Digital Dealer - November 2017 - 33

BUT I TOTALLY EMPOWER ALL OF OUR PEOPLE,
DOWN TO THE PORTERS. EVERYBODY SHOULD
FEEL THEY'RE NOT GOING TO BE REPRIMANDED
FOR TAKING CARE OF THE CUSTOMER."
all I could think about and live, eat,
and breathe. I returned in January
of 2010, as the sales manager. After
a year and a half, my dad promoted
me to president of the company. It's
been a fun journey, every part of it,
whether it was the internet company or the college experience, or the
book or Oprah.

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE
FOR FAMILY DEALERSHIPS
WHO ARE READY TO TURN
OVER OWNERSHIP TO THE
NEXT GENERATION?

I think the timing of the question
is super relevant. In the next two to
six years or whatever time period,
you're going to see more dealerships
change hands than ever before.
What's even more challenging
about the question is that unlike my
dad's generation where it's sort of
like, hey, this is what you need to
do, young people no longer average one or two careers in their life.
They might average seven to twelve
careers. Sadly, I get approached by
other owners where the dealers are
my dad's age and their kids do not
want to be in the business. Obviously, turning it over or selling it
or however that process is handled
among the family, that process is
more crucial than ever. But on the
flip side, as someone who is young
and already in the business, I see it
as the best opportunity for me that
I could ever ask for, because more
dealerships will be changing hands.
Even though, until two years ago
when I bought this other store in
Lexington, for our first seventy-five
years we only had one dealership.
I'm really fortunate because of
what my dad went through. He
wanted to afford me the opportunity
for him to get out and for me to be
able to run it, I guess, in the earlier

years of my career instead of in
the final years of my career. I think
you're going to see if the dealer principals hold on to the reins too long,
their kids are going to get turned off
and not feel as if they're getting the
responsibility.

HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE
YOUR MANAGEMENT STYLE?

It is totally about empowering
people. I think I learned that from
both my internet companies where I
had to empower people. Even when
I was a teenager and I had dozens of
employees, we never had a physical
office, so people were freelancing.
I had to empower people. At the
dealership level, we had a general
manager who had been with us
for 47 years. My general manager,
now, has been with us for 15 years.
My CFO at the dealership has been
there 43 years, so he's been there
longer than I've been alive. Having
that structure already in place at
the dealership is obviously amazing.
You can't put a price on it. But I
totally empower all of our people,
down to the porters. Everybody
should feel they're not going to be
reprimanded for taking care of the
customer.

WHAT'S IT LIKE HAVING
THE TWO DEALERSHIP
LOCATIONS?

When I was a teenager, I was
always going with my dad to his 20
Group meetings. I was having adult
conversations with other dealers in
the business. What I'm leading into
is that for a long time I've seen dealers grow to have multiple, multiple
stores and I've seen the efficiencies
at each of those stores. You would
think their efficiencies would go
up but they actually go down. The
problem is finding good people. I've
seen where a guy had one store that

made a lot of money so he went out
and bought more and so they all
operate at only 60% of what they
should be doing. I'm trying to avoid
that.
Our second store was previously
owned by another dealer and it was
losing a lot of money. When I first
bought the business two years ago,
of course, everyone was opposed.
But I was the largest shareholder
and it was a small dealership. I
said, "Look, do you want me to
make a small mistake or a big
mistake. What's the worst that
could happen?" At that point, we
weren't acquiring the land, just the
dealership. I wanted to see if I could
turn it around-it was losing tens of
thousands of dollars a month.
The Lexington store was profitable from our second month. It
works for us because they're both
Ford but they are an hour apart, so
we're not really competing with each
other. We're not too close where
you're cannibalizing yourself. It
also works because it's in the same
T.V.-radio market, which means
it has no additional advertising
expense because we simply tag our
commercials with both locations.
For the website we combine our
inventory, which gives us an even
larger number of vehicles to showcase. What's great about having a
second store is that it's much smaller and we can compare percentages
and share situations.

WHAT DOES MAGIC CITY
FORD LOOK FOR WHEN
HIRING?

I think you hire smiling faces, because you can teach everything else.
You can't teach somebody to be happy if they go through life complaining about everything. I have some

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

Continued on pg. 34
NOVEMBER 2017

http://www.DIGITALDEALER.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Digital Dealer - November 2017