Digital Dealer - March 2020 - 24

E XC LU S I V E I N T E RV I E W

DEALER MAGAZINE: Thanks for agreeing
to talk with us this morning, Jay. I wanted
to start with your background. You started
in the car business very early, selling cars
at age 15. What initially attracted you to
selling cars as a teenager, and why did you
stick with it over the years?
JAY: My dad was in the car business, and I was
always fascinated by it. I started selling cars at a
little Chevrolet store my dad owned in Milford,
Michigan, when I was 15. It was a very small store
that sold about 25, maybe 30 cars a month.
When I graduated high school, I went to
Northwood University and studied automotive
marketing and management. Once I was out of
college, I started managing that little dealership
in Milford and worked as the finance manager
when I was 19. As I said, it was a small store. As
soon as I got actively involved in running the
dealership and took over management, we start-

DEALER MAGAZINE: What appeals,
excites or surprises you most about retail
automotive?
JAY: It's always changing. I do think it's fascinating how the minute somebody comes up with
some new concept, everybody just dives right in,
whether it's the subscription concept or electrification or self-driving. People see it as the next
big thing, without asking questions. Then, over
time, reality sets in. They start thinking maybe
it's more expensive than we first thought or not
as practical as it sounded or looked on paper?
Yes, to some degree some of those changes
are coming and will influence our future. But I
also think people tend to jump into things and
go overboard. That's why I prefer to sit back and
really look at something and ask if it's realistic or
when will it happen before reacting to it. We're
in a unique business. It's not as if we're selling
toothpaste on Amazon.

" We're in a unique business. It's not as if
we're selling toothpaste on Amazon."
ed to get profitable. Then I partnered with my
dad on building a new Chevrolet store, and I've
added on to it four times. We just won Dealer of
the Year with Chevrolet for that store. It's a great
store that continues to grow year after year. I've
grown through successful partnerships and have
never had a bad one.

DEALER MAGAZINE: What was the best
advice your father gave you about selling
cars?
JAY: I'm not sure you can repeat it exactly
verbatim, but one of his favorite sayings was
about making apple butter out of horse manure.
For example, I ended up buying a Chevy store in
Livonia, Michigan, that had gone through the GM
wind-down process but wasn't prepared to do
what it would take to grow the business. We partnered with them and built a new facility, steadily
growing the business since 2012 and going from
50% RSI to 200% RSI. Today, that store remains
incredibly profitable.
The point is that I always look at the glass as
half full, not half empty. I try to find something
interesting about a deal or a person, a potential
employee or a bad situation. That kind of thing.

[ d i g i t a l d e a l e r. c o m ]

Many things affect our business, legal and
political things. I believe a large part of the population still want to visit a store and see a $50k
car in-person versus buying it over the internet.
People still need to be sold something.

DEALER MAGAZINE: What is your digital
marketing strategy?
JAY: If you're a car dealer, you really have to
be very disciplined and study what's going on
around your dealership digitally. No question
about that. For instance, if you go to Las Vegas
and sit down to play blackjack even though
you've never studied the game or understand its
dynamics, you're probably going to lose. You're
doubling down or splitting or whatever without
knowing why or what you're doing. You've got
to understand a game before you can play it,
especially if you want to win. That's where your
market metrics come in to play and why it's so
important to understand those metrics.

DEALER MAGAZINE: What about more
traditional marketing channels?
JAY: Although we're big believers in the power
of digital marketing, we're also focused on tradi-

March 2020

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Digital Dealer - March 2020

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