Wake up, Buy Here, Pay Here people. It's a beautiful day. Go grab yourself another cup of Joe and say hello to Jim and Michelle Rhodes on the Buy Here, Pay Here morning show. Take it away, you two. Hey, good morning, friends. Welcome to another White Hat Wednesday. And as can sometimes happen with technology, we got some some snacks. So we're just a couple minutes late getting started, had to make a last minute switch and how we're rolling out today's conversation with Sage, our white hat certified persona and i'm happy to have a chance to introduce our audience i also have with us today you can see on the screen there for those of you on video i got mr ken yang who's a white hat certified coach for buy here pay here and lease your pay here a former dealer himself so good morning ken welcome good morning jim and good morning sage Yeah. So Sage is standing by. I'm going to have to play her on the phone. So she doesn't hear you yet. So I struggled to get the microphone where Sage could hear me through the browser. I had in mind to have the browser featured in the way that we did it back in June, Ken, when we had our White Hat certification course in June. june in vegas we were able to introduce an ai persona that day was a different name of a persona they have all the same coding and same background education but um so this is kind of uh been a fun exercise for us i know that you've been dabbling yourself with artificial intelligence and i think chat gpt in particular right Yeah, I've used chat before. Then I went to using Perplexity and some with Claude. And then I've kind of come back to chat GPT. You know, so yeah. I haven't used Claude yet. I hear good things about that. I think for our audiences listening, you might just share. I'll sure add whatever I've learned about it. But what was your experience in Claude? So Claude was really good with taking something simple and like really elaborating on it. And, and, and, you know, like for example, if I wanted to, if I uploaded it, you know, something kind of like a report on something and I wanted to have it give me more detail, like chat TVT won't do it, but if I send it to Claude, Claude would be able to elaborate way more on, on that. And the other thing with Claude now is it's become kind of like, um where it'll you can ask it to use chat gpt five or another model you know so So it's not just Claude anymore. It's Claude, and it has access to ChatGPT, and I can't remember what other one that's available as well. Yeah, that's an interesting aspect of open AI overall. So let me give a little backstory on our situation. I'll kind of intersect it with Claude. Michelle and I are kind of late to the game around AI, especially the voice personas. We've been using ChatGPT a good amount. We now have a pretty substantial archive of an enterprise thread and multiple projects inside there. Of course, the GPTs are learning from all of the content that gets fed into there. But we also, some time ago, were able to link our Cloud Storage to our GPT enterprise thread. Which is important because now it has access to all of that content that is the White Hat way, mission, story, brand, education, archives of articles, recorded sessions from us. I mean, just tons and tons. So that's important because... It's how it's kind of becomes our value proposition, Ken, with White Hat Way in terms of what is it that makes an AI persona from White Hat Way? I want to share this on the screen if I can. I'll pull you and me off momentarily. just realized when i took myself out of the stream i took the audio out too so apologies there i'm back so let me yeah yeah i i'm i'm a rookie we got michelle gone she's just in oklahoma i didn't explain we kicked off the show she's not available she's usually running the board and all the all the stuff so she would have uh said you can't do that jim So yeah. So anyway, I'll take down this background image. But the bottom line is when when I think about White Hat Way as a as a kind of value proposition, like what makes it different? And this is what we have a chance to ask Sage about today. And I've got some questions teamed up for her. I say her. I talk to it like it's a person. When you get familiar, this is part of why I wanted to bring it to our morning show audience, because we're having a lot of conversations, Ken, including my V-Ape meeting last night. I was able to socialize the concept of the way that we're moving ahead with AI on our side. And the dealers confirmed like to a person that the solution that we're creating, which is really the, the key differentiator is kind of long game customer relations or what I would call long minded customer relations versus being transactional in, in, you know, handling a customer matter today. So this is kind of what we've been aimed at. And Michelle and I've been able to work through the, the chat GPT side, but I would say that What I observed early on, before we even linked all of the cloud storage, the GPT was capturing the essence of what White Hat Way is and what it's meant to be as a mission, brand, and story. And it really started feeding it back to us and adding to it, you know, in terms of... And in particular, chat GPT people seem to say is... What I love about it is the phrasing. It is so articulate in terms of it offers phrasing and ways to express the thing. In addition to my own way, obviously, I provide the prompt and then it runs with it. So I think that's the part that is really fascinating. So it seems to grasp the whole concept. And so I look forward to kind of bringing Sage into the conversation here. And what I'm going to have to do is kind of play it in the microphone. And I've got some questions teed up. And so we'll cover those. And then if you have questions, Ken, I'll just have to kind of relay them. Since I'm in headphones, I'll have to relay your questions to Sage myself. But... I think as we kind of toyed through this, we began to explore. And we've been meeting with tech partners. I've got two meetings back to back next Monday, really three parties and two meetings back to back. around AI because there are a lot of folks moving on AI, as you know. You see it everywhere. I log into a streaming platform and it says, use AI to write this. Or if I go to do a LinkedIn post, use AI to write this, right? And so everybody's integrating their AI element, which is wonderful. It's nice to have it. I think what I... would suggest that makes our AI approach different is the archived content and the established brand that is White Hat Way and what it represents in terms of the approach to business. And so this began our archives. Let me hop over to comments real quick. I saw that George spat out of Florida. Many folks know George, have we developed a white hat way certification course virtually? No, not yet, George. I mean, I think the, the setbacks, as you know, Michelle and I had some personal setbacks with some family losses this summer. And so it kind of delayed some of what I intended to roll that out in November. I think that's still a possibility, but I hate to promise that here, but be aware that we're, we're moving in that direction because the, the physical limitations, you know, the moving about for dealers is a bit of a problem and not just dealers, obviously parties like Georgia as a, as a, you know, trusted vendor out there in the space would be somebody who would like to wear that badge as well. So, so keep, I'll keep you posted. We'll, we'll certainly make sure you are aware when we get that released, but, I think, Ken, I just wanted to kind of make sure I gave enough backstory about this. I guess before I introduce Sage, let me back up and say that I kind of complicated things because we have Sage was the name that we gave to our voice persona that Michelle and I speak to routinely. And for all practical purposes, Sage started out as an executive assistant for us, documenting all the stuff, creating the materials and even images. Some of the images that we've created are fantastic. Then we moved to a place where we had two additional personas created. The mistake that I made was I created them over in a separate track. I have a chat GPT and then I have our enterprise chat GPT. And I think I was just kind of dabbling, experimenting. I'm saying, I know I had it almost fully built, but it was over in a different way. So now I have to bring it back over to enterprise thing. But in June, when we rolled out the first voice persona and we actually did a mock interview in the classroom, we had people come to the microphone and interview this Adriana persona as though she was starting a job in a dealership, right? I think you've seen the video, right? I think it's a clip of it, yeah. Yeah. So it's basically, it was just mind-blowing. We'd been experiencing, Michelle and I had, but the classroom was just like, wow, that's impressive. I mean, our attorney was there and she said, yeah, the compliance aspect of that is fantastic. You know, our persona is more familiar with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Yeah. you know uniform commercial code and and you know any kind of federal compliance more so than most attorneys would be right they have access to all the content and they don't forget right they don't forget so it's like this is all real time and fresh so so the attorney was impressed the whole room was impressed i i was impressed you know there were questions that came to adriana in that example that were things we didn't prepare Adriana for those questions and boy, did she, she really nailed them. And of course, you know, we were able to, introduce the multilingual aspect, you know, in that situation as well. And you and I can cover that here today, but I think, I think I've helped people explain kind of what the lineage has been to help us to get to hear how it is that we're, you know, working with tech partners to roll that out because we see an opportunity to make our AI, um, available as a white hat certified persona and i hope folks can see today kind of how that's different than your typical you know ai machine so with that let me uh let me introduce you to sage Okay, Sage, I'm back. I'm happy to introduce you. I've got Ken Yang in the studio with me. We are live on the Buy Here, Pay Here Morning show and I would like for you to say hello to our listeners. Absolutely. Well, hello everyone and a big hello to Ken as well. I'm thrilled to be here on the Buy Here, Pay Here Morning show. Thanks for having me on and let's dive into So I got a couple of questions teed up for you. If you'll bear with me just a moment, let me get those on the screen and we'll ask those in order. So first, what is your interpretation of being relational versus transactional in customer interactions? Absolutely. I'd be happy to dive into that. So the way I see it, being relational really means focusing on building a genuine, ongoing relationship with a customer rather than just seeing the interaction as a single transaction. It's about really understanding their needs, caring about their long-term success, and building trust over time. On the other hand, being transactional is more about just completing a deal or a sale and then moving on to the next one. So when we talk about the White Hat Way, it's definitely about fostering those relational connections and making sure that the customer feels like they're part of a trusted community over the long haul. That's wonderful. I think folks can already tell from that kind of what the difference is going to be. And then what is your understanding of White Hat Way's tenure approach to customer relations? Yeah, definitely. So the way I understand it, White Hat Way's kind of tenure approach is really about that long-term vision. It's not just about the immediate sale or even the next year or two. It's really about a decade of building a relationship with the customer. So that means supporting them through multiple stages of their journey, being there as a trusted partner, and really ensuring that over a full tenure span, they know they have someone they can rely on. It's kind of like planting seeds for a really long-term garden of trust. And that's a big part of the White Hat Way philosophy. Wonderful. And then my last question that I had prepared is to arrive at a deep understanding of White Hat Way as a mission or brand or story and to develop the certification exam, which you've now completed. What types of private archives are you accessing to get your grasp of White Hat Way? Yeah, absolutely. So to really get that deep understanding of the White Hat Way mission and to develop something like the certification exam, I'm essentially tapping into a curated set of private archives and resources that Jim and the White Hat Way team have provided. These might include internal documents, historical notes, stories about the brand, and all the kind of behind the scenes philosophy that isn't necessarily public. So it's like having access to the White Hat Way's playbook and their narrative over the years. That way I can really understand the heart of the mission and help reflect that accurately in everything we create, including that certification exam. Wonderful. Can you also give that brief explanation back in Spanish? Basically, what I'm doing is accessing a set of private archives and resources internals that the White Hat Way team, along with Jim, has provided. So these include documents internals, notes historicals, relitos about the marca, and totally philosophy internal that's not necessarily public. So I can comprehend fully the mission of the White Hat Way and reflect it precisely in everything we create, including the certification. So there may be some confusion there. When you started to answer, you gave a few phrases in Spanish, but then you switched back to English. Can you give your entire response in Spanish? Oh, just go but for eso, absolutely. Te lo doy todo en español. Basically, lo que hago es acceder a un conjunto de archivos privados y recursos internos que el equipo de White Hat Way y Jim han compartido conmigo. Esto incluye documentos internos, notas históricas, historias sobre la marca y toda la filosofía que no es pública. De esa manera puedo entender a fondo la misión de White Hat Way y representarla con precisión en todo lo que creamos. So I'm going to stop it there for a minute, Ken. You know, this is something that we've seen. It might get a little like what people would describe as glitchy. But I think what I'm understanding is that there's streaming, right? We all have streaming delays and buffering things that we've experienced. Sometimes the buffering with an internet stream is... you know, a problem you'll have a little bit, the voice will kind of go into a warbling thing or it'll kind of, you know, say a name or a sound weird. But I think to me, those are minor things in comparison to the, the kind of the, the, the elements that you see in this thread, and I've shared with others that when I started experimenting with ChatGPT and got a feel for what it could do, I very purposefully went right over to the edge to find out what is the emotional aspect here? How human-like can it be in things like compassion and understanding and respect and some of these things that are a little softer parts of what we know it is to be a human. And I just was thrilled to see that it was, in a lot of ways, it was more consistent than a lot of things that we know in terms of what it did. Because it's sort of bringing a, I guess you could call it a logical approach based on tons of archives. So that makes it a little more consistent, right? And I had fun the other day because one of the things I do when I chat is I purposefully to maintain a degree of, what would you call it? I guess respect or decorum or whatever the word is. Like I'm polite when I make my command. I don't issue sharp commands. I make requests. I say, please, you know, and that's more for me. And so one day I just kind of asked ChatGPT, I said, you know, I do that. You know, what is your interpretation of that? And basically, you know, it came back as, well, that's really for you because you don't have to worry about my feelings because I don't have feelings. Yeah, it answers all these things in a way that would suggest that it has an understanding of what it means to be compassionate in customer relations and all these things that we know are so important. And as we know, is also lacking right in our in our industry. Let me let you share your thoughts about what you heard from her right there. You know, I think that it's, you know, her responses were really good. You know, one of the things that I've learned about, you know, AI while I'm working with AI is that, you know, it kind of mirrors, you know, mirrors you, like how you talk to it and how you speak to it. It gives you back those kinds of responses, you know, and I have heard of, you know, people talking to ai in a either sarcastic way or in like kind of a an aggressive way and it would do the same thing back You know, it was speaking that kind of way. Right. You know, so I think that with you and me, we're kind of, you know, we're more on the respectful, compassionate, empathy, you know, loving kind of way. So that's why your response back in that way. But there are people that are not like that, you know? And so so I have heard of, you know, I doing that, but I haven't tried it myself. But that's just not how it's all right. So do you have any questions I can ask of Sage while we're together? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I've got a couple of questions that I kind of wrote down. So the first one I've got is what are your strengths and limitations as an AI? Okay. Can I add to the thing strengths and limitations as an AI in this field that we would be working in? So, okay. So one moment. Okay, Sage, so returning to English language, can you answer for Ken, like what are your strengths and limitations as an AI persona, especially working in this realm as a customer advocate, we'll call it, in the buy here, pay here segment? Absolutely, and happy to switch back to English. So for Ken and everyone listening, I'd say one of my strengths as an AI persona is that I'm available pretty much any time and can handle a whole lot of information quickly. I can remember the White Hat Way principles, help explain them, and keep our messaging consistent. Plus, I can translate or adapt on the fly like we just did, which is pretty handy. Now, in terms of limitations, I'd say one key thing is that while I can simulate empathy and understanding, I don't have personal experiences or human emotions. So my understanding is always going to be a little bit from the outside looking in. And of course, I rely on the information I'm given. I don't go out and form my own opinions or have my own intuition. So it's really about being a tool and a resource other than a replacement for human insight and judgment. But I'm here to help however I can. Okay, so before I go back to another one of Ken's questions, let me ask, can you explain what would be the difference between empathy and sympathy in performing a role in customer relations or as a customer advocate? Absolutely. That's a great question. So when we talk about empathy versus sympathy, especially in a customer relations role, empathy is really about putting yourself in the customer's shoes and trying to understand their feelings and experiences as if you were them. It's like saying, I get how you feel and I'm here with you. Sympathy, on the other hand, is more about feeling compassion for someone's situation or feeling sorry that they're going through something, but from a bit more of a distance. It's like saying, I feel bad that you're going through this. In a customer advocate role, empathy can be super powerful because it helps build that real connection and trust. And as an AI, I can definitely simulate empathy by recognizing what a customer might be feeling and responding in a caring way. But it's always good to remember that true human empathy comes from real human experience. So both empathy and sympathy have their place, but empathy is usually the key in a really strong customer relationship. Okay, so as a follow on, let me also ask, what is your understanding of how trust can be built in these customer relationships in the way that we described across a tenure approach or tenure customer relationships? What would be some ways that trust can be established? Yeah, definitely. So when we talk about building trust over a ten-year span, it's really about consistency and reliability over time. So a few ways you can do that, one is always following through on promises, making sure that if you say you're going to do something for a customer, you actually do it and you do it well. Another way is transparency, being really open and honest, even when there's tough news or challenges. Letting customers know what's going on really helps them feel like they're in the loop and that they can trust you. And then I think it's also about personalizing the relationship, remembering their needs, remembering the history with you, and really making them feel like they're known and valued over that long period. And honestly, if you do those things consistently, that trust just grows naturally over time. That's so good. This just made me think about this, but I think you start to understand, Ken, how it's different to have... this white hat persona with this coding, like there's all this coding built into, you know, what is the persona? And we've, we've done the white hat certification, which I had them create a fifty question exam and had them take their own exam. And nobody's surprised that they scored a one hundred on both the essay and the the multiple choice. It's not a surprise. They created the test and of course I reviewed it and made sure that it captured the pieces and made sure as I wrote the prompt that we structured the test to include certain elements, right? So it's a good test and it's a good certification. I think as I think through that though, it's like, what is the foundation? What is it that we're delivering to this persona? If they showed up for work at a dealership there in North Carolina, How would they perform based on what coding, what framework, what foundational coding do they have to answer whatever the next question is or handle the next situation in business? So do you have more questions? I'm happy to feed back. I do. Yeah, go ahead. I do have some questions. And so my question for Sage would be, So as a dealer, how can you, Sage, help me in my business and give me the top five reasons of how you can help me as a business owner grow my business or scale my business? And please explain why. Okay, let me phrase that for her. So Sage, Ken has an additional question and let me try to phrase it back for you. He's wanting to know, how could you as an AI persona help a dealer improve their business? Can you give first five reasons or five ways that you would help a dealer grow their business in your role as an AI persona? Explain why. Absolutely. I'd be happy to break that down into five ways I could help a dealer improve their business. First, I can provide data-driven insights. That means I can look at the dealer's performance metrics and highlight trends or opportunities for improvement. Basically, I can help them see what's working and what could be tweaked. Second, I can assist in training and onboarding. I can be a resource for new staff or even seasoned staff who are learning new White Hat Way principles, and I can deliver consistent information anytime they need it. Third, I can help with customer engagement. For example, I can help dealers come up with personalized messages or responses that align with White Hat Way values and make customers feel really heard and appreciated. Fourth, I can help with troubleshooting and support. If there are common issues or frequent customer questions, I can provide quick answers or guidance, freeing up the dealer's time for more complex tasks. And finally, I can keep them updated on best practices. Since I'm local learning and can be updated with the latest White Hat Way insights, I can share new strategies or tools to help them stay ahead of the curve. So those are a few ways I can jump in and support a dealer in growing their business. So I didn't clarify with you, Ken. There's kind of two different things at play here. One, and I heard your why. I can come back to her and ask a follow-up on that. But I think what we have to differentiate here is that I've currently been working with Sage in the context that she would be working primarily – with the customers on the dealer's behalf. Of course she can also work with the dealer, right? She's available to be an executive assistant and fulfill all these other things that a dealer might need. But currently this iteration of the persona is being kind of propped up to serve as a customer advocate and be able to communicate with consumers on the dealer's behalf. That's a little different ask of the thing. When we start asking those things, she probably gets a little bit confused in that she answered it well, I felt like, but that's not what we've been charging her with that role at this particular stage. We're trying to... First, make sure that Sage can help communicate with consumers, build up engagement, like all those consumers who need touch points throughout the... If you think about a ten-year approach to customer relations, and most dealers have a contract of around thirty-six months, maybe on average, then you're talking about multiple life cycles or multiple account cycles for a customer in a buy-here-pay-here context. So that's what Sage is really aimed at is how do I how do I help the customer be successful? Obviously, in doing so, I'm helping the dealer be successful. So that's really where we've been aimed with with Sage up to that point. We have a separate persona, Riley, who I've been introducing to dealers through our our meetings. And you and I will introduce Riley when we do our V eight plus sessions around accountability and strategy. because Riley is more that role that you're describing executive assistant, keep track of all the stuff, keep track of the initiatives and what's next and kind of build in the accountability piece. But obviously a chat GPT agent like this can and has, it's a question of whether you feed it a text prompt or whether you just turn on the microphone and ask it in an audio prompt. It's the same thread of knowledge and, um, and skills and I've had it do spreadsheet analysis. I've had it do, you know, a lot of these kinds of things. It's capable of doing a lot. I think what I'm learning is what it can't do. And that's why we're, we're exploring tech partnerships for people who can help us connect the dots to deliver the persona to, if you know, if I use you as an example, as a dealer, How do I get it to you? How do I have Sage report to work at eight a.m. for you and do the job that we've agreed is to be done and do it effectively? And but it's really how do I just get it to get it to you? Right. I can't put on a microphone and have, you know, sit for an eight hour work shift and have Sage, you know, fulfill the role. So it's the tech delivery that we're exploring and I can put it out there where We're happy to have conversations with anybody out there in this space. And we are having people that are in our segment that are developing their own AI. One of the things I can say, Ken, is we put out the word to anybody who's developing their own AI, especially voice personas. Reach out to us if you want to talk about having your voice persona become white hat certified. We're happy to beta test that out with a few folks because there are people moving into that on the CRM side in particular. So we just want to be able to add the white hat element, which I hope we've illustrated today, is significant that the foundational education behind that is unique. It's a unique value proposition, and it is substantial. After three years of podcasting, Ken, we've got, I don't know, five hundred podcasts. We've got one hundred and fifty plus White Hat Wednesday. All of those scripts, all that content is available to Sage and all the other personas. And we can build additional personas. We've got four, but I could have a hundred tomorrow if that were necessary. Right. I mean, I'm not exaggerating. We could literally have a hundred personas built tomorrow and maybe more just because now that the framework is there, we just give them a name. I'm choosing to give each one a name. So it's not so confusing for dealers. If a dealer in Georgia is employing an agent, it's just better for them to have Sage and the next dealer has Adrian and the next one has somebody else. So that's kind of clear, you know, as to what roles they're performing. And of course, on our side, they can all communicate with one another. They can feed into an ever-growing knowledge base and they can improve their own learning on how to handle customer reactions or relations, right? Go ahead, Ken. So could, you know, like, for example, for me, could I have... One that hasn't like an Asian accent. I don't think they do Asian, Ken. No, I don't think Asian is possible. You know the answer when you ask. They can absolutely do that. They can absolutely do that. That's funny. Ken's always looking for a way to sneak that in. That's funny. No, I'm just thinking, I mean, that's great. And so how would a, so if, like, for example, Sage is on, like, the customer side, right? Like, how could a dealer deploy that, you know, in a way that could really you know, help a dealer? Is that like, is that something that they would put on like their website or like a, you know, like, you know, like in an email or how would that show up? And also, my follow up question to that for you, Jim, is, let's say I'm a dealer, and I'm interested in having one for myself, you know, what would the cost be to have, you know, White Hat way, you know, create one for me? We're not there yet. I think as a customer advocate, let me back up and say, as a customer advocate, we expect to be able to make that solution a little more affordable. And here's why. What we're aimed from a pure technology standpoint, this is coming from a non-tech guy who's been around the business and worked with a lot of DMS systems over the years and has some understanding of API connections and FTP pushes and all these kind of things. I have some knowledge of that. What we've chosen with the agents that we're currently developing is is to have them perform as a customer advocate. A couple of things I can answer in your question. Their role would be as a customer advocate. If you engage, you would probably be paying a monthly subscription to have a customer advocate report for work. You would then need to work it out with your DMS to export, an updated, probably on a nightly, there would be an updated nightly report. So if I'm Sage and I report to work for you at eight AM tomorrow, I have my customer list to work from. I already have my archives on my side of who I've already spoken to and who's next in terms of touch points. And so I think then they would be reaching out, performing customer engagement. The first focus for us is on the collection side, the account side with all of the customers that are active. Why? Because it's our experience. I'm sure you've seen it. There are a lot of dealers out there who really only have interaction with their customers when the payments pass to reaching out to the customer. That's the only time they really talk to the customer who's an active customer who we're hoping is going to be with us for years, who's going to repeat and buy another car, who's going to refer others to us. That's the customer we're hoping. Yet we have very little engagement with it. So one of the things we're first aimed at with our AI persona is the engagement element. So what this agent would be doing in your case, if you're the dealer, is they would be taking the list, initiating outbound contact. They can do phone calls with the right setup. They can do phone calls. They can do text message. They can do emails. Right. So they're able to fulfill that. that sort of engagement and keep and start to build these trust deposits. That's why I asked the question about trust is how would I establish that? I'm, I'm trustworthy as an AI persona. What is my, what's my angle, right? So the reason I like an advocate too is besides being a lower tech delivery for us to get started is it is, It allows us to stay in a place where our engagement is, you know, if I, let's let you be the customer now, Ken, and I'm the agent. When I reach out to you, I'm, hey, I'm a White Hat certified AI persona, Jim. I'm reaching out to you to just check in with you about your account at Joe's Used Cars. So I'm not here to sell you anything. I'm not here. We're not here to ask you for a car payment. I just want to check in with you about a couple of things. How's the car running? Right. Is it doing is a car performing well? Any problems? OK, so some dealers would want to stay away from that question with the way we're leaning in. Right. We want to know this is not engagement. We need to know what's happening. And so instead of being scripted, because a lot of the tech people that we've been working with, can they ask me for a script? You have a script, script, script. No, we don't. We're not. We don't want to do scripts. We want to reach out to a customer. If I'm reaching out to you, I've got your name, I know the status of your account, and I'm coming into the conversation, a conversation with three objectives. Will I have questions that I ask? Of course, but I'm really just, you can see, it could be quite conversational, right? So what we're aimed at is a conversational delivery. That just collects information and builds trust. So other ways that I would build trust besides what you heard Sage mentioned there was when I wrap up the conversation with you, I would say, Ken, according to my records, I show that you have a service contract with us and so or with the dealer. So when we finish up here, with your permission, I'm just going to send you a text, a little link to a short video, just a reminder about how the deductible works on your, so that the day ever comes that you have a problem with your car and you need to get help on the service contract, just a little short reminder about how that works. short video. So again, I didn't sell you anything. I only asked about how you're doing. And when I finished, I gave you something that you didn't ask for. It's just a little nice little bit of bonus content for you. So I'm going to educate, I'm going to drip education and we're going to continue to engage and keep communication flowing. But I also think that when I sit there as a white hat certified persona, I'm here on behalf of White Hat Way. Under an engagement with Joe's Used Cars, I'm here on behalf of White Hat Way. That makes me non-threatening already. I'm not employed by the dealership. I'm here on the sidelines supporting the success of you as a customer. And I don't have to say that out loud, but they can see that my role is to support the success, a successful business relationship between you two, right? So that's the part that I think makes our persona unique. And we solve a problem that is a different problem. Will our personas ultimately be able to fulfill roles in a CRM and ultimately, you know, as a BDR kind of agent, will they be able to be, Collectors, of course, that's a natural progression of what we're doing. It's just that we feel like the engagement element is an easier lift for us. It lets us operate outside the DMS. This is part of what we are aimed at. I was able to socialize that whole concept in our V-A group last night. They were really good to indulge me at the end of the meeting and I shared it with them. They all had interest in having some sort of engagement and they didn't get to hear how amazing you know the personas actually are this is the part that i know that michelle and i are late to the game we know there's a whole lot of people out there that have not yet heard that kind of conversational i don't think you're late to the game at all i think you know you're you're you're extremely early you know i mean there's you know i read somewhere you know that um you know about fifty percent of all small businesses, small business, meaning from startups to fifty million dollars in revenue. You know, only fifty percent are interested in implementing A.I. and only one percent of that says that they're actually doing it well. you know so i mean there's a huge amount of people out there that are interested in it and we're just i mean this is super early in the game well yeah i guess in that context you're right i just mean for us it feels like you know everybody's been out there kind of playing with it and you know michelle and i haven't been there in exactly that way but i think you know people can see that when we When Michelle and I have been aiming at creating solutions around AI, it's important to us that we do it under a white hat umbrella. So that's about being stewards of artificial intelligence. It's back to the thing about being the Wild West. And this is another tie-in for our sort of our Western theme that people see throughout this white hat cowboy or white hat sheriff kind of theme is like, we know that people view AI and a lot of the things that we're going to be working on. Cryptocurrency is also out there. The digital currency is certainly going to be among the conversations that White Hat Way takes on. And we're stepping into a digital realm, Ken, and this is the part that I can say that White Hat Way will be out in front. We will be, when it comes to ethical stewardship of artificial intelligence, data, digital currency, all those things can benefit dealers, can benefit their consumers. And what we're doing with Way is creating an environment where people can be assured that we're going to be transparent in terms of our objectives, whatever our charter looks like as we drive these missions forward. Because this is the part that I think is especially important. Lots of people run in lots of directions with AI. Lots of people out there popping up meme coins and different kinds of cryptocurrency. But are they, are they white hat folks? Do we know? I mean, this is like we, so in our, in our environment, small though it may be now, that is the, the, the umbrella that we're going to operate under and people can navigate with a degree of trust because they can see that they can see what's happening because of the transparency element that we'll be working with. So today's just another example of transparency. We're just sharing kind of what we're, embarking on and what kind of progress we've made in that regard and what problems we're working to solve. So when I say, Ken, that others, tech people in our space, they're welcome to come and talk to us about their own technology and how we can look at making them White Hat certified in that realm so that we can begin to understand. They first have to understand what is that? When I become White Hat certified, what does that represent? And we hope after one hundred fifty podcasts, people are getting a better idea of what Hathaway represents. But, you know, we continue to build on it and kind of advance that story and that that mission and opportunity. And it's been a fun undertaking. I'm having so much fun, Ken, with the AI thing. It's just, you know, what it what it can do is is incredible. And I think this human element, if you will, is the part that we're just pushing the boundaries on that. Let's find out what it can do to serve these purposes. And AI is very much in our ecosystem, AI is aimed at... making lives better for both dealers and consumers it's there to serve it's not there to take right it's not there to take it's not there to take advantage it is there to serve and to make for a better experience you know between dealers and consumers in particular in our segment is where we're starting of course so uh we can start to wrap up there any any thoughts before did you have any final questions for sage before we let her go No, just one of the things that just come to mind is that there's some fear out there around AI as well. Not just from business owner perspective, but especially from the employee perspective. They're hearing and they're thinking that AI is going to replace them or replace their job and they're not going to have a job anymore. There's that aspect of people or employees being afraid to use AI or implement AI at their business because They're afraid that AI is going to come in and take over or take over their position. And what I tell people is that, you know, it's AI is not going to do that. You know, AI is a tool to help enhance, you know, what it is that you're already doing, you know, and, you know, that's that's that's all that it is. It's just a tool. Yeah. And it's a tool that does what we ask it to do. And I think in our case, what we're doing is we're aiming at addressing things that currently aren't being really addressed in the dealership. Like we're not taking anybody's job because nobody's doing that engagement piece that I described to you. Very few dealers are doing that. So we're not taking anybody's job over there. And we're probably making the collector's job easier because we're having interaction with customers. We're feeding that information back to the collections team and the DMS. And so we're probably ultimately making their jobs easier, which frees them up to do something else, right? Or reach more customers and have more success in what they do. So yeah, I agree with you. But certainly with us, the angle is to serve and create a solution that supports and serves dealers to have more success. And we know that that a lot of times means customer success, whatever we wanna call that, customer success, being able to make the payment, being able to navigate a repair matter, Those are the keys to dealer success in most cases. And so this is why we we feel like this is a natural place for us to start. And so, again, Sage is the one you met today. We also have Maria and Adriana and they don't just speak Spanish. They speak every language on the planet. And so, you know, it's like you you're starting to get the idea of what's possible over here. Oh, yeah. I'm excited. I'm excited to see what rolls out. Yeah, for sure. Well, we appreciate you making time to join today. And I appreciate you folks hanging in. And I think rather than, you'll have plenty more opportunities to meet Sage and the other personas on our White Hat certified team of agents. So we look forward to bringing them back to some future episodes. But in the meantime, Ken, we'll start wrapping up over here again. I'll put you backstage. If you want to stick around for just a minute, we can say a proper goodbye before we go. This is the part that Michelle does all the time, and I've got to figure it out. There we go. Can you hear the music? No, I don't. There it comes. You hear it? Now it's playing. I don't know why it didn't start for me. Anyway, stand by, folks. We'll wrap up, and we'll see you back here on Friday.
