Pub. 2 2021-2022 Issue 2

continued on page 10 I also followed, and still do, a lot of successful business owners in the car business. There’s a lot to be said for learning from others. The Alan Jay Automotive Network — a network that spans over multiple states and employs close to 1,000 people — is just about to turn 30 years old. That’s a relatively short time to accomplish what you have. What motivates you to get up each day and do it again? Today, it’s growing people, building opportunities, and moving people up. People development is fun. We have 12 dealerships in Florida and four in Michigan. Growth is really about economies of scale. For instance, we can share switchboards within the Sebring stores, and in Michigan, we can share snowplows. If we go into a market, we want to expand within that market and take advantage of those economies of scale. My partners in Michigan are Art White, Michael Witham, and James Lizotte. Art, Michael and I are lifelong friends. We all went to Northwood University and started as freshmen 1986. Art worked for KIA, and we had talked over the years about owning a dealership together. KIA of Canton became available; we did our due diligence, during which we found out that they had no snowplow. It snows a lot in Michigan. I looked across the street and saw Nissan of Canton and wondered if they had a snowplow. James, Michael, Art, and I had a roundtable, and as a result, we acquired not only the KIA of Canton store but also Nissan of Canton, Nissan of Dearborn and Nissan of McComb. Those acquisitions happened essentially over getting access to a snowplow. The stores are doing great. And so is the snowplow. Here’s what I have learned, the bigger we become, the more we can. Everything is about economies of scale, snowplows included. We all have core values that guide what we do. They are those proverbial lines in the sand. Do you have a personal and business creed, if you will, that you live by? “You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give,” has always resonated with me. What do you think will be the most significant challenge the auto industry will face in the next 5-10 years? Does it concern you? I think one of the industry’s most significant challenges will be staffing. And, yes, it concerns me. People don’t wake up and want to be an auto mechanic. The auto industry has a smaller labor pool because young people are not guided into the industry. I think we need to do a better job of showcasing the benefits of working in this industry. We need to work on recruiting and retaining. I think we can all see the effects of a smaller labor market post-COVID, but the labor pool was shrinking well before COVID. Pub Yr 2 | Issue 2 9 CFADA.ORG