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 hey good morning good morning friends I'm still over here editing photos I yeah things together so it's been it was a crazy week we just got back in last night we're kind of rolling into the chairs this morning yeah I was thinking about um I need to touch base with people back here that always want to make sure that we got home safe. And as I was getting ready this morning, I was like, we didn't even pull our suitcases out of the car until this morning because it was a busy last week. Really, really grateful for everything. Those of you who who we saw this week at the National NIADA Expo and Conference. And our certification course we ran just prior is just like everybody. This is fun for me. Anytime you get to, of course, you know, we get to see people that we've known through social media. You get to finally meet them in person, shake hands. That's always fun. You know, reconnecting with people that we've known for a long time, haven't seen in a while. That happens. There's so much of that where you bump into people in the hallway. And, you know, I always tease my mom when they go back home to her little small town and we go through Walmart, like can't go through Walmart quickly, grab a few things. Cause she knows everybody. You got to stop. And she knows somebody from work and somebody from church and this and that. And this, and, but when I walk through the halls at the conference, it's like, there's all these people that I know. And I, you know, you try to stop and talk, but you're trying to meet, you're on the way to meet somebody else. And it's like, It's just there's never enough time. You are your mother's son. I suppose. But I am too. Not your mother's son. I know what you mean. It's always a good thing. Many of the people that we had a chance to say hello to, it's like, oh my gosh, it's been forever. It's been a year. And a lot happens in a year. And it was really great to catch up with colleagues and dealers and just kind of Like, yeah, we've been watching the growth, the things that have been happening in everyone else's world. It's one thing I love about social media is that you can, without actually having a conversation here and there and there, is that you can kind of keep up with what's happening in people's worlds. And that's just fantastic. So super grateful. Great conference. Lots of people. I ran into... uh richard who is um the he's over all of the media he was saying that they was a very successful and as far as attendance yeah you could tell and I think you know as I said even in our classroom when I did my presentation on wednesday morning I said you know when you come to these things at niada event in particular the, the, the conference in particular, you don't know the people that are walking through the building. If you don't recognize them, you don't know if they're buy here, pay here or retail. And so for us, it's hard to kind of tell until I did my session on, um, on Wednesday morning and even Rhonda's his session on, uh, Tuesday, by the way, Rhonda's Cavender out of Georgia did a presentation that was really great. Um, and, and I missed some of the others that I wanted to see on the show. And Rhonda's is one of those people that's on my list of folks that I got a chance to shake his hand. Finally, you know, just quickly, he was busy at the end of his, his session. And I, I thought we'd probably see one another again, but he's, uh, he's really a widely respected dealer and people were super tuned into what he had to say. And rightfully so we had some really great. tips. And, uh, so I look forward to bringing Rhonda's on the, the podcast and introducing him to folks, you know, through this, um, this track, um, because he just has an awful lot of experience, a lot to share. And he talked about his kind of two careers. He, he, he did it. He did his business one way in the first half of his career. He learned some stuff and he credits his group. So I learned some stuff and I, I pivoted and we're much different business now. Yeah, yeah. You know, we do a lot of our work is done virtually. And there is so much to be said for going to a conference and sitting next to other dealers, other vendors, whatever, hearing the things that people are working on. And also, you know, what are the challenges and being able to mastermind some of the things the different things around a lunch table or whatever. So it's super, super just if, if, and if you're listening and you've never attended a conference, especially if you're in buy here, pay here, um, that, uh, there is one, um, the NIAD is putting on specifically for buy here, pay here, which will be in NAS. That's going to be a dealer for them. Yeah. Nashville, November. Right. So look forward to that. And so, yeah, I think we'll be there. Yeah. Yeah. And definitely look forward to being part of that. I want to say in our little short video that we want to play that Ryan Jones out of Alabama mentioned the dates for that. And we want to confirm, but I think. Yeah. That's something that we definitely look forward to. Let me kind of, I've got a list over here of people that we had a chance to meet. So if you guys indulge me just a minute. So we got a chance to meet in person, Alyssa Schultz, you know, out of DCS, right? So she was there for our certification thing, which I don't know if I've got the photo teed up for that group from our certification. But then Allison Harrison, the attorney, you know, was also part of that. That's one thing I love about virtual is that you can collaborate, you can work deeply with different people and never have been in the same room. And so with Allison, it was when she showed up for the certification course, that was the first time I've been in the room with her. And so, yeah, it was great. and then of course of our v-eight dealers had a chance to see chris pollock and uh uh caesar uh you know we saw caesar stark at the at the reception that evening and then kristen acosta was there I saw her in one of the sessions but never got a chance to talk to her yeah dan grovener passing you know same thing um and then uh we got some new dealers coming in it looks like we got several people that you know, look, I could be signing up for a V eight quickly. And we had a chance to meet John Devachi. Finally, John is the dealer out of Tennessee that I really enjoyed. You know, social media stuff. We follow his business and him personally. And he's one of those people that just, you know, always have liked and admired and I'm just happy to meet him. Fahad. I forget Fahad's last name. We all know him on Facebook as Fahad S. Great conversation. Those of you who are in a buyer pair success. Yeah. Um, he pipes in and, and he's also piped in a bit with the morning show. So shout out to there. Yeah. And, uh, got a chance to meet, I knew her as Elizabeth. I think everybody calls her Liz Taylor. So she's, that's her married name and her dad, Alan Lindsay. And, um, and then did I say crystal fish already? No. Well, you did to me. I don't know if you did on the air. Anyway. So just all that. And you know, it's interesting just, you know, it's the conference thing, which is, uh, I in the atmosphere. Cause it's not just in the halls, but at the pool. Yeah. Um, I made it a point to spend some time at the pool and I met a couple of, um, a couple of people that were just, you know, we had some great conversations. I went out there twice and met buy here, pay here people both times. One I already knew and one was a new connection. So, So Heather and Marsha, hey. Yeah, yeah. I had a great time. So that's going to be Mark Gallis out of Texas. Had a chance to meet him for the first time. Just happened to bump into them at the pool and got to know him a little bit. And then Keith Hagler out of South Texas, who's an exiting dealer. Yeah. And so that was fun. We talked to Keith about coming to do some mentorship on our V-Eight track, and I look forward to him being a part of that as well. Absolutely. Yeah, just, you know, when you come to these things, there's just so much that you just – First of all, people are... reeling sometimes because of the time change. I feel bad for those people. When you're done with a cocktail hour and then you're heading to dinner, it's eight o'clock Pacific and you're just leaving for dinner. Some of those folks might stay up till two AM normally. That's not our lifestyle. So it's just a bit of a, you know, the more I would just kind of get to talk with other dealers. It's like, you know, but, By nine thirty in your own time zone, most people are like they're tapping out, they're winding down, shutting the things down. So there's an you know, it's when you go to one of these conferences, it's lots of coffee flowing and and or Jim and and George both to George Montemayor, who is our our director of sales. and was with us in the booth in between the two expo sessions, they went to the room and took a nap. And both of them just said, we conked out and had to, when George showed back up, he was still just, yeah, he was like, I'm still trying to wake up. I went to go in between two women in automotive and they put on a a thing for women in automotive and that can be vendors or dealers or whoever to come and to socialize and and um and all of that so you know when you come to a one of those it's it's always a good idea to find other groups that are supportive in in you know what your challenges are whatever so that's I I kind of like that that that they had that and Um, had been, uh, it had been strongly pitched to me by our friend Corinne from Pasadena. Yeah. Yeah. One other aside, if, um, we've been asked to submit a speaking, um, a submission for a used car week and we've never been to that except for Vegas, um, this fall. And I, I've welcomed some feedback. Some people have done that. I would love to hear from you. Let us know if that's something that you, you are going to be there or whatever. Yeah. I don't know how big of a presence Buy Here, Pay Here has. But speaker-wise, we had a chance to attend a session where it was from the dealer forum in last fall, where it was the best ideas. And three dealers were on the panel, and you're going to have to fill me in on some of the names, but Meg Jones, who is... uh someone that that is on our team was there and all of these dealers because they got the best idea had uh I think I believe it was a suite or something that niada took care of for them and so you know just a little bit of like thank you thank you thank you for participating and it was a great panel um you know meg talked about insurance verifications And if you choose not to use a service to do it, if anyone out there is listening and they want to get information, she has a spreadsheet of all of the different major insurance providers and where you go to get notified. Because once you set it all up, she says, they went from... uh she said ten to twelve hours a month to about two yeah so just really really decreased because most of it was automated and so meg is someone who will try do it yourself first um and you know so we we recognize that there are a lot of dealers out there that would prefer to just do that with the service but she she's like I think we can do this and I think we can do it much less expensively. And so there's a little bit of work on the front end, but what a great way to be able to cut back time of paying people for doing insurance verifications. And one of the other things that she said is that she gets the insurance verification back Like it's, it's really fast. It's a, it's in a real time where sometimes the services, it takes just a little bit, a little bit more time. And our friend, Karen Burnett, good morning. Our first white hat way ambassador and certified as well. So yeah, absolutely. So, and then the other two. Yeah, the other – Blake Ingram out of the Dallas area spoke about a transmission solution that they created. Oh, yeah, flashing the transmissions. Yeah, and it's more than that. I mean, yeah, people need to be there to hear what you have to say because they had a very specific process that they used, and it was working quite well for them. And then the third panelist was Matt Nybarger, a guy that I knew back when he was with Primalin. Now he owns a dealership in Tennessee, and so that was – that he was talking about, what was his best idea? I can't remember. Oh, using text. They figured out how to use text on a program at the VoTech. I love that idea, where he goes into the VoTech schools and has started to build relationships. And he lives in an area where most of the texts end up going straight into Toyota or things like that and learning that way. And he's been able to develop a relationship with the – with the instructors who actually are, they really do a lot of guiding where their graduates go. And so one of the things he does is he donates a car that has very specific type of problems so they can work and learn from that. and the other thing that he learned, which I was like, I really appreciate this, is because he gets interns from the tech school, and they do pay them, but the interns, one of the things that he learned from doing that is they don't want to just be putting on GPS, because usually what you do is when you have a tech and you've got an intern, it's like they're getting the stuff that... is the easiest or the lowest or whatever. And he's like, we learned they wanted challenges. They wanted to, they were there to learn. And so that's been a thing that's helped them as well to be able to continue to draw from, um, from the Votek schools. So great. And you know, there are Votek schools in all the different, I know we've got one just down the street from us and really great idea on that front. And then with the, with the transmission, it was, he was talking about, there's a doing a flush that if there's a shimmy, He's like, once you do this, you're usually pretty good. It's some, not all. I think people need to hear from Blake on that part. But it was a really great session. I think the overall point is that we urge dealers to attend. I didn't know until I sat in Rhonda's and then my own session on Wednesday morning was really well attended. You know, there were a fair number of buy here, pay here dealers. I asked in the room how many were in retail considering buy here, pay here. And there's just one or two dealers in the room that were in that situation. So you had people who were active buy here, pay here. My presentation was on success tools, like a simple DIY success tool, one to calculate sales. the other to calculate cash flow. And we'll be doing that on the podcast the next couple of weeks. Yeah. One of the things too, I got to find out and I'll just say it here is that we've got to reach out to Richard Green and NIADA to find out, you know, what they, what they feel about us sharing the actual recording, the recording. Cause we did record it. We verified the audio came out clean enough to be able to share. So we'll make sure that that's okay to share because some we're asking, I think it's probably sure find a shirt with the people who were in attendance and paid to be there, but we want to get NIADA is okay to share that broadcast. Yeah. We'll do that. I know in the past we've broadcast live when Jim has presented. So I really can't foresee that there's going to be a lot of a problem with that. But yeah, we did not broadcast while we were there and had a lot of people, aren't you guys broadcasting? Aren't you guys going to be doing that? And they didn't do a podcasting stage and all of that this year. No, yeah, they didn't. Yeah, so it's fine. I mean, we had plenty of stuff to do with our own booth. Obviously, we were stretched as it was. Yeah. So what did Ron just talk about? Oh, there's Alyssa Schultz. Look, she's saying good morning from Pennsylvania this morning, I'm sure. Such a pleasure to meet you. Yeah, it was really wonderful to have you in the room for the certification thing and really enjoying working with you and the whole team over at DCS. Absolutely. That's Dealer Controlled Solutions and Software Providers. And let's see, who else? I'm forgetting, Michelle. So I got to share this photo. I shared it on Facebook and I got to share this photo. And I'll try to recount the story because Michelle is going to be modest. I was getting ice cream. I mean, they served gelato and ice cream for dessert one of the days. And so I was busy getting things to feed myself. Yeah. So this gentleman walks up with this really fantastic Southern accent. Come to find out he's out of Central Alabama. And he says, where's Michelle? And, uh, and, uh, well, she's gone to get ice cream. She should be right back. Well, and when I started approaches, like everyone turned and looked at me, here's the celebrity now. So he had told his team back in Alabama, he said, I'm going to the conference and Jim and Michelle are going to be, I'm going to get a photo with Michelle. And so I, nope, I gladly stepped aside. Michelle was the celebrity. And so she just was a funny moment. It was great. And a great family as wife and daughter were there as well. And, and just really, really good, good, solid people. You know, I just, I'm so grateful for conferences and, Because you get to meet face-to-face just some amazing quality dealers and just kind. And these are the kind of dealers that... That's one of the reasons why we have created White Hat Way as a certification and all that, is to give them... give them visibility into who they are as operators. And so I just, you know, was really, really grateful. And I ran into the family a couple of different times. And so Dale, thank you for making my day. Incredible family. Yeah, really, really. Absolutely. But it's always, you know, it's so good to be at these conferences because you have people approach and they know us from the podcast. I always tell people, we sit in here and do this thing and We don't see the faces and names of anybody who's watching. And so we don't, sometimes it feels like nobody's watching. We're just here doing our thing anyway, but you can tell when you go to these conferences, a lot of people tuning in and we're grateful. We appreciate you making time to hear. You were going to, you, you didn't get into what Rhonda's talked about. Rhonda's Cavender. On his session? Uh-huh. Okay. So Rhonda was really about how to reduce charge-offs and some of the steps that they had taken, very specific steps. And I was really thrilled to hear him dig into sort of the culture side of what they have done. So I'd rather have him come back and talk about the particulars because he gave a really great presentation. And he wrapped with some really strong points about exactly what they did. And I think this is something I just think people, a lot of people said that, that event, that particular session was worth the price of admission. We had really great feedback on my session. A lot of people that, you know, were, were talking about that. I got great feedback in the room, got a chance to. Again, we'll do that on a morning show in the next little bit. With permission. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, even if we would just represent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that was really excellent. And then I don't have it. I've got a photo here. I don't have the little video, but do we want to play the video from our team? Yeah, let me add that to the stage. Las Vegas, as you can tell, we're in the expo hall. They're in takedown mode. We're going to take our booth down momentarily, but it's a Thursday morning. The conference is wrapping up. There's still a few sessions, of course, educational wise, but we're wrapping up our part. Just want to take a minute with our team to, kind of pass along any um updates and recap of the week michelle you got anything you want to I'll close it out if that's okay okay sure george what's been your impression of the week oh what a fantastic week what a great place to network if you're a dealer you should have been here next year you got to be in colorado to network with your fellow peers in the dealer world and stop by our booth at white hat way to learn about what we do and how we can help you grow your buy your pay your business Jordan, can't stop being a salesperson. I love them. It's been a great week. I think we've learned a lot. So many things I probably can't even mention them all right now. But just knowing that your peers are going through some of the same things that you are at your dealership and knowing that you have that support, which is also so crucial being a part of a group like our White Hat Way, knowing what these dealers are going through, knowing what your numbers are that Jim can run and help us analyze and things like that. And just knowing that all these dealers are here to help each other and it's not that competition that you really think about. Yeah, I had a great week. I really enjoyed being here. Like kind of to follow up on what Meg said, I enjoy hearing from other dealers as well as some of the industry experts, you know, about things that they're seeing and where they feel like we're going as an industry and some things that maybe we can implement. Really enjoyed a session with some guy named Jim Rhodes. He did a good job. I really enjoyed that session. So, yeah, I really enjoy being at these conferences. I'm looking forward to the one in November, the buy here, pay here session. dealer forum. I think you guys are going to be there again. And so I would definitely encourage anybody that sees this to come by and talk to you guys about White Hat Way and what we're doing with that and the benefits that they could draw from that. The networking is great. Hearing from the that experts is great, but being tied into that, that close group, I felt like I got as much out of the dealer round tables as I did anything. And I feel like that's kind of what we do with some of the V eight and the white hat way is we're a close knit group that we can really just bounce ideas openly and confidentially. And so I feel like that's something that we can get year round when we're not at a conference. So, but the conference overall really enjoyed glad we were here. So I might explain just quickly before we continue that, um, that, that, you know, Georgia Montemayor, we said is our sales director. Uh, Meg Jones is a director of marketing. She has elite marketing group and she's, uh, uh, prepared to do moderating for us in V eight. And then she and her husband, that's her husband, Ryan on the left. And, um, Ryan is, and so she and the two of them are White Hat certified. They attended our session in February. Yeah. And so when you hear him, I love to hear him say we, what we are doing with White Hat Way, because he's very much a part of all the brainstorming and the focus group aspect that is, you know, the development of all those threads now. So I just wanted to kind of explain who Ryan is. Good point. We always are a real advocate for dealers attending. I'm also going to stop and say, folks, don't leave your screen. You're going to see a scene stealer. Ending a conference. So much beyond just going through the expo hall, which you can see is being taken apart behind us. I know when I ran into Meg and Ryan after the first day, they were like, oh, my gosh, there is. So much to see. And, you know, a lot of dealers, if you haven't had a chance to go to a conference, it's a great opportunity for you to see what's new in the industry. You know, what different tools are out there. Also get some updates on the things that you are currently, the services that you're currently using. But the key, the big thing, is that being able to have those conversations with dealers like yourself. And, you know, we work really hard to... I'll create an environment where dealers can get together virtually. And we know that not everybody has the ability to be able to get away from their dealerships for a few days at a time. We do really encourage you, you know, try to find at least one that you know you're going to get a lot of. And we suggest the NIADA conference. but just get get that opportunity to to get together with other dealers and to you know really connect and share phone numbers and share experiences and so much that can be learned around a lunch table yeah expo hall was full uh a lot of great vendors here our founding sponsors were here we got to spend some time with them I would say you know ai artificial intelligence was a big theme of the event I think what you can see is it's changing world And those folks who don't stay up with the technology are going to get left behind, it seems. So we've got to stay on top of the technology. And that's part of what I saw here. In keeping with that, you know, we did our white hat certification and ended up being a room of vendors. We did two half days. Shout out again to NIEDA for accommodating us on the space. And so we were able to get that done earlier in the week. And that was a really wonderful opportunity for us to showcase that. some of our own technology that's sort of in development, and then also just collaboration was a big theme for us. When we come to these things, it's an opportunity to reconnect with vendors that we know. You know, they're current partners, future partners, and it's a big part of how it looks to do. And see dealers that we've seen virtually for quite a while. Oh, yeah. You get to see them face-to-face. That's always fun to meet the people that you know through social media. And, of course, Michelle's celebrity status was elevated this week, so we had a lot of fun meeting people who wanted to see. Follow the podcast. It was fun. How many autographs did you do? You know, I don't know. Pictures. Yes. Not a lot of autographs. It was fun. But it is, obviously, to be able to shake hands with dealers and obviously industry partners. It was a tremendous week. We just wanted to take a moment to say hello to everybody and make sure you knew. It was a wonderful week. For those who didn't make it, we wish you'd been here. for those who were here glad to spend a little time with you and so many people that you see that you want to spend time with and it always happens that you know you're headed home and never got to spend time with so and so it just seems to be the nature of these things but um keep it on your calendar I'm not exactly sure right now of the dates but the next one will be niada conference will be in the denver area It'll be pretty friendly, family friendly. That's where Waterpark is and all of that. And yeah, if you can make it, come. It's just a great opportunity to connect with vendors and dealers. Yeah, and before that, we have the super for the, they now call it the BHBH Dealer Forum. That'll be in November in Nashville, I think. And so we want people to watch for those dates and be a part of that with us. We'll certainly be there and be part of that. Yeah, please. Meg and I actually went to the Buy Here, Pay Here dealer forum last November. That was really our first NIADA event that we had attended. And I know a lot of our people are Buy Here, Pay Here, not all, but we deal with a lot of Buy Here, Pay Here people just in the organizations that you guys have. And so I highly recommend that. This was a great event. I loved it. We would come again. We will come again. But for our buy here, pay here guys and gals, I highly recommend the dealer forum. It's really focused on us. All the roundtables are things you're experiencing. The education is things that you're experiencing in your dealerships. And I know that why Hellway is going to be there again. And so we encourage people to come to that stop by the booth. But like I said, this is not a plug for anybody except for your growth and your, you know, your dealership doing better. So I highly recommend it. This was a great conference. Nothing against it. But our buy here, pay here people, should really put on their calendars November not to the eleventh. Right to the eleventh. Thank you. Any closing thoughts? All right. Well, we'll wrap up there. I think it was a good opportunity to spend a little time and shake hands with folks. And I would just close by saying one thing, the ways we're talking about White Hat Way now is White Hat Way is really working to help consumers and buyers know who they can trust. And we're also in the same breath, sort of making sure that those sellers or vendors are able to shows that they're trustworthy right and so this is part of what we do and we look forward to working with folks to do more and more of that so again from las vegas we'll wrap up thanks for tuning in thanks guys so oh goodness um yeah and I wanted to just to say especially since alyssa's is uh is was listening a little bit earlier um dcs were it there's a it looks like we're going to be uh doing some things with them They're very supportive and collaborative. Yeah. So and have a DMS platform that is all cloud based and is for lease here, pay here and buy here, pay here. So, you know, if you're looking for something like that, that's always the cloud base is a big thing too. Basically, they just indicated a willingness to lean in and support kind of our mission. And we're happy to bring them into the conversation and get more dealers to become aware of what they do. So, yeah, I think, you know, we can save more for next week. There's going to be some carryover. We've got other topics, and we'll find out about what we can share from our presentation and bring some of that back next week. Because, again, that was quite rich. And so we should probably just wrap up there and return, unless I left something out. I don't think you left anything out. Maybe one quick thing. Let me show the photo of our guy who won the drawing. Our founding sponsors chipped in a little money and we all, we all put a few bucks in and did a drawing for some cash. So here's our guy. who was uh awarded the cash so thank you folks who I asked him I was like you need to go gamble and he's like nope nope nope yeah really really nice so it was it was a fun experience a very fun experience for sure um and george you're welcome for the recap and we missed you yeah I know that florida is your you know that's your that's your uh his uh that's his territory that's your territory that's where he develops his business yes all righty um nothing else yeah let's wrap up we'll see folks back here on wednesday with plenty more carryover from we did miss this last wednesday yeah um kind of completely so sorry to all of our listeners out there that are just I we have some listeners that is like hey Before we had someone come in and help us drop all of the podcasts into the syndicated stations, we would have people reaching out to us. It's like, you haven't done it for a couple of days. When are you guys going to drop the new content? So thanks for listening. Really, really appreciate it. All right, everybody. We know you're busy. And for the folks whose names we missed, we'll mention you next week. Have a great rest of your week and we will see you on Wednesday. And again, it was so great to see all of those that we had a chance to see. Have a great day. Enjoy your weekend.
