Digital Dealer - August 2017 - 22

C O V E R S TO RY

Continued from pg. 21

I WOULD SAY THE BIGGEST LESSON THAT I
TOOK AWAY FROM MY THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE
WAS THAT IT TAKES A TEAM FOR SOMETHING TO
SUCCEED."
health of your employees is one of
the most important and yet most
overlooked things. We spend so
much time talking about customer
satisfaction, which is so important,
both in online reputation and in
the dealership. But I don't think we
spend enough time focusing on our
employees and looking at our hours
and looking at their schedules and
making sure that you have happy
employees, happy sales people, happy technicians. Because if you don't
have great employees you're not going to have great customer satisfaction. That's one of the things. Making sure you're running a successful
business, for sure, but you also want
to make sure your employees want
to come to work every day, which is
super-super important to me. Between the two stores, we have about
120 employees.
I'd like to talk about our recent
acquisition by Capstone Automotive Group for a moment. I was
fortunate enough to work with the
previous dealer, Ken Schwartz,
since 2005 and he made a decision
last year to sell to Capstone. Part of
their strategy is that they look for
successful dealerships with proven
successes and operators. In a lot of
cases they're able to go in and the
dealer principal is able to step aside.
As a result of the Capstone acquisition, I was promoted to Executive
Manager. They are in acquisition
mode and are looking to buy more
dealerships. Capstone looks for
successful owners looking to cash
out some equity and continue to
operate the dealership, as well as
successful owners looking to exit
completely. They've been incredible
to work with.

HOW'S BUSINESS BEEN
LATELY?

AUGUST 2017

Fantastic. On the Subaru side,
our sales are up 30% since 2014.
Also, World Subaru finished 5th in
the nation in certified pre-owned
sales in 2016. I would also add for
Subaru we're a Stellar Care Award
recipient three years running (20142016). Our Jeep store has experienced double-digit growth, as well.
And our parts and services
divisions are booming. We'll be
under two potentially simultaneous
construction projects soon. One for
service and sales at Subaru that's
going to give us an additional eight
service bays and a car wash to take
us to twenty-three bays. And we're
doing a full dealership renovation at
Jeep. Both stores will get two drivethrough service lanes.
For Subaru, it is going to solve a
capacity problem. A lot of Subaru
dealers, us included, are not fit to
handle the growth that's coming at
us today and down the foreseeable
future, as far as units for operation
and service departments. The expansion at the Subaru building will
allow us to take better care of our
customers' current and, more importantly, future needs for service
and be able to accommodate them.
The renovation at the Jeep Chrysler
Dodge Ram store is going to be a
game-changer for us. We're in a
smaller, former Lincoln-Mercury
showroom that when done is going
to be a fully-compliant, beautiful
new facility, and I think that's going
to bring us to the next level for sure.

YOU WERE RECENTLY
ELECTED TO THE 2017 CLASS
OF AUTOMOTIVE NEWS 40
UNDER 40. HOW WERE YOU
SELECTED & WHAT DOES IT
MEAN TO YOU PERSONALLY?

It's a huge honor and very, very
humbling. There are thirty-nine

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

other people recognized and I
happen to be one of the forty. It's
kind of surreal, in a way, to think
that they thought that much of me
and our accomplishments here as a
team to have warranted the award.
Someone in the industry nominated
me. We have a lot of involvement in
the community. We try to do a lot
of philanthropic things that benefit
our community and I think that
was something that was highlighted during the process. After I was
nominated, I had to go through a
vetting process with Automotive
News and ultimately selected by
them.

YOU MENTIONED PHILANTHROPIC EFFORTS THAT
BENEFIT THE COMMUNITY.
SPECIFICALLY, WHAT LOCAL
CAUSES DO THE STORES
HELP SUPPORT?

We mainly support two initiatives. The most important one is
we partner with the Arms Wide
Open Childhood Cancer Foundation, which is a local non-profit,
and we have raised, to date, about
$225,000 for childhood cancer
research funding. It is a cause that
is very, very near to me but not in a
familial way. I have a friend whose
daughter was diagnosed a few years
ago and I was just in awe of the
spring-into-action warrior that she
turned into. She not only advocated
for her daughter but she also took
it on as a cause, once her daughter
was cured, for good. It's been so
eye-opening. I think all of us could
name a couple of people they know
who have or had cancer, but I think
you would struggle to name a child
under the age of eight. It was just
earth-shattering to me that this
exists.
So, we took it on as a cause and

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