OK- I stopped yesterday’s post with this medicated brownie body high setting in on both me and my pops, but I am going to deviate and just write about something that is on my head today and the whole reason why I decided to go down this Medium journey.
In January of 2015 I started a new gig – for those of you that do not know, I have been in the auto industry for about 14 years. I started in sales at the WORLD FAMOUS Bill Heard Chevrolet in Sanford, Fl (actually i started in Daytona Beach about 8 months earlier but who cares it was boring and I learned enough to get me stomping with the big dawgs at Bill Heard). I was fortunate enough to have a General Manager that recognized my talent and knew I needed to be groomed into something spectacular. He walked me through all the steps- I turned into a high performing sales person and while I was selling (he left the Heard organization and started his own dealer group) he called me and asked me to relocate to Ohio to become a finance manager.
I was on the first thing smoking- he purchased a small under performing Chrysler Dodge and Jeep store in Calcutta/East Liverpool, OH. Y’all Calcutta is a cool little bumpkin town of 3752 people- just so you know if your in downtown Calcutta you can drive 2 minutes east you were in PA, if you drove 2 minutes south you were in West Virginia. Calcutta had a Tim Horton’s, I don’t think they even had a McDonald’s in Calcutta. Just so you know how bumpkin this town was- I opened a bank account at their local bank 1st National Community Bank and these mofo’s gave me a damn booklet… I said, “what is this for?” She replied, “when you make your deposits we write it in your booklet and stamp it- make sure you get a stamp or else there is no other record of your proof of deposit.”
WHAT DA HELL- it was 2004 they gave people little bank books back in the 1830’s LOL. Shortly after we transformed that store from a 20 car a month lot into a 120 car a month store he purchased another dealership in Cleveland. Lawd have mercy- I LOVE CLEVELAND- like real talk that’s my second home, I would choose to live in Cleveland before Florida and I love the sun. I was promoted to a sales manager and then general sales manager but our owner taught everyone the ropes in Cleveland. He kept us involved in meetings with our advertising outlets (television, newspaper, digital), had us meeting with banks constantly (taking buyers out to lunch to build relationships so they would approve more deals for our store) and really groomed each of us managers to have all the skills to run our own store.
So lets get back to the subject for today- I started a new job in January as the sub prime sales director for a new car franchise in Seattle. They are one of the top dealers in Washington for retail auto units- My job entailed figuring out who we would use for advertising and how we would use them, building a 10 person high performing sales team, putting deals together and getting people financed. About a year and a half earlier I started my own company www.buyacareasy.com. I had my site built and it was generating leads but I didn’t have a clear cut plan on how I was going to scale the business. So from January until July 24th I spent approx 14 hours a day 7 days a week at this dealership (working my ass off GETTING MAD, while HE GETTING RICH).
On July 24th (due to some wild circumstances) I was terminated and I will tell you- getting fired never felt so good. Now I was stressed as hell wondering what I was going to do next but I decided to go full steam ahead and TURN Buyacareasy.com into a powerhouse of a company that I can sell to Cox Automotive Group in 5 years. I accomplished more after I got fired in 3 months for my business than I had accomplished in 1.5 years while working for someone else. Full website redesign, business plan complete, pitch deck put together, a clear goal for the company and how to brand it, acquire customers efficiently (still working the kinks out with this), how we will market and gain traction with our B2B clients, I was also able to determine why there is a need for my company, figure out how long it will take me to scale the company and what processes will be in place to complete this task. I have been to over 30 meet up groups within the Seattle start up and tech community (the people you meet and information you gather from these types of meetings is priceless).
It is wild how “the galaxy” (I don’t wanna be too religious in post’s so I will use the galaxy in place of the word GOD- this might change because I really don’t give 2 flying Russian goat fucks what y’all think) can line things up in your life – bring you a terrible experience like getting fired in order to allow you to walk the a path the higher powers have set for your life. Bringing you to your lowest point in order for you to map out the next 5- 10 years of your life – laying out a clear plan for you to be successful and give you something to live for every morning instead of waking up to make someone else wealthy. The best day of 2015 was July 24th- the day I got fired!
To be continued…
@jessepeakdotcom
