#178 - Back To Basics in BHPH w/ Brent Carmichael

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Welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson, a podcast by Dealers for Dealers. Here we go.

Hello, guys and girls. Welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. Today we have narrowed down our good friend Brent Carmichael here with McMurdo. He is going to be in Texas with us. Right, Brent?

That is correct. That is, yeah.

Brent has got a couple of great, he's got one good, good breakout session and a couple of roundtables and he's going to be all over the place. So if you're going to be at the Texas Independent Auto Dealers Convention, which I hope you are, in about a week, you haven't booked it, jump on, book it now. You're going to see Brent there. And Brent, give us the headline of your main session.

Well, the main session is called Always a Good Time to Revisit the Basics. And it's kind of getting back to business 101 that there's never a bad time to revisit the basics, period. Whether it's in a good time or like what we've had in the past year, which is kind of a good time, but a pandemic year as well. There's never a bad time to be taking a look at the basic stuff, the one on ones.

That's so right, Brent. This whole wave we've had over the last year, our last 15 months, I guess 16 months at this point, has been just a roller coaster up, down, side to side. Then you get, I mean, then you get employees quitting, then you can't rehire. It's been a real, real bad situation for us anyway. And back to basics is what I figured out a couple weeks ago and tried to implement. What are some of the things you're going to go over to make sure we know what the basics are again? Because it's been a long time since we had to deal with them.

Well, there's going to be a couple of things in there. We're going to be as high as maybe a 30,000 foot level and just take a look at the overall business model itself and then even talk about drilling down into expense review, something that we should be doing on a monthly basis, quarterly basis that we do. And then we forget about it when times get good. And sometimes we remember things when times get bad. So it's going to be a little bit of everything, some day to day stuff, some weekly stuff, some monthly stuff, some annual stuff that we do tend to forget. I know I did back in the days when I used to work for a living as a dealer. So I still see it with our dealer clients today.

It's true. Mike Brant. And before we started talking, I mentioned that my one day $1 has started to jump up pretty substantially. Not just creep up. I mean, it's taken pretty good hops. And when I sat down with my collector last week, I said, yeah, you know, this, this, this, this. And she said, yeah, yeah, I should probably get back to doing written promise to pays. And I was like, what? I was like, when did we stop doing this? How so? So you're right. It's back to those basics. Because things were so good. Yeah. Someone said they'd be in Friday. They pretty much came in Friday. Cause that's when their unemployment hit, you know, or those things. But. But the basics are like, no, no, no. Like blocking, tackling. Like promise to pay is how, when, why, how much? You know, like, when did we get away from these things? Was it just too cushy? We just all start losing track. And. And to Luke's point, now we're getting to the area of like, I don't even have to worry about my personnel expense because I have no personnel. So that's one of the things you probably could just glaze right over, Brent, is let's not even talk about. But. But we can talk about maybe expense, maybe, you know, what we're paying them or what we're having to pay them. I don't know if that's part of your presentation. Man, what a change we're in right now.

Talk a little bit about pay plan review more than anything else. Because again, when times are good, the money's flowing. We don't necessarily maybe catch that a sales pay plan is a little more guaranteed than variable. Right. But then when things slow down that we see our, and you mentioned it, our cost per car on a sales comp standpoint kind of go up and we go, why? And we. Well, because we're paying them to do nothing. We're paying them to sell fewer cars so they have more of a guaranteed pay plan. So yeah, that's part of it. Definitely is definitely time to review pay plans to make sure they are in line not only with where we are currently in our business, but you mentioned it, you're having a hard time finding people or hiring good people. Maybe our pay plans aren't conducive to what's in the market right now more than anything else. You know, maybe not necessarily an hourly wage, but flexible schedules, whatever it is. But it's always time to Reevaluate those things. And again, pay plans, we don't want everybody doing every week or every day, but it's a quarterly, annually thing just to make sure they're still aligned with the company goals.

For sure, we've seen a. We haven't been paying as many people, but the people we've had stay. We've had to pay more money. I'm sure you've seen that across the board, too, Brent, how you know, what's a good way to, to make sure we're paying people the correct amount?

Well, if they stay, you pay. If they leave, you're not. No, I'm kidding. Well, and again, one of the things our groups just met in the month of June and one of the hot topics that came up a lot was, you know, what are we going to do when minimum wage goes to X? Whatever that is, 10, 11, 12. We now know that places like Chick Fil A and Fast food are at 12 or 13 or even $15 an hour. Now, where does that put us? Is it just pay? Is it benefits? Is it flexible schedule? Is it work environment? Right. We've all heard the, we've seen the surveys where money is not the most important thing necessarily. Right. It's recognition or chance for advancement. Again, all of those. I still think kind of drill down to money is important to a certain extent out there. But the biggest fear is what's the impact on my business going to be now that minimum wage is 15, where that position six months ago, eight months ago, 10 months ago, or 15 months ago was $10 an hour, now becomes 15.

Yeah.

Quality of employees is kind of a hot topic as well, because it's. I'm willing to pay 15, but I'm getting the $9 an hour applicant. I'm not getting what I feel is that $15 an hour quality applicant.

Not at all. And what's interesting to me, two thoughts that I've had on that lately is I think I'm better off paying $20 an hour or 24, 25 for that person that can get as much or more done than two $15 an hour people. That should be $9 an hour people. So I'm kind of toying with that idea. Does my pay plan need to be so aggressive that I am attracting one really, really well qualified person as opposed to, you know, hiring two. So. So folks, you know, do more with less, so to speak. And then the other thought is it just. I don't see. I don't know. I've complained about this in podcasts before. So I won't go into it. But they just, the not showing up thing, the not on time thing, I guess I'm realizing that I thought that putting in my ad, hey, this is $40 an hour, 40 hours a week. This is full time. You get full time. Like people wanted that, they don't want that. That's what I'm realizing. They're not responding to my ad because I'm asking for 40 hours. So my second question to everyone is how many hours a week do you want to work?

32.

Yeah.

They want to work 30 full time anymore. Yeah.

Nobody wants to be here at a job. It's crazy.

That blows my mind, 32 hours. But I think Iceland just finished up a experiment, I should say, where they went to the 32 hour work week and apparently production went way up and it worked for Iceland, but who knows if it'll ever work for the U.S. brent, one quick question. With all of our expenses going up, you look at 20 group numbers all day long. Have you seen an increase in monthly payment go up or weekly payment go up?

Not drastically recently, but if I look back five years ago, yes, I think our average weekly payment in our 20 group was 85, $87, 2016, 2017. Now we're 92, 93, 94. So it's almost been like a dollar a year. But again, it kind of goes back to a lot of our dealers base that payment off of, you know, a net income and a 20 or 25%. So they've just automatically chosen to go present the customer with that higher payment. And again, with incomes going up, you know, they can afford that. Right. When we go to, if it is $15 an hour federal now, we should be able to ask for 97, $9800 a week at that point because it fits as far as a payment to income ratio is concerned. So not drastically in recent history, but I mean if you take a look back, it's 10% over the last five years.

Yes.

Well, it's got to go up with the cost of cars that have gone up. So are your people in your 20 group, are they buying less car than they were buying eight months ago or are they buying a higher priced car?

No, they. Well, despite what's happened this year, let me put it that way forward, I mean we know it's 37 or 39%. Wholesale prices are up or they were through the end of May, June, they came down just a tad bit, but they've kind of stuck to their guns. And now it's a older Higher mileage car. But they've tried to be disciplined and say I'm just not going to pay more than five grand or six grand so that I keep my three year term, I keep my $400 a month payment, understanding that it's hurt volume to a certain extent. They've sacrificed volume for the model, which a lot of us have a hard time doing and some businesses can't afford to do that. We understand that.

But I've done that, so I get it.

Yeah, I guess that would be a question too, Brent. Is that just a philosophy is either way, right? Or do you see that as a buy here, pay here if you don't keep your volume, you know, if you don't keep your volume, is cannibalizing on your portfolio a good idea to get you through these rough times where you feel like, hey, what I don't want to do is go originate a whole bunch of bad loans either over the dollar amount that these guys should be in, or I'm putting too much money on the street or I'm doing this, this, this. I'm going to wait and see what normalizes. So I'm going to do some slim deals for a couple of months, kind of eat away into my portfolio so that I don't have this little cancer.

Well, and that's where most of our dealers are. They understand and again, it's kind of a, over the last four or five years, become more prominent with our groups is it's cash flow, cash flow, cash flow. They're not worried about building huge portfolios and equity in business. I think they pretty much realize there's not going to be an IPO anytime in the near future. So it's here's how much cash I need to do X, whatever that is, retired debt, retired leverage, whatever that is and whatever that level of sales to maintain that cash flow is, is where they come back to and so they're okay with, you know, I've got a lot of dealer clients that have said, hey look, I want to be 2000 accounts and I want to be anymore. 2000 gets me X. It does this and I can stay there. I'm not worried about new locations or anything at that point. So, you know, the growth strategies have fallen off over the last three or four years for sure, pretty predominantly over the last couple. And actually going into this pandemic over the last year, a lot of them were already going that direction anyway. So they were in a good position as this started. They already had their model or their plan in place to Go. I just kind of want to stay 60amonth or whatever that number is. So it kind of worked out good for them as far as this last year was concerned, where they didn't need 100 cars and could only sell 60. Or currently, where prices are just so ridiculous that I may have to sacrifice volume because I'm not going to pay 2000 over MMR for a car because I just can't afford to do that from a loss standpoint. And we'll talk about the model a little bit in the presentation is we look at one to see, okay, if I do take on more risk for the same type customer, we challenge the dealer to assume loss ratios are going to stay the same, that nothing's going to change there. And so typically, whatever that increase is is probably going to fall to an average charge off. And where does that put you from a financial standpoint? And can you live with that? What in most cases would probably be reduced profitability if everything stayed the same? How many more cars do you think you can sell by sacrificing from a quality of deal standpoint? You know, these are discussions that we have a lot in our 20 group meetings. When a dealer comes in and when they come to me and say, what should I do? Which is better? My first question, guys, is, well, Jeff, Luke, what do you want to be when you grow up? Right? I mean, there's no right or wrong. You know, the cash model or the equity model. Neither one's right or wrong. It just depends on your appetite and your availability of capital.

Well, Brent, every time I think about what these cars are bringing compared to what they were bringing, you know, in normal times, all I see is higher repo loss, higher repo loss. Every time I go to pay an extra two grand for a car, which I haven't done. Maybe I have, maybe I haven't. I just think that, well, that's two more thousand dollars. I'm going to lose my repo. So does it even make sense to do that? And it sounds like a lot of.

That'S been going on.

Y' all been discussing that.

Yeah. And what you have to take a look at, Luke, and that's a great point is if I'm going to sacrifice, I have to increase sales by X percentage. And that's something that we can sit down with the dealer and figure out what that X percentage is. Maybe 10% and maybe 15 and maybe 20. And if they can pretty much guarantee that we're going to be able to do that ongoing, then it may make financial sense at some point. But if you can't pretty much know that it's going to increase volume by X, you're Exactly right. That $2,000 is just going to fall right to the average charge on.

And honestly, for anybody to think that they can increase the amount of cars they're selling right now, I think is pie in the sky. I don't think that with the lack of inventory and what's going on that you did, anybody could say, yeah, I can increase volume. I don't think that's possible. That's just me.

Well, I mean, they can, but it is stepping way out. I mean, they would drastically have to change a model to do that, reduce it down, extend a term, lower a payment. You know, they're going to have to make some pretty serious concessions at this point to pretty much guarantee that volume. Yes. And then it becomes a question where we've got to sit down and go, okay, you and I just did this actually with a dealer, excuse me, back in May at an on site, you know, we had to pretty much guarantee 15% increase every single month, not just on an annual basis. Every month we had to sell 10 to 15% more cars than we were currently selling or his profitability would actually go backwards. Because we knew that we weren't going to get a better quality customer, we had to assume collection, future collections were going to be the same. And by the end of the meeting, I can't guarantee that I might be able to do it for a month or two, but I said, you've got to do this for 12, 15, 18 months in a row. And if you can't, then we probably don't do that. Because at the end of it, we showed that his profit per car sold was actually going to be going down 18 months from now, as opposed to going up or maintaining. So he's going to end up making less money per car sold than he is now. More profit, but less effective was my point.

Hey, everybody, sorry to interrupt the podcast real quick, but we need to plug Buckeye Dealership Consulting, the sponsor for the podcast.

Yeah, Jeff, like I always say, reinsurance is the best way to build long term wealth in our industry. And Buckeye Dealership consultants, they do it, they understand our business and they help us mitigate risk and help us set up programs to make us money and protect our customer.

Yeah. If you've made it this far through our podcast with Brent, you know, you're a buy here, pay here, dealer most likely. Or thinking about it, if you're selling, you know What, Luke? Between 15, 20 or more cars a month. Buy here, pay here. You are definitely at the point where you need to be reinsuring your own vehicles. That means you own the warranty company. Right now you're probably guaranteeing the car anyways. You're putting some sort of a 30 or 60 day guarantee on to make sure it runs. But you need to make sure you're putting that money aside in a tax deferred situation and running it back through your business when you need it.

So doing it the right way, that's the right way to do it.

Yeah, we've got some great episodes on that. So go back into the history and look them up. But we are gonna get back to the podcast. Yeah, that would be my question. And this could be. Well, I guarantee it's a stupid question, but is the old pricing model, I mean isn't. Doesn't apply anymore. Right? I mean we gotta look at this like it's not cost times two plus 1,000. Like that's just not happening or whatever. Whatever it is or should be, do we have to just be okay with that? Is, you know, I'm not making eight grand on a thousand dollar acv.

I mean we haven't been. Yeah, I mean when cars got over $5,000 in an average price, your days of double plus a grand were gone because you were looking at a $12,000 sale price and $400 a month. That's a 42 month term. Right. With the average down payment and numbers just show that wouldn't work. So we have it in our composite as a benchmark of what your gross should be as a percent of acv. I don't like talking about it. As far as a benchmark is concerned, I believe it's 80 or 81% or something. So a five grand ride would be $4,000. And you can kind of do the math with the rest of them. I still think there is a market price for cars. I think we get over that $13,000 sale price for most dealers in most markets and I think you start to see a pretty good decrease in overall performance. And when I talk performance, I'm talking on a profit per car sold basis, front and back end, everything added in there. I just don't think we have the customer base yet to get to that sale price. Have a lot of my dealers that are $10,000 ACV and above. So I get the 15, nine. Typically those guys are 17, 18, 19, $20 an hour. So there's a little bit more affordability. But our data shows our Average buy here, pay here, customer brings home around 15 or $1,600 a month and you get to that 13 grand and over, that's a 400. That's back of a $400 a month payment. Now you're 42, 44, 46 months. You know, you're still, you're somewhere close to a 20 month break even on that same customer that guys, I've said this many times. I've been in this deep subprime customer business since 1989. Starting out in B loan. The customer has not changed in that many years. They make more money now than they did in 1989, but the actual customer is still pretty much the same sub 500 credit score, job time change, residence change, you know, has a more volatile lifestyle than normal than the normal customers. So I just think there's a tipping point right around that 12, 9, 99 and below. Our data show seems to perform better from an overall profit per car sold standpoint. You get over that and it decreases. Part of that is lack of gross that you can charge. Customers are still falling at a certain time.

Yeah, it seems like there's also got to be the bottom end to that. Right. So 12, nine is the top end. There's also got to be a bottom end of car performance. I imagine there is.

I mean, you see that you get below that $4,000 ACV and what you typically see there, our data shows, is a higher frequency of charge off. Right. You have less severity because there's not as much money on the street. But you do see a higher frequency. So charge offs as a percent of sales or open accounts are a little bit higher with those. But to me there's been an argument out there, is it the car or the customer that repossesses? I'm kind of old school. I think it's the customer, not necessarily the car in most cases. So typically when we're selling that low of an ACV car that is that younger customer maybe lives at home, first job, short job, you know, not much income. So we're already taking a risk with that customer in the first place. So we're kind of asking for a higher frequency with those. And again, I think we need to do those deals, but it needs to be a certain percentage of our deals, not a majority of our deals.

Those cars just don't perform. I mean, if you said, you know what's going to happen? Well, the car is just not going to perform. I mean that's really where it's what it's about.

Right, Brett, No.

Well, but it's like what Brett said, though. It's the customer. And what happens when you have that car? That's the customer you're attracting. That's the customer you're bringing in. Luke, if you put, if you put my 59.95, you know, starter customers in your cars that are all 12,995, well, that's where they're still going to blow it up, right? They're going to blow it up. And it could be the nicest car with the longest warranty and 20.

Well, that's the reason.

Well, that's the reason my underwriting is so much different than everybody else in our 20 groups underwriting. You know, it's, it's just because I've got.

You've got a nicer car.

I've got a lot more to lose.

Right. You're attracting and putting a better customer into those. Nice.

So I think.

Yeah, so I think the lower price is just what Brent was talking about. The, you have a, a younger customer, a customer who may not know what's going on doing that. And that's. And that creates the, it creates the default, but the car also contributes to the default because it's not going to last no matter who drives it. Probably.

Let me throw out a phrase, guys, that if any of my 20 group members are out there are going to hate this because I'm famous for this. And it's called devil's advocate. Devil's advocate says that. And we've got quite a few of the 10 grand and above ACV dealer clients. I can promise you that their loss ratios frequency are no better than the under 10 grand guys. So their charge offs as a percent of sales or open accounts are not any better than those under the ten grand. So our data doesn't show that it brings in a better customer. Now, mine's way better. Way better. I'll agree from a severity standpoint, Luke. Completely right. The average charge off is less as a percent of acv, as a percent of gross is less. Completely agree with that. But the data for our high ACV dealers, in fact, I've got a couple of them that are 12 and above that are above 50% charge offs as a percent of sales on an annualized basis and have been. Now again, grain of salt with this. These are the guys that, hey, I'm not gonna let you know, I'm not gonna let Jeff run two weeks late on a payment or three weeks late on a payment grand ride. So you're due on or before if Your insurance cancels. I might accelerate at that point where the $5,000 guy is probably not going to accelerate and repossess somebody for canceled insurance on a five grand ride. So again, it's kind of a grain of salt with that. I'm not going to say that if you're a higher acv, it does not work. I just saying that our data shows. And again, it's not 10,000 dealers. I'm going to promise you that it's a smaller sample, but it just doesn't pan out, that they pay overall any better than a lower acv. And again, collected different. There's so many things that go into that. So bit of a grain of salt with that.

Sure.

Yeah. I don't know that Luke's, you know, having a. Luke, your ACV is probably double mine.

Probably.

Where are you at 10? Eight. Right?

At 10.

Okay.

Yeah.

I'm like at seven or eight. So we're not quite double, but definitely a different mentality, I think. Brent, like you said, you know, I am going to let them get a couple weeks late. I'm going to work with them. Luke, actually, I guess on the flip side, lets him get a couple months late. So he might not be a good example of this.

But.

So if they're paying and they're communicating.

They'Re probably still riding.

But the one thing, you know, if, you know, talk about insurance, I'm strict on insurance. I'll cut them off in a second because they total, you know.

Yeah, that's where you really lose. You don't lose in a repo, Luke. You lose in a total loss. That's when.

You did 18 months ago. Right. Because car values are up. We haven't seen it so far. It hasn't necessarily bled into the insurance settlements. We're starting to see a little bit of an uptick in that, which is nice, but not at the rate at which we're having to pay for the car, which is a little depressing.

We're going to challenge every one of them.

And that's the funny part, is the best, not the best, but the cheapest inventory I can find is my repos. So I kind of got to the point, even with my collection girl, I said, you know what? What I don't want to do is work with a bunch of people that are going to be dead ends. And then in six months, I have a huge wave of repos coming in. I said, let's get on them quick now and let's be a little aggressive with picking them up because, you know, if you're not, if you're not working now and you're not getting the hours right now, there's something seriously wrong that you're not telling us, right? I mean, if you tell me you're not getting the hours at work, there's something else happening and I want those cars back. You know, I mean, if you're not going to pay for it, unfortunately, I'll get it and recondition it and put it back out there. It's, it's the best ones I'm finding.

Hopefully one good thing that's going to come out of these high prices right now is in the subprime market where, you know, they're having to pay more for these. We're starting to see it with some of our independent used guys in that finance companies, credit unions are not really tightening down, but changing the deal structure so it doesn't get paid as much because I think they're well aware that they're going to get trapped with a lot of water in their portfolios because the car that's 15 grand now, right, sized a year ago was 12 or 10 and a year from now may be back down to that. And so if that's the case, then a lot of their secured balances are going to have some water in them and maybe, maybe we can get lucky that they'll realize that a little bit quicker and maybe start pulling back a little bit more, free up some not only decent customers or better customers for us, but maybe free up some inventory as well.

I hadn't even thought about that. Have you seen that?

I have. We're starting two new independent used 20 groups that I'm going to moderate. And one of them, we kind of did an early exercise where I had them submit all of their main lenders what their current deal structures were. And again, they're all driven off credit score. And if the credit score is above 600, then it's 125 loan to value or whatever. But now the updated ones are those we got even the upper credit scores are 105, 110% loan to value, where last fall they were 125, 30.

Okay.

So yes, they are starting to already kind of accommodate for this spike in value. And again our independent guys, they're not struggling. They're doing still pretty well. But their, their profit per car is coming down a little bit at a time. So it's hurting them to a certain extent at this point, but hopefully it's going to be something that frees up some customers. And again Maybe, hopefully some inventory for us. I don't think we're going to think this calendar year, unfortunately. Guys, I read an article by the Forbes automotive guru. He was pretty convinced we were going to see a relaxing in wholesale prices Q3 or Q4 of this year. And then later on the same day, I read one from the CNN automotive guru guy and he says, nope, we're in for this until 2023. So somewhere between six months and 24 months, depending on who you ask and what day it is, where it's going to be. But I think we're in for this again. I know they said June, it came down a little bit, 1.9% or 2% or whatever over what it was in May. But we're still 30 plus from January 1st. Well.

There'S got to be at some point, and I might be wrong and you've been doing this longer, longer than I have, Brent. At some point there's got to be a wane in demand and repos have to start back again.

So.

You'Re not going to have this hyper demand for forever. But then again I go, okay, well they're not manufacturing cars right now. And it's going to take, whenever they start, 100% manufacturing will take 90 to 180 days to get, you know, the back full.

So I just don't, I don't know.

But there's got to be at some point a drop in demand, a significant because of all the cars that have already been sold. I just think a lot of demand has been pulled forward. Do you think that's possible?

Excuse me? Well, I kind of, I think about that and I go, well, yeah, I hope it is. But you remember we were selling 17 million, almost 18 million new cars. 17, 18, 19. Right. Three years in a row, 2 to 1 on a used ratio, 35 to 37 million used cars were sold on average each of those three years. So we're selling 50 something million cars. I'm sitting there going, how many people can actually have a car out there? I mean that's 50 million for three years. That's 100. That's half the population would have had to have bought a new or used car over that three year period, right? Got to assume who doesn't have a driver's license, who shares, who doesn't. So you would, you would have to assume at some point there's got to be. And like we've heard with new car, they're selling fewer cars and making more money. I mean, they're on pace to do 13 or 14 mil, yet knock it out of the ballpark from a profitability standpoint, they're okay with the demand not being there, and they don't want it to go back honestly to pre Covid at this point, because then their margins are gonna shrink at that point. So there's just a lot of different things in play at this point. It's obviously for all of us, the weirdest, as you said, 15 or 18 months that I can ever remember being either in the car business or in the auto finance business in the 30 years now that I've been in this, 32 years now that I've been in this industry, I can't remember anything that's been anywhere close to this. And with any kind of a lack of direction on knowing really what to do with your business coming up.

Yeah. So, Jeff, back to Texas. So, Brent, it sounds like we've got a lot to learn from you at your session. And you're also doing some breakouts too, is what all. What all can people try to find you doing?

Well, they've got me scheduled to do a breakout session of just Q and A, just on collections, where there's no set agenda, no set script. It's basically open questions, anything anybody wants to ask, whether it be specific to a type of a customer or just a general process or collection underwriting question that they've asked me to do. Again, very honored and flattered to be not only a part of that, but with you guys, because I listen to your podcast, I'm a fan. I'm gonna say it right now. I'm kind of geeking out, being able to do this again. So thank you, guys. Appreciate what you do for the dealers in the industry. And then they've also been nice enough to ask me to moderate some roundtables on Monday afternoon, the first day, as well, that we're gonna do on best ideas from 20 groups. So we'll be doing that. So be pretty busy. They've got me pretty busy on Monday at Tiada.

Well, wonderful. I will actually check that. Best ideas from 20 group out. That's a neat session.

For a small, minimal fee, I will allow you to stay in.

Yeah, you got to bring security around. Keep Luke in line. What? Brent, if people can't make it to the Texas convention, how else? Where else can they find you?

Reach out to me via email. Bcarmichaelncmassociates.com Shoot me a text message. Give me a call. Phone number is 913-708-5976. I'll be Nia Da on a panel as well. Got some classes, some buy here, pay here. Specific classes coming up at our corporate office in Kansas City the first part of August. A collections and underwriting class and a buy here, pay here sales training class. Who teaches that 9th through 12th of August in Kansas City?

You teach that?

I do. There you go. We have the full suite of. We have a collections, collections, management, sales, sales management, shop, reconditioning center, management class that we offer. We don't offer all five of the classes every year. It's kind of based on demand. So this year, the demand was for the collections and underwriting class and for the sales training class.

Very neat.

That's awesome. That's. That's bang for your buck right there. If you got Brent teaching that class, a lot of times you'll go to some of those boot camps and it'll be the, you know, assistant to an assistant who has never really done that or isn't the expert in the subject matter. So that sounds like, yeah, bang for buck right there.

If expert means that I've made every mistake probably humanly possible, either in the sales and the finance side of this business, then, yes, I'm an expert, because I pretty much, I think, made them all. At this point, there hadn't been too many that I've heard that I went, nope, I didn't do that. Most of the time, somebody says, man, I screwed up here. I went, yep, I've been there, too. I've done the same thing.

That's good, because it's a lot of people that claim to be experts that have never actually done it or done it wrong or had the. Yeah, they read a book and now they're an expert. Brent, we appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Look forward to seeing you in a week now.

Thank you, guys. Like I said, I appreciate it. Big fan. Appreciate what you do for dealers and for the industry. A great resource. Everybody really should be a part of this. I put you guys out there as much as I can. Thank you, Brent.

Thanks, Brent.

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