#333 - Keeping Customers Happy with Tracy Myers

This is the Independent Dealer Podcast, Education by Dealers for Dealers. Now here are your hosts, Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson.

Hello and welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast, brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. We came off a great last week at convention down in Las Vegas, and there was one session that I really, really regret not being able to make it to. I had some sort of a scheduling conflict. So we reached out to our good friend Tracy Myers and said, Tracy, you got to come on the podcast and you got to fill us all in on what I missed out on. Tracy, how you doing? Welcome.

I'm good, thank you. It was a good, good convention. And as busy as we all were, it's good to see you guys. In passing, I think that's all we had. Hey, how you doing? Goodbye.

Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, this convention, I'm going to say I didn't go to every single session, but it was packed. I mean, that was probably the most dealers I've seen there in a long time. A lot of good sessions, even though I didn't make it to all of them. But it was good to see you, Tracy. You always bring a lot of knowledge and a lot of history to. To what we do. So thanks for being here. Yeah.

Did we get a final head count? I heard maybe like 200 signups the.

Day of, and I think it was a thousand plus is what I understand.

Yeah. And I've got to say, all my years of going, I've been going since 2003, I've never seen that many dealers in the educational sessions. I mean, there's been that many dealers or more at convention, but in the education sessions, especially in tourist destinations, they tend to get light on the second and third. Third days. They scatter. But every session I went into and was a part of, they were packed. Even the, the non sexy stuff and the. The bigger, sexier stuff in the bigger rooms, they were packed as well. So that is good that they concentrated on that. And I don't know that we didn't have more sessions going on concurrently this year than ever before or. It sure seemed like it.

Yeah, I think they were. Was it either three or four sessions going on concurrently? Which tracks?

Right.

Yeah.

And which I didn't figure out until, like the last day. Oh, these are different tracks.

Yeah. I tell you, it's. It does make it hard to get to everything you want to see. You know, I think it was on.

The work, on my tan track.

Laying.

By the pool every day.

I do, I do. And maybe we'll be fully transparent here. I do wish that we still, we as the association still recorded those sessions.

Well, interesting, interesting. So because Jeff had some technical difficulties in my session and the audio is gone and so I reached out to Jeremy Beck and said, hey Jeremy, we had a, a mix up in technology and I'm blaming this on Jeff. And honestly I, I know nothing about technology so it's just as well my fault is as it is his. I may have hit mute, who knows. Anyway, I said, Jeremy, can we grab the audio? And Jeremy goes, this is the first year we hadn't recorded it. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And you know, I, I was thinking all the content is created in those sessions. I mean, honestly belongs to Niada because we signed, sign an agreement when we speak and do a session to do away with that. Man, that's a lot of content that we could use. And you know, talking about cmd, that's a good way to help, you know, help educate if we had all those sessions recorded. So I hate they didn't do that.

Yeah, I know they've always done it. And at one point in time we had our own television streaming which was way ahead of its time. Yeah, everyone laughed at it when that was rolled out. But now everything is a standalone component in streaming as we know. You know, we so many people try to cut the cord to get rid of cable or satellite. Now we have 97 streaming services individually, which equals like four times the dollar amount we were spending for, you know, satellite or cable. But with all the content we have, even if you take this year out of the equation and all the other standalone events that the association does and even the state associations, if you want to branch out into the state associations, I mean there's, to me there's a big idea there thinking next level for dealers who are striving for that. A hunger for that education.

Yeah, I mean, just, I mean even if you just. And I'm sure, don't get me wrong, I'm sure it will be, would be crazy expensive for the win to record all of that. I can't imagine what that would cost the association, but the amount of value that it would build on, on YouTube or on Niada TV I think would be invaluable. And you could probably charge 100, 150 to any dealer that wasn't there to consume that content. So I hate they didn't do it.

Real quick. You know, a lot of conventions will do the pass without the content and a pass with the content like forever. So if it's 4.99 and you just want to attend and it's $5.99 and you get the content forever for your staff, that would be pretty, Pretty important because I do a lot of go to a lot of conventions outside of our industry, and most do that.

Yeah.

So anyway, well, I'll give it to you for free right now. Tracy, fill us in on what we missed from your session. It was entitled keeping Customers Happy, I think.

Yeah, yeah, it was. And it was in the compliance track. And I don't know why I'm. God knows I'm not the best. We can laugh. I can laugh about that. You know, we try, but it becomes more and more difficult, especially in the landscape we're in today. Right. And in the used car business, it is even more difficult, I believe. And if you're in subprime, deep subprime, buy here, pay here space, release your pay here space, I think it's even more difficult. So it's tiered. However, with that being said, I asked Jerry, I said, now, why don't you ask me to do this? Because, I mean, you know, if there's not the compliance part, but keeping customers happy part, because it was just out of the blue for me, you know, I usually do marketing or lead gen or, you know, sales processes or something like that. And he said, because, you know, we looked and you have over 3,000 reviews and a 4.7 star rating, which is above national average, even for new car dealers. Okay. And we're proud of that. And. And I told him, I said, you know, it takes a lot of work.

Yeah, it does.

It's not easy. You can have a 4.7 with 32 reviews. That's totally different than 3,000 plus reviews because they, they, you know, they just compound over time. As long as we've been here, and thankfully years ago, I said, you know, it's difficult to get our staff to focus on one, much less, you know, one. So I kind of forgot the others. Meaning where that people leave reviews. If they leave them, great. And we'll respond. But let's focus on Google. Yep. And it's still by far the ocean and everything else is a small pond. So we focus on that 20, I guess, 20 some years now. So. And answer. How you answer those reviews is actually what the session turned into wasn't necessarily keeping the customers happy. And that's okay. That's the direction the audience took it. And we went with Tracy.

How are you getting them? Let's start with the beginning in your dealership Give us the tactical advice for dealers, or is it just like a QR code you're getting customers to scan? Is it built into your sales process? Do you incentivize your sales team to get them. Give us. Give us some advice and some input on how it's working for you guys.

Sure. So it's been part of the sales process here for more than a decade. It's part of their responsibility. So it's part of the culture. We ask them when they're in the store. There's obviously word track for that, and we train them, and we do that before they go into. In most cases, there's deviants and everything. Right? No, no deal is perfect. But in most cases, we ask them for the review before they go into F and I or to sign the paperwork. And we're. We're retaining. We sold 112 cars last month at the original location, and we had 106 reviews.

That's great.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's just part of the process. We don't have the QR code. We use. We use a. A third party for that. And we were early adapters of that. I'm pretty sure now from. I think Luke actually told me that you can get the Google reviews in the showroom and the customer could be in the showroom now. Right. It's not a. You know, I know back in the day when we signed on with a third party, if you did that, then they would recognize that IP address and you couldn't leave.

Oh, so can I. What third party are you using?

Podium.

Okay. So they're in the dealership. They're at the sales process. You've signed, you know, they've said yes to the car. Your sales staff is trained to then send them the Podium link.

Yeah.

And says. Here's a link coming to you. Click through it, leave me review, mention my name. Pretty much. Honest review. Okay.

Absolutely. Yeah. We started. You know, I think you always need to. We call season what you asked for. Right. So it's like, hey, hope you had a great experience. You're happy with your car. Yes. You love me. Yes. I hope that. Yeah. Would you recommend this to friends? Absolutely. You're the best ever. I'll send everybody to you. You know, they're in that nirvana moment.

That's right.

Right before they go back, say, oh, my God, I gotta pay 600. That's why we do it before they go into the office. Right. Before they sign, like, a stack of paperwork that, you know, looks like Moby Dick. So.

Yeah.

And when they answer yes. All the questions say, hey, if you were to leave me a review, would it be anything less than five stars? If they say, yeah, man, might be a four, then we ask why, Right? If it's a five, then we say, hey, man. Well, here's what I'd like to ask you a favor. I'm gonna send you a link. I'd like you leave, let other people know about your car shopping experience here. You don't mind now you're great. They gotta wait anyway, right? So it actually we found out it killed more than two birds and one stone. It gives them something to do while they're waiting because people hate to wait and do nothing.

Yeah, that's interesting. You know, we, we found. We've never used a third party, third party for, for this process, but we essentially use the same process.

I remember, I thought it was.

Yeah, yeah. But you know, the thing now is you can send, we can send this link. Link through neo. Did you know that, Jeff?

Yeah. Ours goes out automatically after the sale, though.

Well, you can't do that because let me tell you, the percentage of people that do it after they sign documents, it goes down.

Big old fat goose egg.

It goes down really quickly. So you have to just like Tracy, that process of doing it before document signs is huge.

So I want to dig into that some more, Tracy, because that's really, really interesting to me. Do you feel like you could do it without the software? Is that. Is Podium crucial to your process or is it just so ingrained you've stuck with it?

So two answers. It is ingrained. And if it's successful, I always stay with something. Right. I don't know that there's any room for improvement there. Okay, we could do it without the software, but I think that our, the amount of reviews that we had would go down. And here's, here's another thing I like, since we do have. We have 33 people on staff with sales and service and admin. Take advant out of the equation. Still 20, 24. Right. And we're. We asked everyone for reviews from, from sales to service. If they come back like in podium. If they come back into podium three days later in the check engine lights up. Well, being in the industry, we know that it's just a check engine light, you know, 99.9 of the time, isn't that right? But we've been trained in this country, been. At least the light comes on, there's something wrong and my engine's getting ready to blow up. Right. Or at least that's what customers think. We know that's not the case. But if they go back in there and amend the review, it notifies the admin immediately within podium. So if they were a five and it drops to a one, we get an alert that the review was. Was amended. Now, sometimes actually happened yesterday where I was massaging this customer for like three days. I knew the situation, I knew what happened. I responded. I looked them up in the CRM. I cross referenced it, messaged him privately and said, hey, you know, tell me what happened. Even though I'm sitting right there, my office is like in the middle of the showroom when I'm here. I knew, I heard everything. What they described, what happened, what happened is not the same. But I want them to say it or at least think it, type it and say, oh, man, you know, that's not exactly the way, you know, So I can have a conversation with them, then start asking questions. Well, two and a half, three days later, they changed it. Podium notified me that they changed it, which going in reverse, I know they're going to change it anyway in most cases. And I think that's another skill set altogether. And I think dealers forget about that. Yeah. Or they think. I don't think. I don't think they think about it. You can get most customers to actually change their view back. Not all the time, but I have more success than not. What with a conversation. With a conversation. It's not even about dropping, you know, dropping your pants and spending the money. It's just having a conversation and show you care.

I think, I think that's, you know, let's. Let's back up. And you said you went into the, to the session going, it's about how do you make the customer happy instead of reviews? And Tracy, what's your best tip for. For keeping that customer happy and making them happy when something goes wrong?

Communication. Early communication. Having a conversation with them, not not calling them out on social media or wherever the reviews at. I think one of the worst things you can do and we had this conversation is trying to be right.

Yeah.

Because my dad always says we don't win until we get their money, which sounds kind of harsh, but we're in business. We're not a nonprofit. Right. And we can get their money, but we want to retain this customer. And I know this is. We have lease here, pay your short and retail, but we want to retain that customer forever and their family members forever. It doesn't matter how much I make today. I want to sell everyone in the household Multiple cars over the years, and we have so. And I think dealers confuse that with, I don't want to fix everything like a new car store. That tends to be the, you know, in the society we're in now, they think that you have to spend all this money to keep the customer happy. In my experience, you don't have to. It's just having a conversation and meeting in the middle. That doesn't mean necessarily paying for half. It's just, you know, most of the time, it's just list. They don't have anybody else to vent to.

Hey, Jeff.

What's up?

Did I scare you?

Yeah, sorry. I zoned out for a minute.

All right, buddy. So, you know, we're talking about getting money in the bank, and Blitzpay is how I get my money in the bank.

Yeah, they're. We're using them like, you guys know, we moved over, like, I don't know, eight months ago, and we're just now getting to our full transition from our previous credit card processor over to Blitzpay, and things are going really well. It's just such an easy, easy platform for customers to make their payments on. There's just no hassle. You text them over a link, they click on it, logs them in. They have all their credit cards right there in a little wallet they can pitch with, pick which ones they want to process that day. And it just really takes the hassle of out of my collectors and my receptionist just having to answer the phone and take credit card numbers. Friday mornings, like, are the worst. Right? It's just constant phone calls. Oh, run this card. Run this card. Run this card. So we're completely eliminating that. It's awesome.

Yeah, it's truly. It's changed the way we collect for the good. And the folks are really nice to talk with them out of the Expo and really helped on a couple of things that we were having issues with. So give Blitzpay a call today and get signed up.

If you spent $3,000 a month for a therapist, you know, a coach, a customer service rep that literally would just sit down and listen to customers vent, because it takes time. They'll come in, and they have a lot more time than you have. And that's one of the hardest parts for me is they come in and. And I just want to be like, okay, fine. You know, put tires on it. Get out of here. You know, I don't have time to hear them out and listen to them all the way through. But if you really just had the customer service rep spent the Money on that one person that could really listen, empathize, try to help them solve their own problems, I bet that would pay huge dividends down the road.

Yeah. I have a comptroller, Natasha, who is wonderful at talking to our customers. I mean, just freaking wonderful. And sometimes she looks at me and Luke says, you know, you need to eat this one. This customer has a very legitimate point. You know, get off that wall. But. But what I found with our customers is I will try to put this the proper way. They don't have the support system that a lot of us have. And so they're so used to being taken advantage of when something goes wrong. Their first intuition is, I've got to go crazy because these people aren't going to help me. But when you calm them down and tell them you're going to help them and show that you're going to help them, this situation, you build customers for life, right? Tracy 100.

I couldn't have said that better, usually. And you're right. And I tell myself all the time, you have to train on this. Because most people, if they're from a different place or have a different perspective, because everything's about perspective, right. They don't understand where that customer is coming from. They don't understand what it's like to be, you know, not living paycheck to paycheck. They're two paychecks behind.

That's right.

They don't understand that. And when, like, if I have a staff member, for example, and they say, hey, you know, I can't find a babysitter, you know, I'm like, I can find a babysitter. Well, you know, I may have more resources, and that doesn't necessarily equal money. Right. It's just I have a better support system than a lot of people have, and we really have to take a deep breath and acknowledge that more often than we do. At least I believe so. So. And listening to them goes a long way. Nobody, they feel nobody listens to. Now, whether that's accurate or not doesn't matter, because their perception is reality, and their perception is nobody listens. Everybody's out to get me. I've got all these bills in the mailbox, so I'm going to stop checking the mailbox. That's why I don't. That's why I haven't set my voicemail up, right? Because I don't want them to know that's my phone number. It's. I don't know. You're. You're exactly right on that, though. And you're right, too.

Let me ask you this, Tracy. So we've looked at the process. Your salesmen are, are very much ingrained in getting that review podium lets you know if you have a bad or good review or if it's changed. A couple questions on that. Does it also let you know? Or, or sometimes I'll have Google reviews that just disappear. I'll go from being like, you know, 1368, and the next week I'll have like, 1360. I'm like, where did those eight reviews go? How do they just disappear overnight? Did. Do you get notifications on, like, ones.

That drop off, not ones that drop off of Google? And from my, my understanding, that's always been a Google issue. I know three or four years ago, I had. I had like 300 that dropped.

Yeah, buddy.

Did they ever come back?

That's all they did. Absolutely. Emailed. Google actually emailed them for several months and then one morning they just showed back up.

Let me ask you this, too. Who responds to your reviews? Me. At your dealership.

All me.

You're getting 100 reviews a month and you're responding to each?

I'm a therapist. Yes. Wow.

That is brain damage.

One last question before we move on from this, though. When is it okay to fire a customer?

That's going to be different for everyone. I remember my dad used to fire customers pretty regular, but different generation and different mentality. And I say this respectfully because he's the greatest salesperson I've ever known. And however, I don't think he would have a difficult time making it in the retail environment in today's market. It's completely different because this is all I've done in my adult life. So I've seen it change. I don't have a problem with it. I'm not saying it's better or worse. It's just different. It just is. But you have to. When the harassment continues, or when the conversation turns into harassment and the harassment continues, any threats whatsoever, I don't go. They don't get a second chance. I mean, like physical, violent threats. I'm not talking about people coming and going crazy or going crazy over the phone. People are people, and we don't know what they're going through. Right. But if I can't listen to them for 10 to 15 seconds, and there are lots of books and audio and whatever on this. Lower your voice, slow your speaking pattern very deliberately. And usually it brings them. You'll. You'll see them. They'll almost always apologize.

Yeah.

If you say everybody Everybody has a bad day.

Everybody has a bad day and they're used to getting screwed over. So we just have to take our time. But we, we do divorce customers. I mean, we just the other day and blocked them on all, all, all any in our texting platforms. They had bought several cars from us. They bought a truck with 197,000 miles, which is something we usually don't sell, by the way. But it's, it's, it's a real truck, right? They're made, you know, it's a diesel. Checked out great. And I'll tell you what a great truck it was. They drove it 11 months, brought it back, said they think they had it towed in. Think the engines out of it, right? And it had 303. 3. They drove 100, 000 miles a year. What? This family has bought multiple vehicles from us. Well, after multiple threats, no conversation was to be had. It's your fault. You're a bad deal. You're out to screw people. Blasted, you know, nine different places with the same copy and paste review. I said, you know, we can't do anything.

Yeah.

I mean, and there was no reasoning with the customer even saying, look, this, to me, this is like one of the best trucks you could have purchased because you put 100,000 miles on it with two oil changes on record. Right? Anywhere. Not just here, anywhere. Two old changes on record. 100,000 miles in 11 months.

Perfect.

That's a great.

I found that my, my, my threshold for, for divorce has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller. How do you, how do you handle that? Because I'm like, I mean, if they even raise their voice or I hear one F word, I'm like, okay, just take your money back. Like, I don't want to deal with this. I don't want to be married to you for the next 36 months. Just take your money, give me my car, let's go our separate ways. Like.

Yeah. So. So on the buy here, pay here side, I had a hit collector once. And anytime anyone mentioned attorney, it was a. Well, if you're calling your attorney, then this conversation's over, you know? Yeah. What are you doing? You can't. I heard that like three times. Where did you hear that? Well, the last, who I worked for, I said, okay, just stop. I said, number one, 99% of the time, they're not going to get an attorney. They're angry with you. They think that's going to scare you, and they, you react exactly the way they, they wanted you to react in that moment. I said, just take a deep breath, listen to them, ask them questions. We're still selling, right? It's questions. The person asking questions is in control of the conversation. If you don't mind me asking, look, I respect. You want to get an attorney. Why are you getting an attorney?

I used to ask. I used to ask him, does your. Does your attorney know how to work on your car? That's always the best.

I bet that helps.

We had this conversation in the session, actually, because someone said, what do you say? And I'm like, look, if you. I tend to try to be a realist. I say, look, it's okay that you get an attorney, but here's the reality. My attorney is going to charge me $500 to come into their office and sit down. If you want to write a letter, it's going to cost another 500 bucks. You get up to $1,000, you've got $350 repair. That's right. Oh. Oh, I didn't know all that.

Okay.

Conversations changed.

Yeah. Oh, well, I'm really.

I'm really surprised that you're the one that handles hot cases.

That's.

That's inspirational. Yeah, I. That is the first thing I've gotten rid of and, and tried to delegate out because it's the biggest headache and it's the, it's the thing I just cannot handle is sitting down for 45 minutes or an hour and a half and just are talking in circles, trying to calm down a customer. But. But I understand. It's incredibly important.

It is. But you also understand you don't enjoy it, and if you don't enjoy it, you're not going to be good at it, right? Oh, yeah.

I don't enjoy it.

Yeah.

How can I get to an end as quick as possible, which is throw money at it?

And I feel like. I like the feeling. It feels like I'm 22, selling at the Toyota store again, to me, because I. I close that deal and they're happy, like, and they leave me. I get that high I used to get when I, you know, I worked eight hours on a car deal and got a $50 mini. Right. That's the way I feel. Yeah. One, I. I kept another good guy.

Yeah. You're their hero. They leave back.

So I'm good at that and I enjoy it.

But.

So you've got the right. You've got the right philosophy, I think. Don't do it.

That's incredibly painful.

Yeah.

So I'll do.

I'll do it at the very end. Like, if Nobody can handle them. Then I'll be like, all right, let's.

Yeah, I've got one manager that'll give the store away if I let him handle it. Right.

Yeah, everybody's got one of those here.

Get out of here. I'll give you tires. And I got one that's the whole. Well, you signed it as is. No warranty. No. No cooling off period. So. No, man. Yeah, neither one of those work.

Hey, real quick. Of course, Reinsurance. If you talk about a mastermind group or crowdsourcing, sourcing, any best idea from a group of dealers, the number one thing they say is reinsurance. Start my reinsurance company sooner. Start it now. Start it as soon as you can. So of course it's a cash drain. It sucks a bunch of cash out of your dealership, takes it from your right pocket, puts it in your left pocket. I get that. So some dealers just say, hey, I cannot fund a reinsurance company right now. But find a way to do it. Because even a little amount, you know, if you're doing 100 or 2 or $300 as a guarantee or a warranty on every car, that's at least you're putting away something to kind of self insure against the things you're probably doing anyways to keep those customers happy.

Yeah. You know what's funny is, you know the person that actually told me about reinsurance?

Tracy.

Tracy Meers that we're having on the podcast today? So what was funny is I was trying to build my own warranty company. I was like, this it? And Tracy goes call this guy.

Yeah. It's already been done.

Oh, okay. Sorry about that. Yeah. But it's the best thing I've ever done. And Tracy's been a real mentor to me, and I appreciate him. And I appreciate him. Turn me on to reinsurance.

Yeah.

Call the guys at Buckeye. Get your reinsurance company set up today. So let's, let's transition. Tracy, you also have an event, a convention coming up. Well, piggyback convention, but you've got the unfair advantage. Mastermind group coming up. Dealers that are going to be there or want to be there, what are they going to learn? Give us kind of a teaser, a little bit of a, you know, intro as to why this one is different than any of the other ones. Because it is. It's unique. This is a very unique format. It's a unique event that you put on. Tell us what to expect.

Yeah. So, you know, I'll give you the brief backstory. I was at a convention several Years ago. And I was listening to a lot of sales pitches. That's after being away from my family, my business, my kids. I was like, man, you gotta be kidding me. I was third session in. And there's a time and a place for that. And I don't mind it because we're all salespeople, right? But at least disguise it. Make it, you know, give me something I can take back other than trying to sell me something. Now. I was kind of ticked off, and I've got, you know, I got a high threshold for. For getting angry. But I was kind of angry because it's like 1200 convention, right? And it was on the west coast. You know, I barely got 2500 bucks wrapped up in this thing. And I looked at my buddy Troy Spring, who's co moderated with me. I said, man, they got to be another way. So we process this over a few weeks. And one of my favorite books is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And they talk about the power of the mastermind. And the power of the mastermind is. Is people who have the same goal in mind, pulling, moving in the same direction, putting their ideas together for a common purpose, which is to move forward, right? So what they're going to learn is as they're going to learn what they want to learn, because we're going to have a conversation about what they want to talk about. Because when we come into the room, the first thing we do is we explain how a mastermind works. They're going to give us their pain points or things that they're struggling with and they want to learn and take away. We're going to write them on a big whiteboard, and we're literally going to go down the list. After that 15 minutes, we're going to pick one of those things. And our. The philosophy behind the mastermind is there's someone in the room that's good at what you suck at. Just like what we talked about, right? You say, man, I'm terrible at answering, responding to heat cases. You know, what do I do? That may be your pain point. And we put that on the board. And, you know, if I'm in the room, here's how I handle it. I'm really good at it. And you may make that decision that day, man, I'm going to find somebody that can handle that, and I'm going to delegate it. That may be your takeaway. And that conversation may last seven minutes if you're the only one in the room that has that pain point. Or it could last Two hours. We've had deep winding conversations that last for hours and come back after lunch and we have stopped the conversation and Troy and I are only there to moderate and I think that's the difficult thing for a lot of people to understand. Well, you know, I've never heard these guys speak and I don't really care about these guys. And that's all cool because we're there to the conversations gone along. There's someone that's pitching a product, they're interjecting in every answer and they're winding it back around to their product. And our, we cut that off immediately and if things start repeating. Okay, let's move to the next topic. Yeah, so we just keep the conversation flow. And we do have, our dealer advisory council is one person that represents one segment of the industry generally vendor based. But so you'll have someone that's a CRM person, you'll have a BDC expert, you'll have a sales trainer, you'll have recruiting person from a recruitment company. So they'll be in the room. They are briefed for about an hour the week before the event that you're not here to pitch. You can tell them where you work and you can tell them what you do, but that's where it ends. And you can offer the members obviously an offer to do business with you. That's cool, but that's where it ends. And if they ask about recruitment, you're the expert in the room. We're going to defer to you. And then the other people in the room start coming back, well, I've used them or and sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad, but that's part of being, being in the room. So that's really what the Mastermind's about. We will have, we did find out after our first three or four events that eight days of Mastermind is mentally exhausting. So now we go about 90 minutes and we break it up with, with a 20, 20 minute expert presentation, a speaker, an educator and then we'll go back to Mastermind session. So this year we're bringing in our, our round tables. So we'll actually have an expert at each roundtable. You'll know what those round tables are ahead of time. So you'll have BDC, CRM, sales training, recruitment, advertising, AI, text marketing, whatever. There'll be. Right now there's nine tables, an expert at each table. You'll have 15 minutes at each table and when the 15 minutes is up you'll rotate and go to a different Table that's going to be 90 minutes. And I think that that has potential to be pretty, pretty exciting because you get one on one time with the expert at the table. So that's something different we're bringing to the room. So it's not a convention or conference with a bunch of talking heads. It's true interactive learning that's very uncomfortable for a lot of dealers. And honestly, after about four years, we couldn't figure out why we couldn't get past 75, 80 people at an event because we want to grow it and have a bigger room. And, you know, I think it's because it's uncomfortable for a lot of people because you have to participate. And there's some people that likes to sit and listen, take notes, and they learn that way. That's, that's good. But this isn't the event for them. This is for the person who wants to ask questions and engage and debate.

Yeah, yeah. You know, Luke and I, we did a similar session at the end of Buy Here, Pay Here, United each Day, which was our dealer roundup. And to me, that was. Those are some of the best ones I've been through. And I've re. Listened to those on the podcast because it's exactly what you're saying, Tracy. You want to. We just want to talk about our pain points. We just want answers to the problems we're facing today. It changes tomorrow. Someone in the room has done it or been there before. Right? We talk about that all the time on the podcast. We don't know everything, but we know someone who does. So the way you do that is, I mean, it's, that's. Every convention should be led that way. They should all be led as a open discussion. Because you're right, we've all been in sessions where someone is just driving hard towards an agenda and you're like, man, how can I sneak out of here without making it awkward and head to the pool.

That's what's good. That's what's great about having different session tracks. So you can decide where to pick. But, you know, Tracy, I want to, you know, you mentioned Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and dealers. If you, if you haven't listen. I read that book, or listen to it, whatever you want to do. A really good book, great place to start. The end of the book gets a little weird to me, but the corporation, the core portion of the book is fantastic. But, you know, he was with Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie and, and the mastermind group that he references is funny. They Spent a lot of time actually in North Carolina and South Carolina was Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Roy Firestone, I think. And there may have been one other. But these people were titans of industry and they decided that Mastermind was really the way to. To push back, push past their. Their straining points. And 20 group is that for a lot of people this Mastermind group is. Is really that as well. So if you don't have one, Tracy's convention, Mastermind is, is really a good place to start.

I appreciate that. Yeah. You know that Napoleon Hill doesn't get enough credit. I don't think that that book was life changing for me because it made me see things differently. And if you're not a reader or you're a new reader or you're not a. A deep reader, I would highly encourage you to find one of the revised editions that's in Modern language.

Yeah.

It's an older book and uses a lot of. It reads kind of like King James Bible. Ish. Right. It's like these and thousands we worded. We don't talk that way today. Right. Especially if you're from the South. But there's. There's new revised editions that's in this in modern speak. And I would definitely recommend that. And there's even graphic novels like comic book type adaptions that I gave my kids that still gets the same point across but. And not getting all religious and stuff. But you know that idea stem from. From the Bible because you know, the. The most powerful Mastermind group of all was. It was the disciples. And just think about that for a minute. You know, talking about pushing, pushing an agenda forward. Right. Not even about a belief system with that was their belief system. Right.

Think about.

They push that forward and you know, 2,000 years later people still talk about that agenda that they push forward. So it definitely works for sure. Yeah.

When is it?

Yeah. One more thing. So our group is either a standalone on August 1st. So you can come in. It's on the beach in Myrtle Beach. It's a nice property and you can attend the Mastermind and then you can leave or you can stay for the state association meeting, which is Cida, that's Luke and I's home. Home. And it's a good event. Right. And. But I know there's a lot of state specific stuff and that may not apply to people coming from, you know, coming from Texas or California and we have a few of those signed up already. So look, come in for the day, have lunch, learn, but you'll have to come in the day before because we start early, hit the Mastermind, then hit the beats the next day. Okay. Or head out the next. Next morning. Or stay for the cad. We'd love to have you there too. It's a good event.

That's, you know, one thing we were talking about before we started recording was the length of Niada. Yeah. And, you know, my brain starts to hurt after a day and a half of 20 group. And then, you know, at Niada, it's three, three and a half days. I was talking, talking to some folks up there at Niada and hoping that next year they can kind of shorten that thing down it. When do y' all get burned out?

When do we get what? Sorry?

When do y' all get burnout when it comes to convention or same thing?

I think that's too long. Absolutely. And if they're wanting to grow, the majority of independent dealers in the country are. Are much smaller. Their mom and pops with three and four people in the store. And some of the. I talked to some of the dealers there, and God bless them, they're. They're shutting the store down. They have to.

Yeah.

To come to convention, you know, that's awesome. But think of how many more people we could get there if they could do that in a couple of days or two and a half days. But three and a half days is. Is. Is a lot.

What do you think about packing? It seemed like a little weird that there was two sessions before lunch and then like two or three after lunch. There was just a lot of dead time in the morning and a lot of dead time in the afternoon. It was many sessions, but just pack them into one day.

So I know why. I'll give you pros and cons. I know why they do it right. It's for. To get that extra facetime with. So the Expo F can get the extra facetime with the dealers and expo people. You know, the vendors, what pays for the convention and how they make money. I got that part. But there's got to be a different way, because once I did the expo hall, what was the first day? Four hours.

That was enough. I was done.

Yeah, I was done. And I know that maybe added value for them because they say you get two days in front of dealers. But I think if you had asked most of the people who were at the booths, not the. Not the people spending the money, but the people, they'll tell you. They. They talk to everyone they want to talk to about business. Now, day two and three, I went and talked to my people. I do business with say hello, how you doing? How things going? You know, catching up and good old boys club. But day one is when I say, okay, here's who I'm. Here's my new vendors, here's who I want to meet. Here's when I'm shaking hands, kissing babies, doing demos. Right. I think that four hours is, is more than enough. So I, but I agree with you though, that two and a half, three hour lunch for that vendor hall way too much downtown. I'm too adhd. And I'm, yeah, I'm, I had a hard time because my wife and daughter were there this year now that my daughter's older. My son was here selling cars at the dealership because he's working for, for us now. But. And you know, they went to Death Valley and Grand Candy. They did all the touristy stuff. Right. Well, what am I gonna do? I mean, you know, what happens is.

When you, when you have that much time between sessions. I end up at the pool, Jeff. Yeah.

Then you can't get them away.

And then I don't want to go back.

I get on a laptop and get on the phone and call the store and next I know, I'm buying cars and building a new ad and.

That's right. Yeah.

Oh, my God, I'm late for a session.

Hey, Tracy, thank you so much for your time, man. We really appreciate it. Great stuff. I know I'm going to change some processes on the way I handle Google reviews, that's for sure. And we look forward to seeing you August 1st.

How do you and you go to. What's the website?

Unfair Advantage, mastermind.com.

Cool. Thanks, Tracy.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you for listening. Please leave us a review. We'll catch you in the next episode.