Wake up, Buy Here, Pay Here people. It's a beautiful day. Go grab yourself another cup of Joe and say hello to Jim and Michelle Rhodes on the Buy Here, Pay Here morning show. Take it away, you two. okay good morning welcome happy saturday happy saturday broadcast friday was a little nuts and so we're getting ready to head out the door to go to tiada's conference san antonio and urge all those who are listening who just completely forgot especially if you're in or near san antonio Get yourself there. We're going to be at the event and lots of meetings to line up and folks to see. So looking forward to being there. Yeah. It's usually of the state ones. It's one of the big ones for buy here, pay here. The Southeast is kind of consolidating into a good one. The Carolinas is always good. And then Tommy's deal in the Northeast has been strong. So yeah. Yeah. But Texas is good. I'm looking forward to being there. Yep. So am I. What do we have? Anything I need to talk about before we get and dive into our thing? I suppose not. I mean, it's all going to kind of relate to our big topic of the day. We sent out a news release, and so that's our subject today. It's kind of this announcement around a new partnership that has been formed. We've been in discussions with them for some time. And it's just it's hard to overstate the value of, you know, I'm not one to overstate, but it's like this is this is significant. This is an important step for us. It's and it's really important for a lot of layers. It's going to be, you know, I think about our V eight dealers in particular. You know, we're now two and a half years into V eight, at least data. So we've obviously that's where we started in early twenty, twenty four. And our dealers have been patient as we've worked through the data management side of all that. And it's something that I think this part really solves a big piece of what we've wrestled with in data management. Well, and I see, you know, we've had Band-Aids. Mm-hmm. We've had a few band-aids, and then Jim ends up spending duct tape, paper clips, bailing wire. But it's just been a not a good use of your time. We've known that this has been something that looking for a permanent solution, and we've kept ourselves really open, waiting for the right solution to come and we're putting out feelers and the right one has come. It has been vetted with our team and really quite excited about it. And I haven't had a chance to meet the DW. um but uh uh i've kind of you know i walk past your office when when you're in a meeting and sounds nice and um very articulate and very uh knowledgeable of of the things and so um and it's it's it's a really kind of a cool you know like i said we've been putting it out there that this is we're um i guess on the the uh spiritual side whatever it's like all right we're looking for an answer and so that's just what we lean into for you know how those answers come back to us and flow and if i remember correctly this this um person you came across in in linkedin They reached out to me. Um, I can't even recall. I should go back and look at that. It was months ago. Yeah. Weeks at least. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, um, we, so we started in a conversation and I could see right away that this person had, um, a particular set of skills. They had, uh, they had, uh, had a complimentary set of skills and so that their company is kind of new and they're, but they're very much aimed at, have been working in the lender space and the subprime space. And so it's a good fit. It really, it's, it's really a nice way for us to solve a data thing for our V eight members first, because, you know, that's been the thing is where I say our members have been patient as we've kind of worked through and tried to get data lined up. And, you know, one of the things we've done and one of the things this partner is aware of is that we in V.A. made the decision early on. I made the decision to put BHPH and LHPH dealers in the same groups. OK, so that had its own set of challenges and we've worked through that. And it's been it's been it's been a problem. Right. I mean, it's it's. We've made it work, but it hasn't been as clean as any of us would like. Well, it kind of helped to further understand why I know Dealer Twenty groups try to separate them. I don't know if they still do. But a Leaser Pay Here group and a Regular Buy Here Pay Here group. Because there are things that have to be... Yeah, you can get to the point where you can look at them... apples to apples, but it just takes a lot of work. Yeah. And when you say apples to apples, the structure is different. But what we did in V-Aid is we said, if you LHPH folks want to sit in a V-Aid group, you're going to have to sort of conform your numbers to a V to a BHPH structure. okay so that was part of what had to happen there and some software helps more than that i mean here we are having this conversation in mid-july we are you know we're headed into the second round of meetings next week and we have dealers who haven't been able to turn in their data they've made software switches this is really a part of a bigger thing that we can begin to address through this work that we'll be doing in data. We've already started it, right? It's just what this does is lets us accelerate that process and get to a place where we can have, I think what we bring as experience as a translator, having, you know, and this is what I said to the partner, even as we were finalizing the deals, you know, we're I'm in a position having coached in this sector a long time and worked inside software and had access to different DMS systems and reports. And as a former dealer, I just think it's, I'm in a good position to understand the BHPH part, LHPH part, related finance companies, enough accounting to be helpful here, and our relationships with many of the DMS providers. So this affords us a position to be able to solve some of these things that have been a nuisance. And it's really more than that. If you're a lender, You know, in this space, trying to provide capital to folks who can't get a grip on their numbers, they're going to miss a lot of dealers. A lot of dealers aren't going to be able to get access to capital because of, you know, numbers that either don't line up or the dealers don't know where to find the numbers. And this is something that we, through our VH system, because we have close relationships with our members there and we work closely with them and have access to their DMS or they provide, you know, source reports. It allows us to then get in there and starting with the V eight data, which is very limited at this point, but this will give us a chance to expand the data that we extract in or that we pull into V eight. But again, This is why the data translation layer becomes important because we're able to get in there and start to write the language that translates. Yeah. So, you know, for those of you, we tend to speak like two chapters into a book and people are listening and they're like, I don't. don't know the setting. So this data translation layer is what it is that's being built right now. And it's basically to take the mapping. And let me see if I get this right. So it's to take the mapping from one DMS and a mapping from another DMS and be able to just kind of go like this and find where, because they call things different things, they categorize things differently. And so it's finding a way to bring more than one way of having a data set into coherence. And so it's bringing the ability for V-Aid, for capital providers, for a lot of... I mean, as we dive deeper into this, there are a lot of applications that we're looking at this being able to help us with. It's not just about data. It's about... moving from one DMS to the next. It's about moving a GPS provider from one to the next. And it's about this data translation layer because we all know And I hear all the time from dealers is it's because everyone just kind of speaks a different language. We all speak English, but we have different accents throughout the entire industry. And sometimes it's hard to understand or sometimes they have different, you know, it's like I come from Seattle and when we get a soda, it's a soda. Yeah. or it's in the south it's a coke or it's a pop or yeah and it's like so when when i say soda they're like what but i'm talking about the same thing this is what this solves yeah it's like all of those words that create you know that that are the same basic thing then um then it pulls them together in a layer data translation layer where it's like it's it's like having a translator in your ear yeah i think what i'm hearing there is that the next agreement that i need to draft is between uh jim and michelle because you come from a background of translating right for engineers i do i yeah yeah that is that is when jim met me that's what i was doing is i sat in engineering meetings And it was smart home technology. And so we dealt with multifamily, so apartments and condos and all of that. And so I would sit in these engineering meetings and engineers... speak a very different language it's it's almost like they're from the us virgin islands i mean they're like it's like are they really in the us yes they are um they just speak a very very different language and they have a different way of of um of breaking down data and all that so i have this really cool ability to be able to ask the right questions and go like oh do you mean this? And then they're like, yeah, that's what we said. It's like, no, that's not what you said, but okay. And then I would create all the training for the sales team and the rest of, you know, all of the customer service people and, and, um, also for the customer. So, and I, you know, I, And so that's what this is in a way is being able to create that layer. So it's like now we can communicate with each other and we all are speaking the same language and, and it's, and it's an easy thing for you, for everything to communicate from that. So one word that has come out of this that I think is important here, um, As I've worked with AI through this process and VA, et cetera, but in particular, this data translation layer that we're building, the word that comes up is canonical. So with the root word being canon, this is a word that I almost never use. All right, so canon, just give a definition because there's probably a lot of dealers out there that don't understand what canonical and canon is. So it's really, I should have looked up a better definition, but in the interpretation, in context, what it basically is, is a... identified go-to label. In this case, there's a, there's an identifier, right? So this will be the white hat way, canonical descriptor. And then we'll translate then from white, software x to software y and there will be a white hat way a trusted canonical label in between so that's why this thing i've described it as a skeleton but it's a map you're right it's data mapping is what people do And there are people in our industry that have mapping and they have some mapping over here and they have some mapping over there. So what we're doing is building this in a way that it will be a kind of a centralized, transparent is a really important part of this because what we're gonna wanna do is to make sure that if you're a DMS provider, you're a developer with a DMS team, And you're new. Or you're a dealer who's in the middle of moving from software X to Y. Or thinking about it, yeah. This lets you know that you've got a way to see into the stuff that is happening. And obviously that'll get... cleaned up, it'll get scrubbed and it'll be improved as we go. We're working first with the roughly thirty data points that we capture in B.A. and making sure that we're canonical across all of those DMS systems. And it's just going to branch out and become... And again... Well, we were chatting with one of our colleagues, another vendor who does data mapping. And he just finished, or he's just finishing up a data translation map from one DMS into another DMS. And so we've been chatting with him as well. And it's like, It is a problem. It is a big problem that no one has wanted to really tackle on an industry-wide scale. And so, I mean, it's one of those things you hear about the dealers just... belly aching, rightfully so, about how long and how screwed up it is to get everything moved over to a new DMS. Yeah. And I actually had a conversation with a dealer by text earlier in the week where they were asking about if I had talked to any dealers that had successfully moved over to software X, right? And And we had a little fun with the conversation because they said, has anybody done that and loved it? And I said, I don't know that I'm ever going to meet anybody who loved a data migration from DMS. Now, obviously, what we're doing here gives us a chance to make it go much more smoothly. That's kind of the big end picture of what can happen. how quickly this happens has a lot to do with how much collaboration we get. Because as I said, there are people over here that have, have solved some of this and there are people over here that solve some of that. And so I think what we can do though is dealers, I believe are going to be asking for this. And here's where I think it ends. And we might've talked about this on a prior conversation in the podcast, but when, when you get to the place where lenders begin to ask, is your, is your software coming through? Does it bear a white hat seal? Okay. This is important because when you talk about a trusted layer, it's just, that's what white hat brand is stepping in to be able to deliver is to be, we hope a trusted third party in this, to be able to create the language that lenders accountants are DMS to DMS can feel good about that there's this third party there that has an interest in the success of all these parties to be able to build this in a way that, you know, it's it's it's this is one of these areas where I have said and this is true. I said it to a DMS provider we met with recently. I just want to leave this industry a little bit better than I found it. And the monetization will come. We're not talking today about monetization. There could be ways to do that. I think the other piece that's important here is kind of what we talk about with Simon Sinek calls the infinite game. This is the thing where when we work together and we solve this thing in a way that it's It'll it'll improve over time. It'll sort of be evergreen and there will be new DMS providers coming to the landscape. You know, there will be work that goes on all the time with this. But I think what this does is for our peer groups, for other people's peer groups, for other people's data solutions. I really think, though, lenders, bulk buyers to be able to get to the place where they can see that they know that. The language is the same. If they talk to dealer one on Tuesday, who's on software X, and they talk to another dealer Y on Wednesday, who's on a different software, they're going to have a chance to know that when they ask the dealer, is this data white hat filtered or white hat validated? That's when you start to, now dealers are asking for it, right? DMS people are more cooperative, right? So when the money is, The access to money improves. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. And it's we we we have observed and and it's you know, this is this is true in a lot of business. Mm hmm. where there's an unhealthy spirit of competition. And where it's almost conflict, like war. And that it's I'm bad-mouthing or making it as difficult as possible or holding all of your cards so close to your chest that it's like no one's going to have access to my proprietary whatever. But it's just like... I do. I do. But this is like, this is coming in as a Switzerland. It's like we can all sit at the same table and we can all talk about the things and we can, we can, you can keep your stuff proprietary and you can keep your stuff proprietary and this is just going to translate it. And so it's part of it is, is that dealers don't deserve to be put over a barrel. Yeah. Yeah, good point. And they are being put over a barrel by a lot of different providers. Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's a good point that I think you can, this will facilitate. And also, you know, the natural outcome would be that when you get to the place where moving from one DMS to another becomes an easier process. And, you know, I've shared this. We're going to need to get on the road, so I don't need to tell the whole big back story. I know. But I shared that my work started in coaching and buy here, pay here when we were in the early stages of Windows software, right? Yeah, and fax machines and all that stuff. So I think my career, I've seen technology move a lot. Obviously, what's accelerated a lot of this in my work on this whole data mapping, the AI has helped to accelerate the data mapping to let us start building out these canonical layers. Or labels. And so I think this is why it's significant because we've seen that what this will do is naturally elevate things in a way that it makes it easier for me to answer that dealer and say, yeah, this should be a smooth enough transition to go from one to another once this translation thing is put together. And look, it's not going to happen tomorrow. It's starting with V-Eight. In V-Eight, you're going to see us get this part cleaned up, LHPH and BHPH. We're going to help dealers figure out. We're going to work with the DMS people. And we're going to start with just our own data set. We can get the dealer to just run us five exports and send it to us at the close of the month. And we'll be able to sweep that and interpret. Mm-hmm. And so now you start to add value for your members of V-Eight. They can learn more from one another because they're speaking the same language inside that meeting. They're looking at the same set of data. And so this is... This is big because it's something we've worked toward and we've had some opportunities to collaborate with some people that didn't quite come together. And so there's just been delays. And as I said, our members have been very patient. I think it's about to pay off for many of them. Agreements were just signed yesterday. And so it's like we've already seen because during the negotiations that there was already work being done. Oh, yeah. And so agreements are signed and we are moving forward with this piece of the entire... I mean, it's like a piece of the White Hat Way ecosystem. And it's a very valuable piece that will help a lot of the other pieces. And we're just... We're here to help. We're here to make things easier for dealers. And so there have to be... If you are a software provider, whether it be a DMS or whatever, and want to... participate, cooperate, be a part of this thing. Because what it does is that it opens up an ease for you to bring new people on. And what it does though, if we know that it's an easy thing to switch, that helps software providers level up. And that's an important thing because when we level up and it's like, all right, now we're going to have to play on this plane of a field and be more transparent or that there's this layer. And every ship rises from this. And when we can, in general, in business, make decisions that help everyone level up or rise. It's good for everyone and it's really good too for the end customer because we have talked to dealers that are going through and the horror stories around DMSs are more than other ones but they're cantankerous. And so let's, let's relieve that. Right. And, and because when you're cantankerous, your team knows you're cantankerous. It's like, it's been a really rough couple of weeks or months or whatever around here, because it's just like, we're trying to figure this thing out. And cause those things, when, you know, we talk about culture and, and, and how our customers are treated is it starts here. And if our dealers are feeling uncomfortable, stressed beyond what they should be, then that trickles down and it can create a more stressful environment for the customer. And to close this out, kind of what you just talked about, if you look at just the data side of this, so internally and culture and all those things are important. The data piece, what it does is that you're at a time where here we are having this conversation mid-September. Dealers are coming off two very rough years of charge-offs. And the way I would say this is, I'm just going to say it as clearly as I know to say it. If a dealer's listening, in twenty twenty six and twenty twenty seven, we don't have the margin for error that we had in buy here, pay here, pre-COVID, lease here, pay here, same. We don't have the same margin for error. We also don't have the same access to capital. So the way the dealers who I think are going to be the most successful going into twenty twenty seven closing out this year are going to be the dealers who get a real good grip on their data. And so one of the things that I'm still wrestling with and this partner at LendRisk, I haven't even said the name here, LendRisk Analytics is who we partner with. It's in the show description in our broadcast. But one of the things that they'll be able to help to do here is to get this data translated in such a way that dealers can have better visibility into what's really going on in their operation and this business was already challenging in terms of you know timing of cash flow versus profit and balance sheet versus p l and all the stuff that in finance companies it's it's it's a challenging enough business but when your data is not clean it's not well interpreted then we're we're winging it a little bit and and We could wing it. Twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, a little bit more now. In this age for contract is high. Yeah. And our our access to money is limited. So I don't I never am out there to frighten dealers as much as I'm out to just say, hey, we got to, we got to work together to get some of this stuff figured out. And I think it's just, you're going to see that dealers who are able to get the best grip on their data are going to be the ones who have a chance to still be around coming here. So this is part of it. Yeah. Shall we wrap up? Well, I wanted to... A couple of updates real quick. The early warning system, White Hatway AI, we are moving. We're progressing. We should be in... like a couple of weeks, be doing some testing, and then it will be released to our beta members. So folks who don't know, Ivan Korotev, who's appeared with us on the podcast in the past, he's a partner with us now on the AI side. He and his development team are working on getting that piece together. So we've been able to successfully test the text part. The voice part is expected to be early August. So, yeah, we're getting closer on being able to. And we have some dealers that are under LOI and we're moving toward subscription with them to begin. So we'll be watching for that to roll out. like to the general population. And to clarify what you call the early warning, it's a customer advocate that we've built first is to go out to communicate with customers who are not past due or current. This is an outreach. This is not an incoming. It's not collections. It's not sales. It's an outreach just to start. It's like to help have a layer of communication that so many have lost since the dawn of ACH. Yeah. So what my focus has been is establishing the foundation that is white hat customer relations. And that'll obviously serve as we move forward and deploy personas and other roles. That'll serve us well. But what we're really aimed at is getting the customer relations element down so that... if we're going to trust AI to go out and talk to our customers, then we need to make sure that they relate to customers in a way that we want. So that's been the work. Yeah. And then the other thing, the buyer payer BHPH nation TV is continuing to move forward. I've got some, a few different people that I'll be, I'll be meeting with. I've got agreements, verbal agreements for a lot of educational content that from other people, it's not just going to be, The things that Jim and Michelle or whatever have created, this is a collaboration of good quality education. And I'm hoping to have some entertainment in there that is buyer-payer specific eventually. You can even sing a song or two. You know, maybe. Or it's like, you know, I've been thinking like... horror stories from the front line or, you know, just have some fun. But that that is we're we're in the beginning of August. We'll be doing our soft launch with our V-Eight members and people that have already engaged with Buyer Pair Institute. and then we'll be doing our full launch um in september and so be watching for that it's going to be really amazing platform i really love what you've chosen yeah thank you i am so excited about it and it's just it's been you know we we chat with everything that's happened in our world in our personal world and personal lives I haven't been this excited about a product for a while. And so it's like, I wake up in the morning, it's like, I get to work on this thing today. So it's been great. The only other time I see you that excited is when you have a new vegetable in your garden. Oh my gosh. He's like, I have like three cherry tomatoes. It's like, look. so excited but you know and then we also have the horror stories of you forget about a zucchini for two days and it's gone from this big to that big and it's like i do not know where it came up with that whole thing so all right um what else i think that's it we can wrap up there we get on the Seymour will be in and out of his booth. And so looking forward to seeing everyone. All right. Well, hey, everybody. Thank you so much for joining. We appreciate it's Saturday. We're going to get on the road. Safe travels to everybody that is on the way there. And if you see Jim or I there, please come up and introduce yourselves. You know, there's a lot of people that we've seen or talked to that know us. Yeah. We haven't had a chance to meet. Come snap a selfie. I'll wear a decent shirt. Nice, right? Okay, that's awesome. All right, everybody. Thanks again. Have a great day and we will see you next week.
