#85 - NIADA Legislative And Legal Update with Shaun Peterson

Hello and welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast. We have got a real treat today. We got Shawn Peterson back with us again. Right. This is the second time I feel like I've seen your beautiful face on this screen.

Oh, it's so much fun having Shawn here, I tell you. And Shawn's just going to let us know what's going on with convention because we all love convention. Go talk about some education there. Also talk about the things that are on everybody's radar recalls data privacy curbstone from a national level and military lending act. And then we're going to wrap it up and we're going to talk about the policy conference. The biggest thing here, guys, and there's just so many great things coming out, is that Michael Irvin is going to keynote. So cool, man. He's won some Super Bowls. It's going to be awesome. I can't wait.

You are listening to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. Thank you so much for tuning in. Let's do this.

That's gold. We just missed all that. So, guys and gals, we've got Sean here with Niada. Sean is the man. He's probably the. You're the grown up there in the association.

You're like, don't let the hairdo fool you.

Yeah, you're like, you're like the guy that keeps everybody straight. We're gonna, we're gonna just pick Sean's brain here, figure out what's going on from a legislative standpoint, what things we need to have on our radar. Also look forward to this year. You guys need to be scheduling out your calendars. There's a lot of great events both at and inside niada. Also at your state level. Also some of these other guys that are out there. There's some great trainings, things like that. We need to be getting these things on our schedule. Sean, maybe start us out, man. What, what are you seeing from a legislative standpoint that's on the radars, maybe federally or state level that some of us dealers need to be aware of.

Yeah. Well, first of all, thanks for having me, guys. Really excited to be part of the podcast and thanks for the invitation. I will tell you that coming out of the last month, and I think you all know what I'm referring to, you know, Congress has been involved with impeachment proceedings and all of the partisanship that goes along with that. So finishing that and then moving into an election, especially a presidential election, I don't anticipate much is going to happen with legislation that actually Moves all the way through the process, ends up on the President's desk and you know he's going to make a decision one way or the other. But that being said, I do think that there are some very hot button issues that will be at the forefront of the debate in various chambers this year that whether it makes it all the way through the process in 29 or excuse me, 2020, it very well could be on the radar again in 2021, depending on the outcome of the election. So we've talked about used motor vehicle recalls for years, but that continues to be a very hot button issue. We're anticipating at some point in time there'll be a hearing on motor vehicle safety issues. Recalls could become a part of that. There are other places where that issue could pop up in bills that would address transportation and infrastructure and some of those things that are, we know that are going to come up at some point in time. So we're always on the, on the, watch out for that. The other issues that are kind of hot button right now that are happening both at federal level and at the state level concern data privacy. Last year we saw the Federal Trade Commission propose some pretty significant amendments to the safeguards rule that requires businesses that are financial institutions like dealerships to have an information security plan. Right now the rule allows for dealers to really customize that plan to fit their needs based on their size and how they handle information. What the FTCs proposed would radically change that in our opinion and put some very stringent requirements in like hiring a chief information security officer and encrypting data and having multi factor authentication and audit trails and penetration testing which are, I know, kind of it geeky things. But for most of us that don't understand the it geeky part of that, what that equates to is dollars and cents, right? Those are very expensive propositions. So we've pushed back and expressed some concern to the FTC on that. Legislatively, state legislatures have been introducing all sorts of data privacy related bills very similar to what we saw in California Congress. There are several people in Congress that have introduced those same types of bills. Ultimately, you know, data security is important for all of us and we want to make sure that consumers information is safe and protected. We just have to do it in a way that is cost efficient, allows small businesses to be able to do it in a way that's not going to break the bank. And quite frankly, one of the things that we'd like to see in those bills is one federal law that trumps pardon. The Pun trumps all of them. Rather than, you know, 50 states, various patchwork things. Sharing information across state lines could be challenging and problematic. You know, one of the other things that we're going to be pushing for this year, we're very active in working with various states on curbstoning. We are really exploring some ideas that would bring the federal government into that. You know, one of the challenges that we have, you know, that really is a state law issue, it's a licensing issue. But as we talk to states, one of the pieces of feedback that we get is that, you know, states want to enforce these anti curb stoning laws, but they just don't have the funds to do it. So we're going to explore some ways. Perhaps there's an opportunity to involve the federal government in, you know, grant programs or some. Something in the budgeting process that might allow the states to get some more money down into their coffers where they can. Those curbstoning issues.

Yeah, national electronic titling. Right. I mean, wouldn't that just stop it?

That is absolutely at the top of everybody's wish list. And ideally we can get to that point in time soon. I'm not sure what the, what the crystal ball holds with respect to that in the immediate future.

Probably like creating a health insurance marketplace. Spend 50 billion on a website and relaunch it three times. But yeah, put it in the hands of Carfax or Auto Check.

But I will say this. I think one of the positive developments that we saw at the end of last year is the Department of Transportation has opened up the coffers or provided opportunities for states now to allow for the odometer statements to be done totally electronically. So states have the capacity to develop systems that will allow for that. And I think that opens the door now for. What's the next step? Well, the next step would be national time.

Yeah, it'd be a good step. I know my state, the association here, not a lot of dealers very active, but we do have a very good lobby group that runs our association and they've been trying to put the trade in credit up on the chopping block that we would not get the trade in a credit at all for a trade in, I think, or a reduced amount like some states do now. I mean, obviously that rubs me the wrong way because not only have I paid taxes on this car four times already, because I sold it four times or, or someone has sold it four times and Utah's collected taxes on it four times, but now you're trying to get rid of that trade in credit. That's just ridiculous.

We've seen that in some state legislatures over the last. Illinois just went through this battle in their last legislative session about a reduction in trading credit. And it is challenging. It's a concern. And you know, state governments are always looking for opportunities to fund and, you know, get a little more money, can tweak. You know, that's one of the things that they may consider so getting involved.

Anything else, Sean, from that standpoint of hot topics or.

Yeah, I think the other, the only other hot topic I'll mention real quick that we're going to continue to work on this year that's impacted a lot of our members is this interpretation from the Department of Defense on the Military Lending act and how dealers can or cannot sell Gap and other credit products to military service members and their families. Just as a quick refresher in 2016, I believe it was, the Department of Defense put this interpretation out that for all intents and purposes makes it virtually impossible for dealers to sell those products to, you know, those military service members. So we're now starting to see actual tangible harm to those service members by way of negative equity that has to get wrapped up that otherwise would have been covered by a Gap product. So we're going to continue to push for repeal of that and hopefully get the marketplace normalized again.

Hey, Sean, recalls are always a hot topic and I think they're going to stay a hot topic, especially in the independent space where we're not allowed to repair these recalls. I know that that's something that some dealers would like to see. Is there any movement on that if they do require us to. To repair recalls before we sell a car?

Yeah. So there is legislation that's pending and really has been pending for the last five years that would prohibit dealers from selling vehicles with any open recall. And it not only applies to a retail sale, would apply to a wholesale transaction as well, which if you think about the extent of harm that that would cause to not only the industry, but think about it from the consumer perspective as well. If consumer brings that vehicle into you to trade and there's nothing that you can do with it because it has an open recall. Right. You can't retail it, you can't wholesale it. Well, what's that consumer's vehicle worth? Well, to you, Nothing. Right?

Nothing.

Yeah. So it's much, much less problem, extremely problematic. And that's, that's what we continue to educate members of Congress on. You know, there's, we're interested in seeing all recalls fixed we're interested in opportunities to make sure that consumers can get parts to get fixed and those sorts of things. But preventing dealers from selling vehicles that are already in the marketplace just ultimately hurts consumers. And we need to make sure that folks understand that.

So if we are selling a car with an open recall, and all of us do it because there's some recalls that there's no remedy for, what is a best practice for a dealer to do?

Well, two things that I would always suggest is, well, or maybe three, when you get the vehicle, you know, check recall status. If you can get it fixed, get it fixed. And we understand that there's no role that we as independent dealers have in that process. But you know, you have relationships with franchise dealers that can get those things fixed. One of the things I will tell you that we're continuing to work on is doing a partnership with the manufacturers and the National Safety Council, which is another nonprofit organization, to bring recall fixes to the dealerships where you don't have to take the cars. They'll come to you and get them fixed. Actually, stay tuned for an announcement on that here in the next couple weeks. In some selected markets, unfortunately, St. George, Utah and Columbia, South Carolina don't fit that. But there are others where that process will be made available for, for Takata airbag recalls. And we'll make an announcement on that here.

Actually, Honda's been doing that a little bit here in our area, so that's great.

Yeah, we did have some proactive calls actually from some bigger dealerships. It was interesting.

So get them fixed is number one.

Get them fixed is number one. Number two is if you can't get them fixed for whatever the reason is, disclose to the consumer at the point of sale the existence of the open recall. There's lots of ways that you can do that. Go to safercar.gov and you can check the status of the recalls. There are certainly third party platforms like Carfax and others that have that information available for you so you can provide that information to the consumer. And then three, and this is a great customer service opportunity I think, is you can stay in touch with that customer and if you become aware of a fix for that recall, reach back out to them and say, hey, we got word that your car now has a fix available and let me help you get it in.

And Sean, is there any. I mean, I know there's a lot of grumbling with deceptive pricing and I don't know if this is a legal legislation matter on the federal level or just a Straight up, I need to talk to my attorney type situation. But has there been any talk on a state or federal level about maybe defining more or less being able to report those dealers we feel are being deceptive in their online advertising prices, what is a reasonable fee to add, what is, what kind of line item, all that kind of nonsense that we see, some of these, you know, what we would call shady practices.

Yeah.

So I will tell you that amongst the easiest thing for regulators to generate an enforcement action on deceptive advertising. And we've seen that with state attorney general, we've seen it with the Federal Trade Commission, because if you think about it, they can sit here at their computers like you and I are right now and go, all right, well, there's a problem, there's a problem, there's a problem. Let's go get them. So we've had conversations with the ftc, we've had conversations with state attorneys general about some of the things that we see in the marketplace. I'll give you an example. I was just in the state of Rhode island about a month ago, meeting with the Department of Motor Vehicles there and some of the local Rhode island area dealers, and this issue came up, and we talked to them about some of the things that we're seeing in the marketplace where, especially along the borders, where dealers may be on the other side of the border may be advertising one way, not disclosing all the fees that are part of a transaction and making it appear that price of a vehicle is significantly lower, let's say, on the Connecticut side of the border, as opposed to what they're required to advertise in Rhode Island. But certainly some. And that kind of pushes maybe the. Some of the Rhode island dealers to maybe start to cheat on that a little bit. But, you know, I'll tell you, one of the things that is at the forefront of these regulators is advertising. And, you know, we've. One of the things we've told the ftc, and the FTC has certainly said, if you have concerns in the marketplace that you see, they want to see them and afford it, we'll take a look.

I think that's. That's helpful for the dealers that are doing it right. And I think that's one thing, you know, Luke, we need to tell them is, guys, stay the course. Keep doing it right. Don't worry about that dealer across the street or down the road that's doing it wrong. It will catch up to them and they may not go to jail or get sued, but they'll eventually get scared Straight. So, yeah, don't, don't. Don't get sucked in just because you think everyone's doing it.

Sean, have you. I know you've seen the addendum that used car dealers were adding and not disclosing maybe in their price. Is this knowledge that we've given to the FTC so that they can look into that?

Yes, I do know that the FTC is aware of those practices.

Okay, cool. You talked about data privacy a little bit earlier and how that's just a really big topic right now. And I would like to know some best practices on that as well. And I think just looking at it from the outside with me, I think having a quality DMS is very important when it comes to that. And also maybe a credit card processor that's up to date and current. Is there anything else that we should do that we can do in house without breaking the bank?

Yeah. I think what I would tell you is common sense really applies in a lot of these situations. I'll share an experience that I had when I was in private practice. I was representing a client that ended up getting sued because one of their employees had passed on some customer information to somebody else who went and opened credit cards and, you know, racked up, you know, tens and tens of thousands of dollars worth of expenses. And as we went through, and we're kind of investigating, where were the shortcomings? You know, files, customer files were just left on, desks weren't locked up. You know, no passwords on computers, no lock on the file cabinets or in.

The.

Room that houses the file cabinets. I think just common sense, things like that. You know, the rule requires you to have a plan, a written plan that is clearly known to the folks in your dealership, that you've trained them on it. You've got somebody that's specially designated to manage that plan. If you don't have that, then congratulations, you're now the person that's responsible for managing the plan. In addition to being dealer, you are now information security officer, or id, threat protection, whatever the case may be. Anyway, I think just look at those common sense things. Password resets may be something that you want to implement. I think each dealership's got a little bit of uniqueness to it, but, you know, if you treat customer information like it's your own, and you don't want your own information out there, you'll do the things that will safeguard that customer's information as well, for sure.

So let's. Let's dive right into convention.

Yeah.

Ready for convention. I'm ready for Vegas.

It's awesome. I just got back from Vegas and we can't wait to go back. It'll be here very quickly, June 15th through the 18th. It'll be at the MGM grand in Las Vegas. We're in the process right now of putting together the specific education topics on the agenda. But I will tell you this breaking news. As of this morning, we have secured the keynote speaker for the conference. Michael Irvin, former Dallas Cowboy receiver, Hall of Famer. I may or may not have been a Dallas Cowboy fan and still Dallas Cowboy fan. So I'm uber excited about it. But I think it's gonna be, it's gonna be great. He's such a dynamic personality and for sure has such great things to say. So yeah, keynote speaker, we will have Dave Anderson back this year, if you.

Remember Dave Anderson, really good session, great.

He does a lot on leadership and such. So we'll have him back as well. We should have about 60 or so education sessions throughout the course of the week that cover buy here, pay here topics, retail topics, you know, legal and compliance issues, digital marketing, you know, leadership issues, management issues, Certified pre owned. Like I said, we got over 175 requests to speak at the convention from various folks, including the two gentlemen that are on the podcast with me today. So we look forward to kind of finalize.

Sean's promised that we could have a closet, at least a closet or like underneath the escalator where that area is. That's, it's mostly, that's really all we're asking for, but really without having any real horse in the game here. Conventions are important for those that are listening and haven't been. Just put it on your calendar right now, make it happen, start setting aside money, get someone to cover the store, whatever it is. You've got to go to the conventions. You're meeting dealers that are like minded, you're networking, you're getting great education and we'll talk about that some more. And you're going to the expo hall and you're seeing what is the new products and you're comparing. I mean, had I not gone to the NABD conference in Chicago.

October.

Yep, October. A couple months ago, I would have never switched GPS providers. You know, I found a better GPS provider. I found out that I really like their technology. I mean, and I met some vendors there that I would have never met known, saved some money. It really paid for itself, to be honest with you.

Well, that's our goal is we want to put together a convention that we know that you're going to sacrifice and it's going to require time out of your business, but we want you to work on your business, not work exclusively in your business. But our hope, and I don't want to use the word guarantee because as a lawyer, when you use the word guarantee, that means certain things. Things that, you know, we talk about advertising, but bad joke. But, you know, our hope is that we can deliver to you something that will either make you $10,000 or save you $10,000 or ideally both, and it will pay for itself and you'll, you'll become such a better dealer as a result.

I can't even begin to tell you how much money I've made by being at conventions. And so I just. Exactly what Sean just said. It is a great atmosphere. It's a lot of great things to be learned and to make money out there. That's great. I can't wait. Do you have any certain classes already booked that we just have to be to yet or. No, you don't.

Well, like I said, we're still finalizing the content, but I can tell you that, you know, we'll have a great session on advertising where, you know, we'll have a couple of dealers that will talk to an attorney. And those guys are maybe on the phone right now or on their right now kind of leading a discussion. We're, we're excited about that. This is breaking news to them, by the way, as well. Yeah. But we're, we're, we're going to have some discussions on collections, best practices. We'll have for buy here pay here dealers. One of the things that we are going to do is kind of try to. Try to peek into the crystal ball. What are the trends that we see moving forward for the retail dealer? Have a separate session. What are the trends moving forward for the buy here pay here dealer? One of the things that, you know, as technology's constantly changing and different marketplaces, you know, mechanisms and places to sell cars, you know, we're gonna have a session on how you can maximize Facebook marketplace and some of those sorts of things. We'll have sessions on minimizing your risk in the compliance world and such like that.

And I think we got one thing. We have a strong commitment from Sean, too, and the feedback from dealers that we don't want to go to infomercials. We don't want to go there and be pitched to by vendors. And with that qualification, if sometimes the vendors are the most knowledgeable person on the subject. Right. I mean, I've been to sessions where I was like, oh, another GPS presentation put on by so and so company, you know, but some of those, they're the guys that know the most. But I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, Sean, you guys have a very strong, like, you're allowed to come present to these dealers, not to pitch to them. This is not a sales convention and that's getting, I think, driven home more and more to the presenter. So guys, in the past, if you feel like you didn't like convention because you thought it was a big sales pitch or an infomercial, which I have been to conventions where I felt like it was an entire, not an Nieda one, but that's my opinion of digital dealer. I feel like it's just a big fat sales pitch. No offense to anyone who's involved there, but I think as organizers, Sean, I mean, maybe you could speak to that. You're focusing on making sure that we don't feel that way.

So we break the convention down into kind of three big silos. The first silo is education, right? And education is to be educated. It's to teach dealers. Here's things that are happening in the marketplace. You want to come and learn and we want to provide you with that opportunity to work. The second silo is the sell silo, but that sell silo is in the expo hall. Here are folks that provide solutions that can help you in the industry and yeah, they want to try to sell you on those products and you need to get connected with them. To your point, Jeff, on your October experience. So that sort of stuff takes place in the expo hall and we don't want those two to bleed into the other thing, right? Education, Go be educated Expo, go sell. And then the third bucket is kind of the, the events, right? The other things that happen at convention, like networking. And I'm actually happy to announce as well, we kind of tested this at the fall show for Buy Here, Pay Here Dealers in October. But we had such good success with it, we want to do it on a bigger scale here at the convention. And that is doing some dealer led roundtable discussions that provide you all as dealers an opportunity to engage with one another and talk through the issues that are important to you outside of sales pitches, outside of education sessions where you can just say, hey man, how's it going in? I'm, I'm looking for a line of credit. What do you know? Well, I'm, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, and so on and so forth. So we're, we're super excited about that opportunity and look forward to feedback.

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't really. I didn't really like that because Jeff had way more people at his table than I did.

What was your topic, Luke? Your topic was like clients in the age of digital retail. Only if you're between the heights of 5, 10 and 6. One like that.

I don't know, I think it may have been collect. I don't know what it was. Anyway, I had like two people at my table and Jeff had like this group. I swear there was.

It had nothing to do with me. I just got the right topic. My digital marketing.

It was 50 people.

And I'm like, man.

And I'll be honest, it's so funny you put me there to moderate it, but that's just, you're just, you're facilitating the discussion and I learned 10 times more. I wish I had recorded the whole session because there was two or three or four. I mean, there's eight gentlemen there that were like, man, that's. I got a ton of great ideas from them. And that's really what it's about, is those dealers. It's like this podcast, right? Dealers helping dealers. The one thing I would put on that, Sean, is to throw in my two cents is sometimes we need different levels too. Because I know I do hear dealers complain like, I don't want to go to this thing because they're talking to the lowest, the brand new dealer that's asking these 101 basic questions and they're taking up 30 minutes explaining to them what an RFC is and the rest of us are just twiddling our thumbs. So maybe we need to break that down into like 101, 201, 301 type classes so that we know, hey, if you don't have a base level of what a balance sheet is and this, then you know, this is not the one for you.

Great point is there?

I tell you, that was always. A couple of times I've gone where. Yeah, I'm lucky that I have done cmd and I really, during that process got a great, A great appreciation for dealer accounting. Is there going to be some dealer accounting class or something like that at convention this year?

Yeah, we'll actually have, I think several accounting related classes. I know one of the ones that we're very interested in is, you know, what can dealers do to build mechanisms to, to detect fraud and protect yourself from that sort of stuff. Unfortunately, we've heard of way too many dealers that have been burned by that. So we'll have some forensic accountants and others that have that expertise. I think one of the other accounting things that we're kind of looking at as a possibility is the idea of looking at the buy here, pay here versus lease here, pay here model from an accounting standpoint, which is the different angle than run some hard math.

Would there be any room for, like, actual workshops where it's like, hey, this is a presentation, but bring your laptop, because we're actually gonna build a Facebook ad, or we're actually gonna build a custom audience, or we're. I don't know if we have. If that's. I just think sometimes it's good to get educated, but what if. Yeah, you know, we actually put together this thing that we take back to our dealership.

We. We have. We have certainly talked about those opportunities and we're gonna do everything we can to try to fit that kind of process.

Yeah, it's hard, huh?

Yeah.

And you always seem to schedule the best ones all at the same time. What's that all about? Why is it that I gotta pick between this one or that one? You know, listen to Luke or listen to Chuck and I don't know where to go well.

Or bring. Bring more people. Right. That's always one of the biggest challenges we have to be sure is, you know, placement and putting the agenda together is like playing Tetris. Right? You try to figure out, all right, where. Where can we go here? The other thing that we try to do when we know that there's going to be, you know, particular interest in multiple sessions, you know, we have NIADA TV that records those sessions and they're available for viewing on the NIADTV website post convention.

That's great. I forget about that all the time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's. And to wrap this up, shonks, I know we've taken a ton of your time, but along those lines, Luke mentioned cmd. There's other training opportunities. We've got convention, and that's great, but I know sometimes that's a fast fire hose and a teacup. There's other ways that we can get into this, right? I mean, we've got. Or you guys, I should say have. You know, you've got your training in Dallas. We've got CMD coming in maybe July, another NABD convention.

So, yeah, what? One of our key missions is to help educate the dealers, provide as much opportunity for them to learn to be better dealers as well we can. So, you know, convention is certainly a part of that. We have the certified master Dealer class that you mentioned that will be rescheduled at some point in time. Probably, you know, late summer, early fall, we'll have a specific fall show for buy here, pay Here and subprime, we'll have, we have our 20 group programs. We're working on a learning management system that will provide pre recorded content where you can subscribe and go and view that at any given time. Webinars and other things that are continually in development. We're really looking to expand the education offerings that we have. So the last event that I'll mention, if I can be somewhat selfish.

Yes, please.

This is my favorite event as much as, and I love the convention, don't get me wrong. But part of what I do in my role as government affairs guy is our Washington D.C. event, the National Policy Conference that will be September 21st through the 23rd in Washington D.C. if you've not had an opportunity to come to this, and I include this in the education because I think this gives dealers an education in the civics part of the business, which is an important. I think it's a critical part of the business. Certainly there's all of the sales training and other things that you can get from the context of conventions and CMDs and 20 groups, et cetera, et cetera. But there's an important part of being a business operator dealing with civics, right? Helping tell your story to the folks that regulate. You pass legislation, but you also pick up nuggets that you can take back to your dealership to make yourself better. So the National Policy Conference is an opportunity to come to Washington to hear from federal regulators, to hear from administration officials. We've had, you know, key industry leaders as part of that. We've had folks from the White House, we've had folks from the cfpb, the Federal Trade Commission, other four letter and three letter agencies in Washington. But the coolest thing that we do is an opportunity to engage with elected officials, members of Congress, where you can go and tell your story. I'm Luke Godwin. I'm Jeff Watson. I'm a dealer. I'm in St. George, I'm in Columbia. I employ X number of people. I do this. We're here to talk to you today, Mr. Congressman, about recalls. We're here to talk to you about arbitration agreements and how they help our business. We're here to talk to you about how this Military Lending act thing has the potential to really upend the industry. Whatever the issue is, it helps you to educate yourself not only on the hot button issues that are affecting the industry, but how those issues directly impact you.

The great thing about that is, like you said, just talking to your senator, talking to your congressman, our Congress lady, and really figuring out, let them know how they fit in, how we fit into their community. And Sean, you know, we have to raise money to, to sway opinions sometimes. I hate that we have to do that. But luckily, y' all put together the PAC fund. If you could quickly describe that and how a dealer can get involved and what that money is used for.

Sure. So NIADA has a political action committee, which is what Luke is referring to, the PAC fund. And the NIADA PAC is a fundamental fund that is made up of contributions from NIADA members that are used to go and find and support candidates for Congress that will support, defend, protect the independent used car industry, small businesses, that sort of thing. It's a nonpartisan thing. We support members of Congress from both sides of the aisle. We've spent money on candidates for both sides of the aisle. And think of it this way, it's not a pay to play thing. Right. I think people talk about politics and campaign donations in that context of pay to play. That's not what it is at all. If you think about the world we live in and how messaging has to get out to folks to understand what you're about. The PAC fund is there to help candidates do that. Right. They have to campaign. They have to do TV commercials and Facebook, all the same sorts of things that were.

Yeah, you would think that dealers would understand advertising. We have to spend money to get our message out there. And we pay third party sites a ton of money to run through theirs. So why not pay a third party site?

That's. That's what it is. That's exactly what it is. So for more information, you can learn about the pack@www.niada.com pack. We've supported, just to give you a sense, just in the last year, I've been to events with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. I've been to events with Mitch McConnell, I've been to events with. And it's an opportunity for us to donate to campaigns. But Also you get FaceTime, you get an opportunity to talk. Hey, I'm Shawn Peterson with. But as important as it is for me to do that, the one thing that we love doing, by the way, for all of you that are listening to this, we want you to have your senator or congressman come to your dealership. And we have had dealers host members of Congress and as part of that, sometimes provide PAC donations to them. That has Much more impact than me, the professional hack doing it. When you know, Congressman Clyburn, let's say, can come to Luke Godwin's dealership and get a tour. Hey, here's the, here's my team. Here's what I do. I'm a business in your district.

Yep. And that's, that's so important. And you can tell just from when as an organization we first started. Going up there to the reception we get now is totally different. And it's because we have money in our pack and it's because we go there every year and we lobby and that's what we do on Wednesday up there. So if y' all haven't been involved with it, be involved with. Takes money, guys and girls.

Put it in my calendar, Luke.

Put it in your calendar.

Put it in my calendar.

But it takes money and you got to give some money and you got to give it personally. You can't come out of the dealership. But it's so important to our industry because without our industry we don't have any money. And so you've got to give.

Awesome. Sean, thank you so much for your time. Just really appreciate you having on. I mean, it's great. A wealth of knowledge every single time. The nuts and bolts of how we're able to do what we do and kind of the behind the scenes guys that are keeping us in business. It's great.

Well, it's my pleasure, guys. I'm happy to do it and look forward to doing it again sometime.

See you soon, Shaw.

Alright, thank you for joining us today.

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