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. goodness yeah good morning uh people are aware michelle i've been talking to people where you guys been doing stuff and we always joke about it people are you know sitting around like two people waiting for the podcast but yeah but in fact we do have people who have uh recognized that we've been absent for a stretch uh we're back we're trying to work up way back into a rhythm and uh And so it's been there's been some other other activities. Yeah, it's just it's been a really this whole year so far has been one of evolving into what feels right, what feels like a good rhythm, what feels. And so the podcast has been something that we've we know is an important part of. our rhythm, but we haven't really found its rhythm yet. Does that make sense? Well, yeah, we just have to step back into it. Once we fell out of that rhythm, then it just has been a time where we've had other activities, including, you know, a big part of my focus has been this subject we're going to talk about today. Yes. So that's obviously I've been, you know, we were on the AI thing. We kind of put that in the hands of our AI partners. And then I've been able to shift back into data. And so my focus has been, as I said on a podcast, one of the last times we recorded was I'm really doubling down on data. And so it's just an opportunity for me to, Dig in there and work with our new partner. You know, we've got Lenderisk is involved with us. Lenderisk Analytics has joined us in working with data, especially obviously around V-Eight. And so that allows us to work on that. And so today is really about taking another step, right? So did you have anything before we got into all that? Oh, I was just like, there have been. There have been a lot of projects that are still... um they've been moving excuse me we just turned on the show to to talk about it and um you know in real time so a lot of projects that have been moving and feeling really good about um where they're at and their progress and and you know i to to jim's I'm trying to find the right word. Frustration is not it, but it's like Michelle works at a rhythm. We're coming up with that word again, that, that sometimes baffles you. Yeah. Yeah. But it's just, you know, gives me a lot of grace and it's been amazing. But the, the stuff that you've been working on, on data has just really, Removed a lot of roadblocks. We were talking about this a couple of mornings ago. Cause those of you who watch know that we do like coffee time in the morning and we talk about the things in the morning. What are we working on? You know, if there's like a hard conversation, all of the, just all the things it's kind of like our, our coming together and our, when I worked in, In corporate America, it was kind of like our stand up, you know, where you where you get together and you spend fifteen minutes and everyone is standing typically for that just so that it's not one of those things that that. people get comfortable and they want to stay it's like let's make it quick kind of thing so um so we were talking about this the data stuff the other day and and i i just i i expressed to jim how i've watched v-eight v-eight's been something that you've you launched during a time that I was not very active with Latin. So I've just, this has been like a channel that I've watched you launch. I've watched you, like there are challenges in it and finding a way, finding the right path. Right. to resolving or eliminating those friction points. And data, the collection of, and the sifting, and the sorting, and the managing of. And it's just, it's been you, you, you for quite a while. And now that DW is in, it's just been so wonderful to sit back and to listen to how the conversation is shifting in such a really great way. Yeah, we just had our last meeting of the month of August last night. You know, we were able to consolidate two groups because of my travel schedule. Excuse me, that doesn't always work because of competitive stuff, but in this case it worked and we got groups together. it's just wonderful to have we have our new salesperson cami who's joined us and so she was able to meet the members i love her i love her yeah and so she was able to meet some of the members they were able to meet her we also had dw from melinda risk was there so dealers are meeting dw and becoming familiar we were able to share some of the new tools that dw has created And so it's been interesting. Yeah, I wanted to say before we moved on for the new people that have been in, I'm looking forward to getting to know DW like you know him because we haven't spent very much time with each other. I know Kami and. Let me tell you all when she comes with us to a conference, you guys are going to love her. I mean, she, she can, she can just snark and hang and, and, and just, and she's, she's really bright and she's just got a great energy about her. I'm really excited about what she's going to bring to, and it's, she's going to be helping with getting the message out and, and doing like understanding where people's concerns are and you know where we can improve things and also she's she's handling like any any um if you want to learn more about v-eight she's gonna be your gal yeah so she's been able to sit in a couple of meetings this month which really gives her a much better inside look at what the value is and uh boy well last night's meeting in particular was uh really fruitful it was you know we've got early adopters there they've been you mentioned challenges we've had struggles with data we've had and the dude have been patient and And we've created a lot of really great stuff with limited amount of data that we capture. We produce a lot of great stuff. And so they see that, but they also kind of see how cumbersome it is. And we struggle to get the reports out on time because we're gathering data from other dealers, you know? Not every. I mean, those of you guys are in twenty groups. Understand that, you know, sometimes it's like you're waiting, you're waiting on someone or to be able to pull all of the things together. And so being timely is important. You know, twenty groups have traditionally had a hard cut off and we have to do the same. We're moving that direction. But it's becoming easier for dealers to buy. be able to do it. And what we're working towards and huge progress towards is the ability for a dealer to just upload a handful of things and we will take care of the rest. You just get it in. And we continue to work with data partners. And again, that's what today is about. We'll get to our topic here about our mapping tool. But I would say that The key thing is that we're working to make it easier for the dealer to get their numbers in. We see that's one of the bottlenecks. It's one of our constraints is that dealers are busy. They have a hard time and they delegate somebody and the numbers come in wrong or whatever. So that's not a new problem. Twenty groups have dealt with that for decades. But we're working to now get that more automated, right? And take a lot of it off of the dealer's plate. There's some really incredible things that are coming as a result of those efforts. And we started, I think it's been, maybe this is our fourth reporting cycle where we've done our report cards. And so we were able to show those last night. And it's like we just talk about with everybody. those report cards are great. The data that we present graphically is all very important. It just is only as good as the data that comes in, right? So one quick example, we had one of our members last night that was surprised to see that their down payments were much higher on average for the month of July than they had expected. Well, after the meeting, got an email and it turned out that's wrong. Well, the person had submitted their trade information wrong. And so it inflated the information on that trade. So that stuff happens. But it's like by starting to pull the data directly, we're able to then make sure that it gets lined up well and that it matches up and that we've got good information that we're working And that's what you call, I don't know if you've landed, like it's called the data translation layer. And as a product, I don't know that there's anything that has been specifically named, but that's what it is. It's kind of named what it does is it translates the data that's coming in into something that everyone is... This has been such an important piece to you, this apples to apples. You're not comparing a tomato to a pear. It's bringing everything to the same understanding, which is for... anyone who has been in the industry for a long time and has learned and experienced having conversations with people that you recognize that one person's definition of a word is different than the next person's definition. And the DMS's definition of the word is very different too. And so there is always a struggle when I watch. people asking questions on, on different groups and all of that is that those that are seasoned are always kind of like chiming in. It's like pump the brakes here because you know, it depends on where are you pulling this from? What are you accounting for this and those kinds of things. And so dealers that have been around for a while and have been in situations where it's like the, it doesn't, it doesn't make it necessarily someone's data false, but it just makes it incorrect. It's not synchronized. It doesn't match. And so, yeah, I've got, I brought some illustrations today to be able to show kind of what you're talking about in terms of the different labels that the DMS system have or just the systems have. So, um, yeah, let's, Let's remember our our topic today is around the data bridge that we're proposing for the entire industry. Yes. And this is for dealers. Now, there are other beneficiaries in what will happen. Right. So when when we succeed in synchronizing these data points, then This is a phase one ask. So let me put this on the screen and kind of help people understand. We're asking that twenty five data points be synced across DMS systems. OK, so when I say synced, I really mean mapped to be the same label. So so what we've done is create in there. Let me make sure I'm sure in the right one here first. as a canonical label, okay? So what we do is create a label that is our label that we've made as sort of the standard, okay? And then we're gonna tie all of these others back. So in this example, the one I've got on the screen, you can see there's an empty column there for NIADA. I will be reaching out today. Part of what will happen after this podcast airs, everybody will get an email, all the DMS providers, Our founding sponsors will be copied in there just like we've done before when we made asks of this nature as White Hat Way. And then we'll also be sending the request to NIADA to help us match those same twenty five data points on their reporting form. You know, it comes for NIADA twenty groups. But what you see on the screen there is an example of a. you know emotive those folks have already created um blaine over there has already designed a report that generates pretty much all in the right pulling the right information so yeah so so the one key thing we have a star there and they're aware that the one thing we still have to work out is the they have texas sales tax it gets kind of rolled into some of the numbers and so we're working with them to sort that out and so there's a there's an open ask you know to be able to sort that one out the next one is idms we have access to idms with number clients they're able to provide us exports we're able to grab those labels ourselves we don't really require any help from idms on that one but what it does is it allows us to you know show Here's what IDMS, for example, calls this particular item. So we have our definitions, and what I brought today doesn't show the definitions, but I just wanted to have slides for today. So basically, you're just seeing kind of snapshots of what's there. The thing that I would say is that this is only twenty five points and it's only buy here, pay here to start. We're working with some lease your pay here dealers, and it's been a real challenge in some ways, but we are making tremendous progress there. Some of the DMS providers are cooperating with us. Others aren't. But we're we're seeing some progress with some of them to be able to help. conform the lhph stuff to a way that is um comparable inside these um meetings and inside this kind of analysis that we perform so you know with our experience we were able to choose i chose when we started v eight to twenty five points that i thought were most important to allow us to create key ratios to give kpis and also to build projections so we're able to build we're able to capture the history of the portfolio yield and then build projections off of that so we don't need to get too deep in the weeds today it's more matter of understanding when we succeed in building these let me show the other one michelle this is um This is another one that's the same. Here's Wayne Reeves. This is Wayne Reeves, yeah. This is one that's in progress. We have access to reports through Wayne Reeves, through our members. And so you can see there are some that are already matched up. But the label for the same exact row, the label is different in these different DMS systems. So all we're really doing is we're creating a mapping tree that everybody can provide their data points so that when a member comes to – a V eight group where they come to an NIADA group, they will have at least these data, twenty five data points will be synchronized or matched across the different systems. And that that lets us get to a place where we can have more meaningful analysis. And so that's the aim here. So the beneficiaries that, as I said, here would be a couple of, you know, the ones I mentioned already are are in there, certainly. But Oh, I didn't save it. I see. Let me get this banner up there. So, you know, beneficiaries obviously would be dealers. They're going to benefit from having data that if I'm a dealer, not only my data, I can have confidence in, but I can have confidence that your data that's coming in is synchronized and mapped in the same way. So that will help us to get to a more meaningful report. Yeah. And I look at, um, you know, obviously peer groups and dealers, well, dealers primarily, and, and this is, this is being used with V eight can be used with, with other peer groups. Cause there, there are obviously others out there. Um, when I look at the lenders, One of the things that occurs to me is that when lenders, you'll usually have a rep that handles your lending with whatever company that you're with. And that rep has to get to the bottom of what means what in that dealership. And especially when they're new, You know, there's a lot of training that needs to happen in the lending space as to, you know, these are the things that we're watching and they're different because I can guarantee that lenders out there who are in DMSs see that this is something that creates a challenge, a friction point, a speed bump, whatever. And that when we can have these, you know, continue to expand. But when we begin to have this thing that happens where it's all it's so when when a rep is talking to someone about a thing, they will know. that they're talking about the right thing and the dealer will also know what they're talking about. And that's, that's gold. That really, really is in, you know, for anyone who is tracking, um, you know, the portfolio for whatever reason, that's, that's, that's really, it's a, it's a beautiful, um, um, Got a translation. Yeah, I think the nice thing about imagine a scenario where lender one is as considering financing for dealer one. Okay. And lender two is over here considering financing for dealer two. Well, when we can step in there to both lenders and say, these dealers, we have validated data for these dealers. In some cases, we can say, twenty-four months with some of those dealers who started with us or populated their data back to January of twenty-four. So we can say, thirty months worth of data. But we can say, we validated. So the reconciliation that happens month over month, it's one thing to send in a month for July thirty-first, for example. But it's another thing to have June, July, August, all those months stacked together month over month. And we'll tie those together in a way that is validated from our side. We do it because we want to make sure that we've captured all the movement and the dollar so that whatever projections we build, we can make sure that we're working off of good measurements. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Another really big thing, which is not on your beneficiary. Well, it's dealers because this is for dealers, but it's data migration. True. Because one of the things that I hear for kids, switching a provider becomes an enormous task. Yeah. And part of that is matching data points to data points. And so as we develop this, it creates... a layer that a dealer can use opt into, or the data provider that is being switched to, or the, you know, whether it be a DMS or a capital provider, just whatever it is that it, it is an opportunity for them to plug in. This is already all kind of these, these things have been synced. And as it grows, that just, it is, it's not going to resolve all the problems. Right. But it's going to resolve some of them. And some of them are better than none of them. Yeah, I'd say. And it allows us to provide to these DMS providers. And some of them are working with us now. So when they succeed in producing this report that will generate these twenty five data points, a couple of things we can do for them. First of all, we can bring them on the podcast. and showcase the fact that they created this thing for dealers and we can show how it benefits everybody and we can also provide them something we've already written the language and we can put a badge they can put a badge at their website that says we sync with the phase one data points of the white halfway mapping tree no it may not be the exact language but i've got that prepared so that now if a dealer is shopping for software they can see that it syncs with this thing which is a transparent uh tree of of data translation yeah and so it allows somebody to know that they're they're synced in that way so that's part of what we'll be asking we're asking an idea again to do the same thing we can uh you know we'll probably get to the reporting form we get the line numbers and what have you but We want to do it in cooperation with NIADA because we think that they will benefit in the same way that our dealers and our vendors can. So this is just a way to declare a standard of sorts and build this off of this tree. And that lets us provide much more significant analysis for dealers to come to us from different platforms. So this is part of the benefit. Same would be true, I think, for NIADA. But it's really been... It's been interesting. I shared with you that in last night's meeting, we had a couple of things happen. I mean, it was, it was really impactful. I mean, I shared with you, it was, it was particularly satisfying for me to come out of a meeting when we have a, um, a dealer who's got their bouncing baby girl on their lap, you know, that's pretty new. Yeah. Got a new baby. There's, you know, in the meeting. Congratulations. Yeah. Congratulations. You know who it is. and uh so that we were happy to have that dealer there we had a dealer return after months away with a health scare uh-huh right well not a scare but a health crisis yeah they had surgery and treatments and so they were away for uh many months and uh so now they're returning and so they can see the progress of what we've done with cards and some of the things that happened while they were away but i think really the most significant thing for me about that is we will be able to tie all that data back together we will be able to help that dealer analyze the impact of those life circumstances on top of that data and to be able to you know create really meaningful things so you know on a day-to-day basis dealers are busy they may not see the importance of some of this data in the way that folks like dw and myself do and obviously brent carmichael people that live in this that understand the importance of having reliable data here and what can be gleaned from it i just think we We, irrespective of that, we want to make it easy for dealers to be able to push a button, you know, get what they need. And so that's the work. And then there's, you know, the data translation, that's the main topic for today. And it just, you know, it does. Dealers are... they're ready for anything that takes some stress off of their plate. So that's an amazing thing. And I just, I wanted to add a little bit to, cause you know, I'm the one that's like all foo foo and feely about, which is weird because you know, you're the one that gets emotional about things a lot more than I do. But the, the whole idea that, um, that these groups, what I've watched happen with them and data, it's like one of those friction things you're working on, but what it has evolved into is the thing where you show up from where you're at and you've come away from these meetings with stories. Just last night, you had one that That first girl has three boys is just, you know, as is introducing new baby. That can't happen unless it's virtual and you're meeting someone where they're at. You've you mentioned, you know, the the friend who's there. that they can come and just kind of observe and don't have to leave the comfort of their home or their office after this health crisis. You have Meeting with around a campfire where it's like you're part of they're there around the campfire. A member is around a campfire with their family and they're there because they want to participate and it can come to them where they are. And then the other one that I just I love is one of your members who was driving a tesla cyber truck and involved in the meet the drive the truck was driving autonomously and he said you know every once in a while i have to look and and hold so that it doesn't it's not completely autonomous and they they don't let that happen yet with with those but was able to in traffic because they weren't able to be planted during the meeting They knew that the meeting could come to them wherever it was that they are. And that to me has been one of the most, most rewarding things. When I look from the outside is that this meets dealers where they are, with their budget, with their time. Because you have one meeting where the big dealers, they want to meet during the business day because they can shut their office door. And it's like, don't bother me. And then you have dealers that are younger that have... You know, it's easier to wrangle their family than it is to wrangle their business. So they bring it home. They do it in the evening because they know that they have to be available to their team. And, you know, they can't really take that hour and a half away. So it's just so cool. I really enjoyed it. Kind of wrap up on that one thing that we. happened last night. And it's my favorite part of V eight when I can, as a moderator, sit back and just let the dealers ask questions of one another, support each other, answer the questions. One of the things that came up last night was arbitration agreement. Yes or no. Should I have them in my contract? And dealers talked about it and and where to get the answers, right? And so I'm able to sit back. I'm not an attorney. I can share with what I've seen across my time in the industry, but I like that. One thing too, that I got to put in a mention for White Hat Way, because this was a very much a White Hat Way moment. It's like one of our dealers, Forgive me, when I saw what happened, and this was unsolicited, but the conversation was around a particular part of their business and dealers, should I, I used to, should I do this, should I not? And the one dealer chimed in and just said, I just do it because I think it's the right thing to do. It's meaning it's right by customers. It's the right thing for them. Yeah. And so you just don't hear that enough, right? You do hear it. Yeah, we hear it because of the nature of the work that we do. But it's like, I was glad that without provocation or invitation from me, the dealer spoke up and said that I do this because I think it's the right thing to do. And so it's it's also a dealer who's very healthy, but it's a long time. And so it's like it's an example to me of some of the things that can happen in these conversations and why it's important to create an environment where people can speak freely. Right. And, you know, have a confidential environment where they can uh, you know, discuss matters like that with their peers. And, uh, so it was, it was really satisfying to, to have that, to get really great feedback. We'll be continuing to work with our members to get additional feedback. In the meantime, I'll be working with the DMS providers. When this email goes out, my link will be in there where these folks can book their developers can book with us and make sure we get clarification about which of these, what points we're looking for, uh, from their system. And, uh, And so we just continue to try to make it easier for dealers to get their numbers over to us so that we can then turn around and get them timely information that is accurate and helps them make good decisions. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. I love it. And it's just been so much fun to be kind of on the fringe and watching what's happening on the inside. And I don't express to you enough just how proud I am of what you've created. Thank you. um if any of y'all need help out there um you know whether it be from us a v-eight um or if you're like looking for someone that that can help you with something specific then and and it's not within our wheelhouse a call and we can either introduce you um help you find the solutions that you need so if you need help caller texas nine oh three eight one six zero two one six And I look forward to including Cami in that, whose email address is sales at whitehatway.com. And so she will be handling that. most of the questions around V eight and some of the other things that we're doing that are under the, the umbrella of white Hathaway. So, um, her name again is Cammie and that would be at sales at white Hathaway.com. Right. Right. So yeah. Thanks for tuning in folks. We'll, uh, be, uh, for, if you're a DMS provider, look for that email. Uh, there's, uh, again, our coffee and I. And so we're digging in. Yeah, absolutely. Hey, we really appreciate you all joining. And I got to... Yeah, there we go. We know you're busy. It's Friday. And we're... We get notices from people that's like, hey, where did you guys go? Which feels good to be missed. You know, it does. We're working on that. So, yeah. Have you guys a great weekend. And everyone's back in school, I think, pretty much so. And so enjoy your weekend with the family. Go to a farmer's market. Buy some fresh vegetables. College. And there's college football too. All right, everybody. Have a great day. We really appreciate you joining us.
