the customer? So like before you you really decide what your I mean, because this is Steve Levine was like, is it written? I mean, do you have a written policy around this? So because that is an important thing to have a written policy around, you know, what you do in the case of excessive miles. And I think those contracts are being modified now. There are clauses being added to contracts in recent years because of the rise of ride sharing, whether it's an Uber or an Instacart driving kind of thing. People are putting a lot of miles on these cars that they finance through dealers. And of course, they're trying to learn that in... the qualifying underwriting process so they can have a chance to address it on the front end. And I can just say as my own experience as a dealer, we used to sometimes have people who were buying something that would be commercial vehicle driving a lot of miles. And I'd say, I'm okay with trying to help, But just understand, I'm going to want a shorter term note. Your payments are going to need to be higher. Why? Because of the depreciation factor, right? And so I'm happy to help. But the point I was trying to make with, you know, as you as a dealer, as you develop your policy around this, it is important that you reach out to your state. um, association because there may be laws around this that you have to abide by because, you know, you can put something in your contract and that's fine and dandy. But if the state has a different rule, it supersedes yours. Right. Yeah, I just think it's important to, and obviously we don't want to write a rule that's in conflict with state. This is where software is supposed to help us a lot. They work with the law firms and make sure our contracts are legal, right? We certainly want to be with a good software that helps us do that. Yeah, and you know, one of the things that we were talking about, about like, all right, that is also something to be written, to keep in mind as you're writing your, this is the way we're going to do this. Mm-hmm. is do we want to tie the hands of our customers from the ability to make extra money? Yeah, but before we get into that, can we just kind of cover the actual piece about, from a pure legal standpoint, like if we just go to your contract. This is what a lot of attorneys are going to say, as you said, like go to your contract, see what your contract currently says. Because I think in most states and most contracts that I've seen for a retail installment contract, again, as a non-attorney, I would say that what I see most is that the dealer is the lien holder. Maybe their finance company is the lien holder, but the consumer is the registered owner of the vehicle. So technically legally, I think they probably own the car again as a non-attorney, but it just like, so I think we, sometimes if our policies behave as though that's not the case, then obviously we could find ourselves in some. Yeah. And I would, I mean, you know, I know with leases, uh, And so we're going to talk about the LHPH factor here too. And I can't think of any car contract I've signed for a purchase that there was a limit on miles. no probably you know like I said until this whole instacart leasing there is because at the end of your lease based on your miles there's like but let's specify that but you if you lease a car that's a twelve thousand mile contract when you say limit the miles it doesn't mean your car's going to stop running when you get to oh yeah you're more than welcome to use extra miles but then that changes the contract value or the value of what you have to pay it's an interesting thing from yeah as a non-attorney who's somebody who's been a business owner for a long time, thinks about these things as a business owner, like it's an interesting thing to think about. Like I can't limit, I could put more miles in a contract and ask the customer to whatever it was. I think, you know, if attorney helped me, but I think the thing is just really kind of this fundamental idea that, um, what am I going to do about it? Like if the customer is exceeding what was understood in the contract, then what are my remedies? Again, legal, right? So you got to go see what your contract actually says about what remedies. But I hear dealers talking about taking action. And sometimes it's just a conversation with the customer. But I think where it gets dangerous is we start, and what troubles me when I see the threads is that look it's pretty cut and dried if it's as is it's as is now it's easy for me to have a conversation because customers often come into me for help as the dealer to help with financing of any repairs right so it's easy for me to stop and have a conversation around depreciation and whatever else but if it's a warranty it's a warranty so in the example you and I talked about this morning is if I offer a customer a twelve month twelve thousand mile warranty and they come in for service at six months and they've almost used the entire amount they're ten eleven thousand miles then What am I going to do? Well, if it's a warranty claim, it's got to be paid by the warranty there within the boundaries of the warranty. But you would be having a conversation. And I'm not, I'm going to just happily proceed with the repairs. It's under warranty. There's really nothing to talk about, but as they pick up the car, you know, again, so this is the interesting thing about our business that most businesses don't have. This is a question where customers picking up the car out of service, you know, and granted a lot of our dealerships that we work with, they don't have a separate sales department, collection department, service department. Like they're not different buildings. If you want to think about that. A lot of them have everything kind of, yeah, kind of, but if you can start to see how these things bleed over to one another and why we want to have comprehensive approach first, like what's our philosophy. Cause it's going to affect all of these policies that we write and how we handle, you know, customer relations. And so when I think about this one, it's like, I probably just want to have a, if I'm a service advisor, I want to be able to have a conversation with a customer that says, look, you guys are about to be out of warranty and, you know, you're, you guys are using a lot of miles. Typically, you know, it's twelve thousand, you know, twelve months because most customers use about a thousand. You're using at a higher pace, which it's your car. You know, if that's my approach, it's your car. Just be aware that a couple of things. You're going to be out of warranty sooner. So do we need to talk about helping you guys with a service contract? And also, is there any other solution? Like, do you expect to continue to use miles at this pace? I mean, if so, we can talk about a couple of things. But I think if I'm if I'm the dealer principal looking at that situation I would also you know and if I were in that place as a dealer I'd be saying you know here's going to be the problem if you guys continue to use the If you don't do a service contract, you're going to continue to use the car at that pace, then you understand the car is going to depreciate more. Well, and the more miles you put on something, the more you use something that unless it's, yeah, we run the higher risk of things will start to degrade. I mean, it's like using a pencil. The more you use the pencil, the shorter the pencil's life. Right. And so there's the value and then there's the failure element. Like, right, we run the risk of more repairs. So this is an easy thing for me to start to talk to the customer about a service contract. I just did a quick message to Taylor Bird and verified. You know, most dealers can add if they got a reinsurance program, they can sell the customer an extended service contract. After the initial sell. Really kind of at any point, probably along the deal. But it's like, you know, obviously now it's pricing. Now, how does the customer pay for it? Taylor says it's probably going to be a side note at that point, which, you know, if it needs to be a side note, it needs to be a side note. I've got to. Because the car, even though the car belongs to you, let's say in this example, Michelle, like you're the owner of the car, it's still my collateral. So I still need to protect my interest too. So I have to say to the customer, look, you're going to be using these miles pretty quickly. What's going to happen if you have mechanical problems? what's going to happen if you have an accident and the car's worth a lot less than balance out. So, you know, this is another case for gap, but sometimes we don't know this stuff. Like maybe the customer passed on gap at the beginning, but now here we are and we know the customer's using roughly two, Twice as many miles as we anticipated. And so we just have to have a conversation because I think I can't change the terms of the contract on the customer. That's the part that scares me the most. And the stuff that I see in the language is like people sound like they're taking some enforcement action. I think you can't change the terms of the contract. I mean, I'm no attorney, but you can't change the terms, you know. And it's interesting to listen to some dealers where they're coming from. Well, it's my collateral. Then that goes, is it your car or is it their car? And how you do that. So we were talking about bring it in for service. Yeah. And your service manager sees they've used ten thousand and they have twelve and it's only six months in. What do you do if you don't have service in-house but they're going to an outside person to have some kind of service done? I think this is part of the challenge. You just want to be able to have a conversation with your customer, right? Because everything that I just said, I don't care if it's FaceTime or Zoom meeting or however I communicate with the customer. I want to be able to have a conversation with the customer. Well, what I'm saying is, is it part of, we will take care of the bill because it's part of their warranty. But that part of what is remitted from the mechanic shop is the mileage or something along that, that, that, so that you know where they're, you know, you know, these things. And there are certain things that you're like, if, if you get one of these cars, part of the paperwork is just, we need to know this, we need to know this, we need to know this. I think that's fine. I think that's a reasonable request to say we won't authorize any. And I don't know. Again, you got to go to your warranty language like this stuff is typically specified in the contract. Like so. But I think it's reasonable in a warranty claim to ask whether the miles of the car or stipulate we won't pay the claim unless we know the miles on the car. So we can go to the language of your warranty. But I think the main thing here is that I'm I'm trying to. I got to honor my warranty. Got to honor my service contract. Right. I'm going to, if I'm a white hat dealer, I'm honoring the stuff I'm doing, what I said I was going to do. Right. And so now it's really a question of the thing that scares me when I see these is it just dealers are kind of choosing to take some action. So that's the question is the warranty thing comes back in and it's in warranty and we're doing it. It's like, what, what other action are we thinking that we're going to take to against the customer. Now, we're always in a place where we can enforce the contract more strictly. We could make the decision to do that, but be careful there too, because our attorneys will tell us, I know from past experience that when we just, again, change the terms of the contract, we used to allow the customer to pay fourteen. You look at their record and we let them pay eighteen days once. And now because we know they're using the miles and they're in Instacart or something, now we suddenly decide, well, let's shorten that leash. And if they get seven days past two, we'll yank it to protect ourselves. Well, you think you're protecting yourself, but in reality, you change the practices and you really stepped into something. So again, I realize we're skirting against some stuff that's very much legal matters and we're going to have attorneys coming around. And I will. Yes. And I, again, I just from what conversations we've had with Steve and the folks at Hudson Cook have a policy around the things. And so that you, you know, you know, and that if that policy needs to be written into the contract, then that's the next thing. And that's probably something you go talk to an attorney, you know, that, that, that there are certain things that if you have excessive miles or whatever, but if your policy is that they're still considered current after five days, that should be written. And that there is a policy written that under these circumstances, that this is what happens and that the customer is fully aware that that's what happens. yeah it's just it's just such an interesting thing and I think the the piece that you touched on and kind of my years ago in oklahoma versus texas the approach was different and I think it it used to help and I think you you have to be trained You have to be, and it helps to have relationship equity when you sit down with a customer and say, Hey, especially in my case, it was a little easier because it was as is. And so anything that happened like that, they were looking to help for help financially in terms of a side note or whatever. And sometimes we would trade cars, but I would say, I need to be able to sit with a customer and say, here's going to be the problem. I'm happy to try to help you guys with these repairs. And but before we do that, we need to have a conversation around the fact that you're you're using a lot of miles on the car, which means. The car is going to depreciate more quickly. And I want you to think about what's going to happen. I could use the example of an accident. If there's an accident and you owe a lot more on the car than what it's worth because the insurance is going to pay some amount. You've got your own insurance, but the insurance is going to pay some amount. You're going to be left with some unpaid amount. So assuming there's no gap, the G word for me just is about garnishment. And so I would sometimes, not every state does it again. We're not attorneys and, and it's, it's a great tool if it's, if it's something that is offered in your state, but it is not in every state. Right. And even if you had it in your state, I'm not suggesting that you garnish. Now, in my case, it was easier because as an, as a situation, we were able to say at the beginning of contract, just be aware before you sign this contract, we do enforce our contracts around here. And you kind of could just leave it at that. We do enforce contracts. And so what does that mean? Well, you could end up with a garnishment. You know, if you don't follow through on the terms of this contract, you could end up facing garnishment. And so it's just so I want to bring it up in a way that's not a threat. I'm not I'm not I don't want to end up there anymore than the customer does. So that's not why I bring it up. But I think in this context, it's an appropriate time for me to be able to say to the customer and look, if you're as is or you warranty or not warranty, there's still going to be things that, you know, you've got some balance unpaid and maybe there's gap, maybe there's not. It's like the idea here is that anytime I bring up the G word, it's in the context of, you know, running into contract. I'm happy to try to help you. This is your car and you can obviously use it as a base. You wish to just understand that if you, uh, drive a lot of miles and the car becomes worth less and there's something that happens or you stop paying for it, that that just means that the difference between what you owe and what the car's worth is going to still be your financial responsibility. And you can end up being garnished on that amount. So just understand, you know, when you use the car, because I had the approach, it's your car. Like I want the customer to be responsible for their repairs and their car and right at your car. And so I'm, I'm helping with the financing, but it's your responsibility. Well, and you know, there's just so many, there's, there's a lot of assuming that's being done if there's high miles, if there's been a lot of miles, but there's a lot of situations that that could be the case. Like they've got a new job, but their job is a two hour drive every day, but their income is, you know, whatever. I mean that we were just talking this morning about, Um, having lived around, uh, with family and health problems, it's like I drive to X every weekend to take care of X and it's like a five hour drive there and a five hour drive back. And that's a lot of miles, but you know, it's, it's, uh, it's, yeah. you know there's a lot of reasons why and I and I what I assume what I see the assumption is and it's probably there are more people that are doing that because uh our customers a lot of times are looking for other side gigs to be able to make a little extra money because they they aren't making a lot of money what you know where they're working anyway or yeah so but there's a lot of reasons why and so do we treat it different based on their reason or do we just like wrap everything in People have reasons why they will use their car more. And if it's, if it's around, you know, especially if it's around finding a way to getting a side gig, because my job doesn't pay enough for me to handle the medical bills and the thing and the stuff and whatever, then it's like, yeah. Do you want to say, I'm sorry, you can't do a side gig. Yeah. And I do recognize that there are some that that is what they do. That is their career is they take that and they run. We do Instacart. We do Uber. We do Uber Eats. Yeah. And most dealers are asking at the point of application now, is this car going to be used in that manner? Right. And if you discover that that's the case. then, and obviously being able to sweep income and be able to see that, you know, that's where your income is coming from. I mean, sweep bank accounts actually, right? So, so that helps. But I guess my point is to kind of exaggerate the thing is like, if I finance a car to you and you tell me after, because it's one thing if you had an Instacart, deal when you bought the car, right? That's one thing. But I'm really talking about what if something happens after you buy the car? And to your example, let's say your father develops kidney disease and now you need to drive him to dialysis. You live in a very small town. The closest dialysis is forty five miles away and you're doing it once a week or whatever you you're starting to use more miles than was planned. That's one example. What if the customer's example was, well, I like collecting wildflowers and they don't grow here, so I have to go over to two states away to collect wildflowers. And I do that weekly. I'm exaggerating. Any number of reasons, but yeah. I'm giving a silly example to be able to illustrate that. Is it their car or your car? It's your car. You can drive it that way. I'm not going to limit. Otherwise, what am I going to do? Go ride with them and say, well, you can go to this grocery store and not that grocery store. I'm being facetious. And that's one of the things that I've seen. part of this conversation too around is it my car or their car it's like we're tracking them on GPS and we get an alert every time they go out a hundred miles away from their home and they're driving away from their home all the time it's like So, you know, it's like maybe they got a new job that is a hundred miles away. Or maybe they got a cute girlfriend who's in the two counties over. Whose car is it? Life is life. And if I want to drive my car and if I wanted to appreciate it. Now, I understand this is where you start to step out of prime financing into subprime. If I want to drive it that way and I'm going to depreciate it, then this is why, you know, side note, this is why I wish the feds would work with us eventually or that this probably has to stay at the state level. I wish every state had at least the capacity to garnish because I think it would allow us to enforce contracts differently and Right. And to be able to hold the customer accountable to those decisions. You can make that decision. You can go. I understand you like this new boyfriend, girlfriend. You can do that. It's just important that you understand the contract is still the contract. So if you depreciate the car quickly. The value is going to be here. The price of the contract balance is going to be here. And so you're going to be financial responsible for that difference. This is where dealers get uncomfortable because it's their collateral and they know the customer will have difficulty paying that gap. We didn't talk before about if you get in an accident and you have X amount of miles on the car, the insurance is not going to pay enough to pay the rest of your contract off. It's going to affect insurance stuff. It's all about the value, but I think it's a line that we walk, and I think this is why I thought it was an appropriate conversation for a White Hat Wednesday because it's really... It's as much a philosophical matter as it is a legal one. Like I think that, and this is why we wanted to introduce the philosophical element and where they kind of, you know, intertwine here. And I think what we don't want to be doing, and this is as a non-attorney, I remember sitting in a course years ago, Bill Maypother, may he rest in peace. Many of the folks who listen to this podcast will remember him. He was a kind of a bankruptcy specialist as an attorney out of Kentucky, if I recall. And he, I remember being in one of his sessions where he said, don't put your customers in attorney's offices. So this is as an attorney, don't put your customer in a place where they feel wronged and that they're going to end up sitting in some attorney's office because they feel wronged. Whether they legally in the end, it turns out to be that they were wrong or not. You don't want your customers feeling like they've been wrong and going to find an attorney. So I know there are people hear that and say, oh, our customers can't afford attorneys. There's not anything to worry about. That's not a white hat way to think. Yeah. That's, that's predatory. That's abusive. And so this is where we just got to think in terms of what, you know, what, so I, it's okay. I can wrong my attorney or wrong my customers because they can't afford attorneys. Really? Honestly, to say that that's, that is not a common practice with a lot of the dealers that we work with. So we get it. But the, the, the white hat crooks of this is, is, You know, first off, before you create policies within your dealership is that put them through the filter of this is how I want to be known in my community. So that's the first thing. And it's, you know, that's great. And then write those policies through that filter. And that you understand that having a policy is a very straight line thing, but it's also a white hat way thing because it allows you to still be the good guy and hold people accountable or good gal. I have no problem with someone calling me the good guy. Exactly. um but holding them accountable and offering them options because you know that conversation with someone who has the ten thousand or whatever miles and stuff is that you realize it's now understand we're here you know to help um if if something happens but it will like the in the entire amount will then be on your shoulders only right And and just like we're here to help because we know that things happen and cars break down like you use the pencil enough. Yeah, it's it's going to get to the end or it's going to break. And, you know, so it's like we're here to help you with that. But we can't help you unless you help yourself a little bit. And that is like clear communication. Sure. Understand that these are, you know, you understand that this is a, a contract and those contracts are binding and, and all of that kind of stuff. But it's the white hat to me, the white hat element is one is you have good policies that filter you through, you know, how you want to be known in your community and that, that people can trust. Right. that you are going to adhere to and also adhere to. We're here to help. Yeah. Um, so, you know, let's have a conversation and see how we may be able to help. Yeah. And I think just to kind of wrap it up, like, I think it's important to people understand when we talk about white hat way, bringing compassion and empathy and, and, you know, cooperation to these conversations, um, does not mean that we're not holding the customer accountable to what is their responsibility. There's nothing about White Hat Way that makes all of the responsibility to dealers and gives the customer responsibility every out oh yeah there's nothing about why that way that's meant to do that it's meant to create more trust between buyers and sellers in this case by your payer dealers and their consumers and so if we one of the first ways we can ask our customers to do what they agreed to is for us to do our part And always, and we show up and we do that and we're prepared to do our part. It's just, it's important that you understand what is your responsibility here. And that's why I think the backdrop of a garnishment is like, do I expect to garnish my threatening garnishment? No, I'm just simply saying, if you don't follow through on this contract, it's your signature on this contract and you agree to make these payments. And you didn't say you would make these payments only if the car is running. You didn't say you would make these payments, you know, only if it's under warranty. Or if the gas tank is full. That was what I read just recently. I was like, whoa. Have we ever talked about how to decompress a charged conversation with a customer? Um, it's a tough one to, to, we should bring an expert probably and do that because I think, I mean, I had a little bit of, you know, kind of conflict resolution training, but I, I can tell you one of the key things that I learned if I'm having a, it's so much better to have it in person. This is part of why. Right? I mean, it's just the whole thing about body language is so significant. So I'll find an expert on that. And just so you guys know, one of the tracks that we're going with some of the future conversations, whether it be on this show, other podcasts that we're doing, we're going to experts outside the industry. And there's dual reasons for that because it makes... our conversation more applicable to all businesses, which is, you know, white hat way specifically is something it's, it's just been so interesting to us sometimes when we have white hat topics and we're putting them on LinkedIn, we get comments from all over the world because people are interested in the topic. And so, you know, we're going to be adding more of those kinds of conversations where we're, Um, the, the decompressing kind of thing. I'll, I, I'm sure that somewhere within both of our circles, we'll find someone. And that is, uh, I also want to announce before we fully wrap up, we have, um, a, uh, marketing. And CMO, who does fractional marketing, trains people to be a CMO and has had his own podcast. He's written books on the subject and all of that. And it's around being a CMO, but a lot of dealers out there are their own CMO. So a CMO is a chief marketing officer. And marketing has a lot of parts. It's a broad definition. It's a very, very broad definition. Which we will be clarifying in case it comes. Absolutely. And we've got him scheduled for the end of the month to come. And we had a really nice conversation with him about a lot of the things that he is seeing in marketing in general. And what is... What is what is how just business consumer B to C is shifting in how they communicate and how and how they they present information and how they. take a lead through the process of purchase again what's the white hat angle on that the white hat okay I know jim when we were done he's like duh because there's there's it's that same thing of um you know this this is a white hat way topic and it's on this and so it's about putting that putting your decisions through a filter of okay And also one of the things that he that we've talked about is that he understands that people want connection. And that is a very white hat way. Principle is how do you connect with your customer? And so it's it's like people want to feel some kind of connection with the with the process and the you know, that there's there's it's I'm not just someone here to buy a widget and I get up to the thing and go, here's my widget, here's your money. It's like they want to have a relationship through this process. And I can say that from a white hat marketing perspective, if you will, one of the things I'll enjoy covering with Casey when he appears as a guest is that It's one thing to like a dealer can get in this mindset of I got to sell cars this month. I got to sell cars this week. Right. And so it's one thing to sell a car today. It's another thing to connect with a customer who's going to be that customer is going to be with you a long time. They like doing business with me that they came to me through an approach, a philosophy, a message that is going to make them a long term customer. They're going to be that customer who refers friends and families. Right. So. So I think it's about long-term thinking and our marketing messaging, right? Absolutely. And, you know, just a little bit of a teaser. He is fully aware of everything that is happening with AI. Yeah, the tech side of this. And he's like where it used to be with a new computer. It was about eighteen months in between a new upgrade. he says this is happening on a one to three month um turn so every so every three months things are improving and there's a whole new batch of stuff that's coming out so he's he's very very in touch with a lot of those kind of things and some of the things that he was talking about with us I was like holy hannah this would be so incredibly helpful for dealers you sound like such a school teacher when you say holy hand Should I say hell? Hell, hell, hell. Okay. All right. Anything else? I think that's it. Okay. Hey, everybody. Wednesday. Thank you so much for joining us. We didn't have any charts or graphs or whatever, but you can find us on YouTube and any of your syndicated podcast stations. And, you know, like and subscribe. We would love to be a part of your journey as a dealer. And so we again, we really appreciate you listening. And if you've got a topic that you'd like to hear about, you can reach out and, you know, we would be happy to to. to look at and then find an expert to just like this thing that we were just talking about is find an expert about decompressing situation. So, Hey, have a great rest of your day. We will see you on Friday where we have. Kristen Acosta. Kristen Acosta that will be talking about some of her sales and what they've been charting. The history of low down payments. The history of low down payments. The spoiler alert is she's collecting better than you would believe with low down payments. All right, everybody. Have a great day. We'll see you all later.
