#350 - What Time Is It?

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. Luke, I'm gonna ask you this one more time, buddy.

I know. Hey, buddy.

Another question.

Jeff, what time is it?

It's tax time, Luke. We have Santa Claus himself with us. Did you know actually Santa Claus?

Oh, it's too funny.

The only guy I look forward to.

He got some white hair.

Now if you just, you know, get it to your beard there, Bill, you'd, you'd be sending loss.

I probably could pull it off.

Bill, thanks for joining us with Tax Max. For anyone listening that doesn't know who you are and what you do, explain to the audience or some of our new listeners, what is Tax Mex?

Basically, Tax Mex gives the ability for the dealer to receive their customer's tax refund. The customer files their taxes with Tax Max directly, but we route the refund to the dealer and the dealer can now use that refund to sell a car that day or collect on a special tax season payment that is already scheduled and help collect on a repair note, a side note, or, or if the customer is just behind in their payments, the dealer can take that money and apply it to their delinquency and have the customer current and back on the books.

It's really a great program. I know that we, you know, you partner with us for years, Bill, and, and you're at every conference. So thank you for being there, supporting the Independent Dealer and it's a great program, guys. I use it for a long time, years ago. Then I stopped and then we got back on it last year and it was really. And I stopped just because I was lazy.

Yeah, ye.

Anything wasn't prepared, but I'd say we got on it last year and it's really, it's a difference maker.

And yeah, one thing I want to touch on that you said Bill is where he is everywhere. And that's there is a small handful of vendors, guys that are everywhere and always help the independent dealer. Right. We could probably name them on two hands. These guys will sponsor every event. They will sponsor every dinner. They will give back to the dealer community. And then there's the other vendors that are just here to make a buck off us. Right. Or through us or whatever. So just credit to you, Bill. I really appreciate that. I always know that if something's happening or something's in need, like Tax Max is there, they're throwing money at it. They're helping out. So.

Awesome.

Yep. It's fun.

Yeah, that's the truth.

Bill just likes to party, you know, and honestly, we're. We're fun people to hang around most of the time. Especially when I, When I was drinking, I was really fun to hang around. Maybe not so much anymore, but anyway.

So it's a great program. If you summarize it, for dealers, it is basically you put the dealer as the middleman between the customer and the IRS funding the money, right? Because back in the day, I used to actually have to be the. I was the, you know, H and R block. I was the turbo tax. And my customer would come here and sit down with me and bring me all their paperwork, and my salesman would take all this time, and that's a little daunting for sale for dealers, right? It's like, well, I don't trust my salesman to do all that paperwork. I don't want to have any kind of liability. Your newest programs with Tax Max, take that completely out of it. You guys are the filers, you guys are the interactor with the customer. And then you route the money that their return to me, and I get to print the check and present them with the cash. Like, it's really the best of both worlds. Talk to us about that.

So what we did. And it all started with COVID right? So with COVID a lot of dealer locations were closing. Dealers were starting to how do I sell a car without interacting with the customer directly? So obviously Taxmax had to step up its game and how to find a way. How can we file the customer's tax return without the customer being in the dealership or interacting with the dealer also too. You know, coming out of COVID a lot of dealerships were cutting back their staff. So a lot of dealers are using the tools and technology today to where their staff has been reduced by 30, 33%. So we created what's called the Tax Max file and dry program. It's basically where you put a button. It's a banner ad you put on the dealership's website. And the consumers, while looking at the dealer's inventory, having their favorite drink at 2 o' clock in the morning can look at your inventory and then secondary say, hey, look at this advertisement where I can use my W2, file my taxes and have the money go to the dealership and drive out the next day. So it's, it's literally that simple. A lot of questions I get, well, if it's strictly just an online product, what happens when Consumers come in my store or they call on the phone. Well, it's the same thing. They could be in your showroom and say, hey, are you here to take advantage of the file and drive program? Well, just go to my ABC autosales.com website, click on the banner ad and do it while sitting in the lobby. It takes the customer 10 minutes. And what it does is it opens the customer's phone, opens their camera, where they take pictures of the documents. So the customer's not entering all the information either. They're literally just taking photos and filling out. It's like a credit application. Their name, their address, their phone number, information that's very readable and easy for them to fill out on their phone. So we really have taken all the work out of it. Yeah. Back.

You know, I did this probably for the first time, probably 10 years ago, I think. And Jeff, what you were talking about is having, your, having to train. It wasn't that hard. But let's get, let's get real about our sales staff.

Right?

To have to train your sales staff to do that was a, was a bit of a bear and you kind of had to take one person to get it done. But you know, fast forward because I hadn't used that product until last year. Man, it's so easy and it just, it's so simple. An idiot could do it. Jeff could even do it.

Yeah, yeah.

The beauty of the program is that basically you guys are doing what you do best and that's sell the car. Right. And underwrite the customer. Part of underwriting the customer and selling the car is, is finding means of down payment, Right? Well, if the customer says they have $500, you're scrambling. Well, do you have a trade in? Do you have someone can co sign for the loan now you throw it in there. Well, hey, can we use your tax refund for it? So you're doing what you do do best and sourcing funds for the down payment. So when they say, yeah, I want to use my W2, well, just go to my website, click on the button, they're doing it. You have downtimes in your process. Whether you're looking for the customer or you're making photocopies of their documents, they're doing a test drive. There's, there's times in there where they can do the tax return and make that part of your process. The beauty part is within one to four hours you get the check and all of a sudden you have a six thousand dollar check in your hand. Well, wow, you just Sourced down payment. And now you're negotiating from a of means of. I have $6,000 in my hand. Let's see if I can get that customer, put $3,000 down. If they filed an H and R block and they got $6,000, they're going to put that 6,000 in their pocket. They're going to tell you, Jeff, well, I only have $500 to put down this vehicle. Well, you're going to beat them up and maybe get them to put down 800 or 900. You think you won, but the customer won over you.

Yeah, well, it's probably true because between the H R block and my dealership, they spent the other 5,500 of it. So they technically really true. Probably only had $500 in the 15 minute drive.

Is that still, is that statistic still true that the average consumer spends, it's like 98% of their tax return in the first 20 hours or something to that effect.

Is that still the same 24 to 48 hours that, that, that. Here's the funny part. As we approach November, customers are still are starting to spend this money. Now they're going to, now when I say spend the money, that means they're not going to pay their cell phone bill in November, December. They're not going to pay their landlord. They're going to probably stop, you know, paying their car payments for as long as dealers will let them not pay their car payments. They're racking up this debt knowing that they're going to get that tax refund in January and then get caught up on everything. Then that money's gone.

That's right. It's probably more like consumers spend 150% of their tax return and you know, leading up to the 20 hours that they have it.

Right.

I mean, it's, it's all gone.

And that's true, and that's the power of the tax program is that the money gets sent to the dealership, Right? So number one, you're negotiating with power. So you're going to get a larger down payment than if they filed somewhere else. And number two, you're going to get paid. So whether it's for a special tax season payment or for, you know, a customer didn't make their payments for four or five weeks because they're just blowing all this money because they know the tax money's coming. You're guaranteed to get paid first. So therefore you're not at the end of the line where the money runs out. Somebody's not getting paid.

Hey, just real Quick to bust in here. Make sure you guys know about Tax Max. Obviously, they are the place to go to make sure you're getting that money before. So if you this episode and the episodes before we've had with them, we want to let you know we've got Bill here. Bill, why is this the year to sign up with Tax Max? Is it going to be a bigger tax season than the years before? Is there more money available for our customers? What are you seeing?

So the last year we saw increases in refunds and we saw the increase in consumers wanting to put their money to work at a dealership. As the economy continues to. There's two different economies going on. But as the economies for the 50,000 or less customers, those customers are having more struggles. Their earned income credit is being expanded by 7% percent this year. And the income threshold is $70,000 or less can get some of these people access to the earned income credit. The earned income credit this year is going to top out at close to $8,000. And the child tax credit, it's $2,000 per child. But the refundable portion last year was 1,600. This year is 1700. So obviously, with the increase in the standard deduction rates, the increase in the child tax credit and the substantial increase in the earned income credit, refund checks will continue to be higher than they have been the last few years. So therefore, we anticipate consumers are going to start spending this money now. And therefore, obviously, dealers need to tap.

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Perfect.

Episode Foreign.

Let'S talk about this fourth quarter deal and best practices and, and how do you make that work? Because getting a customer in a car now, because for one, it's slower times for us, cars are less expensive right now. It's just better. It's better for everybody to buy, for them to buy right now, for us to sell right now, because then we can get ready for the people who are buying and taxing. What are, what are the best practices for doing this?

So the best practices for the preseason program is basically, number one, you're going to underwrite your normal deal. You don't even talk about the tax program, all right? You're going to underwrite the normal deal. At that point when you say, bill, okay, I can approve you for this vehicle. Maybe you don't tell me that to my face, but in your mind, right, I know I'm selling Bill this car. At that point, you Ask the customer, would you like to skip the last three to five months worth of car payments? Customers can say well sure, how do I do that? Well, I can estimate your future tax refund and take a small portion and schedule it from March 1 and A. You as the dealer can reduce their term. So that's why you can re. So if your normal term is 48 months, you can reduce the customer's term by up to 15%. So now 15 and 48 months, you're looking at 8 months, 6, 7 months. Now you take a 48 month term and reduce it to 40 or 41 months. And it so base in essence that customer skipping the last seven months worth of payments, their payment amount's the same. You're just shrinking the term with a big balloon payment. It's called the irregular payment you schedule right in the contract. It's Reg Z compliant, it accrues interest and there is recourse if that customer does not make the payment. It's not outside the loan, it's inside the loan. When you have a twelve hundred dollar principal payment, in essence that early in the contract when interest rates dealers are charging 22, 25, 28%, when you streamline that out, you're shaving off seven months worth of payments. Now that benefits the customer but also benefits the dealers because you're getting more cash up front. And the customer will actually turn this car into a potential asset versus a forever overhanging liability. What does that mean? If that customer has that car as an asset? That means you're able to take that trade in at some point in time and trade them up when you get towards the end of the contract. And they won't have a deficient balance.

Yeah.

So it is a win win for both.

And is that irregular payment, is that good in all 50 states or, or.

No, it's good in all states except for Pennsylvania. And I have a lot of friends and great dealers in Pennsylvania. We've even tried and we'll try again later. But Tommy Brandis with the Mid Atlantic, we've actually reached out to a lobbyist in Pennsylvania trying to get that law overturned. But as it turns out it's a, it's banking and finance law and those are a lot harder to change. Yeah. And what's funny is that it's actually.

A benefit for the customer, but it's probably there. Yeah, it's probably in there for consumer protection law and it's screwing the customer anyway.

Yeah, yeah.

Isn't that seem like that's how they all work? They think they're protecting the customer, but they're actually screwing them. So I do, I push the fourth quarter program really hard and like Luke was saying, the, the best practices that I found is we do, we like to have a relationship with the customer. You know, that's one thing for me because I'm going to be basically, I'm underwriting the car the same way I would, but because I'm planning on a, you know, maybe a $2,000 or $3,000 deferred down all the way in February. They are technically a lot of times going up a car. Right. Because now what was an $8,000 car in their price range is now a $10,000 car. Right. And still stays affordable for them. So you are putting your neck out a little bit for these customers. So for me, I want to make sure I have a relationship with them already. It's someone I know is, you know, stable, good, solid underwriting. And then it's. The key is to remember that the deal's not done then and the salesmen need to remember. And you need to remember that once they have their W2 in hand come January, you got to get them back into the dealership to actually file. Right. And that's where sometimes dealers get disconnected or the, or the customer gets disconnected is they think, oh, I did a deferred down, I'm just going to go file at H and R block come January. Or the husband snags the W2s and goes and files at H and R Block. So there's a little bit of that, you know, kind of gamble and I know Bill's got some ideas to make sure the customers get back in. Right. Like giving them an incentive to bring their W2s in in January.

Yeah. And you got text reminders, you have email reminders. And with our new file and drive program, we actually, and actually this is our file and keep driving program that's new for this year. It's strictly, it's the same process. You send the customer to a landing page. We. But this landing page is called the File and Keep driving. It's about keeping the customers in the car and what you do. We have texting templates, email templates all about how to collect on these pre season, special tax season payments to remind them that hey, you have this payment coming. The one hesitation that dealers always have and I kind of always chuckle, they say, well this sounds risky. Well, if you're in buy here, pay here, you're in the risk business. The risk is selling them. The two, the $20,000 car, the risk isn't the $2,000 payment or the $1,200 payment. So they kind of get hung up on that. Because if you think about it, what's riskier? Selling them a car for 48 months or taking the same customer and selling the same car with a $1,200 irregular payment in the contract, but the term's only 41 months. Which deal would you rather finance? Yeah, and that's the shorter term.

And if you're going to do the deal anyways, because you would do it anyways. Right. Even without that, you might as well get the deferred down. Right. We always tell our salesman, just like my EV tax credit that I have right now on my, on my electrics and hybrids, that's not an excuse to do a deal just because they get four grand from the government. That's not an excuse to do a buy here, pay here on this customer. That's not down payment. So underwrite it like you would normally. And then here's the thing, worst case scenario, if something happens, their husband steals their W2, blah blah blah, that customer has already made, you know, six to eight bi weekly payments with me. I know whether or not I want to.

That's right. And in most states you could, you could refinance if you're set up to do that. If they don't pay it, oh well, just refinance it and off you go. It's not, it's not the end of the world. They're making the payments. Who cares?

Right?

Yeah, you want them to pay it, but if it happens, it happens.

And here's where sometimes tax season or tax max gets a bad rep is they do it. You know, we have dealers doing this all 365 days of the year. They do a deal in August and then the car was repoed in November, but they still count that as well. I didn't collect that special tax season payment. And they kind of blame tax max for it. But that's just the life of the business. They, they didn't give, you know, close to that payment. They, they didn't make their 100 a week payment. You repoed the car and that's your business anyway. So most people out there repossessing the.

Cars within 8 months anyways. It really doesn't matter.

Yeah. So, you know, then they say, well, do I have any recourse on that payment? I repoed the car. I'm like, well, no you don't. Your program sucks. I'm like, that's not really how it works.

Yeah.

So. So moving forward and transitioning into the first quarter program or kind of the main program, when people are jumping on your website or you're directing them there in your dealership and saying, hey, you've got your W2 in hand. Log in here, upload it, get, get all your steps put in and let's get this done. For me, if you're a retail dealer, we had, I mean, I think almost every single one of the deals I did last year I got a refund advance check on. So if you're worried about this whole deferred down thing and all, my lender doesn't let me do deferred downs and I can't wait to know. Eight, eight weeks. And I can't call it a down payment. That's illegal. No, like, literally I was printing checks that afternoon for. I brought in about. I averaged like $2,000 per customer in the advance check. Some of them got $6,000 in their advance check.

Yeah.

So it is cash today that you can. It is a down payment.

Yeah. And it starts January the second. So there's no, you know, if you just want to do only the, the first quarter with W2s, there's no risk, there's no recourse, no chargebacks, no liability. I mean, literally, I have people say, well, why wouldn't dealers do it? I'm like, that's a great question. I mean, there's, there's no downside. There literally is no downside.

So I will, I want to push back. I want to push back on that.

Yeah.

And don't get, don't get me wrong, this is, this is paid out.

That's what we're here for. That's what we're here for. The downside is this.

And because if you're not back in the day, the downsides was this. If you weren't staffed properly, this can create a headache. So make sure you're staffed properly, number one. But you should be staffed properly anyway. If you're listening to the podcast. Two, don't think just because you sign up for this program, you're going to, you're going to get people in there. You need to prepare for this. You need to advertise for this. You need to let your consumers know. You let the consumers in your area know. Because if you don't, if you don't prepare for using tax max, you're number one, not going to get the best benefit out of it, and it's not going to work for you. And then you're going to be mad at Bill, mad at us.

Don't.

That's not how you do it. It's not a. It's not for you as a dealer sign. And all of a sudden, you sell more cars because of tax.

Max.

You got to put some effort in out there.

Hey, real quick, make sure you guys know about Blitz Pay. So I had a phone call from a previous 20 group member yesterday. She's got a very big buy here pay here operation, and she's looking to change her payment processor over to BlitzPay and said, hey, Jeff, you use them? And I was like, do you not listen to the podcast? Of course I use them. And so we had a great conversation about kind of the pros and cons of switching from her current payment processor, which was mine, over to blitzpay. And it really is the number one selling point for all of it. It's just the ease of use for your customers and your employees. It's just. It's so easy to use, and it's so easy for their customers to give you their money. It just makes it simple.

It's easy. It's simple.

It's.

It's a tool for your collectors. It's a tool for your business. If you're not using BlitzPay, I don't know what you're using. Get off of them and. And use Blitzpay.

And so cool. Because one more note. I had an issue the other day with an unrelated situation. Blitzpay and another company we use them with. And Robin, the CEO emails me back, right? Like, the CEO is very involved in every account, making sure that things are handled and answered. Right. It's just. I just can't say enough about how great, great they are to deal with. So give them a call.

And. And to combat that now, we reached out to our best dealers nationwide last year, and we got the best practices on how they advertised it, the marketing, the advertising, the best practices. We now have Facebook assets, your website assets. You guys don't have to think about anything anymore. You literally just click and push and grab. And we have phone scripts, we have email scripts. So we tell you how to answer the phone, how to talk to customers, whether you talk to them on the phone, here's the script. If you talk to them in person, here's the script. So the only extra work you have to do is literally field the money, print the checks, or load the debit cards. So we figure that out.

I love that.

Yeah, that's what you do every day. The thing is, if you have to have a five minute conversation with a customer trying to get them qualified to buy one of your cars. Now, when I say qualified, that means you underwrite them. You do it every day. You verify their income, you do it every day. All you're going to do is point them to your website and they file their tax return, but send you the money. Now you're negotiating with power. So if you have someone wanting to buy a car, take that five minutes, have the conversation. But, but Luke, you're right. You don't just put a banner on the street or a banner on your website. Never talk about it. Don't have any conversations. You're not going to get anything out of it. But if you're doing the asking and the advertising, then you're going to do very well.

And one, one thing I found is it is very dependent on your front line. So your salesmen have got to know how to sell the tax max program. They've got to be trained to add in. So what does your typical tax return look like? What do you typically get back on your taxes? Like that is a phrase that we learned to add to all of our, you know, upfront greeting conversations with customers. And also, I think it's important that somewhere, someone, somewhere along the line is motivated or maybe compensated or bonused on those down payments because that keeps it forefront of mind, right? It's hard. It's hard. It's an extra step. It is like it's an extra step. And if you're going to approve the deal anyway with or without their $2,000 tax, then why would your sales manager, salesman even care to ask for more down, right? It's like, well, he said that we got to do these deals, have got to be right with or without the tax max program. So, you know, I'm rolling this car either way. Why would I try to get another two or three grand down? Right? So someone's got to be incentivized along the way and your salesman have to be trained properly.

No, that's a great point. Because there does need to be some incentive for the sales people because otherwise why would they care? Right? I don't. Does a salesperson care that the term's 41 months or 48 months? They don't.

No.

So that's a great point. But does the owner care? Absolutely.

Yeah. And here's the thing, the customer cares. And one thing we do in January and February, we push hard. Hey, man, do the tax max program. Because guess what? If you think you're going to come back on April 15, or I guess it's technically February 28 or whatever it is when everyone else has their tax returns. That four wheel drive third row ain't going to be here, right. It will be gone. So I will just have a lot full of Ford Focuses come that weekend. So if you want something that's not a Ford Focus, you better do the Tax Max program and buy this one today. Right. So it's a, it's also helps you and that mentality is also good for your shop, right? Like I don't have to stock up and have all these cars sitting around forever. Like I don't have to, like I can continue to sell some volume December, January and February. Right. Not just wait until that one weekend in February and try to have every single SUV ready by then. So that's helped a lot.

And it's, you know, you bring up another good point that you're slower in November, then gets even slower in December and it gets really slow in January if you don't have a plan. So that's where you really do have the time to create those conversations. Do that extra advertising. And with our new, all these packets that we have, the sales packet, there's timelines or scripts, there's everything that they need to do so they don't have to reinvent the wheel. I don't know why it's taken me 30 years to do that. But we're going to our 30th tax season and I should have done this 20 years ago. But we're now literally giving the dealers everything where in the past we just said here's the tax Max program. You run with it. Now we're telling you what the playbook is, especially on the File and keep driving program, which could be more powerful for Buy Here Pay Here dealers that we now give you scripts on how to collect the irregular payments or the preseason payments, the scripts and the texting messages on how to collect on past due accounts, how to collect on your repair notes, your side notes. And what if you just had repos, right? If you have, if you recently repoed some cars, if you have the lot, the car still on your lot. We've given you the scripts on how to approach those customers if the car has been repoed and sent off to auction. Now you're in a recovery mode where they owe you a lump sum of money. We've given you the scripts on how to collect on those recovery vehicles. So there's all kinds of things that you can do. We've also given you the scripts on what to do? You run a report on your entire portfolio. How many customers have less than six months worth of payments? Well, here's the script and here's everything you need to say to these customers so they can have a campaign. Well, hey, take, we'll take your trade in and we'll take a thousand dollars out of your tax refund and we're going to trade you up or resell you into a new vehicle. And all of that is on the file and keep driving program. That's specific for. For, obviously for buy here, pay here, or lease here, pay here. But another misnomer is that you can be a retail dealer and still use the tax max program. You're just using the January, February, March program where the money's guaranteed, there's no recourse, no chargebacks, and no liabilities to the dealer.

Yeah, it's great.

I think that that made me think of a lot of things. Luke, how many side notes do you do? Side notes? What dollar amount do you think you have in side notes right now? I could tell you it's probably a good amount. Right.

And so it's about, it's about $80,000.

80.

80.

Yeah. So would you take a 10 or 20 discount on that to collect it all in February?

100.

Sure. Right. And I'm not good at that either. Bill, you mentioned that. And it's like we, we focus so much tax max on the sales side. I don't market to my current customers that are late or need to get caught up or give them a discount on their side note or I need to be better at that this year in getting that marketing material to them and figuring out teaching my collectors, hey, here's how we're going to use tax max to get these people current or even get them paid ahead, you know?

Right.

Or collect out these side notes because that's cash you can get in your pocket and it gives them the opportunity, if they need to put a side note on this year, they're going to have that one paid off. So now they kind of have, you know, a little bit of space with us to do it again.

Yep. And now we've given you all this, the email scripts, the texting scripts. And it's really simple because with texting and email, what you're going to do is you create the message you put in that hyperlink that's specific to your dealership in the message, and you point into the file and keep driving site that you guys host. And the message is actually accurate to what you're Trying to do. You're trying to keep them in the car. In the past, dealers would send them to the, hey, you owe me money. We're going to send you the file and drive program. And the file and drive looks like, well, I'm buying a car. And the messages weren't really accurate, they didn't line up. So now we've lined everything up and it should be very powerful.

Hey guys, gals out there, Buckeye, huge sponsor of the podcast and it's just if you're not using reinsurance, you're missing out. I don't even know what else to tell you at this point, Jeff. If you're buy here, pay here dealer and you're not doing cpi. I was one of those guys for a long time, Jeff, and man, I, I missed out a lot of money.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's it. When I look at what we collect every month, you know, I'm almost up to like right around $10,000. So it's not a ton compared to what some of our buddies are doing, right? A hundred thousand dollars a month in CPI premiums. But the $10,000 and I look at my charge offs and it's like, or my insurance claims that maybe would have been full coverage insurance, which none of them would have been, right? Like who are we kidding? Well they were behind on their payment at the time they wrecked their car anyways, so they wouldn't have had current insurance to begin with. So anyways, it's not as scary as it sounds. Get set up with your reinsurance, get your CPI program going and all the other great products that you can offer. You have to do it. It's the only way to make money these days.

That's right.

Wow. So just as we close, I want to give a note. So last year I did my first buy here, pay here Tesla, right? This kind of. And it was the tax max program that made this work, right. It was an individual that got 11,000 back with their tax return. They use, they got a six thousand dollar advance check. So we use that along with the EV tax credit to take a $25,000 Tesla down to a $15,000, you know, financed amount right in that ballpark. And she's been paying 600amonth like clockwork, you know.

And you know why she's going to pay? Because she now has that car as an asset.

She's got some skin in the game, baby.

She's got some equity in that vehicle and I guarantee that car is going to pay off.

Yeah, Jeff, Jeff's just Camped out waiting for her not to pay.

I did. Yeah. This thing is. It's probably worth. It's probably gone up in value, to be honest with you. This is a very high demand Tesla I would buy back right now except for the fact that it doesn't qualify for the tax credit again, but that's another question. So. But what it does is it makes those kind of situations possible. Right. That's a great car to have in my portfolio. It's a great payment, it's a great interest rate, and it's a customer that's going to hold on to that thing no matter what, so.

And, you know, perfect deal structure. Anything else important?

Anything.

The only last thing I guess I want to add is with the File and Drive campaign, new for this year, is when a customer starts the application, the dealer is going to get notified by email that Jeff Watson has started a File and Drive application. Here's Jeff's phone number and here's his email address. One of the biggest. It's funny. We, you know, we're still evolving. So one of the complaints we had last year was people just had no knowledge or the dealers had no knowledge of what was going on on their website. And with Tax Max and that customers were just showing up on the lot and saying, hey, you have my refund. I want to buy this car. And the dealers are like, who the hell are you?

We had. We had that happen. We had that happen last year.

Yeah. Who the hell are you? So now we're going to give you some real time leads from your website. So let's say they didn't finish the application or they bounced off you now at least have a lead that's from your website. They want. They're looking to buy a car, so. And the cost for that is zero. So you're getting these leads at no additional cost. So that's just an added benefit. And you're getting in the know saying, okay, Luke Godwin, I got a lead. He started the application. I go on my Tax Max dashboard. Luke's got a $6,000 check here waiting. All right, you're going to tell the receptionist, whoever, be on the lookout for a guy named Luke Godwin. We have $6,000 of his money. Be nice to him because we're going to sell him a car today.

Yeah, I love it, but don't be.

Nice to the other people. Bill. Hey, man. Super excited. Are we going to see you down there at Buy here, pay here, convention, whatever in New Orleans?

Yep. Matter of fact, we are a diamond sponsor, so we're the one of the top sponsors of the show. So we definitely, as you mentioned, too, we like to give back and to the association, big support of the nida. Everybody should be a member of. You know, we're a member, I think, of 10 different state associations. So every state does something a little different, which is nice.

But not Utah.

I told, we talked at Buyer Payer United that we need to get involved with Utah. For some reason, no one reached out to us.

Well, we appreciate you helping us out here and always standing behind us at the podcast too, Bill. So thank you, Bill. Forward to seeing you in a couple weeks, I guess.

One last thing we didn't talk about is I'd like to offer all the podcast listeners a discount. We've done that in the past, so I guess we'll call it podcast 2024. I guess we'll give a 40 discount to our VIP and our platinum programs, which is basically our File and Drive and File and Keep driving program.

Podcast 2024. Everybody out there, make sure you use it.

How much of a discount?

40 off.

Wow. Basically free.

You know, if you do, if the dealer does one deal, right, whether it's a new sale, it pays for it more than pays for itself. On the Filing Keep Driving program, if you turned a delinquent customer and saved a repo and got them current, that's. To me, that's priceless, Right? Yep. You're giving customers a solution. Their problem is, obviously they owe you money, but their biggest problem is they want to pay you, but they can't.

Because the problem is they don't have any money.

That's the problem. Right? They don't. And. And, you know, if you don't have any money, whether they want to pay or not, they can't. And that customer will be delinquent. And as time goes on, with late fees and interest, they're just really digging themselves into a hole. So this is a solution that actually makes you look like the good guy, that, hey, I have a solution for you and we can get you current. So the program does pay for itself. And the last thing I have to say is for dealers that didn't have much luck with us, you got to try out the new File and Drive program. You got to use the assets, use the scripts and the packets. And the biggest thing, too is reach out to us when you have a problem. Don't wait to the end of the year or 12 months later and say, we're not signing up again because we didn't do anything. If you had no activity within a few days or a week, call us and let's talk about it, and let's see if we can work together and solve your problem.

I love it.

Thanks, Bill. Appreciate your time.

Hey, thanks to you guys, too, for all you do for the industry. It's very much appreciated.

See you, buddy.

See ya.

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