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. hey everybody good morning hey happy monday yeah welcome to the studio in ogden utah in snowy ogden utah it's freaking may 6th and there's like three inches of snow outside We don't have to go anywhere. It's pretty. It is. Well, let it go. I know. I know. I will. What helps doesn't help. What doesn't help at all is that I have one of my dear friends right now is in Mexico and she's sending pictures and she's like, Oh, this is so lovely. Yeah, I did. I did rub it in guys. You're mean. Well, wouldn't we be doing the same thing if we were there? You know you'd be doing the same thing. Come on. I would be. I would be. Does that make me mean or does that just make me funny? Yeah. I don't know. Whichever. Again, tried to fool around, mess around, whatever, with Facebook or the success group to get it to. And I'm still working on it, guys. It'll come. It will come. It will. It will happen. Yeah, with a team of how many people? It just requires me. And Jim's like, are you taking notes? It's like, I have them upstairs. I remember this part. So, yeah, we'll get there. What do we got coming up? We have Group 1 of V8 meets on Thursday night. That's coming up. It doesn't matter to most of our listeners, but to our V8 Plus, we set a date for the 28th for a V8 Plus event around CRMs. And let's see, what else? I mean, I don't know of a schedule. I mean, we don't have much on the travel schedule, right? Well, we do have the, yeah, I am, see, one of my friends that I was like feeling a little bit envious of, she's in Mexico on the other side of Mexico from where I have my annual girls trip coming up next week. It looks like you do those three times a year. Well, we do like a fly to somewhere thing once a year. And then we get together around our homes or things like that. So I'm like, yeah, Jim's going to be on his own for a week. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be a wild time. I mean, you don't know what will happen. I don't. I don't. But I mean, if what happens when I'm gone other times is any indicator, there will be a lot of easy, fun, tasty, not so nutritious food. But I mean, it's like, hey, you're off doing something you love. Leave me alone. It's like, you know, if I wake up and I say, you know what? I'm in the mood for donuts. Is there anybody here to talk me out of it? No. Nope. Nope. There's nobody here. And the nice thing is there's stuff like Grubhub and DoorDash and they'll bring it to your door. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we, yeah, we still do that even when we're together, but we're, we're pretty particular. You know, we talked about this. We do enjoy food. And, of course, we just had, I don't know if you saw it yesterday, our friend Marcy, Marcella in Houston, helped clear up the hole. We had another woman chimed in on Salvadorian thing. And then the Mexican holiday, which is really a non-holiday to most Mexicans. Why do we do this? Because it just gives us an excuse to drink margaritas, eat Mexican food. all of that kind of stuff. I got to say, it's like I told Marcia, I don't, I think I'm just going to start calling it margaritas and guacamole day because then you don't have to wait for something of historical significance. Right. Yeah. But you know, yeah, that, that's a whole nother story and a whole nother angst that we went down to our favorite, favorite grocery store to pick up guacamole. And, and, They were out. And I was like, this is wrong. It's just wrong. So we had to have our celebration without guacamole, but it was still good. Yeah, we'll catch up. But yeah, we do enjoy food. And yesterday we had a really fun layout with our Cinco de Mayo. Yeah, we did. Shall we get into our topic? I think that that would be good. Well, I was like, you know, NIADA, the conference, all that fun kind of stuff. We hope to see everybody at NIADA. You've seen the hashtag out there that we created, J-Y-S-A. Share that thing. What does J-Y-S-A stand for? Hashtag J-Y-S-A. Join your state association. You'll see that in our intro. Let's all just rally around that hashtag. Hashtag the heck out of that. Yeah. Yeah. And let's get dealers in these associations. They don't know what they don't know. And they don't. One of the things they don't know is where to find the good stuff. And that's at their state association. Enough about all that. Shall we move on? I, you just, I mean, I, I had more, but okay. Yeah. Let's, let's go for it. Okay. Today's topic is about something we've talked about a lot of times and, um, we've, you know, dipped our toes and we're going to do this. We're going to, and, and it's just, it's not flowed really easily to like, let's just get this out and happening. And so it is, it's happening. There's a lot of layers to consider and sometimes a little manpower involved. Yeah. Manpower. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we, what I did, because it's, you know, as with a lot of these projects, I've either inspired or motivated or have some, you know, reason to have some urgency around something. And this particular one, we've been working with some clients. I think the need is there to do this. And I chose for this first survey, it's like a preliminary survey that we can do follow-up surveys with customers and we can do other ones. But this one is meant to just sort of capture the need. psyche or attitude of the customer as it relates to certain things. You want to show it on the screen? I've got it ready. I can. Absolutely. I've got it ready to show for visibility. And I'm going to actually take us out so we can see a little bit more. So this is a White Hat Way five question customer survey. And just so you all know, this is something that we're going to be sending to any dealer that wants it. And it's something you can just send out to your your your customer base. And we're going to share all of the results with everyone who shares their you know, they're going to send it to their customers. So basically this will go from the dealer to the customer and then the results will come back to us. So this can go out by the way, by text message or email. So, you know, those who have a CRM and have the choice about that, they can do that. You can send it from your DMS via, um, and sometimes maybe even, uh, with text via DMS. But the idea here is to keep it super simple. Um, And we're giving dealers the option. It's optional for them to place some sort of reward or the chance of a reward behind. And the one that I've got written here says one in 50 respondents will be awarded their choice of rewards. OK, so that's courtesy of the dealer. So the dealer can decide what they're going to offer for rewards. But we just know from having dealt with this sort of thing in the past that your success rate is going to go up when you're going to have more respondents, when there's some sort of something in it for them. So we just kind of created that scenario so dealers can put a little something behind it. We've been working with several of our clients and all of them say, yeah, I'm happy to put a little something behind it to encourage feedback on these surveys. Right. And I have a scroll, but I'm not going to go there right now. Maybe. OK, go ahead. OK, maybe write it down. So I'm asking the respondents for their zip code. This will help us obviously match it up with certain dealers that are doing the survey. And it's required. We're just requiring that for drawing eligibility. Their email is only required if they wish to be in the drawing. So it is required for notification of drawing winners. That's going to be the best way to make sure we get the word out to everybody. And then how high of a priority is improving your credit score right now? And so they have their choices. They're very high priority. I'd like to eventually, but it's not my highest priority today. It's not something I think about. And then lastly, not at all. I don't think it even matters. So, you know, just kind of get a feel for the pulse of the consumer. How important is their credit to them currently, like as of today? And then when you made your last purchase at a car dealership, which of these was the largest factor in your decision to buy there? Okay. So here's your list. Choose only one. Right. The largest factor. Yep. Okay. Inventory. Vehicle prices. Interest rate. Comfort with the dealer process or reputation is the fourth option. Then affordable down payment. Easy approval. And then I thought I had another on there. We can add one for, they can, they can write something else. Yeah. Uh, consider your, considering your overall view of used car dealers, where would you rate them in terms of being trustworthy scale of one to 10? Where, what is your view of car dealerships overall? I want to just get a feel for how big a thing is this? I mean, Michelle and I spend a lot of time talking about trust and transparency and trying to reach customers through that channel. And so this is going to be interesting thing to find out. The next question is how important is it that you trust the car dealer you buy from? Very important, somewhat important, neutral, low importance or not important at all. Okay. So we just want to know, How big, how much does that matter to you? And the answers will be the answers. And then when you made your last vehicle purchase at a dealership, did you fully understand the documents you signed and the terms of the deal? Yes. All of it. Most of it. Neutral. No, it was not what I understood at the time. okay or other or other okay so you know you can see where we're going here is we're just trying to and rather than you know trying to figure out what to sell them today and I did I didn't read it at the top I'll go back and kind of read the opening statement there but um and then your phone number which is optional only if you prefer to be contacted that way if you're a drawing winner so back to the top I don't think I read this did i For information purposes only, there is no sales offer. One in 50 respondents will be awarded their choice of rewards. I didn't finish reading it, I guess. Courtesy of dealers sent the survey. White Hat Way is a benefit corporation whose mission is to improve the success of dealers and the customers they serve. For more information, visit that website. So it's just a way for them to understand this is a legitimate survey, and this is who we are on the sidelines. So the survey, again, will come from the dealer. And then the data will come over to us. But there's nothing sensitive in here, right? There's no sensitive information. So there's nothing to be concerned about in that way. So there were two things because I was over here writing. Because I didn't want to squirrel and interrupt the flow of all this stuff. So one thing is I've been really kind of digging into the things that make our customers tick. The things that excite them, the things they pay attention to, you know, it's just like in the normal day, you know, all of that. And, you know, I one of the things that that has one of the many things that has come out to my understanding is that they love free stuff, giveaways, the lottery, you know, just a lot of those kind of things, because it's like it's a promise for something. more or different. And so, um, you know, and there, and so many of them are struggling. It's like, holy heck, I'll answer this five and five questions survey. If I can have a chance to win a hundred bucks or a gas card or a grocery card or, you know, an Amazon gift card or whatever. It's like, yeah. So there, huh? A donut. Well, I mean, if you're Jim, a donut. So something that I mean, and correct me if I'm wrong, and I don't think I am in that there's, you know, that's just something that a lot of our customers are drawn to. is like free stuff giveaways that kind of thing within an attempt to be able to hit it big or improve their situation or get something that they don't have to try to budget into their life you know like it's a treat so that right there is just a really beautiful motivation and so you know it depends with the dealers all of that it's like it and how many of us can really afford a $50 gas card, which is like one fill up, you know, or $100 or, you know, whatever it is that you choose to do. So little things like that, that's, you know, it's like, hey, I'll do that. It'll take me 30 seconds. The other thing, you know, we talked about, like, how much do you trust? And it's like used car salesman, the, you know, how important is it to you and all of that? you know and this goes back we've talked so many times about we've we have done um jim's written articles it's like about the truth about trust and what trust gives you for both the people that are involved in this trust exchange. And it's really, it is like one of those untangible things, non-tangible, is that right? It's not something that can be quantified by dollar amounts. But it is tied to dollars as well. So and you know, one of the things that I just I know this survey, and it will be really interesting for people to be able to, I think we need to add on there what your zip code is, because then we're at the top. Okay, so the zip code is going to help us be able to like your area, this is what is being said. And so trust allows for mistakes. It gives you, it allows for frictions. It allows for those hard conversations. Trust allows for you to, you know, your customer has made a mistake and it's like for you to be patient with that and let's figure it out and move forward. It also allows for you, when you as a dealer, because I don't believe you if you say you've never made a mistake. Um, and that, you know, somehow it's might've affected one of your customers or, or, you know, maybe you didn't communicate something. Um, you know, it's, it's goes back also to that thing that Jim talks about. Someone was wrong. Yeah. And, you know, and so be, you know, so it just, it allows, it's like equity. It's an equity bank. We talk about that all the time. So yeah. I don't want to go too far down on that tangent, but that trust thing is a real big thing that we're trying to get to. This is our why, is to be able to help develop trust between businesses and consumers. And where better to start than where in one of those business-consumer segments, relationships, where there is the least trust? amount of trust um and there's the biggest spread between you know the the just the price of money like you know the the what the customer can afford and what they're expected to pay is like it doesn't help the trust element so yeah why don't we wait and see what the survey results are on trust because I think this is why it's important to go out there and serve you and I talk a lot about it we believe it matters to consumers consumers are going to tell us does it matter And each individual dealer is going to find out, in my market, does trust matter? And we'll be able to see. We certainly want to encourage our dealers to put enough dollars behind the rewards to encourage high participation. And then we can get good information because that's really going to be helpful. And also, just this one about... What was the largest factor? What was the thing that was the single biggest decision last time you bought? And so we want to have that in there to get a feel for what consumers, what is driving them to decide to purchase. Yeah. One of the other questions you asked in there is like, do you have any kind of desire to improve your credit situation? And, you know, that question actually, to me, it, it kind of boils down to two things. One, do they even, okay, do they care or is it, um, I think there's a lot of people in our customer base that don't know they have a choice, that don't know that there's something different that they can experience rather than having a puddle of oil in their driveway, being at the mercy of landlords. And sometimes in our customer credit segment, it's usually slumlords and people that don't care as much. Um, so, you know, do they know they have a way out? And, you know, we, we had a, we had a meeting with a colleague. Oh, geez, it's like two, three years ago. And we were talking about education and consumers and all of that kind of stuff. And, and he used this term called the credit merry-go-round. And it's like, it's kind of one of those things that his premise was, is that once someone gets into that, that, that ride, um, it's really hard to get off. Dr. Justin Marchegiani You mean, fall off the merry-go-round. Dr. Anneke Vandenbroek Or fall off the, or they fall off the credit merry-go-round. Yeah. But, okay, well, I was looking at it from a different angle. But, um, yeah. But it's, it's, it's like, once you get into that, that force, that centrifugal force of bad credit, it's hard to get off that. And then it's, when you are doing stuff, if you put it and apply it towards that, is that there's a lot of people that have maybe had a better situation at one time or another. And they remember what that was like, but they fell off of it, whatever those reasons are. And that's a whole nother, you know, one of the, this could be a question on here, but we don't have it on there. It's like, why do you think people have poor credit? Because that tells you an awful lot about our customer base is like, why do they think that? that there are people with poor credit. And I've done personal surveys of some of our clients, customers, and it's, you know, it's knowledge gap. They use a different term, but it's like, because we were never taught. And it's like emergencies, you know, like health emergencies, things like that, a divorce, you know, situational, that kind of thing. And I think you're really talking about how the customer is viewed, like what are the circumstances that put them in that credit place. And I think one of the things we can all be guilty of in the buyer-payer space, because you're talking about the slumlord factor and some of that stuff, and I'm thinking, well, that can be true of some, right? That can be true of this idea of what... what the customer profile is. Okay. So, um, it's, it's a little bit like we, we assume that we know what the profile is because we see certain number of customers, lower income, whatever apartment living, whatever that looks like. But I think it's important to remember not all poor credit consumers. Cause a lot of folks that fall off the credit merry-go-round that aren't necessarily in that situation. Um, So we have to be mindful of the fact that, you know, to consumers that we survey, they'll be in all different kind of stages of life. And so we just want to learn from them what's important to them. Our friend Ace Christensen. Good morning, Ace. I love this. Thank you so much for sharing it. Quote, a lack of trust is your biggest expense, says the Wall Street Journal. Without trust, transactions cannot occur. Without trust, influence is destroyed. Without trust, leaders lose their people. With trust can be either your most vulnerable weakness or your greatest asset. That's beautiful. Thank you so much. Yeah, no, that's great. I think it's sort of where Michelle and I live. And I think what we will have a chance to learn, and this is the nice thing about these surveys, is we don't have to guess. Let's quit guessing. Let's go out and ask the customers. Does it matter? Does trust matter? I think what what Ace is saying, we think the results are going to say, yes, it matters. It matters in almost all business transactions. And so I think now I think it's it's a little bit amplified in our buy here, pay here space because it's not like we go in and buy a pair of shoes. from a company that we trust and you know if we have a problem we go back and see them in a week but yeah in our case we have a relationship with the customer as a buy here payer dealer we have a relationship with customer three and four years at least we hope longer right but it's like so so establishing a level of trust if that matters to the consumer You know, that's this is what we got to figure out. And that's why we want to survey. We just really want to understand what is it that motivates folks to buy? What is it? How do they view, you know, this this trustworthy element? And then we can go on that. We can get more specific with the surveys. Right. And go back to the customers with more information. Right now, we want to start at high level and just get a feel for these elements and get a sense of where they're at and their shopping experience, how they feel about their credit. What's important to them when they buy? And let's specifically ask about trust. So those were the main elements. And just to kind of recap how this is going to work, if you're a dealer listening and you're interested in doing the survey, just reach out to us because what we'll want to do, it's free to you. We're going to compile it and send the results back to you. But we just want to make sure that you are prepared. We'll send a separate little questionnaire for you to decide how do you want to reward customers the recipients or the respondents, rather, the drawing winners. And so we'll talk about that. And this is something that we're setting up with our clients that want to participate. So this is something that's getting started this week. And so we're moving forward with this. And there's going to be some really interesting data. And we'll be sharing bits of that as we go. And I think... you know, it's not something that this, I'm going to use a quote that we aren't prepared to use yet, but I'm still going to do it. You don't need no credit card to ride this train. You don't need to pay us a dime to be a part of this. Yeah. And this is going to go for consumers and dealers to, to some extent. I mean, there's a certain amount of what we're doing with white hat way. And this survey is a, you know, a branch of white hat way. This is our offering to dealers and, And so, yeah, that's part of what you're going to see is that we're starting to step toward this thing where people just need to understand there's the whole White Hat Way mission and the community that we're building around that. It's not going to require a credit card. So, you know, it's going to be very inclusive. I think I'm going to have to reach out to the people that own all of the rights to Huey Lewis. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's our band from, well, it's not necessarily our band, but it's from our era. Some of our listeners. Just Google it. Yeah, from the Power of Love. Great song. Great song that kind of just like hit us hard this week. So I was like, yeah, yeah. It kind of belongs in the direction that we're going. Absolutely. But yeah, we should probably wrap up there. Just a quick reminder. We got our V8 group one. I do have one seat available for group one. So there's time to jump in there. There isn't. The data points are not hard. And it's just something that requires someone to sit down for half an hour, 45 minutes, whatever. Pull the, cause I, you know, we are aware that there are other composites that people are, are having to compile that it's, it's a lot. And so, you know, I, those of you who are familiar with those, no, it's like, it's not something I can do the day before. Yeah. Can't do it, but this, you can. Yeah. This is not hard. If you're wondering if a great thing is right for you, just reach out to me and we'll put you in touch with some of our dealers that are doing it. You don't have to care for me. Absolutely. Talk to some of the folks that are part of our membership. And it's, it's, it's, yeah, this is, this is something that we are, we are, V8 is something that we are moving forward with. We've, we've gotten through beta. We're kind of like in a second beta for V8. Our current V8 dealers are right now being, we're, we're giving them access to the next layer for free. You know, and that's at V8+. You said we're not in beta really with V8. Well, not V8, but we're in beta with V8 Plus. Yeah. So whatever, you know, we've got like four groups. Once we fill those, those will be our beta group for V8 Plus. So if you're interested, it's like an extra little perk to come and join us. So we've got groups for all different size of dealerships from brand new, I don't currently have a group for dealers of 2000 accounts or more, but I'm going to be moving. Yeah. Yeah. And we may include that too in this, in this beta thing. It just kind of depends on what happens in the next month or so. Right. So if you, if you haven't already, please, please go to whitehatway.com, fill out an information thing on V8. You know, we can, Jim will have a conversation with you. He knows you don't want to talk to me about it. I mean, I understand it, but you don't want to talk to me about it. You want to talk to him. So, I mean, well, yeah, I can make you laugh. Yeah, that's what I can do. But, um, so if that's something you're interested in, please go to whitehatway.com and, um, the, the tab for V8. And then there's a little questionnaire kind of thing. And then we can get, we can get with you and, and get some information. Very cool. Anything else? No, let's go back to work. Thanks again for your commentary there, Ace. Appreciate you tuning in this morning. Yeah, thank you for making us part of your Monday. It's the start of a new week, start of a new opportunity. And, you know, it's like today is the first day of this next batch of days that... We get to have a better experience if we choose to have a better experience. I think she said tomorrow, or today's a new day. Today's a what? That's what I heard. Today's a new day. It is a new day. That's what I heard. Yeah. So have a fantastic day, everybody, and we will talk to you on Wednesday. Thanks so much. You know, I'm like totally, okay, here we go. You want some outro music? There you go.
