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. Goodness, hello, everybody. Hey, welcome to the Utah studio. We're back. Yeah, we, slight apology. Yeah, we missed an episode on Friday. And that was the day I was flying back home. And we were with family. But we've never missed a slot. We've usually at least done a rerun. And we didn't. So, sorry. Apologies. So, for so many of you who must sit by your computers just waiting... anxiously for today's episode of the buy here pay your morning show yeah we just we normally don't do that I uh I have I'm kind of like off to the side using different equipment than I normally do my best friend has been here visiting um I flew home early and my best friend flew in from sedona and uh we've been playing and she's she's talking to a client right now and so we invited her to come join us so I'm set up she may just pop in at some point don't know but And I'll apologize on Michelle's behalf for all those other people who are her friends who thought they were the best friend. Now they learn. I have a lot of best public way. I have a lot of best friends. Yes, I do. I really do. Um, yeah, yeah. She, uh, you know, it's funny that with friends that there are some that you can get like real to a point and those that you can't get real with and those that you like can get raw with. true and she's one of those kind of friends that like you can get raw because you guys what you served prison time together oh we did yeah that's that's how we met yeah right no silly um uh so I hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving and um and just you know the holiday it's uh and you know there's uh Yeah. Lots of different, lots of different ways that people celebrate. And we just, we had a great opportunity to spend the holiday in Jim's hometown and with family. And it was really, really lovely. Yeah. And yeah. No, it was definitely good to get connected with family. I was able to see my brother and my son came up from Austin. And so that's always great. And then of course she had pumpkin pie with, actually we had whipped cream with pumpkin pie. And so there's that. You know, I left after only having a very small sliver of pumpkin pie. That's on you, honey. Danny, come join us. Hey, there she is. Welcome. There you go. She's just wrapping up a meeting in the other room. So, so she's a business coach herself in a way. So we're a life coach or better description probably. But yeah, let's get her on a microphone and a headset. You got some ears for her over there? I have some ears right here. Yeah. So Danny, Danny. All right, everybody. You guys get to see a little bit inside of my small world. Yeah. So Danny. Well, I'm glad to have you here. Thanks for talking about how sometimes friends... you have friends that you can get kind of real with, ones that you can get real with, and ones that you can get raw with. And this is my raw friend. Yeah, and I explained to our listeners that you and Michelle met in prison. Yeah. That's where you, right? Oh, you're giving away all of our secrets. Yeah, all the backstory, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, yeah. No, we're glad to have you here. So we just kind of were getting dispensing of our updates and kind of recounting our stories. Holiday weekend. I got a couple of quick things, a couple of announcements. We've got all of our dates set for our V-Aid meetings for December. And I set Monday the ninth for our deadline for data submission. So what that means for our listeners out there, for those dealers that are sitting out there on the fence and hadn't gotten in, it's time to stop with the procrastinating. Let's get you in a V-Aid group because we got a chance to get that closed up for December here and get some folks in there at the current rate. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, it's, it's coming soon. And again, current rate at the beginning of the year, the rates are changing. So this kind of gets you an opportunity to get in so that you can experience this at, you know, it's a special, it's a Christmas special. There you go. Yeah, exactly. So why Danny is here. Yeah. um danny uh when I first met her had a brick and mortar and um so understands the plight of a small business owner and now is an entrepreneur in a different way it's more of a virtual entrepreneur and um so you know has a has a direct understanding and intimate like sure deep understanding about what it means uh to be a business owner and the challenges that come with that and how you know our topic today is about community outreach and um we had a really great you know we do coffee everyone listens yeah no we have coffee time every morning and we we talk by here pay here and and danny when she when she joined us we were like hey We would love your input on this. And so she was able to be part of that conversation before the show and had some really great insights. So we asked if she would join us today. She understands community connection and customer relations and all that stuff. So for today, Dani, we're really just talking about this idea of community outreach and how dealers, you know, our dealers are buy here, pay your dealers. They do their own financing. They have long relationships with their customers, unlike somebody who might just sell a car, retail, pay cash, and the customer goes on their way. In our case, we have a long tail with the relationship with the customer. And then there's also just the matter of getting connected with a community who's not yet our customer. Sometimes they'll never be our customer. They're just our friends in the community. Right. So that's part of what we're talking about, really. And so I was thinking mostly about when I started into this topic, I was thinking mostly about. Other businesses, like just thinking about how do I reach out to my fellow businesses and get to know them in the community and get them to know me and be able to give to my community, right? Without any real expectation of anything in return, at least certainly not anything near term. Yeah, and part of the conversation this morning when we were talking was you brought up the challenges, the challenges of what it means to be a small business owner. And you want to talk a little bit about that challenge. There's so much to do and so much on your plate to do. Oh, yeah. My first reaction on this topic was, oh, man, I got to do something. I got to give back. Oh, man, that sounds like a lot of work and it's going to cost me money and what is it going to look like? And then as we began to kind of explore this a little bit, there was, like you said, Jim, many different aspects to this. You know, with my company, the first thing I do is I put myself into the customer's shoes. And so as we were talking this morning, I thought to myself, well, if I bought a car and I think about, you know, the last car that I bought, I thought, wow, it would have been really great. if they had reached out to me after I purchased the car and said, hey, how are you doing? How are your windshield wipers? We're coming into winter. Hey, what about this? Just how is your experience? Is there anything that you need? That would have gone a really long way with me. And I think that a lot of these dealers probably have a really large database of clients. And so that's their immediate community, the part of their community that has already engaged with them. And we could call that the low hanging fruit um and so if the the dealer that I had purchased my car from had done that just very simple not like stalking me or you know wanting anything from me but just reaching out to say hey how are you doing yeah maybe like once a year twice a year you know that would have been wow I'm going to go back to them I'm going to use them for the next you know purchase that I'm going to make and then the the second aspect of the broader community um of how to reach out to those you know whose emails we don't have whose addresses we don't have that we can't send them a christmas card to say thank you or we can't um send them you know something funny I know you two have such a great sense of humor that would be another idea but for the the broader community whose contact information that we don't have You know, that's where we want to get creative in a way that, like, if I was in a dealer's shoes, I'd be like, okay, what is going to be fun? What's not going to cost me a lot of money? What's going to help me to become known, liked, and trusted within my community? Yeah. So I can think of... If I'm a dealer, and I want to give a quick shout out to Nick Doom and Tyrone Tire in Tyrone, Pennsylvania. It's a client from the past with us and somebody that we have watched kind of develop their business. And certainly, you know, his situation is a little bit different. He's in a smaller town. But Nick certainly puts in effort continuously to... not only help his own customers, but he does a lot of community outreach. He's always socializing things that others are doing in the community, whether there's some event or whatever that's going on. He's often doing that kind of thing. And he serves as an inspiration. I would urge people to hop on Facebook and follow Tyrone Tire and Automotive, I think is their Facebook handle. But Um, but he's just somebody who kind of lives it. He just does it. And it comes naturally for him. It's kind of a heart matter. You know, he's just out there helping his neighbors and community and just kind of being a good neighbor. And so this is kind of, we're on a white hat Wednesday, which you've heard us talk about white hat way, Danny, you know what that's about. And so when we think about that, it's like, how do we, and I'm always trying to help dealers separate between there's goodwill efforts and then there's promotional events. And then a promotional event, we're trying to sell something, you know, and, and pork dealers, they're just, they're naturally salespeople by trade. Right. And so they have, sometimes many of them have a hard time turning off the sales element. Like let's do this thing, but let's, when the customers come, let's sell them a little something. But there's, there was something that I appreciated, you know, as Danny was going through how she would perceive it is that the, That is a real motivator behind community outreach is becoming known. To have people become more aware of who you are and that you care and what you do. So when that time comes, they are, I need this, I need a widget. And they already know you because you're a part of the community. And what that would look like. So let's just take a couple of examples of possibilities. So let's say it's cleaning up the neighborhood, community service, and the dealers grab their teams and you put it out to the community that, hey, we're going to go and we're going to pick up garbage on this day. We're going to clean up this area. And so you do want to have a flyer that says sponsored by, you know, community members, you know, we care, something like that. Because if nobody knows what you're doing, then you aren't becoming known, right? You know, if you have something like, you know, if you want to look at something fun, I love the idea of go-karts, right? You know, throwing it out to the community. We're going to have a go-kart race. Yeah. We're sponsoring this thing. And it's all about the fun. It's all about the fun. I love that. And that was one of the things we were, you know, we were just like throwing out just all sorts of different ideas. And, and we live in Utah where every it's, we joke that, you know, we, where we look that you would think that was one city, but there's probably like, twelve cities and in where we can see and each one of them has their own celebrations christmas summer whatever and they have their own celebrations where it's like bring the community together and we're gonna do a fair or we're gonna do like a christmas fair or we're gonna do just our our um like a birthday fair summer celebration and we were I was like you know how great would it be to do like get a booth And have your people there. And it's like just nothing but children's games. And it's just nothing but like it's free. You know, you don't have to pay anything sponsored by. And it's just it's a way to play with our customer and their children. And it could be like, you don't have to be a child to play the game. Come play the game. Have some fun and engage in that way. Because play is. When you make something playful, oh my gosh, barriers just go whoop. They go down and people love to have fun and laugh. And I would take that even one step further and take all of that because I can see all of the kids playing and I can see their parents hanging around and I can see on the toy. something that says white hat way dealer we care yeah and so that every time the child plays with the toy or the parent sees the toy they'll remember that was something that came from you yeah and that that it's it's like the mcdonald's toys you know the kids get something to play with and every time they play with it it's it's like oh that came from mcdonald's oh that came from yeah yeah so you know you get ideas about actual events and actual activities I think if we back up broader and just say why Yeah, why do it? Like it certainly, and let me just make sure our dealers that are listening understand that you're going to do more business as a result of this. Absolutely. But what I'm asking you to consider is when you're playing a long game, that you consider that I'm not going to this event with the expectation of selling a car this afternoon or tomorrow. It's about differentiating and playing a long game and getting to be known, liked, and trusted is the thing that we refer to. And that starts with getting to be known. And if I can get to be known in a way that the customers, so if I meet somebody at the county fair, or if I meet somebody at a parade and they can take away from, Oh, this company, Tyrone tire. And in case of Nick, Tyrone tire seems to be a company that cares. They seem to have fun. They seem like that would be a fun place to do business. Right? Yeah. When you, and it's like known logo liked fun. Right. trusted, they always show up. Right. Right. They're always there. There's just always they're there. And, you know, we were having this the conversation this morning about and you even brought in it's like, well, it's a lot of work. And so I better have something happen on the bottom line. Yeah. And it's like, yes, And I remember with my company when I started exploring how I wanted to be a company that gave back, that cared. And I did. I took care of my employees. I gave them the Cadillac of business plans and I gave them the retirement accounts. And within the community, I engaged with Uh, with, uh, you know, my company was within the wellness space. And so I was out foot in it, building relationships with doctors. So I would go and say, Hey, my name's Danny and this is what I do. And, and just to become known and then I would continue to be something. How can I get in front of them? How can I get in front of these people and build a relationship? Good. And that's what I called relationship marketing. And relationship marketing is the long game. It's where, for instance, if I was a dealer and I was looking at, okay, who can I build relationships with within my community that will really help progress my company forward? And that could be with the loan organizations. I mean, who else? Tax preparers. Oh, there you go. Income tax preparers. Actually, automotive repair, too. Automotive repair. Yeah. And where are the businesses that are customers? frequent and I mean it could be even a like the grocery store or the the the local whatever we were talking this morning about you know how um uh we have the opportunity as we build these you know there's there's like our customer our neighborhood of of customers that maybe not not a customer right now and then the community of businesses within that in that community and how how little things like you going around and hoofing it is it is it creates a uh it can create a really beautiful relationship when we're talking about you know going down to the the um uh dairy queen uh whatever uh like a local place that has ice cream cones and say hey If I if I give my my customers a coupon for a free ice cream cone, will you sell it to me for a discount? And so what it's doing is you're getting you're getting, you know, hey, customers from your mailing list, past customers, present customers swing on by and pick up a thing. At the dealership, we're solving a problem right there, which we hear all the time from dealers, is that how do we keep that connection with our engagement? And so it's like swing on by, pick up a free ice cream cone. And then then what you're doing, too, for that business is you're dropping. your customer base into their business as well. It's win-win, real big win-win. I think it's also important to mention too that when I did go out and hoof it, I was tapping into as many of the locals as I possibly could. I think I had maybe like a hundred packages that I had dropped off to say, hey, hi, this is who I am. I'd love to build a relationship with you. Of those hundred, I think I might have got one or two. But that one or two became a huge referral source for me. And that boosted my business at a very, it really moved me forward in a way that was really beneficial. I just think the whole concept of being known, liked and trusted, like for, I'll give a quick example, our same guy, Nick back in Pennsylvania. One day I saw a post that he had done. It was actually another business. And I think it might've been a nonprofit in his community was doing a shout out on social media. Hey, shout out to Nick over at Tyrone tire for offering us a free tow on something or other, I think was the deal. And so, but the thing, the takeaway is, um, You know, Nick didn't do that to sell a car. But if I saw that ad and my niece or my daughter is in the market for a car, that's obviously going to impact who I would choose to send them to to do business. So it's not that the person who sees it is necessarily going to be your customer. It might not be today. It might not be next month. But the idea is that I'm getting to be known, liked, and trusted in that way. So I want to pause and read some stuff that's coming in on LinkedIn. There's a guy from Joe in Manitoba who says, joining the community builds trust and connection. Plus, it feels good to give back. That's the best part. It's like, hey, I'm an integrity with me. And when I'm an integrity with me and I'm giving back, that's energy that comes back to me. I think I would add giving back authentically because what I watch is when I see people, you know, you can stand up and be a dealership and you can publicize that you donated a thousand dollars to a local charity and you can do a big photo of the check and whatever. There's something about that that when you look at that is why is it on social media? And did the dealership post the thing on social media or did the charity? Because there's the thing about what comes across as authentic and what crosses into looking disingenuous. It's like just because you wrote a check doesn't necessarily mean you care. You could have written the check in the context of promotion. Mm-hmm. Right. And so this is why I think we got to we got to be able to differentiate there and be able to genuinely and authentically give because we want to. It feels good to give back. And as we talked about this morning, like we love for dealers to be able to lay their head on their pillow at night and feel good about the business they're involved in, whether that's their team, the way they treat their customers, the whole their whole. We talk about in White Hat way a dealership as a business being an asset to their community. Mm hmm. Well, what would an asset in the community look like? It would be somebody who's authentically contributing to their neighborhoods, right, and all these kinds of things. And you hear all the time, which it's a valid point, and we're coming at it this and, is that I give back to the community because I serve the community in a way that they need serving. It's like my business serves the community, hence I give back to the community. Yes. Right. And we're talking about the and that it's I have a business that serves my community and. we serve the community in this way as well, or that we outreach in this way as well, or that we help other businesses, small businesses in our community this way. And that's the and. And what's so beautiful about that is when the individuals who are part of the White Hat Way movement And they're on board with that. What you're doing is transforming an industry. It's really beautiful. And I really love that because, you know, the idea of buying a car for a lot of people can be a very intimidating and scary experience. And when a dealership is on the White Hat way, in the White Hat way, operating remotely, in through and around all of that, that customer is going to come in and have an amazing experience. And that's, it's transformative. Yeah. I think the way I like to think about the white hat way element, whether it's in this context, we're talking about community outreach or customer service. It's like when, when the dealer themselves, because culture and that whole thing flows down right from the dealer, it starts at the top. So when my whole culture and my whole team is about community, the customer experience and the community experience, all those things. Then can mistakes happen? Can there be miscommunication in the service department? Of course, that stuff happens. But when you have that sort of culture throughout and the attitude is one of giving and making sure the customer has a good experience and that Really, the way I love to think about it is if you're my customer, I want to make sure when it's time for you to refer a friend or family member, you have zero question about referring them to us. So that's how you think about customer service and why this stuff matters. I want to read another one. This one, believe it or not, this one's coming from the UK. This is crazy that this stuff is happening this morning on LinkedIn. Carlos says, community outreach builds trust and connections. Creating a stronger fabric in neighborhoods is about giving back with purpose. Love it. Yeah. Absolutely. And then I don't know if I'm pronouncing your name right. It looks like it's Monica, but she's out of India, which makes me think somebody out there has stirred this up. Well, honey, I look at analytics and it's just like, sweetie, we're global. And that's okay. This is unusual. Three people commented and all of them from outside the U.S., This one says investing in community outreach builds trust and loyalty and boosts local connections that matter in business. Amen. Right. Amen. And I responded to her already. And, you know, the the this is another and, you know, White Hat Way is about learning to is is is we're teaching a formula to be known, liked and trusted in your community. Right. And, and it goes, you know, there's, there's the and that there's a lot of businesses that they're becoming known, liked and trusted is a massive social media campaign, or, you know, and it's, it's, it's promotion, it's, and it's and promoting the reviews and promoting the look other people, which is really important because people like to know, oh, so and so down the street who's just like me had a great experience. And so that's great. This is different. This is the and again, it's just another example of the and it's not about the self promotion because marketing is really important. It's important to grow a business and it's an important element to become known, liked, and trusted. But this is taking it a much deeper step forward. You have something else, Danny? When I think about these things, one of the things that we're moving ahead with in White Hat Way is helping dealers better tell their story. So it's in this context of becoming known, liked, and trusted. So we want them to be able to build trust in their community. Michelle and I talk about it often that in relationships, personal relationships, business relationships, one of the ways you build trust is by just making small deposits again and again and again. And eventually people start to trust. Right. And so I think in the marketing standpoint, it's like we want to help dealers better tell that story. First of all, we want to help them grow. Build up a bank of trust. So how do you do that? Part of how you do that is you go out in your community and you just show up again and again and again. And eventually people start to say, oh, they're pretty reliable. You can trust that they are going to show up. And so it's not about like every time I have a problem with the car, are they showing up? But it's like they show up in our community. They're there. And they're part of the things that are happening. The person says, hey, I met this guy who's a car dealer. We probably tried to sell you a car, right? No, I actually didn't. Yeah. What does that say? That says a lot about, yeah. It says that's probably the kind of dealer I'm going to be most comfortable doing business with. So like, it's just, so again, when we talk about these things, I think dealers sometimes would hear it and say, well, Jim, but I got to sell cars. I'm not, I'm not saying. That you're not going to sell cars. It just may not happen today. It's a long day. But you're going to build trust. You will sell cars. And you will sell, you know, very likely more cars. But what it is creating is a really solid community base. of like, I am part, I'm not just a business in, I am part of the fabric of this community. And I love some of those comments that you got through LinkedIn. It's about, you know, it's like, I am a thread in the fabric of the community and becoming that. And it's like that thread doesn't have to come with contingencies. If I were a dealer right now, I would be thinking about, okay, so what is going to be fun for me? What is going to be something that I can rally my team around that my team would be excited to participate in? And, and so I would even, you know, encourage, you know, dealers to create little powwow sessions with their teams and going, Okay, what do we want to do? Do we want to do a food drive? Right? Do we want to I mean, I'm kind of a little bit more on the woo woo side. So I would recommend like little cards that say, Hey, you are loved or something like that. Keep that shit up, right? Something like that where you have your team members just hand them out to random strangers on the street, you know, and maybe just a little bit of your logo in the corner or something like that. But something that would be fun and engaging that feels good. Because if you're doing something that doesn't feel good, there's going to be the resistance in it and it's not going to be as effective. I'm glad you brought up team. Because your team is a very important part of your business. And so it kind of, you know, they talk about culture comes from the top down. And then you can really infuse just playfulness and known, liked, and trusted within your team as well. And Dani was talking about when she had the wellness center in the Seattle area. that what she would do for her team for Christmas that, and I was like, you know, this, this is building a known, liked and trusted for her team is that she would, they'd go to the mall. I mean, where are malls anymore, but they would go to. Yeah. Or you can meet at a restaurant. Yeah. But they would go to the mall and she would give them all a crisp one hundred dollar bill and says, you have an hour. And this is the team. It's like a hundred dollar bill. Go out and buy something for yourself, not for someone else, but for yourself and come back and report on it and talk about it. And so and it was show and tell. And they just had such a great time with and it was a team building. That's that's and that's just as important as this community building. It's the team building. Because when you can build a team that really loves to play with each other and loves each other, then you're going to get buy-in really quick about creating that in their community. Yeah. And they will report, oh, I love my job. And I remember I actually did the garbage pickup day one time and they hated it. Dirty. We're not going to do that one again. Well, and you heard me say this morning, I'm always sensitive because I'm a former dealer. I had a dealership for years, and I'm always sensitive to the idea that I don't want to create events that the team is going to dread. So you don't want to end up with that sort of situation. And so we talked about the Christmas party. There will be a lot of the dealers listening who are hosting a big Christmas party and giving back in that way. And I just think that's part of what we're talking about. But I think, you know, we're obviously trying to do this fifty two weeks out of the year. And just getting the team involved makes a lot of sense because you want them to be invested in that. But among the ideas that we talked about was like I'm loving the idea of being able to sponsor a lunch at your local restaurant. food kitchen you know and give them a break like once one you know wednesday just do pizzas for them and just you can say it's from the dealership or whatever that might look like so that because of how can we how can we contribute to the community community there's all these different ways you can financially right you can give of your dollars you could give of your time you could give of your resources which was kind of the the towing thing you know as an example of that it's like there are all these different ways that we can give and they don't They don't have to be a heavy lift for us, right? You can give of your being. Yeah, yeah. You know, like, yeah. Sure. Just be in there. Yeah, yeah. Just be in there. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I think we've covered the parts I wanted to cover. And again, we appreciate people listening in and appreciate all the comments on LinkedIn. That's great to have. Yeah. We don't typically have LinkedIn open while we're⦠That's true. We'll catch the stuff after. But yeah, it's just nice to see that happening. Hey, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. Wednesday, White Hat Wednesday. Dani, thank you so much for joining us. I'm going to do a little plug. Dani, there's a book on Amazon that's called The Ordinary Extraordinary You that she's the author of. She's written many books. Another one is... good decisions because life's too short to not eat chocolate good decisions most of the time most of the time yeah but I would recommend the extraordinary extraordinary ordinary that would be a good one for the team yeah yeah yeah I made a good decision So, hey, everybody, again, thank you so much. We will be back on Wednesday. We're probably talking very straight line, but we love weaving more and more white hat way into our straight line topics. Hope you guys have a great afternoon and we will see you on the other side. Thanks so much.
