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 gracious, good morning, everybody. Happy Friday. I think that I gave Jim a slight coronary because in the middle of the intro, I got out of my seat and ran. You didn't even notice? That's awesome. Yeah. No, I don't. That's not something I do. That's awesome. Yeah. That's dangerous. Coronaries, that's a dangerous thing. I wouldn't recommend it. Coronaries are a dangerous thing. All right. So Friday, anything you wanted to touch on before we- Well, I didn't pull together the schedule. We got quite a few guests lined up for the coming weeks. Oh yeah, next week on Wednesday is Casey Stanton, sorry, who is someone that I've known for It's been ten years or so. He does not work in the car business, but he is a chief marketing officer and does fractional chief CMO work and is one of the most plugged in people I know about what's new that's happening and where we're going with marketing. And technology. And technology. I mean, it's just the conversation we had with him a couple of weeks ago was just really, really rich. And I was like, I'm excited to have a conversation because it's becoming easier and easier for a dealer to be able to leverage technology. massive amounts of AI in a really simple way to help run their business in a lot of ways. And I'm looking forward to talking to him about actual messaging because you can have a machine that spits stuff out. But the question for me becomes what, how do I help a small used car dealer you know or buy your payer dealer figure out what's what's the message to deliver like how do we win customers yeah we can I know we can blast stuff out in front of them but how do we connect so yeah yeah and that's the part I'm always interested on the marketing side but then uh the wednesday after that we have kristen acosta who was with us a few weeks ago and shared uh there we talked about their surprisingly low charge off rates despite the fact that they get a very small down payment which led us to the thing about collections so she's going to come back and talk to us about their approach and philosophy and kind of their their practices around collections and I think everybody's going to want to tune into that because it's like there's there's something philosophically there that she touches on that I find a lot of dealers either don't know or don't have success in implementing. And as a result, the job of collecting and buy here, pay here becomes a lot more difficult than it might have to be. And so this will be a really rich thing. And I've been looking through some of the information that Jim and Kristen have been passing back and forth. And it's like, it's going to be a pretty rich conversation. She's so good. Yeah. They just really have the mindset that I think people need to hear about. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. Let's bring it. Ready? Yep. Here comes Mr. Casey. Hello, Casey. Good. Happy Friday. Thank you. Happy Friday. I end up calling the podcast today. The topic or the title rather Casey was brainstorming aftermath. like just kind of recovering from the storm here. So we had, we had a brainstorming session yesterday. So it was in our V eight plus track. We did our first mastermind in what is going to be a series. We've already agreed Casey to schedule the next one, you know, three or four weeks out and come back and continue the conversation. But you were kind enough in that session to allow us to, I call it bear your soul. We took all the numbers of all the history, inventory, sales, underwriting, and all the stuff. portfolio performance, and we were able to project you know, your, your twenty twenty five business plan, kind of the strategy and so on. And so that's what we took, folks. We had two dealers there. We had two of our coaches or moderators were there. Your CPA, Greg, was there to be part of the conversation. So other other dealers. And yesterday we just presented a ton of information to kind of help people understand what we were working from and what direction we were going with the data. And I think the big things that the big takeaway for people, One, I think people saw the NRV eight thing who actually saw it, witnessed the data. They thought most dealers don't have the kind of data you've got Casey. So I think where we could start on that is let's go back to when you and I met a couple of years ago. And if you can, and I didn't prepare you for this part of it, but if you think about where, where you were at, like at that stage of your business and kind of what you were, what you felt like you were missing and maybe then fast forward to today and kind of what's different now versus two years ago for you. Yeah, I mean, I knew that I wanted to grow, but I also knew that I was missing putting a lot of the data together, honestly, to make sure that during that growth, it was going to be successful in the areas, you know, identify your areas where you're strong or where you're weak, where you need to focus, because as you know, With growth, if you don't do it in a careful way, you can mess up. And sometimes in this business, you don't find out until it's two years down the road how bad you've messed up. Good point. Putting a lot of the strategies in place to do it correctly. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we were talking before we started the podcast, it's like, you know, we we've observed that before before stepping into this that there was you know casey was knee deep and working in his business um but seeing that there's you know there are things I want to be able to grow I want to be able to do these things and so that you made a decision to work on your business and take time aside. And for the most part, it's like Jim and you have been meeting either weekly or twice a week. and spending an hour and working on the business during that hour. How hard was that shift for you to do? Because I hear from dealers all the time. It's like, I'm so busy. I don't have time to do the thing. So what was it that you had to do or how difficult was that shift really? Some of it, you just kind of have to do it. I mean, yeah, I can look up at the cameras or you see the phones, the background going off and there's always stuff to do. It make sure all the cars are moving where they need to go and all but you just have to do it and and set that time if it's twice a week once a week whatever to let that go you need to work on these things to understand the numbers and where you're going I mean because if you just keep doing that all day you don't know what's going on in the background um And I think I think most dealers are probably guilty of it, but it's just that I decided, hey, I dedicated myself to it and show up for these meetings and week after week. And over time, it's, you know, we've been able to put together a lot of valuable information. So you've you're I'm sorry. Oh, I just would say that, you know, when you talk about working on the business, I can say that Casey and I started out in a place where, you know, our meetings early were kind of figuring out, know what what makes sense to assemble first and the thing I've observed in casey over the last couple years is he's made significant investments in his business technology invested in some software spend money you know on underwriting solutions and outsourcing bdc as an example like made substantial investments and I think the other thing, Casey, that I kind of see is that, you know, you're in our meetings, Michelle, he's often, you know, like a lot of the deals we work with, he'll have to take a phone call or stop because there's a deal pending and he needs to make a decision on something. So that's natural. You're in the building, in the business, but you're allocating that time. And I would say more recently, our meetings have shifted to where, you know, at the start of the month, We work together to pull together the numbers from the prior month and do the updated kind of figures. And so that's informative for both of us, I would say. But when I look at where you're at now versus that, it's like you're now, you have enough data, you have enough history to be able to analyze all those things, including those investments I mentioned. Like you can go back and see, are they paying off or not paying off? And you now have enough information to make better decisions going forward. Do you agree with that assessment? Yes, I do. Yeah. Yeah. He's just got so much. And of course, we went through a lot of it. We've we've got underwriting history for more than a year. We've got, you know, all kinds of inventory history, sales deal structure. And you can see across look at we've even got static pool results year over year. And so you can start to see that you can connect the dots between what's working, what's not working. You know, we made certain pivots, or he made certain pivots, you know, at the time I met him. And so I think now the good news is you have strung together enough information to be able to make better decisions and kind of, like I say, know what's working and what's a good investment and what's not. So we're obviously in support of your success. Go ahead. And, you know... I, you're, and I was talking, I was joking around with you both before we started that you're a numbers nerd like Jim is. I mean, you get excited about, oh, you know, being able to track things there. And, and so, uh, where I kind of wanted to go was first off is, was it a hard thing to for I mean I you know obviously to make the decision to invest time in your business and understand those pieces um was that was that your most difficult decision to or the most difficult thing to do for everything that you that you've gone through I mean has it been really hard to give the business two hours a week no no it's not it's not hard but you mean you just but it's You have to lock for that time, right? I mean, you have to realize there's other things you've got to set out to do. There's always something you can think about to be doing. And, you know, if you need to take a phone call, it's fine and what we have to do. But, no, I knew I needed to do it. I knew I needed to do it. Yeah. To understand where I'm going to head with it down the road. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we're always, like – ringing the bell, leading the charge, whatever, is that you can't change something that you don't understand. And we see an awful lot that dealers are, that they are making assumptions of what's happening or what the trends are and all of that. And that that what's so rich about it is, is, you know, being able to string together data for a few years gives you a really clear picture about what's true and what is not true. And so if you run into hiccups along the way, something's off, your numbers are off. You usually know where to start to look at what to fix and in a much more educated way. Yeah. And that, that, and there's a big difference. You know, I did it for years of, most of us can um speak for myself at least um you know your your down payment your average term your costing car all that kind of thing but when you start getting into um repo ratios and the amount of time loans are staying on the books and there's just a lot that you need to be accurate about I would say the assumptions need to be accurate to primary forecast and that's where doing the digging in and taking the time and when you know you start digging in you start uncovering other things and or maybe possibly the way you're putting that into the system is it giving you the best output so it just good some time to get that together That reminds me of a couple of things. One is the thing about garbage in, garbage out. The results are only as good as the effort that we put into putting clean information in there. And as I said, I get picked on for being a data nerd, but doggone it, numbers matter. And this idea of the fact that we were able to show people that in twenty twenty four, Casey, we had seven hundred fifty dollars across your entire multimillion dollar portfolio that we couldn't identify. So I think that's still bothering you. We'll find that money. But I think the point is because we've got dealers in our V.A. groups that are off by half a million dollars. And the problem there is they don't they don't know. It's like they don't they didn't know before we asked them to reconcile it and V.A. that it was really maybe even important. But I think the point is and when I say half a million, I'm talking about every month. Their numbers are they can't identify half a million dollars. I'm like that. that back to the management thing about you can't manage what you can't measure. And in that dealer's case, do they know? Does that half a million actually getting charged off? Is it going in the bank? I mean, what we need to know. And so I think that's why it starts. Let's identify all the moving pieces and make sure we can know what's what and what's moving where. And so we've been able to do that in your case. So I think you've got good software and it helps us to produce the report. We worked a while to get through exactly the right reports. formatted so that you'd have the information that you need. So I'm, I'm really excited about, you know, the future where you can go. It feels like to be your well-positioned, you're very healthy. You're, you're, you're, you've got access to capital and you're, you're in a good market. You've got the ability to grow. So that kind of takes me to one of the things that came up in our conversation yesterday. Some of the, I think it was Ken Yang, you know, one of our, our moderators in waiting, as I call them, is he asked the question about, you know, so kind of to what end growth for what? That was a question I was going to ask. So talk to me about like, what is the strategy for you? Like when you think about going into twenty twenty five, what's the short list of things that you're looking at? What is yeah. Yeah. What is the plan? But it's just like but grow. You could say grow. But why? but why? You actually had a guest on not long ago and he had a good answer to that. He said, what else am I going to do? But in all seriousness, I want to maximize the potential. At least at this, I've been doing this a long time and I feel like I can do more. I can do more with one location. I know right now a lot of people want to get into multiple location thing and grow, grow. Not that I know that I can do more here. Let me give you another answer. You want another answer? It was good. It was good. I'm going to add another one. So the next time somebody asks you, I think another opportunity for you is to optimize your capacity. And what I mean by that is kind of in another way to say what you just said is, You have a location, you have a team, you have the capacity to produce more. So the first thing I'd be looking to do is optimize what can be produced by what the investments you've already made. People, technology, all the systems that you have there. I would first just be looking to make sure that, look, if I'm going to show up five days a week and do this, I want to get as much out of my time and as much out of my investments as I possibly can. And your team members, yeah. and so this is another thing that I think you know is part of the the thing so I think it's just you know so I think that's part of where your data is going to help you to know are we optimizing are we if you look at just your total productivity across all the people on your team which by the way I think you're in a great position now to consider a twenty group I think you ought to think about joining a twenty group I think that would be an appropriate investment for you because you're that they dig in deeper on those kind of things analysis per employee and some of those kind of things would be you know around optimization so I think you know they they just kind of dig deeper and some of you can still stay in v-eight though absolutely most of our dealers who have come over to v-eight who are in a twenty group they're still in the twenty group they just it scratches a different itch But I think it's both appropriate and useful. But I do think that you're going to want to look at something like that because I do think optimizing what you've got now is appropriate. I think when I look at your operation, I would also tell you from my perspective that you're in a position to gently broaden your underwriting. Nothing drastic. Just start to ease into that because you have a high number of leads. you have a kind of a narrow underwriting guideline that you've been comfortable with. But when I look at your collections results, I say, you could handle more, a few more customers that are maybe a little lower down payment, whatever the criteria is that you feel comfortable adjusting in that moment. But I would say that's one of the opportunities for you is to be able to take on more business without spending another nickel. And so, Jim, you basically just, in different words, said what Casey said. It's like, I'm looking to maximize the potential, potential probably of the business, the potential of the location, potential of your team, potential of all of those things. We've been at Casey's dealership. It's a good piece of property. It's really high visibility and all of that. And I've had the privilege of being able to to walk the hall with Casey. I want to ask you, you know, I know that in the last or in twenty twenty four, you actually did grow in twenty twenty four. And so remind me what that percentage did you guys. Twenty three percent. Twenty three percent. In volume. In volume. Of sales. Yes. So that's, you know, congratulations on that. That's that's a that's a pretty good amount of growth. What is your goal for this year? I would say the same Jim. Well, back then there's the numbers. I didn't calculate it that way. What the goal was as far as we do know, we do by actual number of cars sold, but the percentage wise, I would say it was to be at least that much. Yeah. And I think that's part of why we're going to continue the conversation next month, Michelle, is that what we've done so far is say, OK, if we sustained the pace of growth, if we had a twenty three percent growth, you know, year over year from twenty three to twenty four, if we carried that same growth percentage into twenty five. This is where it would land. But now we're asking people to come to a mastermind conversation and say, poke holes in this. Tell us why we can't grow twenty three percent again this year. That's that's my objective, Casey, is to figure out what is a reasonable target. And so it's kind of like and then it goes back to limitations like and this is where I think it's important for you to be comfortable, especially, you know, this is what will happen if you go into a twenty group. You're going to bare your soul in a group of fifteen, twenty dealers, whatever. And you're going to have those numbers and you guys are going to challenge one another in the same way. And so I think what we hope to do in a mastermind environment with people who have an interest in your success, they are in a confidential environment and they're going to be able to help you because they know the business say, Casey, have you thought about this? What's going to you know, how are you going to handle this part of the growth or whatever? So I think that's where this will go in terms of conversation and way. I feel like with our mastermind track, the way we tend to do it virtually is just to stay on the subject until you as the guest in that mastermind feels like you've got enough information to go back and to go to work on the thing. So it's about just inviting people to say. Different points of view, too. Yeah. Asking questions. It's like, oh, I haven't looked at it that way. And you got some tips yesterday for things that could be done and to improve the business. But I think for me, it's like the conversation I want to bring to this and other kind of mastermind environment. And it's what we do in a lot of our Viet groups is like, how do we, How do we help you, in this case, get better? How do we help us achieve, reach the target that we set? But I think we first have to have good numbers to be able to set a good target and know that it's achievable, right? So I think that's part of why I went deep into the numbers yesterday. Give people a feel for... You know, there's a lot of history here and there's a lot of stuff that we're building this plan on. Doesn't mean it's perfect. Doesn't mean we won't find some stuff that could be tweaked in the modeling that we've done. I just think it's important for people to understand there's quite a bit of history we're leaning on here in order to build this. you know, a projection and set some targets. So I think for you, Casey, it's, it's a couple of things, you know, as somebody who's served as your coach and I hope as a mentor is like, I think this question of why is something I would urge you to, when you have a little windshield time, you find yourself, you know, driving down the highway, a little time to yourself, ask yourself, Really, what do you want your life to look like? Forget the numbers and receivables and cash flow and P&Ls and debt ratios and just think, what do I want my life to look like in two years and three years? You have your kids, they're young. This business has the capacity to produce for you. almost any kind of lifestyle that you choose. But I think in order for your business to go in the direction that's going to serve that, you got to get real clear about what is that vision. You and I don't talk about that enough, but I do think it's something that It's really important because it's that so that you, you know, when you have that clear vision about this is where, where, or this is what my life looks like, then you have a much better ability to answer when someone says why. why are you going where you're going? And that is, it's, it's essential to, to, um, you know, and, and part of it is, is removing ego from the why I want to be the biggest, I'm going to be the best. I want to, you know, all of this, but it's like, they're having a reason that is beyond just, um, money yeah or just numbers or whatever and that and having a young family and all of that is is part of that did you have something else you wanted to add to that well I just think it's it's hard because the emotion comes up and this has happened with other clients and casey and I barely touched on this a few times but I think when I think about there's the success of your business and then we can when we can add to that the success of your family life mm-hmm Right? Because that's a real thing. We see dealers that are just stuck in their business. And so this whole thing about- They're in there six days a week. I've been in classrooms, Casey, where we speak to a group of dealers and I'll ask them, I said, you know, do you own your business or does your business own you? Right. And so I think it's one of these things you've met with dealers. And so I think it's we want to try to get to a place where are we navigating our business and is it serving us to to help us create the kind of lifestyle, you know, and family life that we want to have. So I think this is totally not we're expected to go this morning. But in thinking about you as you're kind of transitioning into whether it's twenty groups or whatever is next for you, I just think the more that you can incorporate those answers into your own strategy building, the more your business is going to serve you. Yeah. And it's interesting you bring that up because yeah, if you had asked me something, ten years ago, the answer would have been different now, but you're right. Now that I do have young children, you know, Yeah. I see myself spending more and more time there. So yeah. Yes. Getting that balancing act. Sure. So you're going to appreciate that. I think we've got a mastermind scheduled for February that's on being an absentee. Absenteeism, yeah. I mean, so like, how do you start to make that shift? I did want to share something that George Swatt, who we just, or Spatz, sorry, who we just really appreciate. This is where the Swatt came in. He's like, a SWOT analysis is something that helps with growth and management in general. That's an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And I think it's been a while since we've done one of those with you. But the first day we met you. Yeah, that was the first thing we did with you. We did. We did. Yeah. And so thank you for everything. It's around the wall. Yeah. Thank you for the reminder because doing a SWOT analysis, if those of you who are not familiar with them, you can Google what a SWOT analysis is. It's a really good thing to go through as a business owner to go through with your team too. We do it with the business owner, not the team, but we do it with the business owner. It's about what are you perceiving, but it's a good idea for every dealership to go through something like that with their team because you may... you may come up with and this is off the you know not where we anticipated the subject to go but you may come up with things that have been in your blind spot that other other of your team members are aware of and then it's like oh that's something that I should be looking at or oh I didn't think about that as a success or oh you know whatever so and it also helps the the team to feel more um invested in the success of the business when you as a team can can like you know, look at how are we doing and, you know, what can we improve on? But thank you, George, because that's that's really besides numbers. Doing that and understanding in a and, you know, yearly, every other year, whatever is doing an in-depth SWOT analysis of your business is really helpful outside of the numbers. You're going to get information about culture. You're going to get information about, you know, your processes. You're going to get information about a lot of things that are not measured in a spreadsheet. Yeah. Yeah. And all those investments we talked about, I would just say, Casey, is we kind of transition even in our coaching engagement with you and you kind of go into what's next for you. I think I would say that the opportunity is something that came up in our conversation yesterday. The thing about systems and you've invested a lot in systems. And now I think your opportunity is to take those systems and document them in a way that. You'd have a better chance for somebody else to step in and open the playbook and follow. This is how we, whatever it is, you know, this is how we make a decision about reconditioning a car, whatever all those pieces are. Those are opportunities for you to create systems in a way that the business depends on you less. If something were to happen to you or you were going to cruise for six months, how would things function? It can happen. People do that. People do that. But you have a very healthy, successful business, I would say. And so the other thing I would just say is as you transition here is like the threats, like what would be the threats? Identify the potential threats to your business. We've talked to them recently, and I think it's time for us to revisit the thing about what we call gaping holes. Like what are the vulnerabilities in our business? Just day-to-day operations. You remember going through that like years ago? Yeah. And so I think it's probably a good time for us to revisit that and make sure that we have appropriately plugged the holes in terms of, you know, where the vulnerabilities lie. And that, and so we've got those plugged in a way that, that, that, leakage is reasonably prevented whether you're in the building or not okay and so now uh we you know that's a big thing to make sure that from a protection standpoint the future of your your own because you're you're you're committed in this business you're heavily invested this is where you make your living and so I think we want to make sure that um you know we've positioned you to have um to protect you know what you've created and so I think there's some things that we can help to do to make sure that those holes are plugged and and uh so I look forward to doing that Yeah, we'll keep our audience, you know, updated as we kind of go. And just, you know, when you look at you, you experienced a twenty three percent increase last year. And I'm I'm going to make an assumption. You can correct me if I'm wrong, is that that is due to understanding your numbers and getting the right software systems in place to be able to help you with that. Correct. And then following the processes we've set up. Correct. Nice. I love that. So, you know, we will be watching as you increase that another twenty three percent, which is, you know, look at it over a couple of years. That's that's a pretty good sized improvement on from just, you know, I just ran the numbers because I'm a numbers nerd over here, but I ran the numbers and your portfolio in dollars is actually up by more than that. We were counting volume of sales, which, you know, the volume of sales translates into car payments and, you know, money in the bank. So so that's it's appropriate to look at all of them. I just think, you know, it just feels to me like this mastermind is going to help you. And I would just say to touch on some one thing that Michelle said, as we step forward in the mastermind, V eight plus meetings, twenty group meetings, wherever you sit, do the best you can to put ego aside. Because what we find is when dealer says, I do it this way because I've always done it this way and I want to continue to do it this way. We miss the opportunity to soak in stuff that other people are doing. And so that sometimes involves putting ego aside and accepting that somebody else may have a little different way to. to do the thing. And so we've got to be open to those ideas. And that's, that's so important. I mean, and, and when you really fully understand your numbers and you understand like all the metrics and someone says, what about this? Then you can be able to answer it in a very educated fashion. And so you may teach someone else in their questioning about, I know it because of this and this and this and this, and this isn't why I've chosen not to do this. You know, we talked about like one of the things came up is reinsurance and you like knew exactly why you I know you and Jim talked an awful lot about it, but it's like the why of why decisions are made around different topics. And that's like really, really awesome. And, and I love when you, it's sometimes we use the word ego, but it's being coachable and, and, you know, ego car dealers are all going to have a level of ego. That's just part, you know, you've just got this thing ingrained, but it's about being coachable, which is just really, you know, you can't, you can't get better with, um, unless you're willing to learn. And, um, and that can be through the numbers that can be through a coach that can be through a group that can be through, you know, uh, there's so much information out there and the worldwide web. Does anyone ever refer to it that way? Google, I'm going to say the Oracle, um, or, and now it's chat GPT, but I mean, there's so much that, that we have access to, to learn and to set aside, um, that part of ego that that keeps you from being coachable and you know like it's just because it's the way you've always done it doesn't mean it's the best way or the only way of doing something so but back to just kind of wrap up on the whole thing about you you won't know if you made a shift you wouldn't know if it really was better or worse if you didn't have the history and the results to tie it all together so it's the thing about you can't manage what you can't And it's funny because a lot of dealers were like, there's more money in the bank account. And it's like, that is not an indicator. Because, you know, you could be. There's a lot of reasons that can happen. There's a lot of reasons why that can happen. And, you know, yeah. And there's a lot of reasons why what money is in the bank account is actually less than it should be. or whatever so yeah there's so much we want you to have money in the bank absolutely and I I I'm gonna like pat myself uh george again we do swat analysis for our dealer clients um george is in the florida area and does reinsurance um to make sure that we offer the right services which is amazing I'm going to incorporate michelle's term going forward we are blind spot indicators because you don't know what you don't know what you don't know. And you don't, you're not asking questions. You can't ask questions around something you don't know. Yeah. And, and I, we probably did this Casey when we met you, but it's, it's common when we do a SWOT analysis, we want to extract from you the things that you feel are strengths, weaknesses, et cetera. And then when we get to the end, I typically say, well, here's one that I see that you may not be thinking about. Right. Yeah. And so that's kind of, and usually when we do these with a, with a new client is we all go, And sometimes we'll split it up. Sometimes Jim's like just working with a dealer, but I'll go talk to the team members. And it's like, so what are you seeing? You know, what do you think is, and bringing that to the meeting too, sometimes it's like, that's why it's, it can be such a good exercise to go through. And sometimes if you can find someone who can go through a SWOT analysis without the dealer being present, is a really good thing too. I could imagine, yeah. Yeah. It's helpful to hear from the team, hey, the dealer principal's a jerk, and I don't know if I'm going to make it through. I don't know if I'm going to be here tomorrow. We've had those conversations, and so when we go into our final SWOT analysis with the dealer, it's like, you have a threat here that you should probably be aware of, that there's a mutiny. Yeah. All right. Casey, thank you so much. You're welcome, Joanne. Yeah. I'm going to put you backstage and we'll just say goodbye properly after we close out the podcast. All right. Thank you. All right. Good conversation. You know, dealers out there, if there is a call to action, it's measure and, and know what you're measuring and making sure that, you know, what you're measuring is clean. And so that's a huge one. And then the second thing is, is well, actually along with that measuring, because I come from a world where I've been asked to help be like, what are the trends? What are the things? And I'm not a spreadsheet nerd like Jim is, but it's like, If you got enough data that you can string together and see, it really is eye-opening. It's like, oh, this happens every year around this time, or this happens in this cadence whenever this is going on. And those things, the longer you can stream together your data, the more educated your decisions for your business will be. And then the second thing is do a SWOT analysis. Even if it's just you sitting down and doing like a four square on a piece of paper, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and just what you're thinking. And then talk to your managers, talk to your team, whatever. And see, you don't have to tell them what you already put down. Because then, you know, sometimes they're just going to parrot that back. But it's like, what do you guys think? Great exercise to do. Inevitably, what we write on the weakness section becomes an opportunity, right? It usually is. Yeah. Yeah. But I think dealers first have to just do a self-assessment, make sure they're honest with themselves about what the... Absolutely. And I think just in order to really improve the business, we got to kind of that thing about we... we've got to be able to wrangle this business and kind of tame it, you know? And so that starts with just making sure we know where we're at. Oh, absolutely. Getting good measurements. Yeah, absolutely. All right, everybody. We really appreciate you making us a part of your day and, and hope you guys have an amazing weekend. It is Friday. And then the week after that on Wednesday, we have Kristen Acosta from Iowa. Yeah, and Casey actually, he ran a podcast for a few years himself, and he's just starting it up again in his industry, which is for people that are in marketing. So any of our audience that are interested in learning more about marketing and what a CMO does, that's going to be a really good conversation. And a lot of dealers out there do their own marketing, so it'll be really rich for you as well. Hey, everybody, have a great rest of your day, and we will see you on Wednesday.
