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. Hello. Good morning. Friday, right? It is. Happy Friday. Welcome to the morning show. Yeah. And to the Utah studio. You feeling well today, Michelle? Much better. Good. I'm just checking on you. Yeah. Just making sure you... This is sort of like public check-in. Yeah. How are you doing, Michelle? Are you feeling good today? I'm feeling great today. Okay, good. That's all. Yeah. Excited for... Today, the morning show is a great topic and just got a lot happening. We're winding down the last of the prep for the next certification course and for the conference that's coming up. And so those of you who are listening that are going to be there will be in booth one twenty one and come and have a chat. Say hello. I'd love to see you. Absolutely. Yeah. Some fun ideas, and there's a contest there. People can come see us, come see our founding sponsors, and have a chance to win a bucket of money. A bucket of money. Cash. It's Vegas, you know, and we know that it will be helpful, but just so you all know, yeah, it involves you going to each of our founding sponsors' booths, and you've got to be there to win. Yeah, you've got to be there to fill out the thing. Do they have to be present to win the game? By five p.m., everything has to be in on that Wednesday, the last expo. And then we're doing the drawing at five forty-five. But do they have to be in the building at five forty-five? They have to be there to get their prize. So we will text them. But if they're not. So you've got like five minutes and then we're going to go. We'll announce the rules then. Yeah. So let's make sure those rules are. Yeah. But anyway, we're giving away a pile of money. Yeah. So it'd be to help for those who suffered losses at the casinos while in town. So yeah, there's a good reason. Only one, only one entry per person. It's a get yourself home cash bundle. So, so a couple of news items I got, um, I want to make sure and mention that we said on Wednesday, Jimmy Rambo has moved over to LHPH Capital. Super really happy for them for that. Yeah. Great move. Great addition. I'm curious to find out if that means Jimmy will ultimately be relocating to Southern California from his home in South Carolina. Going from one coast to the other. I don't know. It's interesting to find out if they're going to just kind of let him stay planted. He obviously has a lot of relationships out east. Oh, yeah. Most of the people that we know that work with LHPH Capital are are in the California area. But, um, uh, from what I understand is that, uh, as I was reading through, I was on their website, uh, yesterday and he's, um, over by her pay here, they're, they're branching out and to buy her pay here in their capital. providers so good so he's there as the expert it was what it sounds like for the buy here pay here branch of um capital yeah mr lawrence tim lawrence had shared with me at one point that they were starting to do some buy here pay here in addition to their lease here payer so that's uh that's exciting news uh for the industry that's a yeah one more solid provider to be able to offer a solution so And we know them. We know the people behind the product, and that's one of the reasons why they are one of our founding sponsors. And we know Jimmy well. He has been very supportive of the White Hat movement. And so for those who don't know, Jimmy's had a long career at Spartan Financial, and so he's now moving over to LHBH Capital. So all good. And then our other news was Buckeye Dealership Consulting has renamed to Buckeye Risk. Services, do I have that right? I didn't look it up. Risk management. Risk management, I think. Those of you who are familiar with Buckeye, they're a pretty well-known provider. They're one of the... the founding sponsors or the founders of buy here, pay here United. And, um, and I, and I get it's, uh, there, there was a, uh, a video that Rob Fox, who, um, his he's like the, the head of, uh, Buckeye. and it's about just being clear about who they are and what they're doing. And I was like, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I appreciate that. I'm hoping to get the word out on that. They're well-known, so you can look up Buckeye. There's a press release and all of that. But it's just they're choosing something that's more reflective of what they do. So it's still Buckeye, but it's not Buckeye Dealership Consulting. It's Buckeye Risk Management. Okay, got it. Okay, cool. And I hope I got that right. If I didn't, someone please pop it in there. Yeah. All good. Shall we dive into our topic then? Yes. Anything else? No, not at all. I ran across this and actually brought it to your attention. This was a post on... What day? It was June sixth. It was, yeah, last week. And it was a really, really good post. And I appreciated so much about what it spoke about because it really aligned an awful lot as well about a lot of the things we talk about. And our... perspective of the industry right and um and it just yeah and so so there were a lot of names uh buckeye is actually one of the ones that was named in there a lot of names that are uh companies that are named if you want to know all the company names you know, get in there cause it's a beautiful endorsement. But there was meat in what was talked about. Yeah. And I think as much as anything, what I, so, so the post that Michelle is referring to is on, you can go into the BHPH success group. If you're not currently a member of that and you're in the BHPH or LHPH industry, go to Facebook, look up BHPH success, get into that group. Once you're in there, you can look for a, Jeffrey Owings, J-E-F-F-R-E-Y, and find Jeffrey Owings did a post on June six. And so we're referring to that. We're not going to read it necessarily in its entirety today, but it's, so what you may not know, Michelle, is since this post came out, I've had people in our V-Eight group say that they knew him, like he's part of a V-Eight or a Dealer Twenty group that they're a member of. And so some of them have said, You know, he's forty years in business, very experienced when he speaks. You know, he's one of those people that people just really tune in and listen to what he's got to say. Beautiful. And I can see why. I'm glad that he's speaking. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad that he spoke up on this and shared it publicly. And it really is kind of his perspective on how the industry's changed and to an extent how the industry hasn't changed and kind of how. first of all, he's just enthused about, you know, what can happen. Yeah. What's to come. What, what the, what the, what the topography looks like right now. And, and, you know, I, I really did appreciate in the, for one, for years that he's been around since the beginning of buy here, pay here pretty much. So, and so, you know, he's like been in the trenches with the likes of, uh, some of the bigger names and by her pay here. And, um, and I, I just, I really, really, you know, when, when, when, uh, when a business, cause we've seen one of the things he mentions is that some of the biggest names are no longer in the business. Right. And, um, and you know, there's a lot of reasons why you, and we, we can talk about some of the reasons why, um, uh, And I would venture to say that those that have weathered the storm of what we've watched happening are those that are not entrenched in the way they always do things. Good. I think, and let me, just for the benefit of our listeners, let me read at least the first paragraph of what his post says. It'll give you a feel for the flavor of directions he's going. Yeah. Forty years at Owings Auto Center, and let me tell you, the last two or three years have been the roughest I've seen in a buy here, pay here game. We've watched giants fall, dealers with decades of success, alongside plenty of smaller lots who didn't make it through this brutal stretch. If you're reading this, you're one of the survivors. Give yourself a pat on the back because that's no small feat. So that's basically what he's really kind of leading with is this idea that People have fallen by the wayside. He is saying, you know, if you survive this, then you are, you know, you're in a position to really garner a lot of business and grow from here because it's definitely been rough. A couple of perspectives on his comments about the last two, three years have been the roughest. We saw Steve Carstens from SGC, Shilson Goldberg and Chung. He did an article a while back where they released their benchmarks or their industry data from last year. And he said for as long as they've been tracking it, last, twenty twenty four was the heaviest charge off year that they've seen in the industry. I don't know what measurement he's using, but just from his perspective, the most the roughest year in terms of charge off. I can also tell you, Michelle, just last night, we had a V eight dealer group meeting and I noticed that we're looking at interest coverage in our, in our group. And again, I think all but one of the members in that particular group were underwater January through May. Okay. So it says that we're still not through it. Dealers are currently experiencing, at least in that small group. I'm not saying that's across the industry. I'm just saying there's a group that heard last night that I pointed out on the screen that it was only one member that was in the black. in terms of their interest coverage, which is an indicator that we're still, you know, riding a bit of a downturn in terms of our charge-off experience. And I think it just... First of all, you have to be aware, right? You have to see and know kind of what's going on. And then that lets you kind of make pivot. Jeffrey goes on to talk about AI. Go ahead. Well, I, and to that, Jeff is also a member of a twenty group and being a member of some kind of peer group also helps you keep optics wider. And so you're able to see and, and, and shift and all of that. One of the things that I love chat GBT. um, the, the, one of the talking points that came up was like, we watched giants fall. What happened and why? And it said, you know, when you reflect on the last two to three years, there are, here's some of the major things that have happened. Inflation, capital shifts have been big regulatory pressure and operating fatigue too on those. And then it says the thin, the thinning of the herd has also exposed structural weakness. Now, is this coming from him? This is coming from ChatGPT from, you know, like some talking points. And I was like, the thinning of the herd has exposed structural weakness. Amen. Yeah. And it's like, but it's also created space. Yeah. space for new dealers to come in. And hopefully those new dealers are observant and open to learning from the mistakes of the giants and the smalls that have not made it, not weathered the storm so that they can not make the same mistakes. And I love that it was like, inflation is a thing. I mean, like what's happening in our economy is, is, and capital shifts. We, we, you've said capital shifts that you've watched in your time and, and, um, buy here, pay here. I mean, you had your own dealership and you've been in this for. Yeah. I was a dealer. Yeah. Yeah. During the, the capital shifts, you watch people, capital providers, uh, ebb and flow and they come in and they come out. And when they go out, there's like a culling a lot of times that happens. And then they see that the people that are, you know, it's like they'll watch and it's like, it's booming. And then they, they come back in and I just, sometimes it makes me wonder is, is there a correlation between them coming in and coming out and, as far as dealers like this culling this thing that happens and let me let me offer jim's perspective to add to uh jeffrey owings so as somebody who's observed that cap capital ebb and flow I think it there's there's an element in this that I think jeffrey's touching on doesn't speak to it necessarily that specifically but why does capital ebb and flow it's a really broad uh look when their surplus money on wall street they go looking for investment opportunities and they see that the subprime segment is has got a lot of margin in it a lot of opportunity they underestimate often the operational requirements associated with managing accounts of folks who have credit trouble The end. They just, they underestimate. Was that a mic drop? They come in. Okay. Yeah. They, they think they're going to make a lot of money and they place a lot of money and it doesn't take long before the operational pressures of that show their, show their head. Right. It's like the, you begin to, recognize the demands of this. And this is why I think it's another element why, why this is why I think local dealers can serve a buy here, pay your customer better than some private equity group for, as an example, it's because you, you've got to be able to get in the weeds and work with that customer and keep engagement and all these kinds of things that are really required in order to support that customer through a three-year contract as an example. And so this is why I think it all kind of ties back together. And I think we're seeing too, we're seeing dealers recognize in a way that for the first time, The importance of getting their operational house in order. Yeah. Right? Well, and I know just on that capital markets coming into the space, we've talked to numerous people that are like, we're thinking about getting into the space. This is our background. And I've listened to you like, okay, it's a great place to make money. And? And? And be aware that it's very different than other businesses. It's not a hands-off business. What I typically tell people that are exploring the industry, and I've seen it in my career. Michelle, you've seen it in the time that you've been with me five or six years now. You watch me. work with clients and we've seen people come in who have abundance of capital and they they come in and they they they might engage us for a little bit of coaching help on the front end we point them in a direction and then and they take off running off I I just think there's so much more to learn you haven't asked the really important questions and so it's like you you you take off running in this industry and you're going to quickly find out I'm afraid you get stung financially in the process of doing that and so that's the part that I'm just I'm watchful about it's like We, we also see that, you know, it used to be, and one of the conversations we had last night, and I'll be speaking on this at the, an idea thing was a week after next. So on profitability. So it's so interesting in our space and we'll get back to Jeffrey's post here, but, but the, the tie-ins for what he's talking about from, from my own perspective to kind of intersect and kind of intertwine with what he's talking about is the, When we look at profitability, I used to be able to say, and I would even, if I'm meeting a new dealer and we're working through cashflow modeling on the screen, I will tell them, look, in our business, we can almost take profitability for granted. I realize how ridiculous that sounds coming out of my mouth for somebody who's been in a business and struggling to get gross profit or struggling to be profitable. In our business, we have plenty of profit. Why? Because we, customer doesn't fight us on price. We don't fight us on interest rates. We have plenty of margin of markup. It's a question of the cash flow. So we're typically I'm saying that in the context of we need to map out your cash flow. Profitability will be fine. In fact, we'll have so much profit early that we're going to have a tax problem. We don't manage the cash part of that. And so this is kind of the piece that I think, you know, is something that and looking at with our dealers now, it's like we we're seeing lenders. press dealers harder at the time of renewal about profitability and some of that kind of stuff. And so I think it's just one more indication that the, the, the market has shifted. Um, and dealers who it used to be Michelle that, you know, we had so much margin for error that dealers could sort of fly by the seat of their pants and, and almost, uh, be successful in spite of themselves. Well, it is in spite of themselves and it's to their detriment. Sometimes with this situation. And then one last thing before we, I want to get to the AI piece of Jeffrey's post and I'll just read that paragraph that he wrote on AI. But you know, when I look at that and I think we met with a dealer earlier in the week who's, and we, we started digging into the thing about let's, let's establish some enterprise value for you. Let's, let's establish some elements in your business so that one, your business is more sustainable. Two, If something were to happen to you, the business could continue to function in your absence, right? And then the last would be if you should decide to sell, we've got a business that's got some actual market value. Before we go on to AI, I'd like to just kind of touch on something that he spoke about before he went into AI. And he says, for the first time in our industry's history, we've got resources and synergy like never before. That's true. True. I'd like to see more synergy. Yes. I'd like to see more collaboration. You're starting to see that happen. We're also kind of watching what does synergy look like? Does synergy look like a gated synergy? Good question. Or is synergy look like an open synergy? Because I am seeing gated synergy happening where it's like very specific people are working with very specific people. It doesn't mean they're not adding value. It doesn't mean that they're not adding value, but it does start to create. It's like, you know, we can create this thing. And the open synergy is where it's like working with everybody. Everybody's welcome to the table. And I'm watching some of the synergy thing. There are some that don't see how... beneficial that is to dealers to be synergistic with other vendors, and they're closing things off. And there are a lot of dealers that are angry about it. That's right. We've seen that with certain providers. That was a pretty hot topic in this success group a week or two ago. And so, yeah, that's a good example. I think we're certainly going to, certainly at White Hat Way, we're going to be emphasizing collaboration for the benefit of the industry, not just the dealers that are in our community, our group, right? It's like for the benefit of the industry. Because there are, you know, this whole, the whole idea of like a true, pure synergy in the industry is everyone is welcome at the table. Right. It just, it just is. And it's like, so when we see that there are DMSs that are closing off. Yeah. We won't work with anyone outside of our own product now that we've created. It's just, and it's like, it leaves people in a lurch. And then when you also, it's like, if the closed synergy, it's like you only have access to this. Yeah, and listen, these are for-profit companies we're talking about, so obviously they're going to look out for their margins and their market share. It's just that we believe that's possible to do that and still be collaborative and to create solutions that are for the benefit of dealers. So that's the part that we're just going to continue to highlight those people who are collaborative and who are… you know, kind of creating some solutions that are not restricted. I have a background in tech, not an extensive background, but I understand tech a bit and I understand open, open, shoot, integrations. Like it's, it's, it's that, that, that you can easily build a, structure in your business that allows for open integrations. It's possible. So when those, when it's like, no, we don't have the integration, it's like, it's... That's the part that, you know, in our podcast that's in production, it'll get released soon. Poor Alan Keat has met with me and we started in the BHB market watch. And we talked about some of those elements. And he referred to the industry being fragmented, which in my definition of fragmented industry, it's like, you know, there's this DMS and there's this provider and they just, they don't play nice together. And so you've also got the fragmentation of the, independent dealer space because these dealers are independent and they have different business approaches so it's it is a little bit fragmented but I think that's all the more reason for us to be able to collaborate and so I think ai is is a big um it's a it's a large opportunity yeah well and that's so read that quote yeah yeah let me read a paragraph because I really like how he how he brought this into that article I was like because he's like boom yeah yeah go ahead and uh he says and then there's ai oh man this is big we're the first generation of dealers who get to harness artificial intelligence for underwriting collections marketing and training imagine smarter credit decisions tighter collections sharper marketing campaigns and training that actually sticks all powered by ai If you've made it through the last few years, you're not just a survivor. You're on the cusp of a revolution. It is heartbreaking to think of dealers who hung on for decades only to miss this moment because they couldn't weather the storm. So I think that's really... You know, and some dealers, frankly, just won't. I mean, that's just the reality. They're just not going to really involve tech, and they're going to kind of keep doing what they've always done. And that is heartbreaking. It's unfortunate to see that happen. But I do think, you know, Jeffrey's right. Everything that we see about the AI piece is it is going to transform every industry. Yeah. Absolutely. And unfortunately, and I'm kind of starting to see this shift some, the buy here, pay here industry has been a decade or more behind on anything tech. How many dealers out there are still... using cards in their dealership instead of using tech to manage. Not a lot anymore, but there are some. There's just been, I don't know if it's an unawareness or a reluctance to lean in, or maybe it could be that there really weren't a technology platform providers that were interested in getting into the space, but it's just boomed. I mean, we're seeing, we're seeing like payment opportunities that it's just like, it's so easy and it makes it super easy for a consumer to pay their bill and make it, kind of fun even in, in the process. And so, um, you know, one of the things that, that when we, when I, uh, I'm looking at these, uh, highlights, it says AI is not a threat, but a co-pilot, um, especially for those with limited staff. And that is, that's huge because how many dealers out there we're trying to, we're not trying, we're doing, we are teaching dealers, get off the hamster wheel. Get off the hamster wheel. And when we do these, we don't as much anymore, but many of the onsite, when we would be meeting with someone that was new to coming into the industry, that we would talk to both the dealer and their significant other and ask them, what do you really want? And Every single spouse that we have talked to said, I want more time. I want more time with the dealer to be available for children's things and couples things and all of those kind of things. And so many of them, they're younger, they're newer in the business, and they're just like, I have to be there. I haven't grown it enough. And then they get on that hamster wheel and they continue in that mentality where their physical presence in the building becomes an integral part of it being able to operate. And so AI is a beautiful way of starting to take some of those things off the plate of a dealer. Yeah. And they got to be ready to do that. It's a simple control thing for a lot of them. It's like they just have a hard time letting go of the elements of their business. Fear of letting go. Yeah, and so I think it's part of what stunts the growth, and it's part of what keeps them tethered to their building a lot, and so that's unfortunate. But I think I got something. I know the next element of what I want to make sure we get covered on his post was around the subject of collateral recovery. Yeah. And I agree with what he said here. I think, so let me get this on the screen. I didn't think to get this in advance, but I'm going to get the collateral recovery rate formula up for people as we talk about that so that they can better understand kind of what this is about. So, You've got, Jeffrey, let me just read what he said first, because I think that's his perspective. Can you, let's just give just a fifth grade definition, what a collateral recovery rate is. Yeah, it's basically sometimes I refer to these kind of things as burn rate. It's like it's the rate at which the portfolio is performing or the rate. I call it a lot of my numbers. I call it conversion rate. But that's just me using farm boy logic or, you know, kind of, you know, my own kind of dealer speak that I feel like they can interpret. So it's often what we're really talking about is how is the business performing? We want to step further. Last night, we had a group that was small for the first time. I started introducing. in meetings recently a stress test for debt. And so it uses numbers like this to be able to apply. So there's something we're doing now in V eight meetings is where we're, we built in so that every meeting they can see an updated number on how is my portfolio performing and how could it support debt? So I go in and put all of them at the same, you know, interest rate and same advanced rate and all. And so it helps them to kind of see, because now again, now you begin to so what jeffrey's referring to here let me just read his thing and then we can we can explain the formula but what he says is so what's next We've got to stay sharp and lean into these opportunities. One big focus, our collateral recovery rate, or CRR. Whether you're debt-free or working with a bank, you never know when you'll need a new lender. CRR is their North Star. It shows how well we manage our assets, and it's a number that can make or break their trust in us. Trust is a big word. So let's pour energy into boosting our CRR, making it a shiny badge of honor for any lender looking. Yeah. AI said on that, why it matters more than ever is because lenders want proof of control, not just contracts. They want to see that you're keeping. You know how to manage. That you know how to manage your portfolio. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we meet a lot of dealers. We see it now. Sometimes they come into V-Aid and they're in the headlights. They've never seen these kind of numbers. And that's okay. We're going to coach them through it and help them learn the stuff. But I think to his point, there are a lot of different calculations. In fact, I said just in our group last night, if you'd asked me a couple years ago, I would have said there are five or six numbers that we would recommend you look at to really have different perspectives on your collateral performance or your portfolio performance, which is the largest asset in every buyer, payer, dealer business typically if they've been open for more than five minutes. So now the idea is, I told them, I said, now there's probably more like eight or nine now that we've started building in some new things that we track in V-A because it gives dealers more ways to measure what's happening. And I think it helps dealers understand break free of, sometimes we get in a mentality where we get kind of married to our business plan or our business model. And by putting, I don't call people out, but I know that they could look at the numbers and say, I like my business model for various reasons, but I can now see why a bank wouldn't like my business model. As a line of credit provider. And in our day and age, there are very few dealers out there anymore who can bankroll on their own as they're getting started. Well, because cost of car is up and the cost per contract is higher. And so that's so important that your business model might have been from a thing, a way of doing it, pre-COVID, and it's just different. And it could still work for some. I just think this gets into the whole question about, and we've got, I wrote articles, we've got old YouTube videos, we've done podcasts around something I call the volume formula, which is this idea that We really need to do a certain amount of volume to make the math work because otherwise we just sort of are stunted and we're stunted at a place that's kind of risky. If we don't grow to a place where we can enjoy some positive cash. And so, you know, people are going to, and I always say, look, when I meet with a dealer and we're advising, I say, look, it's, it's your name on the building. So at the end of the day, you're going to do what works best for you. It's just we want to introduce you to these ideas that to make yourself one more person have more market value as an enterprise, have your paper have more market value. Because even though you don't have the first inkling about selling paper today, things could change and you might need to liquidate some paper. And so the idea that you would have paper that has good market value is going to be significant in that scenario. And it's going to serve you in the meantime, because that paper is going to produce well, right? And so it's going to, these are all things we look at. We've worked with dealers that they know they have a certain framework they have to abide by for their capital providers. And yet they still write paper that they know is outside of that framework. And then they wonder sometimes why they're struggling with certain pieces too. So let me show that formula before we move away from it and people can snap a photo of the screen. But this is the RR formula from one of the major lenders in the space. And this is the way we calculate it. I've got a different calculation that generally produces the same results, but principal collected plus repo fair market value. So that's the recovery or the ACB. Yeah. And there's some question on this. I think one of the things we want to be careful about here is it, it's one thing to use the actual, value that we would pick when we booked the car back in. And it's another thing to have the actual book market value because the lender tends to lean on the book market. They're not there to see the car. So we're going to lean on the book market value, which is something that came up also in our meeting. We're going to try to start tracking uh book value in uh in our v-eight stuff for those dealers who don't have in the process we would recommend that and then you take those numbers add them together and you divide that by your portfolio reduction so this can be done across a period you can do it a single month you can do we would recommend doing across multiple months or doing it every month and stacking it into a rolling average but you we definitely want you to see trends so you know having that calculation each month as a three month or a six month rolling average so you can see when that's trending down we had one dealer who you know, was kind of surprised to see that his portfolio had been trending down. And it's like, if you didn't have this math, if you didn't make your time to stack up the math and reconcile the portfolio to make sure we try to reconcile principal plus or minus one percent so that we can be sure that the numbers that we're looking at are valid and that we've identified all the movement in the portfolio. And now you apply this formula and you've got a pretty good indication. And I think Jeffrey's exactly right that this is if we were to pick a number To measure, I would say, because I always talk about it. Our members probably get tired of hearing me talk about portfolio performance, portfolio performance. I mean, this is where it's at. If we can get our portfolio to perform, it's not about selling more. It's about why put more contracts into a portfolio that's not performing, right? It is the independent dealer's mindset into buy here, pay here. It was like, well, I can sell myself out of this problem. And it's like that does not work. That drives you off a cliff. I would say that's even less true today than it was pre-COVID. Absolutely. It's probably less true. So anyway, let me read the one last part of his post. He closes with, the buy here, pay here world is buzzing with possibilities, and I'm fired up about what's ahead. We've got the tools, the community and the tech to make this next chapter our best yet. Let's grab these opportunities, tighten up our operations and show the world what us survivors can do. It's really great, Jeff. And I would just say what, you know, the work that we're doing at White Hat Way, we would add when we can put a white hat back. badge on people who not only have clean operations in the way that you're talking about but we can sort of uh you know place an emblem on them that is representative of character and integrity and being trustworthy and all those kind of things that's that's what white hat way is about so as a coaching company and as a as a you know a brand solution we are working to make sure that we can add that element to what Jeff's talked about here. And so shout out to Jeff. Thank you. I reached out to him and made sure he was okay with us, you know, quoting from his post. And he said, you know, he was happy for us to do that. And so we were grateful for that and really grateful for him sharing his perspective. And then I'd love to invite him on the podcast whenever we can. I think there's a lot more that we can talk about. Um, I, I appreciate, cause he didn't really mention in the article that he was a member of a group and, and I, I would like to have the conversation with him. How much of your perspective and your weathering the storm can you attribute to being a member of a group? Because, um, Any kind of opportunity a dealer has to learn from others is really going to help strengthen your dealership. And so even listening to our podcast, you've got independent dealers podcasts, other, you know, other things that are out there that are free and then getting involved in some kind of a peer group. Now we can go live to a conference and sit at a table and then talk to other dealers. That's a one and it's very valuable. Yeah. It's a one-off. A lot of different peer groups, whether it be twenty groups or the V-eight groups, is that you start to get into deep conversations that you can't have around a table at a conference. These are ongoing conversations and you get to really understand what's happening in someone's business model and then you can tweak your own because it's like, oh, this is a thing that's happening. That can't happen unless you're involved in some kind of a peer group. So, you know, if that's something that you're looking at doing, or if there's something else that we can help you with, please don't hesitate to call. I mean, we, we can get you, I know that there's, there's the, at the conference, there's twenty groups that'll be talking a lot about that. V-Eight, we, we look at those, we have a lot of dealers that are involved in both, twenty groups and V-Eight. It's a different way of looking at things, it's a different way of meeting, And it can be used as a springboard into a twenty group as well. Sure. I think it's a good place to start. I think people moving toward a twenty group and not sure. I think one, it's more affordable and easier to plug into because you're just doing virtual. But yeah, I think people can do both. I think they serve different things. As you said, they scratch different itches. And I wanted to, George, we just appreciate you, George, so much. He says, I suspect most of those survivors who have been referenced are White House dealers, whether they know it or not. Because it is about something more than just the day-to-day. So if there's anything we can do to help you, please call, text, and don't forget, that's my cell phone. So if you just have a funny meme that you think I would enjoy... Do you remember it was last year you said, send me cat memes and Scott Shamrell from Neo immediately sent you cat memes. It was hilarious. It's part of it. It absolutely is. But yeah, you can always reach me directly. I'm happy to talk to you at any time. So just, you know, to kind of, it's like, what are those that... weren't able to weather it, you know, and their absence. It's like part of what chat GPT said in their absence or use their absence as motivation. Don't waste the chances that they didn't get or that they're not going to be able to take. So, hey, everybody, happy Friday. We really appreciate that you're joining us and taking some time to listen. That means in a way that you are interested in learning more. And so Good on you because it's a really important thing to always be open to learning new things. Big announcements next Wednesday. Be sure to join us back here then. All right. Everybody have a great rest of your week and we will see you on Wednesday with another episode of White Hat Wednesday. Have a great day, guys.
