#260 - ChatGPT, Hire The Smile, Audit Your Processes

You are listening to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. Hello and welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast, brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. Luke, I know I love chipper and excited and happy, but, man got home late last night from a great, great 20 group. But I did not get a lot of sleep, man. And I've got. You can't see the sides of my desk here. Mounds of mail, bills on both sides.

Hey, but you know what? I'm gonna be out there tomorrow to help you, Jeff. Yeah, I'm coming out there to clean all your messes up.

Bring your checkbook, my friend. Bring your checkbook. Speaking of, I know we talked about this last week, but it seems like every week, you know, I have one small variable line of credit that I have open. Well, it's on an amortization. I'm paying it down. They didn't want to deal with me anymore. Cause I'm a dirty buy. Here, pay here. But it's an adjustable rate, and it seems every week I get a rate adjustment notice.

Yeah, I mean, so I'm at 10.5%.

Interest, and it's only like. It's like 300,000. Right. So it's not a huge jump. But those guys that have got like 3 million on adjustables.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. How about those guys that have 20 million on.

Yeah.

20S and 30s or 15 million on it. I'm telling you, we were sitting there in 20 group, and there are people. And I've said this before, this number before, I'm gonna say it again because I'm not sure it sinks into people's brains how important interest rate is. We have people whose expenses, monthly expenses, have gone up 40 and $50,000 on the interest expense alone every month. That is a half a million to $600,000 a year. And it's something we discuss.

Money.

Well, the thing we started discussing during our last meeting was how do you cut expenses to alleviate that? Because you can't find 40 and $50,000 to cut expenses. You can't. It doesn't happen.

Well, I'll tell you what. We definitely cut expenses this weekend in our 20 group. We stayed at the Pink palace and we ate at the Sea Hag. So I'm expecting the lowest pro rates I've ever had in my entire life. And I say this joking because my moderator, Ben, admitted that he doesn't really listen to the podcast, but he was scared that I was going to put him on blast for what is in the top three. Most ghetto 20 groups I've ever had. St. Pete's it was.

I never even heard of the place you went to there.

I think there was some disconnect in the up, the higher ups in the event planning coordinators. So I think they were so excited about the DPG announcement, that's all they focused on. So we got a last minute reservation and they took us to the Sea Hag for dinner. It was, it was interesting, but I learned a lot of stuff still.

Regardless, you know, it's something interesting to be said about that. I know that the groups are brought back together and I'm thankful for that. I just hope that we get the same level of service from DPG as we did the same level of service from NIADA as we did from DPG is all I've got to say.

I have the feeling your size of group definitely will. You know, you guys are. You're a large group, not a lot of people you want to get pissed off. We were our groups. Our group's good. I've got a couple more spaces too. If you guys are looking in to get an average size buy here, pay here group, give me a holler, reach out to me. We got like three spaces left and I think we're going to cap it. We've got a lot of great, great, great dealers in the group anyways. But I did bring home a lot of good notes.

The Sea Hag that, that is. I mean, who would, who would even. Why, who would name their restaurant Sea Hag?

Yeah, yeah. That's a whole nother story we'll get into sometime. But it was, it was interesting. You know, one of the things that I did take away amongst many, many things and what I wanted to pass by you is we had a presentation done by a large, large buy here, pay here. Right? And they kind of showed us a lot of their policies and procedures, their onboarding, their. All their documents. And these guys have like a. I don't remember the numbers, but let's say it was a, you know, $15 million portfolio or something bigger with like a 5% delinquency. Like 5% delinquency. Historically. Ever bull crap. No, no. Hey, this is. I mean they're, they're JD by rider. So all this is like in their CRM documented. Like hard to cheat.

Like they can't. Oh yeah, it's so. Hold on. I've sat in so many 20 groups with JD by writer people over the last bit. And they're. The way they do things is so different from the way we do things.

Oh, for sure, for sure. Regardless of what they're.

It's not 5%. They're lying.

My point is they're running a tight ship.

No, they're not. 5% is a lie. They're running a lying.

5% delinquency is.

There's no possible way. There's no possible way bad credit people can run at 5% on 15 million dollar portfolio. It's no chance. That is a 100% lie.

All right, all right, all right. Well, we're going to bring him on. You guys are going to battle anyways. Not the point. The point is some of his training material. And one thing they said that I believe in is he says, hire the smile, train the skill. Right? Don't worry about finding someone with experience here, there, and there. And really, it's hit me a lot lately as we hire people here. I just want someone I want to hang out with. Like, I don't want an interview. I want to have a bunch of applicants come to the golf course with me or come to the topgolf. Let's hang out for an hour. And whichever ones I really enjoy being around, you're hired. Like, I don't even care what your skill level is. I don't know what your experience is. I will teach that. It's not hard whether it's sales, collections, anything outside of being a mechanic. Like, I can teach you that in a couple of weeks, months. What I can't teach is you to be a good, happy person that I enjoy being around.

I think it's, I think, I think you're right to a point. You, you can't train attitude, and you can't train jovialness, if that's a word. But you can, you can train someone to learn how to sell if they have the right demeanor. Right? Some people are not going to be okay on the phone even if they have a happy demeanor.

Right?

So that's a little hard to train, maybe a collections person. I'm gonna lean the other way. And, and I've been, I've been this. Hire the smile, train the skill for a long time. And we do a lot of training. But what I am noticing, and this is with managers, I know we're not, we're not speaking about managers right now, but I am beating my head against the wall training managers. And it's, it's getting harder and harder. And what are they not getting?

What do you think they're deficient in.

The knowledge of, of the business. And no matter how much you, you Train that knowledge. I can't get them up to speed fast enough. Now, I'm not saying, I'm not saying a year from now they're all up to speed, but it's frustrating and maybe I just haven't given enough time. But training, training managers is really, really difficult because some people just don't know how to manage people and some people just aren't organized enough maybe to be a manager. So I think that there are, there are certain skills that people have to have. You just can't train.

Yeah, I could. I would definitely agree with you that on the margin you have someone who's just a happy, go lucky guy. Sure, they probably lack a lot of organizational skills. Right. And when you say train managers, and I know some of our dealer friends have posted about this lately, trying to find a good GM to run a second or third location, that's like catching lightning in a bottle, right?

Like it's a haystack.

Someone who is good enough to run a dealership and will run your dealership.

And not want to own the dealership.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And to be content. And I'm 100% lucky. I mean my number one guy, Adrian is like, I mean that's like hitting the lottery. Great guy, runs a dealership, takes care of everything. And when you find those types of people, it is super rare to be trustworthy. You trust them with your bank account, you trust them with your portfolio, you trust them with underwriting and training and saying the right thing. That is a lifetime of learning, Luke. I totally get that. But when you're talking about lower level folks, I'd rather have a bunch of happy, go lucky fun to be around people than hiring a bunch of sharks. That.

Yeah, I think you're right there. And I think the way you pay them is important as well. When you do that, I believe that you can train low level people to do pretty much anything and then maybe they evolve into a manager. And that's what I've been trying to do for the past, you know, five or so years. And it, and it works to a point, but at some point it, those people may run their course in your operation. And that's. And that's kind of what I'm leaning to.

And this is a good time to make sure to plug buy here, pay here United guys, now is the time to get on, get signed up, plan your Trips to Vegas. April 30th of this year year. It's going to be a great time. Yeah. Through May 2nd. It's going to be an Opportunity for you to bring your top level managers and your collectors and there's education for everybody all the way around. If you're a buy here, pay here, this is going to be the place to go. And it's easy, I mean it's so easy to get in and out of Vegas. Being there at the end of April is a great time to be there. Super cheap room rate, super cheap registration.

Bring you and have some fun and a nice hotel. Not like the one you stayed in with last week. This is the Palace.

Yeah, this is the Bellagio which is.

For, for like 169 a night or something ridiculous like that. And to sign up, it's by here, sorry BHP United.com we're going to have all kind of great information. I'm running a panel there with three really top notch buy your pay here dealers. So I believe there's going to be, I mean everything that you can possibly want to learn from a buyer pay here perspective will be there.

Absolutely. Talk to me about your processes, Luke. That's one thing that really hit me is making sure that I've got these processes dialed in. When this guy was doing the presentation, everything was processed, everything was checklisted, everything had a sheet. New hires do this on day one, do this at the second hour of day two, for the third hour of day two. Like these things when you, I think when you grow such a large system and if you ever want to scale, we talk about this all the time. You've got to be, you've got to have these processes. Yeah.

And you know, the thing about buying a franchise like JD by writer is that they're already written for you so you don't have. It's like opening a McDonald's or opening, you know, a subway. All those processes are in a book and you follow the process. Well, you and I aren't that lucky. We didn't get to get that book.

But we also don't have business idea right there, Luke. You put together a book, I'll sell it for you.

Yeah, this is the problem with my processes. Okay. We train on them, we know them. But I feel like Jeff, I am missing the next 10% or 5% that that will change my business and put it on a growth trajectory. That, that is just crazy. And so I, I don't know, maybe you can help me with that means.

Your processes, they're broken or they're not.

Efficient, they're not, they're not perfect enough without me involved in them. Okay, so what I'm saying is this. I'VE got the. I've got the recon process that I feel if followed by the letter of the law, there should be. There should never be any policy expenses. When a customer test drive a car. There should never be anybody that says, hey, the check engine light was on, or any. Any of this. And I feel like we're working the process. We're doing everything, but. But somebody is dropping the ball in the process and not dropping the total ball. It's like one of those fumbles that you.

Yeah.

That you fumble. Then you pick it back up.

Right.

And it's just not quite there. I just wonder if anybody out there feels that way too, because I just feel like we're so close and then we miss it.

Well, I would think. I would argue in that you're dealing with A people, you're dealing with B cars. Both are finicky, both have hiccups, both fall outside of spec just. Just because. Right. I mean, you could have. You could do the top to bottom checklist on that vehicle. You could be the one that does all the recon, puts your hands under the engine and fixes everything. You could put it out front and check on that thing every single day, drive it to work and back from work every single day. And guess what? The second you put a customer in it, the check engine light's going to come on or something's going to happen, or they're going to find a reason to complain a week later where you drove the thing for six months, completely fine. So I don't think any process can be bulletproof, But I think we also have to learn to have that tolerance and even that forgiveness within our own process of, like, okay, did you follow it to the 90%? You know, are you trying to short circuit or jump the process? And that's the problem I have is people try to end around because they think.

They think that's what happens. I think that's what happens. Or they get. They get the car to a process, get it to. To the end of the process, and then they just get tired of that car and move to something else. Right. And so it's like, y', all.

We.

Yeah, you.

I don't know. So put the floor mats in the vehicle. You detailed the whole thing. Like, just finish it with the floor mats and the stickers. What happened?

Pop the trunk and verify that you actually detailed the trunk.

Right. Yeah.

So this is. This is my problem. I have all these people checking the. It goes through before a car gets to my front line. It goes through a minimum Jeff. A minimum of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. A minimum of five people.

Okay.

Maybe six. And I can go out there on the lot and say, how did this car get through all of this without somebody saying, hey, we forgot to paint the top of the car. It's fully detailed. It's been pictured everything, and it didn't make it to body because somebody dropped the ball. And that's the things that just. I just feel like we are so, so close, but yet so far away.

Yeah, it does sound like there are times where you look at your processes and what you think makes sense. And maybe it helps to have someone come in from the outside and say, hey, maybe you've got too many hands in that process. Like, because you got five people, they all think it's someone else's job, but. Or what you think is a. Makes sense and is linear is actually not. So I definitely think there's some biases we have and maybe that's the time to bring in an outside consultant or do something like that, if you're getting to that point. One thing I learned, or one of the notes I took down from my 20 group was it was audit. What did I write down? I write down something like audit everything. Yes. Spend more time auditing the processes, forms, and phone calls. You know, it's again, it's working in the. On the business and not in it. Like, yeah, I need to be reviewing phone calls from my service writer, from my collector, from my salesman. Like, weekly. I need to be looking at paperwork weekly. I need to be just shadowing somebody. Hey, man, I'm just going to hang out here and just follow you through this new check in and just watch the process happen and be like, oh, this is where we're missing it. You guys misunderstood this step. Or we weren't clear on this one. Or this is completely inefficient. Why are we doing this? Like, continually auditing the process, I think is just really important.

I think, I think that's super important, Jeff. I'm glad you brought that up. And we forget to do that. Listening to phone calls, it's something I don't do and Alexa does and she's like, you will not believe what this person said. I know we've talked about this before. It's something I really need to, to train on. And I think it's important in your dealership to train on this because the more phone calls we listen to, I think the better your dealership will get because you don't know how many customers you're losing. And this is across the board in your service department and your collections. How many repos are caused by bad phone calls or how many sales are missed by bad phone calls? And I'm not talking about somebody being mean. I'm just talking about somebody being not saying the right words. Saturday, Saturday, I was listening to some phone calls because I was actually in the dealership and listening to some sales calls. And after one of our salespersons got off the phone, I said, hey, you say kinda a lot. And he's like, what do you mean? And I said, you're being very vague when you talk to customers. And customers don't like vagueness. Customers like exacts. Right. And so. Well, this is kind of how we do it. Well, it's not kind of how we do it. This is how. This is how we do it. Well, you kind of just do this, you kind of do that. No, no, you need to be specific. Because if you were specific, the customer, well, thank you. An authority. And then you can sell.

Yeah, he's scared of, he's scared of getting pushed back.

You're saying maybe and you're saying, well, sometimes it's what we know. No, you got to be precise. Especially in collections departments and in service department you can be a little vague because sometimes you have to be. But. Yeah, but with sales and collections you need to be very.

I kind of want you to buy a car. Kind of comes warranty.

It's kind of ready.

It may be my drive.

I mean, it's, it's. You really need to listen to specific words your collectors and your sales staff say, because it really, really, really matters.

Yep. And that's ends building out those processes. And to, to plug Buckeye here, I have got to get my CPI process dialed in. Talking to some of the other dealers in my group and them talking about the money they bring in through their CPI program each month.

It is like, it is insane. Insane.

30, 40, 50 grand a month in just CPI. I mean, that's, that's, that's completely found money. That is money that's going to progressive, it's going to geico, it's going to Allstate, and you're rerouting it to your own pocket like it's. And more than half of it process.

And more than half of it is profit.

Yeah, yeah, you'll, you'll, you'll have some claims, of course, but I mean, so anyways, guys, if you don't have a CPI program set up, reach out to the guys at Buckeye. At least start with that. It's if you're in a state where it's advantageous, it's a huge, huge moneymaker. Some other states, yeah. Mine is not quite as good. And there's probably a lot of Utah dealers that might argue it's great. I just suck at it.

But you suck again, Jeff.

Yeah, I got to get better. I only have the worst of the worst on my cpi. You know, the people that couldn't get insured insurance fall onto my cpi. I'm not getting everyone or at least a good amount.

And that's, I'll tell you this, the biggest CPI dealers out there use Buckeye and Jason Gosnell and, and Buckeye Brett can tell you how to do this to make serious, serious money. You can find Buckeye Brett everywhere on, on the Facebook. He's, he's everywhere, everywhere.

And, and Jason keeps me going.

You can reach out to us him and, and we'll get you Jason's information. But I'm telling you, CPI reinsurance products, they are just amazing wealth builders.

So look, we've got a lot of other topics on here that I don't think we're going to get to, but I really, really, really want to hear. I resisted asking you. And when you come out this weekend, I'm going to make you set this up for me. But I never, never in a freaking million years that you would be using a new tool before me. I never thought that you would adopt technology before I did. This makes me both angry and happy. You're using Chat GPT in your dealership literally daily.

We are.

How did you even. I didn't think you knew how to turn on a computer. It's got to be Alexa doing it.

No, no, it's, it's Isaac. Isaac's doing it. But I brought that here.

Isaac.

Well, I brought the idea to him and said, hey, have you heard about this thing, this chat bot thing, this chat gbt? And for everybody out there, I spend hours a day watching cnbc. And of course it is the, this is like the newest gadget in the finance world. Right. And everybody's kind of betting on the future of Microsoft because of this and Google as well. That's the reason. Anyway, so I just got super interested. Well, what can we use it for currently in our dealership that we're not doing that we're not being great at. Right. And so I used to, by myself write every description for our inventory. And I quit years ago. Yeah, I quit years ago doing that because it was just so time intensive and it, and it didn't make sense to me.

We don't even do a description. We just copy and paste the same paragraph into each one.

Well, I've done that before too. Horrible. I've done that before.

Not good for SEO, not good for the customer.

So guess what's great for SEO?

Yeah. Customizing keywords.

And so what we do is we go to chat GBT and say, please write a description for this car and within 15 seconds it writes three paragraphs that are great for these cars. And I'm telling you, it is it. We, we, we copy it, we paste it into the description and then we hit save. And that's how easy it is. We have done every one on, on our car on our lot. You can actually go to chat GBT if you're looking for hey, I need some good content for my about us on our website. Because a lot of you goes out there, don't have it. Just say, hey, I need you to write a description of Four Seasons Auto and it will search the web and write this description of your dealership for you. It's incredible. If you're not using it, use it. It's going to save your dealership time. It's going to make your website better because of SEO.

So, so I just grabbed the most boring car on your website and I don't know if this is going to work. 2009 Hyundai Santa. This description, this about this vehicle was written by ChatGPT. Okay. The 2009 Hyundai Santa Fe GLS is a compact SUV that offers a spacious interior, comfortable ride and a fuel efficient engine and is powered by a 2.7 liter V6 that is produces blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, about five, six sentences. They kind of repeat themselves a bit. But man, talk about, I mean, how awesome you have to go through and audit this to make sure that it's.

Actually, you can read it. And what we do is read it.

Features that this car has like a rear cross traffic alert system and lane departure warning system.

We check it all. It's, it's a very, very neat product. If you care about your website as much as we kind of, we tend to care about our website, I think this is something you could use also. You can use it, I think to write some advertising content. If you have a problem writing advertising content, we are.

Sounds like a podcast replacement right there, man. This thing's going to start writing our episodes.

I think we could use it in the podcast for sure. It's super cool technology and as you said, Jeff I'm usually not at the forefront of technology. I think this is a game changer.

So where does he go? What interface is he using to get it? Is he using a third party that's linking into OpenAI or is he going straight to.

I. I cannot answer that. I will know this before I see you tomorrow and Friday. I will. We'll update this on maybe next week's podcast or we gather his podcast so I can tell everybody exactly how we're doing it.

It definitely seems like, you know, from the stuff I've seen of this and we talked about it, this is a. Definitely a game changer for a lot of creatives and it will put a lot. As this progresses, it's going to put a lot of creatives out of business. Yes. Someday this podcast will be two guys named Luke and Jeff that are just videos that look like us, but we're literally not there. Right. It can take all of our back catalog and create new content every single week with our faces and our sound and our thoughts. It's some crazy stuff, man. Not to mention stock photos are a thing of the past. You're never going to have to go out and take stock photos again. It's just going to create whatever kind of photo you want, you know, descriptions about us. Blog posts. Like, if you want SEO on your website. Oh, you can generate dozens of blog posts every single day.

I forgot we're using it. Yeah, we're using it for blog posts, too. We just started that. Or just. We haven't posted them yet, but that's what we're doing.

It just seems like it's an arms race because Luke's going to start doing on his website to boost his SEO. You know, the guy down the street's going to start doing it. The new car store is probably already doing it.

Yep.

And now you're. Now you've got this arms race, almost like your Google listings, your Google reviews, you know, I mean, if you don't have. If you're a small dealership in a small area and you don't have 100 to 500 reviews, you're like, you're not even in the game.

You know, that's something. I'm glad you brought up Google Reviews. I challenge everybody out there listening right now. If set yourself a goal for Google reviews this year, Jeff, we did it internally, and we're. We're going to, you know, damn the torpedoes. We're going to get there for this year, and this should be part of your goal setting every year, because it does matter. All these things matter. Every time you learn how to use a new technology, you got to use it, right?

Yeah. My. My Google reviews are weekly. We set weekly goals with the team. It's a number that we track One of our KPIs, along with sales, along with leads, along with delinquency. We track Google reviews for both stores because it's so important of a number. We have the stupid spinning wheel. We incentivize for reviews. I think that's the number one reason we show up well. And we know it's a very, very large reason why people buy from us. Oh, I read your Google reviews.

Yep.

One more time, Luke. Primal End, great sponsor of the podcast. Great place to go get your capital. I think they're probably prime, plus a couple points, so their money's even a little more expensive these days.

But everybody's money is more expensive these days. Yeah, yeah. You know, give my buddy Todd Yates a call. His number is 312-933-5338. That's 312-93-3538. Todd is a industry veteran that knows so much about ways to help your business grow. The easiest way for your business not to grow is not to have enough capital and. And not have your books in order. And primalink can help you do both. They can. They can give you capital to grow. They can give you capital to buy your property, your own. So all these things Primal and does, they're really a great partner in the industry, and they will be at Buy Here, Pay your United as well. They're. They're a big sponsor of them. So give them a call and grow if you can, and if you want to.

And you got to own the land under your dealership.

Oh, my gosh. It's just.

Try. Try the best you can. Get an SBA loan, get seller financing, go to Primaland do what you gotta do to own the land under your dealership. I think that's just crucial. I've talked to a dealer here locally the other day that had to move because his property got sold out from underneath him. So he's in limbo for, like three or four months. Nowhere to go. He can't find property, nothing in the city. And then he goes to rent a place, and it's like, dude, that place is half the size of mine. And you're paying almost double what my SBA loan is just to rent.

Just think if you've got a great business, they've been in business 10 years, and you're crushing it, and all of a sudden your 10 year lease is up. And because the money, because the value of the property has gone up probably 10x in the amount in 10 years. And all of a sudden the guy goes, guess what, you got a pack. I mean, how, how do you come back from that as a business owner? It's in hospital, I think anyway.

Yeah, especially in cities where they're a little more hostile to car lots. That's, that's one thing we run into. They're just pushing, pushing them out, pushing them out. Luke, let's wrap it up with one more thing because I want to. My final thoughts and one of the big things I'm going to tackle this year is to try to change some of my, I mean, collections were huge. Guys, if you're buy here, pay here. Most of my 20 group conversations the whole week was spent talking about collections.

It's been as it should have been. It should have been.

Things are getting tough, it's getting tighter. I mean, I came home to three or four voluntary surrenders, a repo, like couple bankruptcy filings. Like it's going to get a little messy out there, right? Yeah. But getting your money quicker and sooner. And so that's one thing I want to do is I just want to improve my payment portal, my payment processing text to pay ivr cashless dealerships. I got to look at my payment processor and I got to find a smoother, less painful way. I hate on a Friday. My receptionist, all they're doing is picking up the phone and taking credit card numbers all day long. It's stupid. Why am I paying someone to just take. Will you run my card? Will you run this card? Will you run this card? No, get on the fricking portal and run your own card.

Suck at auto pay penetration. And when we were at dpg, Melanie, she's, she did a little interview for, for us on the podcast a couple years ago. Melanie Goldman up in Indiana, Indianapolis area. She has 100% penetration on autopay. And what it did to her delinquency numbers after she committed to auto pay is mind blowing. It's one of those, you know, people that were, you know, let's say, you know, 17 or you know, 20 something percent and dropped it to that, those, you know, 10% numbers or what, you know, whatever it is, it cut her delinquency in half because of maybe even 3/4 by what she did. And it's a commitment. It's commitment from just like getting Google reviews. It's commitment to, to have everybody on board to get auto pay and Also, it's technology.

Cpi.

Just like cpi. It's, it's, it's. But you know what, you may not have the right technology to do it the most effective way. And so there's a lot of new people out there that are offering different technologies for incentivizing autopay and to make it easy for customers. And it's something that we all should, should look at. We should, we should audit our vendors and see if there's a better way to do what we're doing.

Yeah, better and sometimes cheaper to the dealership. Right. There's definitely third party providers that can charge a convenience fee for one time payments. Right. That's a big issue for me. Like hey, if you don't want to be on autopay, that's fine. But if you make a one time payment on the app or at the 7 11, you're going to be charged a convenience fee. Right. So get back on autopay, update that credit card. I know a lot of our customers are so scared to be on auto pay because they don't know if the money is going to be there. And even if it is there, they don't know if they want to spend it on the car payment just yet. Right. They don't want you sucking out their last $400. So there's got to be a level of reinsurance, reassurance and a level of retraining these customers, you know, like, hey, this is how it works, Mr. Customer. We only do payments through auto pay. Please write down your debit or credit card number. You know, that's just policy. It's the process for us. It's done every single time. And we have fairly high auto pay penetration. Now getting them to stay on it is a whole nother thing. Right? So every time you do a promise to pay, every time you do a payment arrangement, every time you do goodwill, it should be conditional on them getting back onto auto pay.

You know, that was mind blowing to me that I don't know why I've never thought about that. But we focus on promise to pay. That's like our, our golden arrow, right. For collections. And we focus, we measure the percentage, we measure the one day percentage, the exact day percentage. And I've trained to this and the more I've trained this, our delinquency has come down, I mean a lot substantially year over year. But my mind was blowing. Somebody said, well, if you're taking the promise to pay, you better have them set up for the autograph on that day. And I'm like, why have we not been doing that? That is so simple. I mean, it's just like my mind was blown anyway. It's just the little things you can do to make it easier for the customers and get everything right.

Yeah. And you got to have a system that makes that possible.

Oh, yeah.

Schedule the payments, to schedule automatic text messages, to schedule, you know, Quick wallets that have their Venmo and their cash app and their Zelli and all these different places, these people have money. You've got to be able to integrate those in and be able to get their money from them. Because if there's any friction. I know, for me, man, if there's friction, if someone sends me a fricking invoice and I have to like put it into QuickBooks and print a check and do this, it's delayed. If it's a QuickBooks link and I click on it and my credit cards automatically link to my QuickBooks and I can hit pay. It gets paid within the minute. Right. So our customers are no different. It's just gotta be easy.

You know how many times that I have almost bought things on, on a social media app, but then it was a, it was a problem to do and I just didn't do it.

It doesn't auto populate and then you're like, I'll just jump over to Amazon and buy it.

Oh, yeah. Or, you know, I mean, what's great is when you have, when you can just use your Apple Wallet, right?

Yeah.

So why not integrate everything into the Apple wallet? All these things lead to frictionless buying. Because let me tell you, if I can just double click and look at my phone and it pays for it. Oh my gosh, that is so easy.

Yeah. Yeah, it is easy.

Got to make it easier for our customer.

Yeah. Speaking of easy, guys, this is our ask. Leave us a review. It has been a good minute since we've had an updated review on itunes. So we'd really appreciate it. If you get any kind of value or any kind of interest from this, just click over, leave us a review. Say, you know, Luke's annoying, Jeff's a good looking bald guy. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. It just helps us in the algorithms to boost it up. And thank you, those that listen to YouTube. The YouTube channel is growing way, way faster than any other area. And of course, our newsletter. You don't want to miss the newsletter.

The reason the YouTube is getting so much action is because we're such handsome fellows.

Jeff. Yeah, it's got to be. I don't know any other reason. Yeah, the. The newsletter, though, is good. I actually use it, which is funny. I help, you know, produce the content. Luke does the videos. I don't watch the videos. Busy editing. And Luke's like, hey, what'd you think about that? I was like, I haven't got to it yet, but when it does come to my inbox on Sunday, I watch them. And so I actually did sit down, and I listed all my reoccurring expenses. Every single one of them. I got like. I mean, it went down, like, one page and then back down the other side of the page.

Isn't that so funny to. I mean, so I'm looking at these.

And I'm like, do I really need that? And then I look at this one. I'm saying, what in the world? How did that get there? I need to get an itemized invoice from this company. What are they charging me for now? You know, and sometimes you find things in these bills where it's like, well, I've been paying $200 a month for some online customer service. What are you even talking about? I don't even use that customer service. No one has logged into that in six months, eight months. Like, cut it out.

I got one from Dropbox the other day. I was like, do we even use Dropbox anymore? Everybody's like, I don't think so.

Yeah, it was. It was a great one back in the day, but now it's like, nope. Yeah. And then you also look at some of these vendors and you say, you know what? I'm going to shop this one. You know, I'm going to shop my Internet provider because I have a minute, you know, when tax time settles down, I'm going to shop my, you know, healthcare provider. I'm going to shop my. You know, I don't know. Luke's going to put solar panels on his roof and cut his utility bill down.

You know, I'm going to try. I'm going to try.

Could be.

I'm going to try. We'll see.

Cool. Well, thanks, guys. Hope you enjoyed it. That is the podcast Dealers Helping Dealers. Please leave us a review and subscribe. Subscribe the independent dealer podcast.