#296 - Do You Have A Board Of Directors?

You are listening to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. Hello and welcome. Brought to you this week by Buckeye Dealership Consulting.

As always, Jeff, you just totally. What did you do there?

Well, the problem is, is our bumper says you're listening to the Independent podcast by Luke Godwin. Here we go. Or let's do this.

Well, I mean, I think we should keep this in here. Now that's really pretty funny.

And I say, listen to the independent podcast brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. And I felt like it was just redundant.

I don't know. Let's. Let's just keep rolling. I think.

I think people know and you're listening. You know who we are, you know why we're here. Luke and I are both out of it. We had long flights last night. I traveled 14 hours to get back from Sarasota. But we're back. We're back together, Luke. We're back in a 20 group, bro.

Wait, man, I'm. I'm so excited. And they. They sit us beside each other so I can smack you on the back of the head whenever. Whenever you say something dumb. But are. Are you.

Someone's willing to stand up to your nonsense? I gotta call you out on things, you know?

You do. And, you know, what's. What's so great about having your friendship and. And anybody in, you know, and if you're dealers and anytime when I. I spout off some nonsense, which I did once or twice during the meeting, you're like, that doesn't. That doesn't even make sense. You're like, I bought about three cars. I was like, cars in Southern California are cheaper. And just like. Just like you bought three cars in Southern California, and now you've decided that the market in Southern California is cheaper than anywhere on the planet. And I'm like, well, yeah, it is. And then I think about it for a second, I go, yeah, you're probably right, Jeff. I don't know what I'm talking about.

My sample size is too small to make that opinion, which is so great about these 20 groups. Guys, we haven't done a 20 group episode in a really long time. And, you know, obviously, Luke and I, we're both members of the NIADA 20 group systems. There's a bunch of different 20 groups you be involved with. But the whole point is a group of your peers, a board of directors, guys, are going to call you on your. When you have it, guys. They're going to help guide you in the white right direction, right? And Push you to be better, to be a better operator. So stuff like that, where we have blinders, and just because we had an interaction with a car or a customer or a vendor or a philosophy or a strategy, we think it's the best way. We think it's the gospel. And then when you get in these groups and you have, like, five other dealers that are like, you're the exception to the rule, bro. You might have got lucky on those ones. And then you're like, oh, oh, there's a. Opens my eyes to a whole nother world.

Yeah. I mean, it's. It's an echo chamber if you're. If you're only by yourself. Don't get me wrong, Some dealers blow my mind at what they can achieve by themselves. I can't. I'm not smart enough to think through things properly and. And use things I learned from past experiences to. To really dig down and make things better. But being around these folks do. And honestly, Jeff, I've been going a little bit longer than you have from. From the office, and when I got back today, I was just like, oh, gosh, what am I doing?

You had the fire burning or what?

Yeah, you know, I. I don't like coming back from 20 groups and being gung ho. I've been doing 20 groups long enough to know that that doesn't necessarily help my staff. And so if I can drip, you know, if I can take what I learned and just fill up my bucket and then just drip it over the next week or two, then it works better that way than coming in this. This morning and changing a bunch of, you know, policies and processes. Because some things that, like we talked about, that work for some dealers will not work in my case. Absolutely, I'm okay to try them, but I don't want to make a wholesale change immediately a lot of times.

And what's interesting, two things on that is you're saying sometimes you. You do think through things, and you do have the brains and the insight to see it, but you don't have the courage to do it. And that's. I think a lot of dealers are like, oh, man, I really should steer into this part of the market, or I really think this might be a good idea if I go this direction or change this thing, but you don't have the courage to do it. So when you go to the 20 group and you see other dealers that have had the courage or have had success, it gives you that little nudge to come home and maybe make that change or, you know, with One of the members in our group, it was maybe to lean out some of your overhead. You know, he was in kind of a tough space and we all kind of encouraged him to say, hey man, you need to, you might need to let go of a couple people. You know, you're operating pretty heavy. Oh, I know we're a little heavy staffed, like. No, you're heavy staffed and it will eat you alive. You need to go home tomorrow and cut two people loose.

It's. We're in a, we're in a spot that not many people have been in in a while. That rising interest rates have rushed people's profitability. I mean, crazy rushed it. Jeff, you know, we were just walking and talking the other day and one of the guys in the 20 group said that his interest expense has gone up $80,000 a month in the last 18 months. I don't know about you all, but I cannot afford $8,000 to my expenses a month.

Well, give that to me in a percentage. It's all relative.

I, I don't know the relative expense, but I can tell you some of.

These guys it has double.

Oh yeah. Oh, for sure. It's more than doubled for this.

Okay.

For this guy. I thought. You thought relative to his expenses and.

Well, I want to know relative to what he was paying before, like.

Yeah, I think, I think he went quadrupled. I think he went from about 20 grand a month when, when rates were flat in 21 to $80,000 a month. So it's a six. No, it went up $80,000. So it must have. Maybe he went from 40,000 to 120amonth. Anyway, he's paying over a million dollars a year in interest expense. I don't know about, I don't know about you, but I can't afford it. A one million dollar extra expense a year.

Yeah, I couldn't if my.

That's real. That's real cash. That's real cash.

Well, it's not fake cash. All cash is cash when you say the word cash. But if you're talking about double or tripling your interest expense. Yeah, that, that is painful. You know, I have not a lot of debt and some of it's fixed. The majority of the heavy stuff is fixed rate stuff. And if it were to double, I'm okay. If it were to triple, I'm okay. If it were to four or five times, that would really be painful for me and I'm in a super low debt situation. So yes, guys, you need to structure out your business model for Worst case scenario. And a lot of people that got into this thinking, oh, I'm going to get, you know, prime plus one and prime's at zero, so I'm going to be great. And then all of a Sudden Prime's at 8. So, yeah, you effectively quadrupled, quintupled, whatever your interest payments. That can be devastating. Luke. What I want to get into is some of your takeaways. Guys. We can't share everything with you, right, Luke? Because this costs us. So people that don't know 20 groups real quick. If you didn't, you know, some. Last time we did an episode like this was probably two years ago. Give it to us real quick, Luke. The 20 group kind of in a nutshell.

Okay. You talking about fee structures?

Yeah, kind of all the above. Like what can dealers expect? Those that just have no idea what these things are.

Yeah. So what you can expect is to travel three times a year somewhere. Okay. And in those three meetings, it's usually a day and a half of meetings. And then the night before you have something, so you got, you've got flights, you've got hotel rooms. Then everybody splits the, the expense of the meeting, and that includes your moderator getting there. Your dinner, your receptions, your breakfasts, all that is split.

You're getting less alcohol bill at a super fancy wine cellar.

Yeah, yeah. For people who don't drink, that can, that can get annoying. I get that. And you have monthly dues that are, that are paid in as well that kind of handle the admin portion of, of your 20 group and it also handles your composite cost. The composite is what I get the most out of now. I've been to enough of these events where I'm not necessarily learning that much by hot topics and I'm not really learning that much by best ideas. I'm learning more by looking at my composite numbers compared to everyone else's and looking at the percentages I run on, you know, your, your, your averages and your benchmarks. I'm looking at those to make sure I'm better than that or, or worse than that. If I am, then I know I need to improve. So that's really where I concentrate on 20 groups. You know, talking about sometimes we battle in these things and really get mad at each other. And we saw that yesterday on thinking about where, where we wanted to go for our next trip. We don't talk about expenses, you know, and, and it's, you know, it, it's men being men to each other. And, and it, you know, this is one of the first times I've ever seen people really care about the cost of 20 group. A lot of times I would go before and Everybody's, oh, it's 20 group, let's have fun. It doesn't matter where we go. But you can tell people's expenses have gone up when you have an argument about how much the hotel is going to cost at your next meeting spot. And that happens.

Yeah, yeah, you definitely do. Because people, dealers look at it two ways, right? You either look at it as like, hey, this is taking me away from my dealership and I'm here to learn, get me in, get me out for the most part. And some dealers look at it like, hey, you know, I've paid my dues. I look at this as a tax deductible vacation for me. So I don't want to go to Atlanta and stay at an airport. Right. But for the new dealers, yeah, you're very cost conscious. It's best to just get somewhere that's cost effective, time effective. It's hard to be away from your dealership, but it pays off cost wise. You're probably looking what, like 3 to 4,000 a year in dues, in your month, your monthly dues, and then you're looking three to four thousand a meeting, right? So you might be like 24ish. 20 to 40 grand for the year to be a part of a 20 group. And some might be on the lower end if you're in some starter groups and then some are on the way higher end if you're a big fish and you're going to freaking Cabo and all these crazy places every time.

Yeah, it's. You have to take advantage of it. Like if you just go to have fun, you shouldn't be in a 20 group. You know what I mean by that? Now if you go to have fun and learn. Yeah, you should be in a 20 group if you go just to learn being a 20 group as well. But if you just, if you're just doing it just to go places, you shouldn't spend the money, you should just go.

Yes. So what I was getting at, Luke, was we want to share with you some of our takeaways. Now these are going to be our personal takeaways. We're not going to share with you our best idea session. That book that we brought home with the best ideas cost us 30 grand, right?

Yeah.

So those types of things, you got to be a member to get kind of the in depth stuff. But some of our personal takeaways and insights that we had from the 20 group, I think can be useful for everybody. So Luke, is there anything like what, what's your A1? What did you bring home that you said? Hey, I'm going to drip this on my guys a little bit at a time, but this one we are definitely tackling this week.

You know, all of us out there have problems with comebacks when we, when we sell cars. And if you're not tracking your policy expense or your delivery expense, depending on how you want to. Want to call that we policy expenses, anything. Jeff, that happens 30 days after I sell a car. So if I sell a car today and a window breaks tomorrow, that's something we're going to typically cover because we're is goodwill. Right. And so tracking that policy expense and make sure that things we're fixing after the policy weren't fixed during recon as well. Right. Making sure that we're studying our policy and something Paul Claiborne talked about it, if y' all don't know. Paul Clayborne is probably one of the best owner operators in the country. He's out of Alabama, just does it the right way. Been doing it the right way I think for 30 years. But he still walks around every car.

I was really surprised when he said that. Blown away.

He still, we're talking about somebody probably has 30 employees, sells 100 cars a month. He walks out to every car, lays his hand on every car before it's allowed to go the front line. He blesses it.

Right. And I mean or, or performs an exorcism. One of the other.

That's either one. But he, he looks at the ro. He studies ro, goes out, looks at the car, verify it meets his standards before it's, before it's allowed to go. I'd be willing to bet you he has the lowest policy expense in the group. I'll be willing to bet you that. Now I, I didn't look at the composite to verify it, but just the commitment, the commitment to quality that, that he exhibits is something that I've got to do.

Are you driving him, you think? Is he taking them for a drive or is he just. Because that would be very time consuming to say I'm going to take a 10 minute test drive in every car because that's my biggest issue is just these, these mechanical failures that happen soon after the sale. And I don't know how to. I, I got an idea. You know, obviously, you know, the, the post repair test drive I think is super important and I'm gonna do kind of what he did. I Think I'm gonna start being better at spot checking ros on cars that go to the front line. Hey, let me get the, the inspection from the auction. Let me get all the ros and the whole ticket of everything we did to it, and I'm gonna go physically inspect it. And this better have new struts and it better have a set of brakes because it says we put them on there. Right. That's not only a quality control, but also a cost control.

Jeff, how many miles do you think you put on a car before you put it on the. On the front line of the retail?

So our guys have got to do like 10 to 15 our route.

If I told you we did 50.

Would that be insane?

Okay.

Yeah. And we drive every car. If you're selling 30 to 40 to 50amonth and you're driving each 12 hours, that's why.

So, so our initial. This is crazy. Our initial test drive is the normal loop is like 8.8 miles or something. To that effect. We have a little bit longer loop for something that may have, you know, more, and that's about 12 miles. We drive a car before it goes in for inspection, we inspect it, it goes, gets done, we redrive it again, usually 10 to 15 miles. And then after it comes out detail, we drive it another 15 to 20 miles. So. And I can tell you it doesn't necessarily help comebacks because cars are going to break when cars break. But we keep raising that number of miles because we are trying to get to the point where we don't have comebacks, but we still have them. I don't know what the answer is, but I think the more inspection by the owner on some of these cars will help. Not every owner may have the ability to do that, but I think it's something I'm working. I'm going to work into our process.

Yeah. And definitely put somebody on it to catch the obvious stuff. Luke, one thing I. One of my takeaways, and we had the pleasure of having dinner with Jason Gosnell from Buckeye. So a bit of a double timer here. A plug for Buckeye and a plug for me. There are some guys, we've talked about it a million times on this podcast, but CPI Income is a real deal.

It is the real deal. And, and Buckeye is the best company out there to get it.

And.

And Jeff, I, I decided about a year ago that I was. Okay, I'm. I'm all in on cpi. And, and this is actually something I took away from a 20 group. So you know, it's when you look at what you make from 20 groups, CPI is a great way to make a lot of cash. But since I decided I was all in on CPI from a 20 group meeting and learned I decided I was all in then it took me six months. I still didn't know exactly how to do it. So last 20 group, I said, all right guys, what am I doing wrong? They told me, man, we've doubled our, our CPI penetration since then. Right. It's the real deal, Jeff. And I hope that I know that you started really progressing that cpi if you did you learn things while you were here.

Yeah. What's interesting to me, so my takeaways are two things. A, I think that us having our own CPUI program is going to be crucial. Right. Our customers getting insurance is harder and harder and more expensive and more expensive. And there's all these stupid little disqualifiers, you know, uncovered drivers and policies and whose fault was who. And so they want to jack up the rates on our customers and then they're completely crushing us on any valuation if there is a total loss, right. Or they're trying to total the car out for like peanuts because they don't want to fix it. Right? So the insurance game, if we play against the big guys, is completely stacked against us, right? So let's just take ourselves out of the game, right? Say, fine, I don't want to play your game. I'm going to have my own game. And it's all numbers, man. They do it every single day. Granted, they have a very large pool and they distribute their risk. So some I know dealers are like, well, I'm so scared about insuring my own customers. They're the worst of the worst. Yeah. Yeah, they are, right? You're going to have some problems. Guess what? It's your asset to begin with. So that's my first takeaway is you got to steer into that game because it's going to be a win win for you just because of the outside.

Pressures market and hold and hold on. It's a win win for our customers because 100 they're getting. They're getting screwed by these insurance companies too.

Yeah. So they're getting, they're getting the, you know, they're being able to waive their full coverage requirement and then you have the option to step in and help them out when you want to. The other thing is that the, the ease of switching to someone like Buckeye, you know, I kind of walk down the process with Jason of what that would be like, pretty simple stuff, right? I mean, sign some papers, set up some accounts, even getting it going. So if you want to do it now before the year starts, I mean, that's my thing. Nice, nice, clean break, January 1st. And you obviously could do it any time of the year. Do it on a quarter break if you can't get it done by January. But fairly easy transition, with the exception of maybe tracking some old contracts and some new contracts. And we kind of walked how that would be be transitioning from company to company. So that. That's one of my big takeaways and something that's definitely on my to do list.

Yeah. You know, another takeaway. I had it. And. And as y' all know, neo's a sponsor of our newsletter. If you're not getting our newsletter, Jeff, how can somebody do that just on our website?

Yeah. The independentdealer.com how many dealers in that room? Out of the 15 that were there, how many had Neo?

I think there were 16 dealers there, and I'm pretty sure 10 to 12 use Neo.

I was blown away.

Blown away, Blown away. We've made NIO a lot of money also. And what was even more surprising is that, is that everybody in that room was on a grading system, an automated grading system. If it were not nio, it was. It was something else. We have a couple of buy writers in the room, and they have a proprietary system they use. But the importance of staying on top of the data, that's that NEO or your. Your provider is using. Right. These are algorithms, and the algorithms have to be updated. And we're sitting there yesterday morning, and we're going over, and I'm going, huh, I can't remember exactly the last time we updated our info with neo. So that means have we reported our last six months of repossessions? Have we reported anything we've seen that has become an anomaly that we want to grade out? Right. So I fired off an email yesterday afternoon and said, hey, guys, when was the last time we did it? I want it done as quickly as possible. And so I'm actually having a meeting this afternoon with, you know, NEO and saying, hey, guys, this is our new data. I want to import it. I want to update our car information. I want to. I want to look at some things to get it dialed in a little better. Because the more you use a system like this, the better you get it dialed in, and the more information it has, as we know, the better the algorithm will get. So that's. That's a huge takeaway. I have by just sitting there and during the. During the Hot topics, you know, these things come up and I go, okay, yeah, this is something we need to be doing. I haven't done. Yeah. And what I found interesting, you brought.

Up a nugget for everybody when you said, look and sorry, guys. This is very specific for NEO users, but if you're using them sometimes the car is such a good car and scores so well that no matter who you put on it, it may get a higher grade than what that customer should be given. Right. So if you have a. For me, a 2012 Silverado, right. Like, it will pay to the end because I'm putting decent people in it. But the problem is it's such a good car that it can artificially drag up someone who maybe shouldn't be in it. So, yeah, that's one thing Luke told us was, hey, you got to have a control car, right? You got to have whatever car is your bread and butter and whatever car has the most data in your system, you know, whether that's a Hyundai Elantra or a Honda Accord or a Grand Caravan. That should be an average price, average term, average payment, bread and butter, and score everyone on that car first. And that gives you a true. Like. Yeah. And I don't know if that's. If you talk to the guys in nio, if they say that's how you should do it or a workaround or what? I don't know. But.

Well, I think. I think the people in the. And I came up with that idea. It's. This doesn't apply to a lot of people out there because a lot of people say, okay, I'm in the. I'm in the buy here, pay here business. I'm only going to sell certain cars. Right. Which is fine. Your control car may be exactly the same car that's on your lot, so you don't have to worry about a control car. But when you come to somebody like me who's selling $30,000 trucks and is also selling $15,000 Honda launches or whatever, you know, car, you really need to have something that. That is your baseline. And you should have this if you're using a scoring system or not have a baseline car. And I think Dare actually talked about that last week. What was it? The. The top 10 cars he knows he sells.

Right. Yeah. What. What are your bread and butters and.

Don'T know your know your strike zone.

Yeah.

And grade your customer on your strike zone. If you get outside that strike zone, you're going to have problems yeah.

So, you know, talk about the guys at Primal End and, and getting your money. You know, obviously interest, we talked about that earlier in the podcast. Interest expense is huge right now. It's crushing a lot of dealers. I think it's crushing a lot of finance companies. You know, I mean a lot of these guys are just getting out or closing their door because they can't make the spread anymore. And so we talked about that in the group is like, hey, is this a time, are you at the state max rate of interest that you're lending as a buy here, pay here? Are you, you know, or do you want to get into a variable situation and say, hey, you know, based on these completely unbiased criteria, maybe I'm going to have a variable rate these days because I see an opportunity to jump on some better credit customers when they're staring at a 12% interest rate callback from their credit union, you know, and you can get them at 14 or 15 and still have it make sense based on your debt structure. Now all of a sudden you're sucking up some long term customers that you can treat well, get their friends, get their family, and they may just go with you over a couple of points because of the headache. It's just that much easier to stay with you as it is to go sign up with a new credit union or something.

So yeah, you brought up that, you brought up that point. I thought that was just very interesting about, hey, is there, is there an opportunity to, to lower your interest rate to get that, that good customer? And I believe you're right, Jeff. I believe there are opportunities if your money doesn't cost you too much. Right.

Debt free or low debt. Yeah, Carry.

Yeah, I can do that. And you could, you can probably do that. There's probably, there's other people in the room that could do that. And the more opportunity you have at getting better customers will lead to better customers. Right? And there's, there's something about the ease of walking in to one of our dealerships and buying a car and not being jerked around. So, you know, if you've got to go, if you got to go to a dealership and they've got to fire you to cuddle and they got to fire you to, you know, with Route 1 or whatever, next thing you know, you're in that dealership for five hours. Everybody in the world is taking a swing at your credit. And you may have walked in with a, you know, with a 7:30 credit score and may walk out with a 690 credit score. Right. But if you walk into my, you walk into to my dealership or, or fill out my application online and you start with a 730, you're going to probably leave with a 730 and I'm going to give you a good rate. I'm not, you know, I might pencil you at 15 or 16, but Dare told us last week that hey, a lot of people are getting penciled at 12% out the box now. So there's 700.

Right.

Like yeah, crazy.

So would you, you would take. And from a buy here payer standpoint it makes sense. Like if you're taking a 10 shave on your interest rate. Right. To get that good credit customer that guess what, that's gonna, that the likelihood of them repoing is very, very low.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

So yeah, you don't make as much on the interest, but they're almost guaranteed to pay out to the end of the loan or close enough to the end that you can trade them in again or trade them up. I mean that net net, you got to look at the full picture, not just the upfront growth and the interest potential.

And they're more than likely going to take care of your car better than, than a 500 credit score. And so you can trade them quicker.

Yeah.

And when you bring that car back in, then you can go and put that with a, with a 500 credit score. Right. So there's all kind of ways to make money in this business. And it was very interesting that you brought up that point that may there might be an opportunity in the market with a lower interest rate.

One last thing to talk about or I don't know how many you got, but I got one more costs, man. We, I, we say this all the time and we always revisit this. You've got to keep a handle on your expenses. And I think they just so easily creep up. And all of a sudden you add some new feature to your DMS and you add a new feature to your booking tool and you all of a sudden sign up for some recurring charge on some guy that's gonna bring you mops twice a week. Like the little 50, 60, 100, $500. Dealers are so ready to sign up. Dude, if it's under 500 bucks, great, sign me up, I'll do it. Right. So I think we've got to continually visit these things and be like, hey, are these all crucial? Are we using them? Do we even know what we're getting with this tool or this product? Is, does anyone even use it? Like I don't even know if anyone has even logged into the system, and I'm still paying for it.

I was so blown away during our. During our Best. Best Idea session by the amount of people that their best Idea was some BS tool that they were paying 250 or 499amonth for. I think that is the most insane thing in the world to have all these toys, because what happens is, is you don't think about, oh, It's. That's only 250amonth.

Right.

Well, next thing you know, you have 10 of them, and it's $2500 a month. Or even worse, you have something that's an advertising portion. Oh, well, it's only 2. 99amonth. Next thing you know, they go up and you didn't look at it, and it's 699amonth. You've been paying that for a year, and you actually have another lead provider that's giving you the same exact lead. So be careful when you sign up for. For these new toys, because if you can't equate it to sales or to. To another savings, you're not. You're not making anything. And.

Yeah, and it's. It's auditing it for utility, right, Luke?

Yeah.

Like, you have tools that you spend 4.99amonth on, and you might be the only one that logs into it, but it brings you value. Yeah.

Yeah. But it may not. You know, it may not be worth it if. If it's giving you a little bit of value, that's still $6,000 a year going out the door. Can I. Can I use another tool that's a better value?

You have a booking tool that you use that gives you market data, right? Comparable. Yep.

Yes.

I assume no one else really logs into that. I don't know who in your dealership would use it.

And in my dealer. In my dealership, I can tell you five people that use that equipment daily.

Okay. So that is not something that would be on the chopping block for you. You feel like it's in there, it's integrated.

Yeah.

I just recently signed up for auto check. I have not used a vehicle history report in the 15 years I've been in this business. Good or bad? I don't know. Just barely signed up for auto check. It was the hardest thing I did. Hardest thing I did. I've operated so long without them, and now. Yeah, it's kind of cool. Like, I get to see where it was hit, when it was hit. I don't know. Man, like, yeah, was that. I don't know.

That's. That's funny. But, you know, there are certain things you're going to use every day. You know, vehicle history reports or something. I use every day because I typically buy cars every day. We use it also in the service department, too. So, you know, that's something I use every day, and it builds value for my customers. I know, I know. I need it now. Could I get a vehicle history report somewhere for cheaper maybe? And I may be looking at that coming up. There's. There's all these things that you have to weigh, but you need to weigh every expense before the end of the year, Jeff, and I think that's where we're going to. Yeah, every expense needs to be weighed before the end of the year because times are going to be tougher. Cash is king again, if you, you know, if you don't have a provider, you need to see primal and see if they can help you, because you're going to need cash. If you want to grow, you got to have cash, which you and I both have seen here lately. But audit your expenses go down. I love when you talk about it. You go get out your credit card statement and highlight every single one of it. Figure out every time you build something, where's it going? I do that inside QuickBooks. I'm going to look at that a lot before the end of the year.

Yeah, yeah. Pull them off, put them on a spreadsheet. You know, the vendor, the cost, anything that's recurring or that shows up that some weird product service subscription, and then just say, hey, I'm going to dig into this invoice. When did my 700 credit bill become 500amonth? Like, why? Oh, that's because we're paying for a smaller bundle. And now we're pulling more reports, and so we're getting charged the per report over our bundle expense. It was a simple fix, right? It was like a simple phone call to jump up and knock that thing down by a hundred bucks a month. But you don't even know it until you're looking at, you know, kind of that specific idea.

Yeah, I. I saved. I think I was about four grand a month a couple months ago by going through and doing this. But it's something that you should do every quarter, probably.

Yeah. What else you got, Luke? Any closing thoughts?

Couple closing thoughts. One, if you have not, visit our YouTube page, Jeff, I want everybody to go out there right now and click subscribe. We are getting close to a thousand subscribers on our YouTube channel and it really helps get the message out. Our shorts are doing amazing. If y' all haven't check out our shorts. A lot of nuggets in there. Jeff, you do a really good job at timestamping them and getting them out to, to dealers and, and actually a lot of other people because we've got some of their 9 and 10,000 views which is really kind of cool. Anyway, I had an issue that I, that I'm trying to get resolved and that is the loan car situation. Jeff. And you know, just talking to people, I was at least here pay here summit over the, over the weekend. If you get a chance to go that next year everybody go. Even if you're not lease here pay here go because it's wonderful. 10 Tim and the staff do a great job. But I was talking to somebody who has a lot of accounts, I think 6,000 accounts and they have 40 cars or loaner. Does that blow your mind? Jeff?

Yeah, I can't even comprehend the, the coordinating. I mean that's a full time job for somebody.

It's a full time job. But what I've noticed here in the last little bit actually from COVID is that our customers demands are a lot more than they should be. And maybe it's just America in general that, that our, our sense of reality on, on time it takes to get things done is distorted. We're, we're used to being able to hit a button on our phone and a car picks us up and takes us somewhere when we, when we're at the airport or we're hungry and we hit a button on our phone and, and food arrives. It's creating an entitlement with our customers that goes hey, my motor went bad because I ran it hot and I think I should be able to put a push a button and you should have a new motor in there tomorrow. Unfortunately, that does not happen. But what I've seen is happening is that if I don't provide some type of transportation option for that customer, they're just going to leave me the car. Even if their car is under warranty, even if we had nothing to do with it, they're just going to leave the car, which blows my mind. The warranty should protect me from that. But what the warranty hasn't done is protect me from that. So I've got to figure it out. I've got to figure it out. And I don't know what the right ratio to loaners to amount accounts is, but I think it's depends on the.

Size of your shop and your turnaround time, right? I mean, you can have less loaners if your cars are getting stuff. You guys can get on stuff and get it in and out. If you're like, my guys and cars are here for a week, then I need a few more loaners.

But it. But it's parts. It's not necessarily in my shop. It's getting them.

So, I mean, so my only thoughts on that are if you're a retail dealer and you're selling a car and you're providing your own reinsurance on that, and you have a couple loaner vehicles because you're trying to provide customer service, right? If I sell you a 2017 Hyundai Sonata and the fricking engine blows and it's stuck down at the Kia dealership the day after you bought it from me, you're going to be pissed, right? Maybe I have a loaner car in that situation. I don't want to put a dealer tag on it, right? That's liability is insane. Don't do that. Have a separate llc. Go to Northland Auto, get rental car insurance on it, and put some in a customer service. Now, from a buy here, pay here standpoint, lease here, pay here, I have acquired a customer, and I need that customer to pay me $500 a month for the rest of their life. And I don't care what car they're driving. I don't care if they're driving the Hyundai Sonata that I sold them or if they're driving my Kia Soul loaner car, right? I don't care. I don't care which car it is. All I know is I have a customer paying me $500 a month until the day they die. That is what I want. So if you look at it from that standpoint, it's whatever I can do to keep that customer, my customer, and keep their auto pay churning every single month for $500, right? That's it. When you look at it from that standpoint now, all those loaner cars that you have are just. They're just a band Aid. It's just to swap them out, okay? And that's where that leasing gets a little closer to that, where people are like, okay, you're leasing a car for me. I don't care which car it is. If you want the red one this week, great. If you want me to switch it to the black one next month, you just got to pay a couple of fees and make it worth my headache and I'll switch it to the black one. It doesn't matter which Car I have. As long as you're paying me 500 or $600 a month, that's all that matters. So.

Yeah, I don't know if that helps.

You with your loaner car decision, but you blow because they're not driving. That's a losing situation. So what does it matter if you've got them in their Silverado or you've got them in some loaner car for the month or the week just to keep that customer on your books?

Yeah. And it's, you know, somebody I think at 20 group said this. It said it's part of our value add statement. That was you. Okay. It sounds like, man, really sounds like something you'd say. I mean, because you understand customer service and you appreciate customer service like I do. Our customers have it hard, Jeff. And sometimes we forget that, that if.

They don't show up to work, they're fired.

They're fired, and that's a big deal. Or worse than that, they can't eat, you know.

Yeah.

So.

And they don't have a bunch of people with extra cars laying around or even family that could even give them a ride because their family doesn't have a car. Right. Like, or.

Or their family's too busy working. And. Yeah.

So it's called in too many favors. Like, I, I completely sympathize with that.

We've got to make it easier for our people. And unfortunately, state regulations and blood sucking attorneys have made it hard for us sometimes to provide the ability to help our customers. And that really stinks.

Really was absolutely insane that you could give someone a loaner car to be a good guy. Somehow something happens and some attorney wants to come after you because you tried to give this person a car to get them through so they could make it to work.

Yeah.

Completely backwards. But, yeah, I don't let that potential of liability. I think I've got my eyes dotted, my T's crossed. I'm going to err on the side of customer service at this point instead of using the. Well, I don't want to get sued as an excuse to not provide some customer service. So maybe I'm crazy. Maybe it'll bite me in the ass and I'll be. I think you're right, you know, but who knows?

I think you're right. I think you're right.

Hope everyone got some value out of this. Guys, we look forward to talking to you again next week. And like Luke said, visit the website, go to our YouTube. Please subscribe. Give us a comment, let us know what you want to hear more of what you want to hear less of. It was fun getting some feedback from these guys in the 20 group that I. Some of them I've never met that are like, hey, we listen to you. Here's what I like, here's what I don't like.

And I want to thank everybody. It is. I want to thank everybody that I saw at least here pay here summit Jeff. I'm pretty sure everybody there listens to us on the podcast. And, and, and I would walk up to people and say, hey, I'm Luke Godwin. Nice to meet you. And they're like, yeah, I know who you are. I'm like, okay, I can't be good. I listen to you every week and I'm. Thank you all so much. I really, I. I enjoyed hearing your. Your story. I enjoyed you telling me, hey, you know, I think I'm good. Or I think I'm getting better every week because of, because of Yalls podcasts. And hey, that keeps us going. So we really appreciate it.

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