#376 - BHPH United 2025

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 this special edition of the Independent Dealer Podcast, brought to.

You live live from Las Vegas.

From Las Vegas by Buckeye Dealership Consulting and by Here Pay Here United.

Yeah, and I may be a little angry because Jeff won't let me go get any breakfast. So I don't like you today.

We got to record this today. So we're excited to be here. This is going to be three days education. We've got compliance unleash unleashed here at the same time. So we're learning all things from compliance to buy here, pay here, to how to get things done, how to run better operations, and we have record attendance. This is insane.

There's like 500 acres here. This is nuts.

So many faces. We don't know. It's awesome to be here. And Luke, what are you looking forward to? What do you hope to learn?

You know, I think I've learned everything possible at this point, Jeff. No, it's not the right answer.

Absolutely not. True.

Okay, so I just, I want to meet dealers like we always do with these things. Networking, maybe get some new clients. That would be fun. Selfish. Selfish. You know, there are new things out there that I don't know for sure. And there's gonna be a lot of dealers talking about it. So I'm ready to hear from them. Talking to Jack Carter this morning and he was talking about his presentation tomorrow. It's gonna be on buying. And he said, I'm just gonna wing it.

And I said, just the way he buys.

Yeah. So he said, but I'm talking about something I love doing. And so many dealers talk about things they love doing and they're good at it. And it's easy to be good at something when you love doing it. And a lot of dealers presenting this week are like that.

And that's the beauty of it, is you find experts in that little area. So a guy like Jack, who's, you know, we could say an expert buyer, he's got a passion for it. So he's honed his craft to the point where he's really good. So we can go and sit in a 30 minute class with him and learn all the things that he's taken 30 years to learn in 30 minutes. And then we can apply when we want to in our own buying habits.

Yeah, for sure. And Michael Fernandez, I was talking to him this morning, a dealer down in Tampa, he and his sister, and he's going to be Talking about how to. How to make customer pay service work and the policy and the warranty work. And he's got a lot of accounts, like 1200 accounts, something like that. And it can get. It can become a bear. But trying to figure that out and mesh it together, a lot of dealers have problems with. I think maybe I've done that before and been successful at it. But he's. He's. He's going to teach us, and I'm going to listen. Awesome.

All right, well, Luke, let's go find some other dealers. Let's talk to them about what they look forward to learning this week and any takeaways they might already have.

Sounds good.

Well, Luke, we got our first victim.

Yeah. So another South Carolina boy, so, you know, it's good.

And you guys always flock together with your nice hair and your tans and.

Yeah, I got a couple of. Well, he's from Myrtle Beach. He's from Myrtle beach, so, you know, he gets a good tan.

Yeah.

I get the sunglass line to prove it.

What's it like selling cars in paradise?

Is it easy? It's not too bad, man.

Well, come on. Myrtle beach is not paradise.

Well, it's the great value paradise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, we have a. We have a good time, and we're excited to be here and kind of learn from y' all and see. See what we can bring back to Myrtle beach.

For sure. Yeah. Well, so, I mean, you're out here to learn, so what is. What is a problem you're having currently in your dealership that you're trying to solve out here?

I got a whole list of stuff, but mainly how I. When we scale, how that process goes, you know, and what I can do to make our team better and KPIs and everything else to try to hit some targets.

So are you looking to scale?

Absolutely. Okay.

How big are you right now?

We're at 600 accounts. Okay. We got about 16 employees. And like I said, this is all kind of new to me, so we're just trying to figure out what next steps we need to take to get to the next step.

And 600 accounts, you know, there's probably some people listening that have 200 accounts, and there's probably some people listening that have, you know, 1500 accounts. 600 accounts is a. Is a pretty good area.

It's a beautiful, beautiful plateau to be on.

Yeah, you can run it.

Right.

Getting to 400 is tough. And then that 400. 600 is okay. Yeah, that next push to 800, now that. That can. That can be tricky because 600, you can kind of level it out cash flow. Well and. And just be happy. Yeah. But that next one. Yeah. So how do you. Are there some dealers you're looking forward to? Successions. You're looking forward to seeing that. That can help you with that.

Yeah. Interested to talk to a bunch of people. I'm doing it. Dms swap. I'm doing everything I can. We're with Frazier right now with 600 accounts. So it's a nice.

It's probably pretty hard.

Yeah, it's tough. So we got two Fraser systems. We're operating on RFC cars or car dealership. We're going to swap everything ams and try to scale and make things more efficient and. And just do the best we can.

That's.

Yeah.

Anytime. We've talked about this on podcast before, but anytime you switch dmss, oh, my word. I just want to gouge my eyeballs down.

I'm not looking forward to it at all, but we got to get it done. We're good.

Hopefully here you can get some motivation to get through those hard times, because that is tough and you're probably going to question yourself along the way.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

But when you're here, you meet other guys that have done it and hopefully keep you motivated to get all the way through it.

Keep us on track.

So how was tax season for you?

It was good. It wasn't like, you know, as big as we wanted it to be, but we still had a good tax season, good first quarter, and hopefully stay consistent. Around 50 cars a month and keep growing that portfolio without debt. Hopefully.

Yeah, well, that's the key. Did you run out of cars? How was inventory?

Four cars. I did not prepare. I should have started in October, November, we started in December and we. We ran out of the buy here, pay here stuff. We do a mix between retail and buy here, pay here and by February.

Don't roll through my camera. Look at. See, I'm quick ninja.

But yeah, by February we were. We were mid February, we were out. So, yeah, we'll prepare better next year.

You screaming about him walking across our shot.

It was probably worse than him walking.

Than him just walking across the shot. And also. How'd you get that T shirt?

Oh, so I'm on the corporate. I'm on the corporate. I like that. I'm on the buy your pay here advisory. United advisory.

White, not purple.

That is exactly.

All right, Jordan. Hey, man. Thanks for your time, buddy.

Yep, Pleasure.

Hope you have a great week.

See you around.

Talk about A blast from the past. Look who we've cornered here. Mr. Nathan Smith. Why are you back here, man? What is going on?

Well, in January 1, 2024, we bought out Parker Auto Sales, Knoxville, Tennessee. Don and Stephanie Isaacson's dealership.

Yeah, okay, that's.

We saw them downstairs at the bar yesterday. Yesterday. They're still lurking around.

Still lurking around. We were in 20 group with them forever as well. You were?

So Don and I have done this buyout plan where he's financing me the buyout, and so we're actually doing a presentation here this week on how that works.

Wow.

Yeah, I tried that one time, and it didn't work.

It's a deep, deep, deep thing, but the way we've done it, it's a.

Unique animal, and, well, you're getting a good dealership. Those are. I mean, that was a good operation.

It's a fantastic operation. It was turnkey, make some tweaks, and run, but.

Yeah.

So we show up to your session, we're gonna learn how to sell or finance from both sides, right. From their side and from your side. The good, the bad, the rub. What you guys got going on, that's pretty cool, man. Yep.

The good, the bad, the ugly. And there's not a lot of ugly to it, honestly.

There's really not.

It's been a really clean move.

Give me some background because Jeff didn't introduce you.

Okay? Okay.

And where. What, were you already in tenness?

I've been in Tennessee my whole life. I got it in buy your pay here since 97. Well, I mean, you know, good Lord, son. No, I ran my dad's dealerships. He had a couple dealerships in Tennessee, and he decided he wanted to retire, but he didn't want to sell out to me. He just wanted to close them down. I said, that's a mistake, man. You're losing all kinds of money doing that.

Yeah, I know a guy.

Yeah.

So that's what he did. And Don had been after me to buy him out for years. And so when my dad decides to close these down, I'm like, hey, let's do it. And so we put this plan together, and we are. What are we, 18 months in? And it is just. It's just working.

That's great.

So we're doing a presentation on how it's working.

So. Well, that is rare.

Yeah. Yeah.

It is rare that you have in a second generation that's not relatives.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. You have to have a good operation to start with, and you have to have a Good operator to buy out. And if you. If you have that, then. Then things should work properly.

That's the only little hiccup. And we're going to present that our meeting tomorrow. And is that getting that guy to buy you out who already knows what the heck he's doing, that's the challenge. But if you can find that guy.

Oh, man. So he's not learning on your dimes.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

You can't have that.

I mean, he's got a guy. You gotta find a guy that already.

Knows what's going on. Yeah.

Go back to 20 group in what, 2000, man, long way back.

Yeah, about 2010, 2012.

Back when you had hair.

Yeah.

No, no, you didn't have hair then.

Yes, I hadn't fully given up on. Was still hanging on there.

It's so great.

So great.

Okay, we're done.

We're done. Get out of here.

Get out.

Morning. All right, Brent Huckabee. And your. Your dealership is in North Carolina, but you're in South Carolina or South or. I had that reversed.

I live in North Carolina and the dealership's in upstate South Carolina, outside of Spartanburg.

Yep. Okay. It's by here payer, right?

Yes, sir. 90% buyer payer, probably 10% retail.

Okay. How long you been in business?

The business has been there since 1960. I've been a part of the dealership since 2013.

There we go.

Nice. So you're here. Buy here, pay here, United. What do you hope to learn? What do you want to take away? What are you kind of your, like, pain points right now?

Definitely employee retention and just trying to minimize charge offs. Seems like charge offs. The last year has been really getting strong. A lot earlier than normal.

Yeah. Several dealers, I've been in their dealership the last month or two. Their charge offs the last quarter of last year were big, and mine were big the last quarter. Last year. Yeah.

For sure.

Yeah. I mean, what. What do you think you can learn here that's going to help you there?

Probably the.

The thing that I love about the.

Conventions is just networking, you know, talking to the bigger fishes, see how they have better processes in place. Because I think that's one thing we struggle with. It's just having, you know, procedures and processes that ease the. The stress on employees and the customers and that.

I tell you, when it comes to collections, if you don't have a good process for collecting, it creates charge offs. Jeff, Even if you have a good process, sometimes it'll happen, but it. It's you identify it quicker, and the charge off sometimes are less.

Yeah. And you're talking about saving a fraction of a charge off. Right. If you can narrow that, if you can whittle that thing down from, you know, 12% charge off to a 10% charge off, it's a lot of dollars saved, right?

Yeah.

I mean, you're 5 to $8,000 savings on every saved account or redeemed repo or whatever.

And also, you're talking about employees, probably employee costs and charge off costs are the two biggest costs in a dealership.

Absolutely.

Yeah. For sure.

I have two overseas employees right now, and that's probably the bright spot of the business right now.

For sure.

A lot of that. Talking about collections.

Yes. That is my collections is my sweet spot right now. Overseas.

Well, what. That's interesting. We could go down that path, but, I mean. No, we're not going. Jeff says I can't go down that path.

It's a topic for a whole nother episode.

Okay. Yeah. It just. The work ethic, for sure.

And the dependability.

There you go.

They never sleep.

Never sleep. Yeah, for sure.

Brent. Hey, man. Look forward to talking to you this week and hopefully have a good time.

Yes, sir.

Thanks, buddy.

Okay. We roped in another one, Luke. Ms. Dala from Dallas.

She actually came up to us, which was very neat.

Well, we were gonna ambush her anyway.

Yeah. She said, I've listened to a few of yours, and I was like, why not every single one of them? And she's like, I don't have the time.

She avoids the ones that you're on and just listens to the one I'm on. But really, Dela from Dallas, right?

Yeah.

Your second generation.

I am.

Buy here, pay here, dealer. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. So you know everything. Why are you here? This. What are you trying to learn?

Because, surprisingly, I don't know everything, and you just never stop learning.

But I bet your parents know everything, right? They want to tell you how to do it.

I wish it was.

What.

What do you hope to learn this week? Is there anything on the docket or the agenda that's sticking out to you is like, here's a pain point in my dealership. Here's what I really want to, like, come home with.

Yes. Actually, right now I feel like I really want to learn about advertising. That's one thing that I feel like.

We'Re dropping the ball on. Yeah. Marketing's hard, and, you know, you and I have struggled with it. Luckily, my wife is a marketer, and so she's. She's really helped me with that over the years, so I hadn't had to do it. But, you know, we're car dealers. We know how to sell cars. But how do you market to sell those cars?

Yeah, yeah. It's a tough. It's tough trapping head around because it's kind of continually moving. Right. And we know that our demographic of customer is. We have to cast a really wide net. Right. Because we're kind of grabbing a lot of leads, and then we're trying to funnel down the ones that we really, really want. So if you can get more specific with that message and just try to find that great group of subprime customers, you can save a lot of money. Right. But it's hard to do.

And then being in a big market like yours, do you feel like that's a hard. A hard portion to be in in Dallas, trying to. Trying to set yourself apart?

Yes, it is a tough market in Dallas. There's a lot of buy here. For years, being second generation, I mean, most of our business comes from referrals or repeat business. And so it's something that we've never really tapped into.

Referral programs are huge. Yeah. You have one in place now?

Yes.

Yeah. Just feel like you could get better at it or.

Yes, I feel like we could get better at advertising it and letting people know about it.

Yeah.

What part of that, like, I want to ask specifically, are you thinking, like, Facebook ads? Google Ads? Like organic?

Like what?

What?

Yeah, Facebook ads. I mean, we're not really doing any of it right now.

I don't want to interrupt you, but you find that with second. With first generations. Right. Like, maybe your parents weren't so much into technology. They didn't understand the power Facebook Marketplace or Facebook ads or Google. And then you come in and you're like, hey, guys, there's this whole Internet thing that we should probably be a part of.

Yeah.

I mean, they don't even believe in advertising. They're like, what is that?

I mean, I think that's not unusual. My dad never advertised at all until I took over and said, we need more leads. Right?

Yeah.

And, yeah, but I mean, you're younger. You understand Facebook and all that and the power of it. Are you making videos, putting them out there? Are you doing anything like that?

Yes.

I mean, we do have social media platforms, but to be honest, we're not. We're not getting much from it. I feel like we could be more effective.

Well, Daley from Dallas, thank you for letting us. Corny, why don't you continue on your way to the next session.

Thank you, guys.

Yeah.

If I could.

Let's all just take one step to the left here. Oh, there we go. We're good. Hey, look who we have here.

Govinda, how are you? How are you doing, buddy?

Very good.

Good. He's always got something going on.

Cooking. He's always cooking.

Always cooking.

Yeah. Always cooking.

Hands still.

Still.

Which is good. You're still here.

Ants in the pants.

You got a lot of hands in the pot.

Pots in the pan, eggs in the pot. Something like that.

But you come here to buy here, pay here. United. What are you hoping to learn? What's it going to help you with? Your current operations, your expansion? We know you're picking up stuff across all 50 states. What are you gonna learn here?

Seeing where we can find a little golden nugget. Right. On. On very surgical. Whatever department we're in, in the business. And seeing, like, wow, they're doing that. Someone's doing that differently. That's being successful. Right. And like, let me see if I can go and adopt that from as detailed as. Let me update this form, update this checklist. Right. Or this process. And I find a lot of value, like going into the weeds.

Yeah.

In every department. And see how it can be improved. Micro improvements.

Yeah.

It's probably great because you have large, you know, your operations as they grow. If you make those tiny little adjustments now, the growth trajectory you have, it's going to pay huge dividends.

Right. The way I see it, if. If I can make 15 micro improvements in a month. When you add six months.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

You're at 75, Chuck.

Chuck used to tell us that saving. Saving on expenses. If you would. You don't multiply it. The monthly expense that you save, you multiply it by 12, then you multiply it by five years, and that's when you really get to see. And that's what you're talking about. That improvement just really, really is big. What are you. Are you teaching or you got a session?

Yes, on underwriting.

Okay, great.

And tracking your underwriting performance.

Yeah. And how's the best way to do that for you guys out there that are not using maybe a underwriting platform?

What I'm basically doing is I'm going to explain to them the three components that you can track your underwriting. And that's really going over. What are these. These three components, which is your net charge off your static pool and.

Got you on the spot. And you can't remember it.

Yeah. Set a pull net charge off. I blanked out on the third one.

That's okay.

You gotta go to the session.

Yeah, you're gonna have to go to.

The session to find out. I like it.

Oh, there's cr.

CR is huge.

So what's the difference between cr, your net charge off and your static pool? And the difference between the three of them? All right, and do you have the formula calculated?

Do you do that every month? I don't. Okay.

So we have our internal covenants that we. We report internally, and those are the. The three items we kind of need. You kind of need all three of them because one is quite different. Like net charge off and static pools like opposite. Opposite sides of the spectrum. So. And the CR kind of in the middle.

Yeah.

I've never really had. I've never really had a static pool. Like, I'm not. That's not something I track, but I know a lot of people do.

Yeah.

And really explaining what it. What is it and what kind of value you can get from it.

Right.

Because you can really see what direction you're trending. But static pool is too late.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah, it is. But it helps you look back and say, we made that decision during tax time. We made that decision on Honda Accords. We made that decision on third row suv.

I think that's the biggest panned out.

So when you start dissecting that static point pool in a way that makes practical application to the future. Yeah.

And you want to see it improving.

Right.

Year after year. Because then you're going the other way.

Yeah. Because you could think, man, I do the best on this car. But you pull the static pool and see that your most charge offs are on that car.

And you go, oh, oh, my static pool on Chevy Traverses proven to be wrong.

You don't have to do a static pool on that.

You got to do bad.

That's the internal static pool.

Yeah. That pool is just a big old cesspool of burning birdie nonsense.

Well, cool.

Govinda, Good to see you, buddy.

Keep going with you guys.

Yeah, see you.

Hey, so hope you guys enjoyed that episode. A lot of great dealers, a lot of great diversity here. Everyone with different problems, everyone with different size operations. And we all can learn from each other. From the big guys to the small guys, people that just started, people that are second generation, people that are third and fourth generation.

Yeah. There's a lot going on. It's going to be a wonderful week. And Jeff, we gotta mention Blitzpay, they're out here as well. And compliance unleash is here. Yeah.

All of our guys here, all of.

Our folks are here. And make sure you give everybody a call that we recommend.

Yeah. And stay tuned for the upcoming weeks. We're gonna do some recordings from Luke's session and our session wrap up. Hopefully be able to provide those to you guys on the podcast. So if you didn't make it out here to Vegas, you can still get some education from this great work week.

Yeah, but you should be here.

You should have been here. Yeah, it's in the past now. This happened yesterday.

Sorry.

Dang it. Thank you for listening.

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