#194 - What is a Fractional CFO w/ Chad and JP

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Independent Dealer Podcast, brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consultant. Today we have JP and Chad from Martin Bryan Accounting and Consulting, and Jeff. Today we talk about fractional CFOs. What's that about?

Yeah, really cool concept. Cool term, cool concept. This was brought to me by a dealer buddy that I really trust. They've been working with JP and Brian or Chad and JP for a long time, or maybe a long time, couple months. But he just raved about the fact that he's finally got a financial game plan in place. We all set these goals and these strategies, but we don't really keep ourselves accountable or always know everything. So in this episode, guys, we're going to talk about what fractional CFO is. We're going to talk about the pitfalls that dealers fall into. We're going to talk about some great tips that these guys have for us so they share some awesome knowledge and that as independent dealers, the things we need to be looking out for and of course, how a firm like theirs could step in and help us out. Guys, say hello to the independent dealer community.

Hey, guys.

Hello.

All right, here we go. That'll work.

Cool.

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

I am a cpa and I have spent eight years in dealerships of large buy here, pay here, at least here pay here dealerships over the years. And one was an 8500 buy here, pay here account, and the other one was a 6,000 buy here, pay here and lease here pay here dealership. So acting as their controller and as their CFO at those dealerships. And then a couple years ago, I branched off and started a CPA firm, a consulting firm that deals strictly with the. The auto industry and this space. And then about six months ago, I brought JP on and we formed a partnership to carry that on.

And so, Chad, were you. So how long were you in the buy here, pay here space? You said about 15 years.

Well, I've been in the corporate world for 15 years. I spent five years in audit and tax work and then went into the corporate world, but spent eight years of that, specifically as a controller CFO of the large buy here, pay here, lease here, pay here dealerships.

Okay, so you have a good grasp on what all of us go through daily, it sounds like.

So it's a good mix of having that industry audit tax work mixed with boots on the ground dealership work kind of gives me a good perspective of what dealers in their financing piece or their finance department is going through on a daily basis.

Sure. And jp, what are you doing here?

Yeah, good question. So, you know, like Chad, I have this, the audit tax kind of consulting and accounting background. I spent the better part of almost 13 years at a large CPA firm that serves this, this space Cat Sapper Miller. And you know, during that time probably spent 50% of my time in the independent automotive space. So I didn't have boots on the ground like Chad did, but dealt with dealers just about daily and kind of any issues they're facing. And I got to know Chad over the last couple years kind of serving mutual dealers that he was an outsourced CFO to and that I was kind of an auditor and accounting consultant too. So I'm now in the past year getting a real flavor for what you guys go through on the day to day basis.

Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of fun. So we're going to talk about this term called fractional cfo. Guys, tell us, what are the challenges? I mean, you talk to a lot of dealerships, you've been in dealerships, what are the challenges the dealerships face from a financial situation where they would need a fractional cfo, where they would need someone like that? What are we dealing with? What are the headaches that we're running into? What are the blind spots that we have that we're not really addressing is as independent dealers?

Yeah, I'll take that one out of the gate, man. It can look like a lot of different things to a lot of different dealers. But, you know, through the course of this discussion, we can pick up some of the pain points that we're hearing and that generally draw us in, you know, some that immediately come to mind. You've got, I mean, staffing's a huge issue these days, right. And dealers get in touch with us because they're having someone, some key accounting member retire or leave or just walk out, right? And so you're thinking, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? So an outsourced CFO or outsourced controller might come in kind of as a stopgap just to make sure that that quintessential daily, weekly or monthly processes aren't slipping through the cracks. Things like supervising existing accounting folks, right. Making sure that policies and controls are being followed, producing, you know, monthly financial reporting, make sure cash flows are being managed. Right. That vendors are being paid, people are being paid. And so, you know, folks like us might come in to be that stop gap and then over time develop with the company. That's a scenario that we hear a lot. Another one that we come into quite often is a company is growing and also decides it needs to grow up financially. And so at some point in the kind of growth cycle of a dealer checking your bank balance once or twice a week isn't sound financial planning or isn't nailing the finance role. And so having someone, an outsourced CFO come in, or if you can afford a full time CFO on staff to make sure that monthly financial statements are being produced, that you can put budgets and projections in place to see what the course of the business is, analytical packages. If you don't have maybe the right dms in place or the right access to sales and collections data. And what an expert can do, a finance expert can do is, is gather all the information, digest it and meet with owners and managers and see what's working, what's not, what's the health of the business.

Yeah, jp, it makes me think, I mean, there's so many areas that I would love to ask you guys a million and a half questions right now. So I'm going to try to control my thoughts, but when do we need to go? When do independent dealers. Luke's laughing. When do independent dealers. When do we graduate from, like, hey, I'm the dealer and I'm the one checking the bank accounts and I'm like willy nilly running my stuff, half off QuickBooks, half off my DMS and like, if the money's in the account, I'll buy a car. If it's not in the account, I won't. I mean, I'm at some weird phase right now where I know enough to screw up my QuickBooks, but I don't know enough to get it right. And I've had this conversation with Luke many, many times and apparently the CPAs I'm using right now know enough to get it wrong as well and not actually get it right. I don't know.

Jeff's main question is, can you give us 20 group numbers?

But at what point does a dealer like me graduate and say, hey, what I need is, I need an outsourced controller or an outsourced CFO or hey, actually I'm at the point now where I've got to actually hire someone and these and someone like you guys could train them to make sure that the policies. Because I just don't know what, I don't know, I don't know, these reconciliations and bank statements and, and putting all this stuff together like, at what point does a dealer graduate?

Well, I think that's interesting because we're working right now with a group that is, you know, that does financing and they're actually trying to get a program in place that even for their startups and their new newbies that are coming on with them, that they're putting some kind of fractional CFO relationship in place even from the beginning. And because it's fractional, because it's not a full time role, you have the ability to scale the pricing and the needs with where that dealer's at in their cycle. So, you know, you guys know cars. I hope you do. Most independent dealers know cars. We don't know cars, we know numbers. And I always try to, you know, kind of put that into perspective. And not that you don't know numbers, but there's a point where you get to that growth and those milestones that it's out of your wheelhouse and you're better served being on the front lines of the dealership, buying inventory and managing the operations and allowing somebody else then to come alongside and manage the numbers and the banking relationships and give you a roadmap. I think that's the big piece here is you don't know what you don't know. And most dealers that I've talked to are back of the napkin out on the whiteboard. And it may or may not, you know, tie. And we did, we may have multiplied or added wrong, but we're, we're able to provide a roadmap that says this is where you're at, this is the milestones. As long as you can achieve these, you should be able to achieve your goal of X.

Can I, can I stop you? Yeah, can I stop you for one second? Because it seems like as dealers we, it's kind of the car jockey portion is trying to be beat out of us and that's the reason we're going to trainings and that's the reason we're doing all these things. And you know, kind of what I, what I hear you saying is, well, actually you need to be a car jockey. Let me handle everything else. Is that a good thing?

I don't know.

Because we've always been said that's we should, we should be running our business, not being in the business.

But allow, allow a person who is, you know, an expert in the finances, provide you a daily snapshot, a weekly snapshot, that those monthly analytics that are key to your business to allow you on a whim to, as you're at the auctions you can pick up your phone, look at that snapshot, see where the business is at, what all the key metrics are, you know, whatever you're used to looking at, and then put it down and get back to the, to the business that you're, you're good at doing. And again, I'm not trying to say that dealers aren't good at the business and the number side, but they're usually the ones that are best at the operations, buying inventory and managing those processes.

It's a similar argument, Luke, I think I have with my 20 group numbers is I don't want to spend three hours trying to get my numbers together. I want to spend three hours analyzing the numbers and coming up with a game plan. So if I can't have a comptroller or a CFO on full time payroll, you do need someone that knows how to reconcile bank statements, that knows cash flow statements, that knows. And you mentioned a big thing is projections. You know, I mean, we all know Luke needs a $50 million free clear portfolio to retire. That's his goal. So how is he going to get there? You know, we all say that and it's like, well, hey, P.S. you know, selling 20 cars a month is not going to get you there, but selling 80 cars a month is going to get you there, but it's also going to get you broke. So, you know, someone like you guys would come in and say, well, here's the roadmap to get there. You're going to be able to grow organically this way, but then you're going to have to borrow to get to the rest of the direction. Is that, is that what we're talking about, where it kind of goes above and beyond accounting and it goes more into consulting and kind of, you know, game planning?

Yeah. And I think the goal would be on a true fractional CFO role would be that you've got a boots on the ground, you know, somebody in your office that's doing the daily, you know, paper transactions and, and whatnot. But, you know, a fractional CFO can help oversee that individual, make, you know, take the pressure off of you. I've seen a lot of dealers just get burnout. Right. Doing all aspects of the business.

Yeah.

And I, and I think the business side of it, the accounting side, is an area that is a big pain point, stress point. You know, is the money there to make payroll, is the money there to buy the cars? How many cars can I even buy this week? And without having to dip into reserves or another lending institution So I think that's where it's really a quality of life for the dealer, letting them enjoy what they do enjoy. And that's usually the operations in the car side and taking that pain point off to make this a lasting business form.

It makes me think of something else, too. We all have people in our dealership that do some of the numbers for us, whether that's, you know, daily balances or reconciliations or even ordering parts and booking deals and things like that. Like to have someone who's an outsider look at your processes and say, hey, guess what? This is not getting to the bank. Or did you know this person has the ability to unbook accounts or reverse payments or delete and delete undelete things? There's a problem here. So. So even from a safety standpoint, I could see the benefit of someone knowing more than me to know exactly what to look for when it comes to maybe a fraud or embezzlement or any kind of sketchiness. Hey, guys, sorry to interrupt the podcast. Real Quick Buckeye Dealership Consulting. You know, they're a sponsor of the podcast and a great financial tool and consultants. So as we talk about consulting and being able to keep your dealership going in the right direction, these are guys that are not only helping you with your reinsurance products, but they're also helping you with consulting and education these days.

Yeah. And also today we talked about some tax strategy and you know, how that works into the dealership community. And for sure, I think, pretty sure that reassurance is the number one best tax strategy when it comes to owning a car dealership. So.

Yeah, well, you can try to write down your inventory, but you're going to have to write it back up when you sell it for more. And. Or you could try to cost seg your building. Yeah, but putting in a reinsurance company is.

It's immediate and as long lasting.

Yeah.

Awesome. All right, guys, back to the episode.

Can I kind of talk through the layers of this real quick, just in my store? Because I kind of want to know where you would fit. I think you'd fit where I fit right now. I think so. I have a comptroller that handles writing checks, bank balances, preparing a daily control sheet for me, inputting payments into QuickBooks, you know, pretty much all that type of stuff. So then I go back and I check undeposited funds, accounts, clearing accounts, and I do kind of the reconciliation all through there, and then I send things to the cpa. What I understand and I think, Chad, what you're Saying is, you would essentially eliminate me from that process, probably train my comptroller a little better, and then bridge to the cpa. Is that, is that what y' all do?

So when you say, when you say you, you give the numbers to the cpa, is that at year end, are they doing something for you monthly, typically at year end?

Because I've worked alongside my CPA company for 10 plus years now, and I was trained by one of the best, I think, in the industry when it, when it came to it. So, so I knew how to reconcile everything. He taught me that. And so I can essentially, at the end of the year, unless I have a problem, say, here you go and it's done. Because I've done all the reconciliation up to that point. Is that what y' all would come in and take off of my plate?

Yeah, we could, we could come in and take the reconciliation, the oversight, kind of take you out of that and be able to give you a finished product to look at and you're not doing the hands on, you know, manipulate. And a lot of what you just said, you know, your comptroller could probably also do with the.

If I trained her. Yeah, yeah.

And then making sure that the right controls and processes were in place. The one thing that you did say was, you know, having an outsider come in is also a positive thing from a collusion standpoint. And, you know, we don't, we're not there being buddy buddy with your accounting staff, and all of a sudden now we, you know, get a plan together to steal from you. You know, we're there working for you. We don't, we don't know Susie in your office as well. And, you know, it's having that outside perspective to look for the, for the holes and where money might be going that it shouldn't be. Does, does work really well.

I think that's huge because we don't, I don't even know some of the processes. Again, I'm not an accountant. I don't have an accounting degree. And Luke says some of these things to me sometimes where it's like, oh, man, that's. You do that every week, every month. Like, what are you talking about? Like, I just, you know, we stick the receipts in a box and then that box gets stuck in the closet somewhere. So some of those process. I think dealers just don't even know they're supposed to be doing them. Like, we just don't even know we're supposed to be reconciling credit card statements or receipts or any of this. Crazy stuff. So having someone that knows like, hey man, your cash accounting process is completely broken like this, this is fraught with the ability of people to steal from you because you just haven't, you don't have your thumb on it, right?

And like, you know, most, most of us are going to have a pretty small accounting back office, right? And so one person, it's tough to spread duties that might conflict with one another if you've got two people in the back office, right? And so that's where someone like an outsource accounting function can come in to, to not only see how those duties that might conflict with one another are spread, but also add in a layer to monitor them. And so, you know, outsource CFO or controller, you know, for that type of business that's smaller and kind of growing up in terms of their policies and procedures, they might come in and kind of insert themselves a little deeper in the onset, right? And we're going to roll up our sleeves. We want your policies and procedures to be in place to limit fraud opportunity and, and just to have the quintessential PMPs in place that you need and help train folks. And then after that initial kind of honeymoon phase is over, you're more buttoned up and someone like an outsourced CFO can then take us a little step back and spend a little bit less time and it's more supervisory and advisory on a go forward.

That's interesting that y' all set up the policies and procedures or train the staff to do it, because I, I feel like I could probably train my staff to do it, but maybe not 100%, right? And I think that I could see how that could be very helpful because like you said earlier, sometimes you don't know what you don't know. But the real question, I mean, being honest, can you, can you really do 20 group numbers for Jeff? Because we gotta get this done.

I can't, I can't train my staff to do anything. I'm watching my late tech blow rocks all over the parking lot, right. Apparently I have no idea what I'm doing and I have no ability to teach people. So, guys, give us some tips, give us some, give us some actionable items right now. What, what do dealers need to do if maybe they don't know if they're at the level to call you yet? But there's things that you see are just like these blatant faux pas that we're doing as dealers. What do we need to kind of have on our radar? And either Start digging into it and learn or at least be able to see. Hey, this is a complete blind spot. I had no idea that I wasn't doing this or that I was supposed to be doing this. And I need to figure this out.

Sure. You know, I think a couple key areas I would look at is probably, you know, what are you doing on a monthly basis. Right. To reconcile your accounts. Luke, you mentioned that you're doing some of that hands on work right now and you're looking at the numbers and you're diving into some of the details, but is somebody doing that? If you're just blatantly taking the numbers out of your DMS or QuickBooks and there's no one really reviewing, maybe not even reconciling cash, which is kind of that quintessential daily activity. But if those things aren't being done daily or monthly, there's probably a problem and we need to look at what's going on. I think budgeting and forecasting is key and I can't produce a set of numbers monthly and then not have something to compare it to and feel good about that. One of the first things somebody as a fractional CFO controller should be doing is sitting down and picking the dealer's brain on how do you think your business is running? What are the key metrics that you measure your business by? And. And where do you think the business stands? And then lo and behold, when you go and you do a model and you plug all those numbers in, nine times out of ten, you're miles off. Right. A dealer has an inflated perception of how their business is really performing and they're really not understanding what to measure their business against. And so having that budget or forecast to compare actuals to and look on IOM having a goal to get to in the next 12 months I think is essential to be a successful business owner slash dealer. Right now.

Tax season is coming. I don't know about you, Luke. I've had a couple slow months. We're sitting here at the end of October. I don't think we're going to come anywhere near to hitting our goal. So I don't know what's going on out there, but I need to start getting that tax money flowing because I can't handle a slow November and December.

That's right.

And tax max will sure help you with that fourth quarter money, not just the first quarter money. So get signed up today, Jeff, because you can maybe get ready by November1, hit the ground, run it with their fourth quarter plan and carry that momentum into tax season because like they said a couple of weeks ago, tax season is going to be big. So don't listen to all the naysayers out there. Tax going to be here.

I'm getting my login set up this week. I'm going to start training my guys the first part of November and then our fourth quarter programs, you know, we kind of start pedaling it mid November, but end of November hard through December and the 1st of January, we really push our fourth quarter program to get those tax returns pre filed and get our hands, you know, that tax money committed to some of these deals to just get myself in a better cash position again. I'm not rolling any deals that I wouldn't have rolled otherwise, but what I'm doing is just trying to get my hands on a little more cash. Because we're paying more for cars.

That's right, yeah.

All right, back to the episode.

Because we talk about forecasting a lot and I think we even went through a before on a forecasting podcast and I think what as dealers we can do is we can forecast, hey, we plan to sell this many cars next year. We can kind of look back at a number and say, I think we can collect this amount per month and we're going to have this many repos, we're going to have this many payoffs. We can do the, the car side of that. But the problem we, a lot of us are missing is the, the money side of it. How much cash is it going to take to get there? And I think if you, you know.

You do realistic number, not this like pie, we craziness, the craziness that we.

Bring in and you trying to operate your business with the assumption that I can sell 80 cars a month and I'm gonna go out and buy all these and just start blasting through it. You know, at some point you may sell every car that you own and you're generating that cash, but you've actually, you know, bankrupt yourself, right? You don't have the capital to support the ongoing operations until all of that money starts coming in from the sales that just occurred. So you can really kind of sell yourself out of business if you will, quickly if you don't watch it. So you know that, that goes the same, you know, the same thing with the financing piece, right? So if you are a growing dealer and you're not forward thinking and projecting out what you need to finance your business and that growth, that's probably another key area. I would say, hey, you might want to call someone and get some help. And maybe that's your CPA you work with at year end or somebody. But one thing I do want to mention before I don't mention it is when it's all said and done, I really think it's key that you're finding when you work with a CPA or you're working with a fractional cfo, you're finding someone that knows the business and, you know, there are nuances within the dealer world, you know, that are, that are, you know, specific to dealers. There's aspects of it that are the same amongst all industries. And it's not rocket science, you know, but there are some dealer specific things. The things that we have seen and come across on tax returns and financials, you know, reporting, you know, finance contracts on a cash basis, you know, just, you know, all these different things. Right. It just seems really crazy to think that a CPA actually signed off and put that, you know, put that out there. So I think that's also another kind of red flag or something out there to say if my guy isn't, you know, a large part of their business is not the auto industry. You know, we probably need to rethink what we're doing.

On that note, Chad and jp, whoever can speak to this, having y' all do what you would do as a fractional CFO and having a separate CPA firm do what they do, that probably could provide me a good bit of COVID if I ever got audited, correct?

Absolutely. And the key with those, with your choosing those individuals is that they do know the, the auto industry. And if you're, you know, buy here, pay here, that they know that as well because that's still nuanced just from the, you know, new used or independent dealer space that doesn't hold notes. So, yeah, they would know what, what hurdles to get over, what t's to cross eyes to.in terms of industry specific nuances. So.

Yeah, and the other thing that, Sorry.

Luke, the other thing that maybe this is going the wrong direction, but you guys also, it's again, talking about not knowing what I don't know. You guys know the people I don't know, which is, I think really big for a lot of small car dealers is like, hey, why are you using this floor plan? You know, they're taking advantage of you and you're like, well, that's the only one that I could get and it's the only one I know.

And so how do I get off that floor plan?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, they're really killing Me with this. And they're. And then you come in, hey, guys, why would you structure it this way? You know, you're missing out on this, this, and this. Or, you know, why are you using these lenders? There's so many better ones. If you would just get some good financials put together and send them in, you can get approved with so and so. So you guys have those connections, too, I imagine. I think I've heard some stories about even helping some of these dealers get approved for the Eidl QPS loan or whatever that thing is. And you can get some. You can get some really cheap money from the government right now, and people just. They don't know or they're too intimidated to even go down that road.

Yeah. And I think what we're talking about right now is that there are so many company events. First of all, I agree. I think that the vendors who do it really well in the subprime space not only can serve you in their expertise, but they can connect you elsewhere. Right. And so we've built a base of connections, but you're going to, as a business, you're going to come across company events that having an outsourced CFO or on the ground with expertise at your fingertips is going to pay dividends. Like these government loan programs that pop up out of nowhere, and you kind of have to jump on it or, you know, hey, guess what? Car prices are up 30%. I don't have access to a line of credit or other financing. What do I do?

Right.

And so these days, those events, there's a fork in the road almost weekly.

Right?

That's.

Yeah, everything.

It blows out. Your model, too, Luke. Right. So it's like, sure, we did a forecast into the first of the year, but A, things changed, and now my model's blown out, and B, I'm not even paying attention to it. That's the other thing, is to have someone that can hold you accountable to be like, hey, man, you know, your goal was to have 40 cars a month to get to this point and make this much net, you're not there. Like, you know, you got to change the ship or make a real change, because now you got to catch up to catch up. You know, you just pushed your model back two or three years because you're. You're not staying on it. Something like that.

And those are. And those are. That's information you need to know monthly. Right. To be able to make the adjustments and business adjustments that you need. If you're waiting until year end to Meet with your CPA to have those talks, like you said, your years now behind, you know, if you did something wrong for the last 12 months.

Yeah. And again, the problem I still have is my CPA is they're like a number counter, you know, like they're going to tell me what I did. It's like all forensic, it's like, well, that's the past. I don't know that I've had a serious conversation, maybe one or two with my CPA where they're like, hey, you know, we need to do like some inventory, write down to save some taxes. And I think I brought that conversation up. So I think there's a huge difference between a CPA and a consultant or a CPA and a strategist or, you know, and that's, I think where we get really confused is, oh, I have a cpa. And it's like, well, your CPA is not giving you proactive advice.

Well, not my old CPA was, but he's no longer with us and that was, that was a big advantage when he was, when he was in the business and alive that he was, he was helping me, you know, look at my business and how to do things. And I don't currently have that situation. So I think, you know, guys like this would, would help Chad and rjp. Does it matter which CPA company I'm using? As long as, I guess it's a real car industry to have y' all in there that. Does it matter who I use?

No. If you're, if you're going to have a fractional cfo, somebody like ourself or somebody else. No. We work with multiple CPAs and firms to help coordinate. I mean, with most of our clients, we're coordinating the tax return and the audit for the owner. We're the ones having the communication, we're the ones passing off data. We're helping review those returns before it even goes to the owner and then the owner ultimately signs off on it. Right. And we're not signing off. It's the other CPA firm is signing off. But I think, I think having a fractional service in house and having that expertise also gives dealers options to be with non dealer specific CPAs. Right. For the tax and audit work sometimes because we're helping bring some of those nuances. Whoever's in there is bringing those, you know, additional expertise to the table and validating that they're taking advantage of some of those tax strategies and different things. So it allows for some folks to still use their, their local CPA that they've had for years. But, but they have that, that double check, you know, by, by somebody in house that has the expertise that can help.

Sure. You use your, you've used your uncle for two decades because he's super cheap and he does all your stuff for you and he handles every business that you have. And so you're so scared to switch over to a dealer specific accountant, but you know, a fractional cfo, is that like in between to make sure that Uncle Bob is actually catching all the deductions and running everything.

And I guess, and that's another question is, I mean, y' all do have strategies for. To look at all of our companies and make sure we're attacking taxes like we should. I mean, is that strategy?

Yeah, I'll say this. And JP can add, but you know, one of the clients that JP is specifically involved when we started out in the dealership and now we're getting involved in other businesses that that dealer has as well. So, you know, we're trying to look and be a holistic approach for the, for our clients to make sure that, yes, something that we do on the dealership side doesn't affect the other tax strategies of other business segments. They might also have.

Yeah, if I can jump in. Because, Jeff, you brought up something really smart a handful of minutes ago.

Oh, gosh.

Used to doing.

That's going to be the only clip that I pull out of this. It's going to be on Facebook, not all the negative for the next two weeks.

There you go.

Yeah, go ahead.

Enlightened. So tax planning.

Right.

Proactivity versus reactivity. Because we hear so often from dealers that we're just getting to know like, oh, you know, and in this past April, I had to stroke a big check. I didn't see it coming. My CPAs, you know, didn't talk to me throughout the year and then just said, here's the bill. Right. And so right now we're almost at November 1st. This is when you should be strategizing and you know, there's so many variables out there, but do I need to. Yeah, you said write down inventory or take a deeper discount if I can justify it or, you know, these variety of, of strategies that you can put into place now because, I mean, raise your hand if you've been profitable this year. A lot of guys have and a lot of guys are going to be facing a tax bill. So, you know, it'll be December 31st before we know it. And then there's only so much we can do so.

Yeah, I don't know. I think August, September, October, November might have killed my profitability for years.

I made sure I blew that one out. Is this a, you know, if you come into my dealership and I'm not a large dealership, I'd probably say bigger than most, you know, normal size buyer payers in the country, but not as big as some big places. And I'm not a small guy. Are we looking at an hourly rate? Are we looking at a job, you know, flat fee? What does this fee structure look like when I hire a fractional CEO cfo?

Yeah, I think every dealer we approach, you know, with a clean slate, right. There's not a set, this is what we have to charge for services. So you know, I think each dealer is kind of an a la carte, right? What is it that we're doing, what are we providing? And then we kind of in our heads, you know, put that, put an hourly, you know, an amount of time to that, right. And come up with a reoccurring, you know, monthly fee to do those services. And you know, we always say that, you know, if we get in and we're you know, able to improve things and the dealer, you know, this is a, this is not a lifetime commitment, right? It's a month to month, you know, let's, you know, let's see how it goes. But we're providing value and that obviously once the deal, you know, the dealer one then wants us to keep coming back for more and usually we're adding services than taking away. But there's times where we get in and clean things up and the dealer just wants to be kind of a status quo or not, you know, not grow, but just wants to make sure their house is in order and you know, and we're able to go in, do what we do and then pull back our fee, adjust what we do to match the services that we're providing. So we're really conscientious about making sure that the value being provided, you know, matches the fee.

Yeah, go ahead J.P. i'm sorry, I.

Was just going to say that, I mean we want to, we want to, you know, folks like us want to work with dealers of all sizes and there's often a greater need at the lower level. But you know, they can't afford the same bill that a much, you know, that a 3000 account dealer could. So you know, programs can be designed based on need.

I mean if y' all ever come in as a one time type situation, hey, clean up my mess. And train me and I'm good to go.

And you know, one of the, one of the projects that I, that we've done in the past is a dealer was what was trying to get financing. And you know, the bank wanted three years of audits. Well, in their mind they had to wait three years, right. And do three individual audits to get that done. But we were able to come in and we, we retro back and did three years retro and we were able to pull those financials together, pull the numbers together, you know, work with the CPA firm to get the audits complete. And now they had their three years of audit. So that's, that was, you know, a one off project, you know, clean up work. And then they were off to the races with their banking.

This is super interesting, Jeff. Thanks for surprising me.

I knew, I knew you'd love this, Luke. I knew you'd love it. I still have a million more questions which is probably something I should handle off the podcast just on a one on one conversation. So guys, for other dealers like me that do have more questions and want to get more educated or want to reach out to you, how do we get ahold of you specifically? We like the way JP and Chad talk about CFO and accounting. How are they going to get in contact with you?

We've got email addresses, we're still so new, we don't have a website yet But Chad Martin, bac-accounting.com It's a long email. If I can give a phone number, it's 479-685-9434. So that's another easy way. We're an open book. We get calls from dealers all the time just wanting to ask one off questions. Sometimes that can get a little drawn out, you know, one question after another for three weeks straight. But we're happy to do that. I mean dealers just don't know what they don't know. And to call a CPA and be dinged, you know, 300 bucks for an hour's worth of time to try to get an answer that may or may not be right. I don't like that. And so, you know, we actually have four CPAs within our group that are, that are working. So it's not just a one off, it's not a single guy, single point of failure. So there's four of us. So somebody can usually be gotten a hold of and ask those questions.

And can I ask one more? Do you guys have specific vendor or service software type knowledge? Do you specialize? Obviously in QuickBooks. QuickBooks Online. I imagine as any accountant, you've got to be an expert in that software. What about dmss? Is there a specific DMSS that you guys are more familiar with than others? WAYNE Reeves, idms Dealer Socket. These ones. Like, which ones do you guys would you say are kind of your bread and butter?

We have probably more experience in the kind of the AMS, the deal packs, the AFS dealers. Who am I missing? JP We've done some IDMs.

Yeah, you're hitting the main ones that we do.

So those are, you know, just some of the ones that we've. But you know, when it's all said and done, you know, both our experience, you know, in the accounting industry and being out there, every dealer, you know, every client we would walk into, whether it was manufacturing, whatever, had a different software company, you know, software package. So, you know, we're pretty versed in getting in and understanding and getting through the software to understand how it works, pull information and start rolling with it pretty quick. So that's just, that just comes with the territory.

Very good.

I'll point to one other way to kind of get in touch and to get more resources. We run a Facebook group as others do. It's called Buy Here, Pay Here and Lease Here, Pay Here, the Forum and Resource center. And I'm JP brianbac-accounting.com just want to throw that out there before we get sidetracked.

Yeah, plug that Facebook group one more time.

Yep. BHPH and lhph, the Forum and Resource Center.

All right. You guys like long names, huh?

Yeah, we're not marketers, we're not salesmen.

Is the Jeff and Luke Independent dealer podcast for retail and Buy Here, Pay Here Dealers. Let's change, let's change our name.

MDS Choir. Guys, this has been great. So much awesome information. I could just. There's, yeah, there's a lot of opportunity here for good knowledgeable vendors to come in and help the industry. I think so much dealers look at like SaaS products as like the end all be all. Well, if I had this new software, if I had this new thing and if I had this. But really it comes down to like policies and procedures and financial literacy and just, and just. I think you would, you would probably save more and get, you'd get further as a dealership having a good game plan and a CFO than you would having some brand new CRM or some brand new, you know, Facebook review platform that you're going to get Google listings on. You know what I'm saying? Like this is just like the bread and butter. And it's like the fundamental rock of our dealerships is like, are you financially healthy? And do you have a financial game plan? And I think it's so confusing and scary that we just ignore it. Yep. You know, maybe that's just my vibe.

But I might take that segment and put on a future website that we. We finally build. But that's a great way to sum it up.

Crazy. Thanks, guys. Appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

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