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. Oh, good morning, everyone. Happy Friday. Welcome to Utah. We woke up to snow again. I thought a week or so ago we probably had the last snow and here came one more dusting. So pretty. So, so pretty. The air is just so clear and our bedroom has like a massive sliding door that... uh, I kind of like keep the blinds open. No one can see. So I'm, I'm like, I'm like bebopping in the bathroom and I can look out there and I'm just like, Oh my gosh, it's so. And before she said anything to me, I looked out and said, it looks like a painting. It does. Yeah. Yeah. It was funny. Cause when we did our, um, our white house certification course that there were people that from all over the country that flew in and we had a couple of our participants stay at the house and then we took them for a drive up through the mountains and they were just like, Oh, so pretty this the whole time. So it's, we try not to take it. We try not to take it for granted. So, yeah, I was just, uh, we were joking around a little bit earlier this morning that, um, uh, we both had like, Jim had a song stuck in his head and he's just humming it along. And before I knew it was stuck in my head and then I changed mine. Yeah. Yeah. And he was like, where did this song come from? Um, yeah. So it's just, it's human thing that you start singing the song and that that was kind of our, our MO this morning. It's just weird. I have to, a song will stick with me until I replace it with something else. Right. Right. And so you hope that it's a quality song, something that you can be like, I feel really good about this song. It makes me feel happier. Sometimes it is. We got anything before we, um, No, I think not. We'll look forward. We don't have our topics lined up for next week, but we'll announce those in plenty of time. So folks have a chance to tune in. If you have any ideas, you can always reach out. If there's something, there's something that you would like to, to, to chat about. Absolutely. So, all right, we are going to bring our special guest in and we've, Oh, Steve, I've got you in the, let me see if I can. You just drag it. There you go. There you go. Okay. We wanted you in the middle. Welcome. Welcome. Those of you who are new to Steve, Steve Levine is one of the attorneys in the Buy Here, Pay Here space that people should be paying attention to because we were talking before we got on that Steve is always giving and like educating and he's got webinars and newsletters and all of these kind of things that just really, really with the intent of It's making the industry better. And so, welcome. Thanks for having me. You're so welcome. Saw the email come out, Steve. Obviously, we jumped on that right away and said, hey, you got a book out. Let's bring you on the podcast and talk about your new book. So, we definitely want to hear about that. In fact, let's just start with that, Steve. Talk to me about the motivation for the book. Well, it's called Counterpunch. Right. And it's compliance strategies for car dealers. Go ahead. I've got the link. We're going to share it in the comments now. Okay. Great. So, yeah, my first book came out a couple of years ago, Winning the Fight. And that was all about my journey, how I started representing car dealers and how I kind of changed from doing trial work to I want to stop my clients from getting sued, coming up with methodologies, strategies for all that. And I never intended to write a second book. And then like six months after that one was done, I started to realize I left a lot out there because I really want to focus more on why I see dealers struggle so much with compliance, with the steps they need to take to protect their business. And I want to bring that to the forefront. So that's what the second book is all about. It's all about the obstacles that I think prevent dealers from having success with this and then how to overcome that. And, you know, it drives me crazy. I frequently have conversations with folks. I saw you at a conference three years ago. I spoke to my group. I meant to call you and I didn't. And now I've got this AG problem. Now I've got this lawsuit. You know, how do we fix it? And I'd much rather have the opportunity to fix it ahead of time. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Proactivity. When it comes to compliance, we definitely want to see dealers think about being proactive in that regard. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be expensive and it doesn't have to be wildly time consuming. You just need a good strategy and put a plan in place and just execute on it. Yeah. And, you know, we understand compliance is not a sexy topic. You know, Jim's like, what? OK, was it the fact that I said it's not a sexy topic or use the word? I don't know. But it's just not. It's not something that, you know, it's it's a difficult thing to keep people engaged in the conversation because it's just. you know, it's there, there's, there's, yeah. Um, but I love that, that, you know, you make it fun. I, it just, well, especially like, you know, you're just looking at the, at the cover. It's not dry. The cover's not dry. The cover's fun. Um, And, you know, it just, it's trying to make it more engaging. You speak at a lot of different things. You're doing webinars frequently. And so it's like, and I know this is totally off the subject, but I mean, are you, what are things that you have done to just try to really make it something that's more approachable? So the thing I'm really excited about right now is started this year, we started what's called the Compliance Accountability Group. And that's like a giant twenty group dedicated to compliance. And you know, the obstacle for doing something like this has always been, everybody always wanted to turn into a moneymaker and it's not a moneymaker. It is a movement. And I think ultimately we're going to have hundreds of dealers participating in this and very, very low cost to join, very low cost of time commitment. It's quarterly meetings. We're going to do updates in between the meetings. And we've created this survey that we've taken the results and we've put it into a compliance composite. It's the first time, to my knowledge, anybody's ever looked at this space and said, okay, let's try to put some definition around what folks are doing, what are they good at, what are they not good at when it comes to protecting the business. So everything from how often are you audited? How often do you get demand letters? How often are you sued? What do you have? What do you not have? So we're gathering all that information. We had our first meeting a couple of weeks ago and people approached me after and said that that was amazing. We've never had a benchmark. We've never been able to look at this subject that way. So I'm really excited about that because I think that as we gather that data, we're really going to be able to help fine tune and help folks overcome all these obstacles that they seem to run into. I love that. I there's, yeah, there's so much about that, that I really love. I love that you're doing something that's like virtual too, because it's just, it's easier for people to tap in and, and connect on those kinds of things. And, and I, there is so much great. There's it. We, we have the V eight groups that is totally virtual. And it's just like the conversations when you're meeting in a, in a, in a rhythm and, And meeting in a place where they're not distracted by, Hey, the family's out at the pool or, Hey, I've got a tee time in, you know, in a half an hour, can we wrap this up? That it's just like, you've got them, you've got them right there and you can just have some really, really great conversations. So kudos. That's that's amazing. And I think if my eighty something year old mother were here, she often asked me, how do you do so much for free? I don't understand why you do so much for free. Right. But your heart's in the right place. You're just trying to help a lot of folks, right? Yeah, I really think this one, this one is very meaningful to me because I have seen folks just struggle for decades. And I think this is going to be the solution. And, you know, for instance, our next meeting, Uh, I'm going to do some of the talking, but, but there's a couple of areas that I'm going to have other folks present. You know, you're, you're this size. You're really good at this. Tell folks how you became good at this. Uh, and in fact, I got a call from somebody just the other day saying, man, this is fantastic. I didn't realize, you know, he thought he was off on an island. He didn't realize how many other folks, his size, his type of business are having the same situations. And now he's able to, you know, plug into this network and ask questions. Yeah. I love it. And, and, you know, the more you're out there and you're seen, and so, you know, you, it's, we all know in this space that it's, it's sometimes hard to cut through the noise and, you know, and we, we, I, we've had this conversation. You've got the golden five hundred, which are the people that come to the conferences and they're tapped into education. And then you've got the other, nineteen thousand five hundred that are out there that, you know, it's like we're trying to reach those so that we can actually this movement thing. I really, really appreciate that. And this is my attempt to reach those folks. Cost isn't a barrier. Time isn't a barrier. I'm not asking you to make huge commitments. I'm asking you to think about your business kind of from a new perspective. And let me help you. Yeah, absolutely. I love it. We should probably talk about the book. Yeah. Talk to me about what are some of the big challenges that dealers deal with that you felt necessary to speak to with the book? So I looked at, you know, I've worked with so many dealers over the years and I looked at why does so many struggle? Why does so many just keep kicking the can down the road? And the big one I came up with was what I call in this book, the inner opponent. And what I mean by that is dealers could be their own worst enemy when it comes to compliance, because they're the greatest, greatest entrepreneurs in the world. And they are so driven by KPIs and obtaining cars and selling cars and moving that metal. And you know, that's what gets the juices flowing. That's what they're excited about every day. And then when you look at the legal compliance obligations, they put on this industry. It's like, holy smokes, we're not dealing with hazardous chemicals. We're not dealing with environmental concerns. Yet they are beholden to so many laws, so many rules, so many hoops they have to jump through. And that's where a lot of folks struggle. And I will have the same conversations with folks. I'm not kidding. For a decade, I know I need to get with you. I know I could do better. And then it's always when something bad happens, then it's, you know. And if you put a little effort into it upfront, uh, the bad things won't happen. So, so I really, I look at that. I look at another big one. I think that folks were into, and this has been something that I've encountered my entire career from the time I first started working with dealers, going to court, defending dealers, that horrible negative perception, the stereotype that dealers have to overcome. Yes. And. And there are things you could do. And that's part of the methodology. But I believe in there's things that you can do to overcome that. But you actually have to do them. You can't talk about it. You can't hope that, you know, I'm going to buy this online. I'm going to put it on my shelf and it's going to be a magic shroud. It doesn't work that way. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I tell folks all the time that this doesn't have to be. cumbersome doesn't have to be painful, but it has to be thoughtful and it has to be deliberate. And I work with folks all the time. I can turn you into a really good compliance person, help you identify risk, help you protect your business. It's going to take about a year and you don't have to know everything I know. You just have to know kind of how to identify where there's gaps and holes. Well, and the point is, first off, be aware that there are rules. So it's not just about buying the book, but it's like, okay, what are the rules? What are the things that I should be paying attention to? And again, not sexy, but the thing that we talked about on Wednesday, just really it kind of flows into that. know that when you talk about the perception there's a reason why there's that perception there's a really good reason why we have this this you know uh how why we're looked at that way and and so jim had actually we were I think one of the questions he's going to talk about, which I don't know if it's a good segue or whatever, but you know, what, when you look at that list that we gave that we, we touted off you know, we did the great, great. Thank you. The ten things. One of the things that it talked about was don't go to a buy here, pay here unless you have no other options. Yeah. And then, and then like the five reasons. So what are your thoughts around those five reasons? I found that really interesting. Uh, cause from my perspective, I work with a lot of independence. I work with a lot of buyer payer. I also work with some franchise. I don't draw a lot of distinction between independence and buy here, pay here on that front end of the business. I I've seen plenty of independence engage in those activities that, that, that, that AI was talking about and, and, you know, labeled buy here, pay here. Uh, The law books are filled with plenty of those cases. It's just that stigma, that stereotype that we're under. And one of my favorite classes to teach is I'm talking about the methodology. I'm talking about, I call it telling your story. For years, lawyers talked about, oh, you have to have a compliance management system. Like, God, that's boring as hell. Let's call it something different. Let's call it telling your story. So I get up to this presentation, and I approach it as if I'm a plaintiff's lawyer, and I do the opening arguments from a case as a plaintiff's lawyer. And it's actually based on cases I actually worked on and tried. And then I stop and I tell the audience, okay, that's the plaintiff's side of things. You've been demonized. How do you come back from that? What is your lawyer going to say on your behalf? And it's a true story. And I use the example. Is your lawyer going to talk about the Little League team that they sponsored? Because back when I first started doing this, that was about all they had. Oh, I'm a good member of the community. I sponsor the Little League team. Well, that ain't going to get you a cup of coffee in front of a judge or jury. So then I talk about, okay, these are the things you want your lawyer to be able to say. And then I do the opening statement from the dealer perspective. And, you know, let's look about all the training, look at the way we educate our employees. Let's look at all the guardrails we have in place and the tremendous effort that we put in place to do business the right way and be transparent. And, you know, I love your White Hat Way concept because it's almost like we're cousins. We're talking the same language. Yeah, that's what I was just thinking. There's a lot of dovetail there. Yeah, for sure. It's fantastic. I think a couple of things, Steve, as you talk about that. First of all, I love the approach about being the plaintiff conversation. Let them hear it. Let them think about what this is going to feel like even in that situation. And the other thing I talked about again recently, Michelle, is when we recently had a V eight session of kind of a bonus session around absenteeism. And as I talked to dealers about how do we build our business to make it sustainable and make it scale and all the things dealers work so hard every day and every week to build this business. And I started using the analogy of an extension ladder. You know how extension ladder, you slide it up and it's got the little hooks that slide down and keep you from losing ground and sliding backwards. Right. And so I think compliance to me is one of those big threats to our business that if we kick that can down the road, it's like we worked so hard to build this. And it's like, I wouldn't want to see dealers lose ground because of some expensive mistake. And so this is the part that I say, can we protect ourselves from every mistake? But no, when the mistake is really that and not a pattern, Right. Then we obviously through the work that you do through compliance, if we can establish that we've got good practices in place and you could still make a mistake. But I think in this case, it just kind of feels to me like dealers work so hard, you know, to build their business. And I just hate to see them remain vulnerable to some of these things. And to just pleading ignorance is just not going to get us there. Right. It's just we don't get to. And I understand procrastination. We see a lot of that. I mean, especially in this day and age where it's like information is so readily accessible. It's like we don't live in an age before the internet. You know, we don't live in an age where it's just like you only hear about what's happening across the ocean a week later, you know, or a month later on some film that's showing at the movies that you're going to. It's real time information. You've got great information right at your fingertips. And so the idea that dealers aren't aware is just, it's like, okay, let's pull your head out of the sand and let's just first off be aware. But yeah. Well, I think there's awareness. I also think, you know, let's face it, there is a great propensity to kick it down the road. I've got a lot of folks that, you know, I work with regularly. I pretty much know March and April. I'm not going to get anything out of them. So when we develop our strategy, let's just plan. You're not going to be very engaged in March and April. I'm going to be engaged behind the scenes protecting you. But I know I'm not going to get your attention in those months. And if you know that, you can plan for it. But it always breaks my heart. I get these horrible phone calls. I've been sued and that they want ridiculous amounts of money and it's going to cost me this much in defense. And in the book, I really focus on understand plaintiff's lawyers, understand how you discourage plaintiff's lawyers and give folks some tools because most dealers out there are one lawsuit away from being put under or one regulator issue. And folks look at it, well, yeah, it's only a ten thousand dollar fine. But what they don't realize is Most of your capital providers, it's in your covenants that you have to tell them about that fine. You have to tell them about that examination. And once they start digging into that, you're in jeopardy. So it's really doing what you have to do proactively so that you're not faced with that horrible result and outcome. And that's really a thirty plus year career. I decided early. That's my passion. That's what I want to do. And you've created solutions to help dealers implement. Like if there's a dealer listening today and they say, you know what, they're right. I should definitely step in and be more proactive and start some measures. You've got ways to help people implement this in phases I'm hearing, right? Yeah, absolutely. And we do a weekly tip of the week. Everybody at every dealership should be on that tip of the week. We'll make you think. And there's no obligation. There's no commitment to anything else. It's just something we do. We do monthly webinars. I mean, every person that's in charge with protecting a dealership, I don't care whether it's your collections manager, sales manager, the owner, you know, whoever wears the compliance hat, get on those webinars, you know, no obligation. And then certainly those compliance accountability groups, you could learn a ton just being in that conversation. And that's all without having to, you know, really do any heavy lifting without incurring costs. But you gotta, you gotta decide. I want to do something. Yeah. You know, one of the things that when, when we really got moving with the things that we've been doing, we had a business coach that was just kind of like, all right, so here's, here's a really good playbook. Show them how they can do it themselves, you know, book all that. have an option where you can help guide them through the process of them doing it themselves. And then a process of, we'll do it for you. And, and, and I really love that, um, that this guide them in the way they can do it themselves. That's what these kinds of things are really about. It's like, cause we know there's a lot of dealers out there that it's just, it's given good information and they will follow through. Um, But the cool thing is, is that when you give people good information and then they realize they're not following through, it's like, oh, maybe I need some help. And it sounds like from this accountability thing, I love that you're listening to the needs of the dealers and that there are options for all of those. And I agree with you, Steve. It's got to really suck when... When it's a conversation that's like, I am so in trouble or, you know, it's like this really crappy stuff. And yeah, I've been watching and I'm aware that I should do the thing, but I haven't done the thing. So I just, I feel for you because you probably are, you're talking dealers off of a ledge and it's just like, okay. you know, let's, let's get you through this, but can we, can we make a promise with ourselves that we're going to fix all this stuff in the business as soon as this is done? Can we, can we like have a gentleman's handshake on this? You're going to do the thing and make sure that it's, it's compliant. What else? And that's a great point because unfortunately my experience is we deal with that one issue and then they put their head in the sand again and they don't want to take those steps to protect themselves, you know, going forward. I'll fix this one letter. I'll change that one practice. And it's like, man, it's more than that. I'll do as much as I can, but I can't do it for you. You've got to be able to make that commitment. And I tell folks, something I see a lot of dealers struggle with is they started the business, they did everything for a while, and when it comes to compliance, they still think they have to do everything. And I tell folks, very few exceptions to this rule. Do not do it yourself because something else is always going to be more important, whether it's the building or the employees or buying cars or the problem of the day. It's always going to trump compliance. So you've got to have somebody that you feel good about. Okay, your job is to protect the business. Your job is to fill that gap that I'm not filling because I'm so busy with other things. I've got to do that in my business. I can't do it all. Yeah, for sure. Well, it kind of it kind of makes me think, you know, when you talk about, Jim, we did the V eight plus meeting on absenteeism, which isn't about a dealer completely stepping away, but about like, let's say your best friends say, hey, we're going on this cruise and we're leaving in a week. Can you go? can you do that? Can you step away for a couple of weeks? And I lost where I was going to go, but that's okay. Oh, it's just having compliance solutions. Can you be away and feel like those things are still happening? Do we still have our safeguards and our measures in place? And I think the piece that I would come back to, Steve, I don't have the exact phrasing that we used. We referred to that podcast that we did on Wednesday where for folks who didn't see it, I would recommend you go find that because what we did is we asked AI, said if you were Given the financial illiteracy matter in the United States, how should or what should people know before they go shopping? What would be ten tips they should know? And of course, we didn't say specifically buy here, pay here. But what you could see in the thread, this is the machine with no emotion and no financial investment, right? The machine simply spits out, we see these problems. And then we followed up with, why did you call buy here, pay here predatory? And give us some examples. And it gave examples, again, as a machine. And I think what it illustrated to me was that this problem that we sometimes act like it's the CFPB should go away. We're over here doing it right as a buy here, pay here kind of collective. And I would say, no, we see a lot of predatory practices. Like across social media, you hear people speak up and say things that clearly suggest some level of kind of predatory behavior. I'm sure you're as much aghast as we are. It's like, oh, crap. Yeah. I jump in on those once in a while. I'm like, okay, wait. This is more complicated than that. Yeah. Most of them are. Go ahead. So let me throw something at you because as I was listening to your podcast on the AI, I kind of thought to myself, you know, boy, this sounds like conversations that I've had with regulators. And the list of practices that AI didn't like is very similar to what they don't like. But the problem that I deal with sometimes is I'm dealing with very emotional regulators that have this stereotype and have this negative perception. And And I always tell folks, if you want to overcome that, there's a couple of things you could do. Again, it's not very expensive, it's not time consuming, it's not painful, but you have to do that ahead of time. And if you do that, then in that first conversation, I could totally distinguish you from the stereotype and make you different. Like you'd be amazed, when I'm talking to a regulator, And I mentioned that somebody has a relationship with us. Well, we're an outside compliance company. We're experts in this field. And they're like, really? Well, yeah. They're not just going by the seat of their pants. They've engaged us. This is what we do. They have a training platform. And then I start laying it out. Totally changed the perception. Amen. Yeah, I love that. But it's like, when you talk about a movement, it is, as we start to, this is part of why we have White Hat Way, is like putting an identity on a way you choose to have your business practices. I mean, it's just like- With White Hat Way, we don't call out the people that we see. We just try to spotlight and showcase those dealers that we see. And for us, it starts with kind of customer relations. When we see people that are clearly demonstrating an interest in the success of the customer, it's hard to have that and have a predatory behavior at the same time. So we just try to spotlight that. This idea that this this dealer has demonstrated, you know, is demonstrating a desire to see the customer be successful and to support that customer and to not take advantage. So whatever that definition might be. Right. But it's kind of that it all kind of ties together. And I think is, you know, what we see in your book is another effort to try to give people tools, you know, give them give them a baseline of things that they can understand. First of all, frame the problem, help us understand what it is that we we are up against and then offer some solutions. And I know your book gives some very real solutions. And certainly we shared a couple of things, Steve, in the thread of the comments here. We shared the link to find the book on Amazon. very affordable it should be on your desk and find time to read that and then the uh the other part that we shared was a link to your free resources page at ignite where people can go and get signed up for the uh that newsletter because that tip of the week thing is is really excellent and I think I'd mentioned to you uh and I I probably said it on the air a couple times but our clients, when I read something and it's like, this is relevant to some things that we've been talking about is it gets sent out to everybody, you know, a link. And it's like, I would suggest you subscribe because then it's like, you get something weekly and it's like, here's the tip and acts, you know, you get extra, this is the webinar. If it's something that you need to, to, to be looking at, I, I really, I kudos for that too. So yeah, it's, it's great stuff. And that one, we take things that come in the door and we feel it's important, so we talk about it. Like this current week, we had a tip about this new thing that I've started seeing all over the place, and it's your Zoom meeting. Whatever platform you're using, you have this AI that's now taking notes and doing summaries. And we point out there could be dangers to that. that there could be some really sensitive information being discussed, and now there's a record of it that that could be discoverable in a lawsuit a year from now. Yeah. Next week's tip, I'm really excited. I had the unfortunate opportunity this week to deal with one of those big national class action firms, and I've been seeing this more and more. They're soliciting consumers, and they're grabbing onto TCD, TCPA type cases, canned spam, all these communications that people get that are unsolicited. And one of the things I'm pointing out is you may think you're protected because of what your website says, what your text platform has you say, but you really need to think about the words you're using because they really come back to bite you. And the class action firm that I had to deal with, when I gave them the whole story, they backed off pretty quickly. But There's a thousand folks they're not going to back off on. This was just one of many. So you have to make sure. A lot of times I think that dealers think they have this magic cloak of invincibility because, well, I use this vendor. I know that vendor. They know what they're doing. You can't assume this stuff because, man, those plaintiff's lawyers, they make a living off of poking holes and all that. Well, and you know, unfortunately we do, we talk about buy here, pay here being, um, something that is, that is, uh, uh, it's seen as a predatory industry. The legal system a lot of times is, is, so it's like, you got people, you got lawyers out there that are predatory, that are looking for cases like this and open to that. And that's one of the things I talk about in the book. I, I talk about those consumer advocates. I call them zealous. And a lot of times they're not looking for justice as we define it. They're looking for that higher purpose. And those folks can be very dangerous. And again, it's all about taking some steps to discourage them, distinguishing yourself from the run of the mill. Because yeah, those folks really scare me because at the end of the day, what they're trying to do is They want to send enough letters, scare enough people, get enough settlements, and it has nothing to do with justice. I mean, I helped somebody through one the other day. The lawyer was demanding ten thousand dollars for nothing and totally unjustified. And thankfully, they found me and I was able to educate the lawyer a little bit and they went away. It doesn't always happen. Boy, it's great when it does, because they realize huh, I'm going to really have to invest my time into this and my recovery is uncertain. So I'll just go to my pile on my desk. That's a whole lot easier than this one to move on. Yeah. That's kind of, that's what you want. Yeah, for sure. I think, um, We we like the idea of being proactive when it comes to compliance and any kind of a maintenance plan to get those things implemented and make yourself a little more resistant to these things and establish a pattern of behavior of, you know, taking the steps and we're trying to do what's right. And so those are all all good things. I also wanted to mention that Steve and Ignite are members of BHPH United and that conference is coming up. I've got the dates here. I show April twenty second through twenty fourth in Vegas. Right. That's right. And we're doing something really exciting this year. So, so every year Ignite puts on an annual compliance conference. Yeah. Totally separate. It's been in May, it's been in DFW and we decided this year to join those events together. So, so we're going to kick off Tuesday afternoon, April, with compliance unleashed four hours compliance content. And then Wednesday and Thursday, we kind of go back and forth, but there's, Business content, great content from BHPH United. And then there are compliance classes as well. And I'm really excited. I'm hoping this gives us exposure to a lot of folks that you'd never go to DFW for a compliance conference, but you're going to go to Vegas for the entire umbrella. And as part of that, you're going to get this really meaningful content. So it's part of your ticket. It's part of your... one price, two great conferences, low hotel rate. I mean, everyone loves it. Two for one. I'm feeling like Michelle, it would be nice if we, if we knew somebody could help us score some tickets for that. I mean, if it just, if it comes up, unfortunately we're not part of the, the team that does buy your pay United. So we're, we got invited to speak one year and, and so we haven't been invited back. I think Michelle said something. I think we said something. No, no. Here's the deal. And I'll, I'll, So this conference is very different. We don't have an exhibit hall. There's no infomercials. We really limit the number of sponsors. It's all about education. So, you know, yeah, I get a lot of angry comments from folks, you know, but we really want to come and really try to limit it to the dealer community so that there's none of that, oh, my God, I'm not going to step foot in that conference hall because I'm going to be assaulted by twenty people. And so, you know, you can't do a one, one, one for, for us, because I mean, we, we don't typically have a booth and we're just there to educate and, and, and all of that. So, I mean, I get it. I do. I get it. And it's, it's especially, you know, if you're, if you're brand new to it, it's like new blood. All of that. But we, so I, we're real proponents of, or real advocates, sorry, not proponents, advocates for education. So dealers out there, this is a, it's, it's specific to buy here, pay here only. That's the topic of the thing. And it is, it's, it's primarily dealers that are teaching and, and then, you know, those that are part of the, the, the association also will teach on topics that they are experts on. Um, and so maybe one of these days we'll get invited back to come into, because yeah, we'd, we'd love, we'd love to. So it's just, we'd love to be able to do that. We are though, just kind of a little, uh, we are, uh, we, Jim, uh, I'll be there in the audience just like, oh, Jim is actually going to be presenting at NIDA, which is coming up in the June has been asked to to present on on that. So so those of you that are conference people to will be there. Yeah. You won't miss this there. And so, yeah, it's, and this year I'm really, really excited, Steve, because normally NIADA is over my birthday and they shifted it this year. So it's not over my birthday. So it's like, really, we're going to go to the conference for my birthday. Yeah. really look vegas for your birthday isn't the end of the world either no it's not but it's usually like we're here to work and there's just we've got usually have a lot that's on our plate and it's just not all about fun so so I'm kind of excited about that did you I still celebrate them you get a gift should I stop So Steve, thanks for making time to join us. I wish you lots of success with your book. We'll continue to try to get the word out to folks that should have that on their desk. And it should be a really good reading material for anybody that's in the buy here, pay your space and independent retail dealers too. So by all means, find your way to that book. And again, Steve, thanks for making time. We look forward to seeing you on a future podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks to both of you. Thanks to everybody that that's listening. You know what, We're all of the same cloth. We all have the same mission. So I really appreciate the opportunity to be here. You're so welcome. Yeah. Anytime. All right. So I'm going to put you backstage. If you want to stick around for just a minute, then we can say a proper goodbye as soon as we have closed up the podcast. Thanks. Okay. Good conversation. Um, I, you know, it's, uh, not expensive, uh, you know, go and get it. It's, it's, uh, and, and it's all, it's, it's organized topics. It may be less expensive than a dozen eggs. It could be. It may be. Oh my gosh. Let's not even get started on that. A dozen eggs. Yeah. Yeah. um all right so do we have anything that we need to no I think you know big announcements we're good off full speed ahead just uh look for it all right everybody middle attack season you're probably super busy hopefully you're just having a killer week thus far I hope you have a great weekend spring is here if you can get outside hug a tree whatever put your put your feet in the grass get a little bit of earth um you know just nature and and the spring and all of that so excited for this time of the year Again, thanks again so much for joining us. We know you have a lot to do. And we will see you on Wednesday with another White Hat Wednesday topic. Have a great rest of your weekend, everybody. Thanks again.
