How did you become the general manager at Jenkins Honda of Leesburg? When I first started working for him, Mr. Jenkins was the general manager at Courtesy Pontiac GMC. He started me out in sales, and after a year, I went into finance. I’ve worked for him all but four years since then, and I’ve been a general manager for him for 13 years. I’ve worked as the general manager at Jenkins Honda of Leesburg for the last seven years. When I wasn’t working for Mr. Jenkins, I was helping my dad out with some little private lots he had. But Mr. Jenkins and I always communicated with each other even when I wasn’t working for him. Why did you join CFADA, and how have you been involved in it since then? Glenn Ritchey is a general manager in Daytona and the vice-chair at CFADA. He called me because he was looking for a Honda dealer to join the association. What are the benefits? Why is membership in CFADA important? Belonging to different groups is important because It gets your name out there and creates more business. Associations like CFADA put great minds in the same field together, and the relationships that members make with other members give them an advantage over everybody else. In addition to CFADA, I’m also a board member for the Chamber of Commerce in Leesburg, Lake County. What is your biggest career accomplishment so far? I don’t know that I’ve done it yet. I’m 52. I hope my biggest accomplishment is still ahead. What are the three most valuable career suggestions you would tell someone you wanted to mentor? 1. Learn from other people’s mistakes. 2. Stay in one place. Don’t jump from place to place. 3. You’ve got to balance your work-to-home-life ratio because you’ll lose personal relationships that are important to you if you don’t. I’ve been there and done that. Supply chain issues have been a huge challenge for everyone. How are you solving them at your dealerships? New car volume is down, grosses are up, and we’ve switched our focus to CPOs (Certified Pre-Owned) and used cars. I think the problems will get worse by the end of the year. Last year, we had supplies on the ground; this year, we don’t have what we had last year. However, the supply chain should start ramping up by the middle of 2023, going into 2024. What is the biggest challenge facing dealerships in the next three to five years? How can dealers successfully deal with it? We’re making record gross profits, and some managers think they created all their success. But it’s not always them creating it; it’s the market. Dealerships need to be training the sales staff. Dealers who don’t will have a hard time continuing to succeed when things get back to normal because their sales staff will have forgotten how to sell cars. We train our staff the same way we did two to three years ago. What do you enjoy doing when you aren’t working? I work six days a week, so I don’t have much free time, but I play golf and spend time with the family. There’s a huge lake in Florida where we like to go, and we just got back from visiting my wife’s family in Pennsylvania. Tell us about your family. My mother is living with her husband in South Carolina. She is a retired nurse in her 80s and is doing continued on page 10 Pub Yr 2 | Issue 3 9 CFADA.ORG
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