#197 - The Perfect Payplan w/ Chuck Bonanno

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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 and welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. Today we are going to be talking all things compensation plan, pay plans, Luke. And we have a special guest.

Who in the world do we have here today? Because he's new to the industry. I'm not sure who he is.

You know, when I got this industry, I had hair. So you're like, Jeff and I have been really in it. Luke's been playing. That's why he's here.

Well, Chuck, I'm glad you said hello to everybody.

Yeah, I'm glad to be here. Hopefully I can give you some insight, some help on this plan. I was telling you guys before we started that I've moderated over 520 group meetings and I think the discussion of compensation, whether it's for sales or collections or in the shop or wherever it may be, has come up about 480 times and everybody is still looking for that magic bullet.

Well, so in case everybody was wondering what we're talking about today, it's compensation plans, right, Jeff?

Yeah. Yeah. So we had some dealers in the independent dealer Facebook group kind of, kind of talk about, hey, it's so hard right now to hire and it's so hard to retain and it's so hard to motivate. We want some tips and some ideas and some insight on the compensation plans that have worked for dealers, what hasn't worked, and how we can transition people or just kind of figure out what's going to motivate our employees, what's going to attract the top talent, what's going to keep them around in such a competitive job environment. And obviously Chuck has seen them all, the ones that work, the ones that don't work, how to get in between both plans or transition at your store. So let's start with that. Luke, what do you see? And I know this might change a little bit because it has to do with your employees and their personalities and what motivates them. But when we're talking about front end employees, do we pay hourly salary? Should it all be commission based and bonuses, some sort of hybrid plan? What are you seeing that's working out there?

Well, you know, I wonder, you know, I don't think all of it starts with pay plans, Jeff. I think a lot of what goes on in our dealership and whether people are happy or not starts with your culture. And what I've seen for a long time Is that all of a sudden someone can make. Be making a lot of money and if the culture somehow gets off or their, their vision gets off, they leave. And no matter what you paid them, it's just, it's just not working out. But, you know, I think overall, most of my front end staff are paid on salary with some type of bonus program. My salespeople are paid a, a salary plus flat or car with different bonus structures set in there. It's been hard to hire, it's been hard to retain over the last year. So I don't know what the answer is, but I think there's more in our current environment that's going into this other than pay plans. But pay plans are super important.

Yeah. So, Chuck, help us out with that. And I want to set up this conversation for this. I don't want to talk hr. I know that we've got to have a good culture. We've talked about that before. I know you got to have the right people on the bus in the right seat. We know that. Employee reviews, you know, good attitudes, sodas, whatever you're going to do at your place. But let's keep it specifically on pay plans. Chuck, do you like straight, hourly, straight salary, or do you like straight bonuses and straight commission?

Okay, yes. I will tell you that it is becoming harder and harder to do that Commission only total 100% variable expense. The world doesn't like it. The world's not used to it. When you want mature people who have families and bills to pay each month, that takes a specific individual. And a lot of times from the old car days was they had a second income in the house that was stable and it allowed them to be more variable. And we also worked in Bell to Bell and kind of says if you do, you do, and if you don't, you get nothing for it. I struggle with that one because it's going to create an environment where salesmen in particular, whether it's retailer buy here, pay here, are going to be there purely for them. And you can live through that. I mean, I've lived through the guys who sold a lot of the girls who sold a lot of cars or were high grocers. But they're also the same person who comes in your office and bitches about your inventory levels and your advertising. Right. Because you're not helping them. And I think that does create a culture. And those are also the same people who are going to be likely not to help others in the, in the dealerships and in the finance offices. So you've got to. Again, some of that's going to be personality. I know the one thing that's happened and I know this is hr, but it's really in particular is that when I got this business, it was six days a week, bell to bell, whether you own the place or you're a lot porter. And that's a grind them up and chew them out. And I did this in Florida where we were open till 9 o' clock every night. And so it was weekends, it was nights. And it's going to get you a particular personnel. And right now, when you're hiring and retaining, one of the challenges you have is do I have a reasonable schedule, Do I have some weekends off, do I have nights off? Do I have means as much as the money itself? And so I think we all have to play all the pieces today where you can't just dangle money in front of somebody. You know, the example I love to give about money is I'm sure everyone in the audience has that salesman or woman who sells six to eight cars a month and has for like 100 years, right? And you're like, well, they come to work every day. I haven't had to get bail them out of jail, so we're going to keep them around. And what that person told you was, this is what I need to make. Everybody who's listening, us included, has numbers in our head of what we need to make to have our quality of life and support our lifestyle. And one of the challenges of when it's all on the individual basis is you're bound to find people whose level of necessity for cash is lower than what you really want it to be. And that's always hard. And so you end up going through them until you finally get a group of people who all have a higher level of need for compensation. And of course they're the ones who fight over split deals. And I wasn't in for that guy and I got that guy off the CRM and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, which is again, I've made. I've done it for many years. So I do know that can work. It's a more hostile work environment and it's certainly not team oriented. And so that will depend on who you are. What I think the thing that we're all guilty of, especially today, as you guys talked about the struggle to hire, is we are accepting if we're going to be on a variable pay plan. And our expectations is, Luke, I'll say, you know, 10 cars a month or 20 cars a month. How many people are we keeping doing? 6 and 8. Because our fear is coverage, you know, so we end up doing those kinds of things. And if you told somebody if they sold six cars a month and they can live off of that and you let them do it for two years, I think you've told them what the acceptable number is.

Yeah. And Chuck, you know, you brought up something during that that just made me think, you know, what's, and we're all guilty of this, but a lot of times when we're interviewing someone to come to Workforce, we ask the question, well, what do you need to make? How dumb is that? Right, I know, I've done that.

So what do you want to find the bottom number? You want to find the minimum you can pay them?

Today's culture we're talking about, hey, I got to get the right culture. It's not about pay. But if you're advertising for a job, it's pay that's going to bring the, bring the responses from the ad. Right? Or no. Or how do, how do we get, how do we advertise our culture in a job ad to make sure we get a good balance of both?

Well, it's, I can tell you, first of all, it's always been challenging and you guys are senior. Lots of seeing how you portray yourself in your community. One of the challenges I've always seen, and I had it because I had 27 stores I was responsible for and a lot of them were old gas station looking lots. I mean, they were just ugly little places with 20 cars on them and you couldn't find people to come no matter what the pay was, because they're looking at that and they're not seeing the opportunity that could be there. And so that's one of the challenges that you're a used car dealer with a gas station lot and they're going like, well, there's no money to be made there, so that's part of it. And then of course you're saying, are we looking to advertise for people looking for, for a career and a career path? Are we looking for someone to fill a job? And I think that changes it. And I think that's, that's one of those really hard things. If you've got a beautiful location, I will tell you, you get a lot better prospect coming in for a job.

Yeah, you do. I couldn't even imagine having to hire at our old location. I don't think it would have worked. Honestly.

It's, I would say people, people don't get paid on what I call your gigs. But people like their gigs. They like where they want to go and feel good about where they go work every day. And if you don't have that, you probably need to consider that. And I think to your point about that is you've got to show them the opportunity. Not just, here's your hourly rate. We pay $15 an hour. I mean, that, you know, burger king pays $15 an hour. I think there's got to be a lot more to that, that you're advertising the opportunity they may have and, you know, like, the sky's the limit type of thing, which, again, some dealers get really bent about somebody. I don't know, you guys haven't ever done this, but somebody in my store made too much money. I just crack up at that statement because. Oh, that means you did.

Yeah, yeah.

I never. I never forget. A guy who owns a new car store came to me, and this was in the late 90s, early 2000s. And he didn't come to me, but we were talking, and he said, I got a freaking new car manager. That's make. Our used car manager that's making 40 grand a month, that's just way too much. And I kind of looked at him, I said, well, if he's making, you know, if you're making 40 grand a month, I know how much you're making a month. I mean, we all get that. So it happens where we built a pay plan, Chuck, and the pay plan paid someone too much money, and then we tried to. To renegotiate and. And to get back to where that that person should be, and we lost them. Should we ever revisit pay plans after we have something?

It's. I'll tell you what, it's really hard. If there's ever a time to revisit a pay plan and you're going to inevitably lower their compensation, whether it's a percent or the bar just moved higher, it can black people out, you know, that's why when I say, when you're building any kind of pay plan, you kind of have to say, okay, what is a minimum standard? What do they get if they make or hit all the goals at a reasonable number? And what can they make if they nail it? I mean, we've got to be okay with the ones who nail it. We got to be okay with that.

What do you think about having part of your pay plan be changing? You know, like, hey, you get a base hourly, or you get a salary and you get bonus. But guess what? I'm going to change that bonus every six months, every quarter. This month it's going to, you know, this quarter it's going to be on sales. Next quarter it's going to be on office sales. Next time it's going to be on if the paper towels are always changed. Like, do you think that that's confusing and changing the mark or do you think it's good to let people know, especially from a collector, hey, I'm going to bonus my collector on recency this quarter. But now guess what? Delinquency is out of whack. So I'm going to now bonus you on delinquency.

So I've lived.

Does it confuse them?

It is. But I will tell you that I had at one point in my career, I had 54 collectors working for me. And. And it did change because the portfolio changes. Right. It's getting better, it's getting worse, it's getting too big. I like to keep some of the fundamentals in sales and collections. Be the same kind of numbers for the number of car sales with a flat or. But spiffs bonuses change all the time. The one thing I think we have to do is do a better job beginning of the month, beginning of the quarter saying, oh, on top of what you do, we're going to bonus for this. So emphasis put. And I'm a big fan of bonuses and commissions in the regards that once you give somebody a $3 an hour raise on their base pay, you can't take that back.

Yeah, it's the law.

Yeah, it's the law.

And but if you're going to say $100 to the first person that gets three sales this month. Yeah, that's fun. And now it's that gamification we talked about.

Yep.

Let's go down that route though, Jeff. If an employee's pay plan is always changing, I mean, that's a problem too, right, Chuck?

Yes. So that's why I said one of the things I think they've got to have a clear understanding of where the lion's share of their pay is going to come from. And what I call it is it's the I know I can buy groceries number. Right. There's got to be some number in there that they have a comfort level with or they're going to leave you or they're going to start sabotaging others to get ahead. I always like to say I'm willing to pay $300 a car for a buy here, pay here for a flat or 20% of commissionable gross And a retail guy. But I will also add different spiffs and different bonuses based on where our goals and our needs are. More money down, better recency, lower charge off. And that can change. But I always said meet with them at the beginning of the period, lay it out and listen to them. I mean, I spent every month telling my collection teams, can you get these numbers? And they're like, heck yeah, to get that extra bonus. We'll get there. And they didn't always get there, but they knew the number and they bought into the number.

Hey guys, sorry to bust in real quick, but we want to make sure everyone is got signed up with tax max. When we talk about compensation plans and making sure you're paying your employees, we're coming up on tax time. This is when they make the cheddar, right?

Cheddar, right. The big cheese. But yeah, tax max is the way to go when it comes to tax time. You can advertise, you can do this, you can do that. Tax max is a way to make sure you grab that tax money when it comes out the out the atm. Right, Jeff?

Yeah. So I'm doing my first tax max deal today. We are delivering a nicer truck. The Gentleman is putting 90% of it down in cash and we're going to do a tax max deal for the rest of it. Great customer, friends of our salesman. So really a no risk 4th quarter type program for this gentleman. You know, we're going to defer off a couple thousand dollars. So it's out there. Make sure you call these guys, get set up so you can start taking advantage of the fourth quarter program and getting your hands on some of that future tax money. And back to the episode. I've got my, my, my recon shop, my guys in the back. I said, hey, if we get to 66 cars through the shop this month, everyone gets a thousand dollars, you know, because we're going into tax time. And it's, I'm so empty up front that I pay them $10,000 because I can't make any money. And it's fun though because they're back there and they're hustling each other and they're reminding the parts guy and they're all kind of on this team effort to push cars through. So I get that these one time bonuses can be fun. And we'll call them bonuses, not commission because they're spiffs, they're bonuses, things like that. And on the flip side of that, Chuck, do you think there's a problem with having a Guaranteed minimum. Is that a bad thing to go to a salesman and say, hey, you're 100% commission. That's how we work here. But I'm never going to let you go below two grand or $15 an hour.

Besides, you know, whatever minimum wage laws are in your state, because there certainly is that. And salesmen can be, I mean, you know, historically can have a 15 car week and then zero for 10 days and they still need to get paid. I would positively do guarantees. I don't, I'm not. Every time I did draws, I lost. Right. Because the good guys never had to worry about it. The bad ones, I always lost as they left. So I'd rather have a guarantee. And if they're not, if they're not performing, it's still, that's an HR write up and review and a lot of things. I think we're as small business people, probably not the car business alone, but we're terrible at training. We're like, oh, you're a car salesman. Oh, you passed the drug test here.

Yeah. There's a computer, there's a phone.

Knock yourself out.

Yeah, I've been training. We had a new salesperson start yesterday and I've, I've done more training in the last, you know, two, two days and I've done for a while. But it's something for sure. Our salespeople want to get better and the more we train, the more they'll want to stay and the better they will get. So that's definitely something we don't do.

So I have a friend who pays. Everyone at the dealership gets paid on how many cars the car lot sells. Front end, back end lot, porter collections, cashier. What do you think about that? Do you think that having either store volume bonuses or team bonuses a good motivator or does that just hurt the overachievers and bring up the underachievers?

The answer to those questions again is yes. It's if you have the right people. You know, the thing that a lot of, a lot of car dealers, us in this room probably included, I came from a different industry. There's some people who are born into it because their dad or granddad started it or they've been in since they're 19 years old. You know, we forget sometimes that there are millions of workers in America who go to work every day and do the right thing without any hope of a bonus. That's just not part of their pay plan. And that's where you start getting into value hiring and retaining. It's like this person would do the right thing whether they got paid for it or not. That's who I want out there. And then on top of that, I think bonuses will work that way again, the same things that the transitioning. If you have, you know, an individual bonus or commission program for collectors or salesmen, that's based on what they do as an individual, they're the hardest ones to flip or transition to team because that's their fear. Whether it's true or not, Jeff, their fear is, I'm going to work harder to take care of this guy who does less. And if you can't get past that, it doesn't work.

Yeah, and I want to talk about that too, Luke. Him and I had a conversation the other week about Luke's got more cash than he knows what to do with, right. Buy here, pay here guy flush with it, but he doesn't have employees, right. And I said, luke, you got the cash. Pay what it takes to get the top, top, top talent in your area, and they'll pay for themselves. You know, you might be out a month or two before they get up to speed. But talk to us, Chuck, about why are dealers cheap? The difference between, like I asked that guy, well, what's. What do you need to make? What do you need to make? It's like, well, stupid. So the difference. Yeah, like $15 an hour will give me a decent employee, but what will $20 an hour get me right now? And that's a difference of $800 over a paycheck for a lot porter or a detailer or. And if I can get, instead of getting the basic guy that I just stole from McDonald's, getting the guy that for $20 an hour, I stole from, you know, the rental center or the new car store or the like. Yeah, we don't get that. That payoff of $800 a month looks to us like, what's a $5 an hour raise? That's crazy. No, it's not.

I would tell you that, you know, just observing hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of dealers, and I start looking at results, whether it's sales results, whether it's profit results, whether it's the best performing loan portfolios for buy here payer guys, they all have unbelievable employee retention. There's not turnover. And I think that's what happens is we always want to go out there and get a lot porter and say, well, he's a lot porter. That should pay $10 an hour. And if you can get somebody who shows up for the interview and Shows up on the first day and passed the drug test and shows up four out of every five days. You feel like, wow, we made it. It's like you didn't. No, you didn't, you didn't win. And so I think that's point. I think it's even more powerful now when we talk about why it's so hard to hire people and why did we have 5 million people in America leave their jobs last month? It's because they found a better gig that they got more money for less effort. And that's what you're up against.

That's exactly right. I've had two for a better word CTEX leave in the last six months. They went to a new car store and that new car store essentially is paying them 23 to $25 an hour to be lube techs. And it's all it's about is hey, you know what? This is a way easier job because I'm balancing tires, I'm changing oil than actually I may be doing brakes every once in a while and I'm doing alignments. Well that's way easier than doing valve cover gaskets and tune ups. And so it's way less effort and they're making the same amount or more money and they're happy as can be. Right?

Yeah, it's, it's the old adage that everyone has heard a thousand times and there's, you know, they become cliche because they've been used so many times. Because there's a lot of truth to them is that you can't pay an A tech enough money.

No, you can't.

Especially a guy with who's got good diagnostic skills. You can't pay a good salesman or sales manager or a great collector enough money and you always pay the bad ones too much. The problem is a lot for a lot of us is again whether it's fear of coverage or, or having to go through which I think most of us, yes, we're cheap as independent dealers because we're self made. That's true. We're thrifty, I like to call it.

Yeah.

But we're short sighted sometimes on doing. I'm looking to find long term people. If there's not a true career path, there's not like there's not 12 levels of management to rise to that they can make really good money and have a great life.

Yeah.

That's one thing I think and Jeff and I, we've discussed this so many times. It's about we're at a certain Size in business, let's say the 15 to 25 employees, where we're not big enough to be, to get like the upper management careers and we're too small to not have really good people. And that's really difficult in a family size business. How do we get, how do we get past that? Is it just more money?

So it's certainly when it comes to attracting people, and I think today's. It spells this out more than ever, is certainly you have to be way beyond competitive in wages, but you also have to be very cognizant of your expectations of, you know, it's 40 hours work weeks, it's five days a week. It's, it's other things that create that lifestyle that puts you in the same room with all these other businesses. You know, I just saw a lady on TV, she applied for 300 jobs in the last year. 300. And she didn't take any of them because they wouldn't let her work from home. Well, that's what she wants. We don't have very many, if any, jobs that allows that. So we've got to come up with some other things. And to your point, I would tell you if you guys know some of the large dealers who have 100, 200 employees out there and they have layers of management that you guys don't have to have, it's easier for you to pay a few bucks more an hour to keep a really good person than to hire a new level of management that you may not need. Because you most, most of us are probably one chief, that's you, maybe a couple of, you know, lieutenants and the rest are Indians. They need to come to work, make a good living, have a good time, not be overworked or overburdened. And they will stay. And yes, will employees leave like Luke. You're two guys who went to become lube techs at the new car store. I'm going to bet you lunch they don't make it.

Probably not. At least one of them won't. Yeah, yeah.

You just know that's going to happen out there because they were lured away by the wrong things. The person who wants to work less is probably already the wrong person. But work less for more money, they're going to leave us. It's just going to happen. It's just like Jeff, I don't know if you've had this or Luke or the audience. The person you try to steal from another company who ends up getting a big raise and stays. You know what that tells me? I had the right person.

I had the right person. Absolutely.

I had the right person. Because they wanted that badly. Yep. So that's just going to be part of it. And part of it's going to make sure that they can live a good life depending on their lifestyle, and that we're happy with the performance and that we've given them all the tools to succeed. Because I'm personally one. Whatever you make based on the pay plans I've given you is okay by me. Right. Unless it's too little.

Yeah. Luke, do you think those two techs that left your two techs were either of those two someone you should have kept and paid more?

Great question.

No. And so I. I had.

Honestly, not. Not just out of ego, but like, honestly. Okay, you were fine letting them go. And that's. And that's what I want to drive at.

Well, let me, let me, let me.

Yeah.

One of them, I had decided, I love the God of death. He was not. Not turn hours kept saying, I don't want to be a tech. I don't want to be a tech. I don't want to be a tech. And finally you just throw up your hand and say, well, he doesn't want to be a tech.

Yeah.

The second guy. The second guy I really had. I kind of got a little butt hurt when he. When he did what he did. But what I look back at, he didn't show up to work like he should have. You know, it was halfway through. We were through October. He probably already missed 20 days of work. I mean, what. So it was good for him to leave, in my opinion.

Chuck, tell me this. So we know that in our deal, in our dealerships, we have guys, like you said, you can't pay too much to keep them. They are a players. And then we have other guys where it's like, take them or leave them. If you found a job somewhere else for more money, great. I'll write you a reference. We need to get to the bottom of those. Right? We need to figure out who those people are, and we need to nip that in the bud before our A player decides that he's disgruntled. He doesn't like Luke. He doesn't like his work conditions. He doesn't like his pay. So he starts flaking out, not coming into work, not giving his full effort feeling that he's underpaid and underappreciated, and eventually flunks out to somewhere else who's going to now, quote, unquote, appreciate him and pay him what he's Worth, is this really come down to having the pulse on your employees and the employee review and kind of visiting these guys more often?

I think it is, I think it's, you know, if it's going to be the path of writing people up for poor performance, you know, I've always, I've always hated that. And I worked in the corporate world before I got into the car business and I watched that, which is just the path to terminating people. You know, I've never seen my turn around from that. I think that we've got to be more involved with them on a regular basis and explain to them exactly what our expectations are. Listen to what they're saying, Luke, to you saying the guy's saying I don't want to be a tech. Good lord. He doesn't want to be attacked. Right. I think the thing that we all hesitate in and we always find ourselves trapped and sales guys seem to fall out of trees, you know, and most of them are bad. And then you just get a few winners sometime. But collectors are another one that they're vital to our operations in buyer payer. Techs are vital to our operation to recon cars and do warranty work. And we stop looking when we have the right number. So all the best employment people are always be looking. You know, the fact is, if I found the right person today for a company, I would hire him. If I didn't have a job for him or her. And then.

So important.

Yeah, one of the things is like, you know, you look at yourself like a sports team without a salary cap. Okay, I can bring in two people. And if two of my marginal people who've been there for a while don't make the grade now that I brought in these two studs or two great people, then so be it. But I'm always looking to upgrade my staff, whether I'm net, whether it's necessary today or not.

That's true. I decided to just keep my indeed ads running. I don't shut them off anymore. I don't close them. Yeah, I pay the $10 a day to keep these ads running constantly because.

What Chuck, you brought up something about collectors. And I want to talk about this because this is something I keep just going in my head. And why in the world, in the buy here pay here industry, are we paying our salespeople but more than our collectors?

So I've only been saying that for 30 years. Right. It's really funny because, you know, in my company, like I said, I had 54 plus collectors. We were publicly held by here pay here with 27 stores and this is mid to late 90s. And I was paying my good collectors 50 to 60 grand a year then. Right. Because they run the ship. And I would argue with you guys if you're going to have, especially if you have multiple stores or it's not just you being the GM and the owner, you're going to be there belt to bail yourself. I would still pay my sales team, my manager in my store, a lot of money. But you can argue for the sales team, they're not selling. They're not, they're in a buy here payer. They're not. They're not negotiating price on the cars. They're. They're meet, greet, write it up, get it approved by somebody and deliver them. So yes, to that point, I think the scariest thing is that we've always said, well, collectors are women and collectors are second jobs and households or single moms. And we're going to put them on two nights a week and Saturdays and we're going to pay them which now turns out to be close to Burger King wages. And then we're mad that they're not the greatest. It's like that's on us. Yeah, it's always been on us.

I look at that, I look at that pay plan or those compensations of those people and you look at your dealership and who are the, who are the hardest ones who take the most skill?

Right.

Your gm. It's a lifetime, it's an absolute lifetime of learning your A tax. It's an absolute lifetime of learning. Your collector would probably be the third one. And that's, I mean that's 612 months to really be a good collector, I imagine, at least.

Yeah.

And then you last another 12 months after that and you burn out. But, but then everyone else is like a salesman. I can train a salesman in two weeks. I can train a detailer in a couple days. I can train the lot porter in an hour to my receptionist and collector girl. It's like those. So those three responsibilities, the ones where like this, these people have to, they have to have those skills.

Those are.

I can't just bring in a tech. I can't just grab techs off the street. So I better not be losing them.

It's.

I think all of us probably read that E. Myth book, you know, the one by whoever wrote that book. And we all think that all we need is these systems and then we can just plug folks into the system.

Plug.

Yeah. And I don't think that's I think you do need systems, but I don't think we're just plugging in the cheapest labor anymore.

Yeah, Jeff, to your point, when we're talking about the average independent dealer having 10 to 20 employees or less even, we're not going to have a real division of labor and specific skill sets that says, hey, I only do brake jobs on cars, and I only, you know, in the bdc, and I only set appointments. I mean, we all got to kind of do a lot of different things, wear a lot of different hats, and. And that's why they become so vital and so valuable and we hate to lose them. So bad is that they're not creating one hole. They're creating a giant hole.

It's true.

So. And then.

And she knows a lot of stuff. I have no idea how to do.

Now all the time. Yeah, that girl over there, she knows how to print things you don't know how to print for doom Packet was.

Trying to run a credit card the other day for some tires we put on my dad's car. That was embarrassing because I was like, I don't even know how to run this stupid credit card machine. My dad's standing there looking at me like, what the hell? Yeah, Chuck, this has been great. I mean, we could keep you for hours and hours and hours, but I know you've got a big organization to run and a couple of great things we want to talk about. So buckeye is going full speed, full bore into buy here, pay here dealers. You guys are 100% get behind the buy here, pay here dealer in a couple different ways. Tell us about the upcoming events that are going on. One in January and one in April.

Well, one of the things that we have going that we just started in September here in Sarasota is our dealer performance groups, which is buy here, pay here retail, indirect lending, finance, leasing. And they're along the lines of a traditional 20 group, but with a lot more fun involved. And I was telling Jeff before we got on, our meeting in January is going to have a trip to Barrett Jackson for a private party. Racing school, golf spa at this event. But it's also going to be Everybody together, not 20 different groups going to 20 different places. And we're going to do that once a year for all of our. For this group, for this program. We found that we had such good response, and it was really fun because you can get to the point where you're in a 20 group, you're seeing the same 15 people three times a year forever. And that starts to be limiting. Well, this doesn't. But then it also allows two meetings a year to be with people in your group and so you can get to know them at all. But we're really excited about the program and it right now is offered to anybody who is a Buckeye Dealership consulting reinsurance customer. And we don't want people to say, oh, I'm not one, because you can become one. We've actually written up new reinsurance companies, we've added products to everybody out there to become a Buckeye client to do that. And there's a lot more products out there than you may be aware of. Not just we sell vehicle service contracts or maybe we do gap. I mean we literally have VSI and CPI and psi. I mean literally set up your own reserves for your own.

That is a great product. Yes, I think about that probably three times a week.

So there's a lot of things out there and they could just be additions to what you already have. We're not trying to steal the world from that one. And we're excited about the program, we're excited about the team that we've put together. And we continue to grow. And there'll be some more announcements coming on that soon too as we add to it as we're trying to really put an A team together just like you guys are. And then the second thing is, which was just announced this week or in the last week, is Buy Here, Pay Here United, of which Buckeye Dealership Consulting is one of the founders, along with several other industry vendors. And it's going to really deal with Buy Here, Pay Here and Lease Here, Pay Here specific dealers. We have a conference that's already contracted and ready to go at the the Bellagio in Las Vegas on April 10th through 12th. But I think everyone will be pleased as this won't be a vendor show. There is no expo hall. This is going to be purely informational and educational and we want the entire agenda and the way we roll this out to be dealer truly dealer driven. Not just words, but truly what is it you want and what is it you need? We will put it together for you. So we're excited about that as well.

Sounds like we're going to be finding a lot more coming up here, Chuck.

Yep, yep. It's gotta get, gotta get on the airplanes again. I actually so sad this is off the subject, but I actually had to buy one more ticket this year. I'm flying to Atlanta and back home so I could get my diamond status for the next.

Oh my gosh.

When I landed last week, I kept my or. I bumped up to platinum status in American. So I was happy I didn't. I don't have to get back on a plane this year.

Hey, good for you. Good for you.

Well, Dealership Buckeye Dealership Consultant is a great partner of ours. And Chuck, we appreciate you being on and really educating us on how to build those pay plans. And I'm sure if they were, if listeners out there were members of dealer performance groups, we could talk more about that in the future. For sure. Fair enough.

Thanks, Jack.

Hey guys, thank you very much. Happy holidays. If I don't talk to you before.

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