Digital Dealer - November 2017 - 32

C O V E R S TO RY

Continued from pg. 31

SHE TOLD ME TO TURN TO PAGE 156. SHE SAID
THE WHOLE CHAPTER WAS ABOUT ME. I SAID
ARE YOU KIDDING? I'M IN MY OWN TEXT BOOK AT
VIRGINIA TECH."
2001, I started our internet sales department and I would answer emails
and answer leads, then I would hand
them off to a sales person because
during the day I was in school.
However, I was able to give them the
most accurate product information
and the quickest response. I grew
our internet sales to be the number
one internet department in the state
of Virginia at the time. I did that for
a couple of years and then attended
Virginia Tech.

AFTER BEING SO
ENTREPRENEURIAL AT SUCH
AN EARLY AGE, WHAT WAS
COLLEGE LIKE?

I was on the cover of BusinessWeek when I was fifteen. When I
was in an advanced business class
at Virginia Tech and I came in one
day and sat next to a friend and she
asked me if I did last night's reading
assignment. I told her no, I didn't,
and asked her what was it about?
She said it was on entrepreneurship.
I told her I am obviously interested
in that and I'm an entrepreneur
myself and will go back and read
the assignment. She told me to turn
to page 156. She said the whole
chapter was about me. I said are you
kidding? I'm in my own text book
at Virginia Tech. I'm telling you
this story because at the time, when
the article came out when I was 15,
the publisher McGraw-Hill owned
BusinessWeek and McGraw-Hill
had obviously published text books.
What they had done was repurposed
the story about me and my companies and enterprises and here it was
in my text book. This was like my
first semester in college.
But I dropped out of college after
my first semester and started a
company called "Certificate Swap."
It was going to be an online mar-

32

NOVEMBER 2017

ketplace for gift cards. The gift card
business was a $40-billion a year
industry at that time, the number
one gift to give or receive at Christmas was a gift card, because you put
a little bit more thought into it than
cash. Obviously, you could end up
with a gift card you didn't want, so
what we did was connect buyers and
sellers. This was back in 2003. I told
my parents I was going to take one
year off from college. It wasn't going
to affect anything. I was going to
take one semester off from college
and try and raise five million dollars
in venture capital. I actually raised
ten million dollars. At the last hour,
my partner and I decided to walk
away from the ten million because
we were going to be giving up control, we're not going to be calling the
shots.

AT SOME POINT, YOU
RETURNED TO THE CAR
BUSINESS. HOW'D THAT
HAPPEN?

After I sold Certificate Swap, I
started working back at the dealership. At the time, we had a used
car manager who had just left, and
our general manager, who had been
with the company for 47 years, the
only job he had ever had in his life
suggested they make me the used
car manager. I couldn't go back to
internet sales because that was two
years ago and I had obviously hired
somebody to replace me when I
went away to college. I said, yeah,
used cars. One of the most important parts of a dealership, you're
managing basically a portfolio of
cars, which to me was no different
than managing a stock portfolio.
You're looking at your ROI, how fast
can you turn it, what's a good stock
or a good inventory to have, what's
a bad stock? I took over as used car

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

sales manager, that year we grew
$10 million in sales. After used car
sales manager, I became general
sales manager. I was not going to
stay in this business if I could not
own all of it, so I started writing
checks and bought out the other
shareholders.

YOU HAVE A SUCCESSFUL
BUSINESS BOOK THAT WAS
PUBLISHED BY A MAJOR
PUBLISHER. COULD YOU
TALK ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE AS A PUBLISHED
AUTHOR?

Sure. In 2007, my book You Call
the Shots was published by Simon
and Schuster. The book's about
how you're in control of your own
life, which is why we didn't take
the VC money. Anyway, when the
book came out, I was separate from
the dealership and was a regular at
CNBC, where one of Oprah's people saw me. They were casting for
a show for ABC that was all about
charity. It had huge celebrities like
Jennifer Aniston. I was traveling
with Oprah for three months. It's
obviously a T.V. show but we were
competing against each other to
see who can raise the most money
for charity and we did it in eight
different cities around the country.
Every Sunday I was on T.V. after
"Extreme Home Makeover."
Parallel to this, it was '08 or '09,
I was still getting all the emails
from the dealership. The car
business was doing poorly. I have
a younger sister but otherwise I'm
the only heir to the dealership.
Ultimately, I said to myself, if
I don't go back and work at the
store, then it's going to be sold. I
didn't want to be the one to cut off
a fourth-generation business, and
I also love the car business. That's
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