#1 - The Intro

What percentage of independents that are involved do you think care to get involved?

You know, I think most of them that aren't involved don't care to get involved until they do or until something happens to them, you know, so until they have the DMV come in and shut them down for a reason, they thought they were doing it the right way and weren't doing it the right way.

Well, like your buddy that you met at the auction, he hasn't used a computer. Guarantee you he's not looking to get educated or learn more. He's just trying to write out the status quo, and he's either gonna get squashed by the guy down the street that understands, you know, and eventually his clientele, his loyal clientele to come to him will, you know, die, pass on change, you know, So I guess what I'm trying to think is how many independent dealers just want to sit in a cocoon and they do it their way and they don't care? And how many are looking for ways to get more educated? You know, I think it's 50.

50, honestly.

Okay.

I think it's 50. 50. I mean, you really have some. Some new people out there that. That come from a background. They went to college. You know, they may even have a, you know, a graduate degree. They understand the value of education. And you have some guys that just ended up in the business, and they don't know what they're missing yet, and so they don't necessarily want to get involved. Something like this, I really could think could pull people or push people into wanting to be involved.

Yeah, and that's where I look at it as I say, okay, who are the guys either in that circle of education or on the fringe of that circle of education that will, you know, I mean, it's really interesting. Even inside the Facebook group, there's, you know, what, maybe a dozen, two dozen, three dozen guys that are pretty active, you know, that jump in and contribute and are wanting to learn and asking questions and answering questions, you know, and who knows how many countless others just chime in and read it, but never actually contribute.

You know, I think, you know, if you're on there, you probably read a lot of it, and, you know, some people are just, in general, are gonna be a little shy about it, so.

Necessarily gonna post a question or make a response, but they're probably in there taking information and getting educated.

Yep. Yeah.

Yeah. So along those lines, I find that, you know, that group is just, I mean, like I said before, I mean, you look at a list of Topics that we could cover in a weekly podcast. I mean, it's endless, Right. You just go down and you look at all the hot topics and people that have said something and they've gotten a lot of responses, and that's what dealers want to, you know, so you find someone who's an expert in that field, bring them on in an interview type format, and all of a sudden you've taken what was a thread with 15 or 20 comments and you've made it into a 30 minute, you know, real strong education piece.

I totally agree. That's. And we can really rely, you know, the first little bit is going to probably be us relying on topics that we know and that we can really delve into, and then we can really look at the topics that are coming up the most and. And getting. Getting the right people to talk about it because. And honestly, I probably know the right person to talk about most subjects. Yeah. Because I. There's a lot of things I. I know a little bit about, but don't know everything about, you know, but I know dealers who know, you know, probably all there is to know about that. That particular situation.

Yeah. And that's where I think, I feel like. I feel like. And I think we had this conversation. I feel like Naid goes a little bit awry, where it's like, yeah, I want to talk about, you know, GPS best practices, but I don't want to have it done by gold Star, you know, don't want to, you know, and maybe there's a place for some of that, you know, but if we're gonna have a DMS debate, we're not gonna bring on, you know, dealer center or dealer socket, you know, because of course they're gonna pitch an angle and then it becomes an infomercial.

Sure. And that's. Sometimes the vendors are the most educated on the topic. And there are certain vendors that you could bring in and they could talk about the subject, and honestly, you wouldn't know that they were vendors.

Mm.

But there's some vendors you're gonna bring in and they are gonna sales pitch you the whole entire time, and it's useless. Useless.

Yeah. So I think, I think definitely vetting those in a way where you say, hey, you know what? Yeah, this is education first. And then, you know, like, you know, in podcasts, the last 60 seconds, okay, how can people get ahold of you if they want to learn more about your specific product or service? You know, now that you've educated us and proven that you're an expert in the field, yeah, now, now, now, people can contact you directly if they want to know about auto check or tax max or some other.

And that's, you know, and, you know, talking about, you know, dmss. We could bring on, you know, three or four dealers who use three or four different systems and, and see who's really, you know, using the best, you know, have one where you're talking to only buy here, pay here, stores that use, you know, three different system, have, you know, a retail only store that's using three different systems and, you know, really probably get some good value out of that. So if, if that question does come up in the thread, we can say, hey, we can send that podcast. Listen, this podcast, you got a question about dms, it'll probably help you.

Oh, yeah, man. I mean, that's, that's true. And when you look at that, like even us just, you know, hacking that thread or other groups promote this, you know, I mean, yeah, that's huge because so many people want to chime in with their opinion, but if you're like, hey, guess what? We actually have a 30 minute podcast that completely tear, you know, opens this subject up. Go check it out.

Yeah. Because no matter, no matter what, no matter what product you're using, you have good and bad aspects of that product. There's no product that, you know, there's no product that you say it's 100% perfect. That product works perfectly. So I believe having some dealers out there really voicing the goods and the bads of different products would probably help everybody, I think.

Yeah, yeah, that's. And I think about, like, it's almost funny though, but you could take 20 or 25 topics and you could probably recycle them every two or three months, you know, I mean.

Oh, for sure.

Because go back on that debate.

You know, easy to go back on the debate. And the technology is constantly changing.

Yep. Yeah. What's the best marketing strategies these days? Well, you know. Yeah. Who's doing Facebook Marketplace? Right. You know, who are the integration partners that you want to use? Who are, you know, you know, you look at some of these things. What is, you know, what does a subprime bubble look like? You know, how does that, how does that play out? You know that thread yesterday that everyone was talking about, about, you know, hey, is this mirroring 2008? You know.

Yep. You know, that just, you know, talking about that. Were you in business back then?

Yeah, yeah, we started. I started indirect lending in like 05. Okay.

Yeah, well, you know, we started and that's Right. I remember you said that. You know, from then on it's kind of dropped off at it. We've been, we've been buy here pay here since probably 87. Oh yeah. And it, some of the best years we had were when the economy was really bad. Because what you saw and what we saw was we had 700 beacon scores buying buy here pay here cars. Oh yeah, yeah.

And good people with bad credit.

Oh, yeah. And that happens, that happens during those times. And I've always thought our business model is immune from bad economy and it kind of proved itself to be that. And in. The best thing we can hope for is a little turn down in the economy and people to tighten their strings.

Yeah, I'd be really interested to dive into more of the 2007, 2008-2009. What does the actual period of crash look like? You know, that's where I say, okay, our people are really in buy here pay here where the rubber hits the road. They're kind of continually in a recession. But what happens when, you know, your local employer gets hit and they have to lay off 20% of the workforce? Right.

What happens when the buy here, pay here customer can't get another job?

Yeah, they're not working two jobs anymore. They're not getting full time hours or they're having to relocate because these guys shut down and so they're going back to the neighboring state, you know. So yeah, it's the slide down to the bottom that I find that interesting for us because that's where we get hurt. Because I remember back in the day we had, I had another subprime lender in the area that he was very heavy in the Hispanic community. And for us, oh yeah, construction goes.

South all the way to Mexico.

Look elsewhere. Yeah, so he was chasing cars south of the border and all over the place. You know, what does that, what does that downslide look like for us? And how can we kind of plan on it or mitigate it or do we need to.

That's a great, I mean, that's a great topic for a podcast. I mean, that is a, a really good one. And you know, you can, I've seen, I saw those, those dealers who relied on that Spanish, you know, market here in our town. I don't, I may have two people on a, two Spanish customers on a podcast at the moment, you know, on a loan right now at the moment that are. So it's not going to affect me, but if half my portfolio, Spanish speaking, imagine what's going to happen. And it happened to them last time and they were, they were crying the blues. They lost cars everywhere.

Yeah, yeah, I find that. I find that an interesting niche, especially for, I mean, we just barely hired on a kind of a GM who's from. Was the neighboring buy here, Pay here, our number one competitor. He left them, came over to us. But he's very, very strong in the Hispanic community. And so his part of his marketing game plan is to pick up all of his customers from over there. And again, I've always kind of been of the like, well, I don't really want to dabble in that because of the mobility that they have. And so, yeah, I'm definitely facing that. I'm looking at square in the eyes right now because that's really where he wants to go deep. And I think, oh, I don't know, man.

You know, when they work, they pay. You know, when they work, they pay great. When the work leaves is when you have an issue.

Yep, yep. They go where the work is. They got. And that's, you know, small town. You know, that's our number one. My under. Number writing underwriting criteria is are you from here? Times get bad. Are you going to stay here?

You know, that's, that's the main thing.

Makes it makes a $45 repo instead of a 1400 dollar, you know, chase across the country.

And you know, that's definitely, you know, that's probably another podcast is buy here, pay your underwriting.