Thanks for chatting, Carla! How did you get into the industry?
Oh, geez. Okay, I hope you're ready for this.
I am. Always.
So, I grew up in this business. I'm the third generation. It's a business I grew up watching and spending time in. It's also a business I never intended to be involved in. I was like, not for me, no thank you. I wanted to make my own path and do my own thing.
I went off to college and studied clinical psychology as an undergrad. I fell in love with the research side of it and worked in a hospital while doing my co-op in college. I wanted to pursue that as a career. I moved on to attend Columbia and got my Master's in Clinical Psychology, graduated, and planned to get my PhD to do research.
In that lapse of time before I could apply to the next level of programs, my dad was like, “hey, just so you know, if you can afford your apartment in New York, I'm not paying for it while you're not in school. Pack it up, come home, put all your applications together, and figure out what you will do next.” So, that's what I did. I moved home. And then he asked, "In the meantime, why don't you come and help me at the dealership?" So, that's what I did. A month later, he had me enrolled in the NADA Dealer Academy. I figured, I'll just go and see what it's like and continue to work on my application process. It was kind of a way to keep my dad at bay and be able to get to the next level of where I wanted to be.
Then I started selling cars. And I fell in love with selling cars. I love the interaction with the customer, I love the challenge, I love the sales floor, I love the commission. All around, I love selling cars.
I brought a different perspective to the business that wasn't initially there. I genuinely cared about what the customer wanted. I genuinely cared about their follow-up. I wanted to create relationships where people wanted to come back and see me and wanted to do business with us. And I wanted to make a difference in their car buying experience, away from the cliche of what a car buying experience is.
I sold cars for a couple of years and then wanted to learn finance and finish the Dealer Academy. I was a finance manager in the organization for a while and then moved over to the desk. And I loved the desk, working the desk and running a sales floor and motivating the salespeople, and coaching them on how to go back to the customer. I fell in love again with that leadership role, almost more than I did selling cars.
Eventually, my dad bought a store in Rhode Island, and I moved to Rhode Island and ran it. Shortly after that, my dad was diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumor, and they gave him four to six months to live. It’s funny how things work out right? Because if I didn't get involved in the business, and if I didn't come home, and if I didn't have that lapse of time, he probably would have sold the company. I was lucky enough that I had worked in the business for as long as I had that I was familiar with it.
We closed that dealership, and I moved back home with my dad and started looking for a house closer to him so I could take care of him. We were fortunate enough that he lived for two-and-a-half more years, and in that time he groomed me to take over the company. I went from learning how to be a manager to learning how to manage the managers, which is a huge change. My brother who was in college in Hawaii at the time also moved home to help.
My dad passed away two-and-a-half years later, and my brother and I worked hard to keep the company going. I feel very grateful that the people working here believed in and trusted us; we were really young. They had their own families depending on them, but they stuck with us. And we were able to grow the company. It's been an amazing progression. We get to keep my dad's name and legacy alive. I always think back to how everything happens for a reason. Because me coming home from college with no intent to ever be in the business and working is the whole reason that Tommy Car still exists.
I'm sure at the time, coming home felt like a step backward.
Yeah, I felt like I was just appeasing my dad, waiting to move toward my own goals. It turns out this is what I love at the end of the day. It's in my blood. They say you can never leave it, and it's true. Once you're in the car business, and you fall in love with the car business, that's it.
How did Dealer Academy compare to your time getting a Master's in Psychology?
It was interesting because a lot of the people in Dealer Academy had been working in the business for a long time. I remember kind of just sitting back and not knowing a lot of the terminology and just watching and paying attention. I remember a woman raising her hand one day and asking, "excuse me, what's a row?" They were confused. So she clarified, "you know, on the page, it says row." Like an R.O. for a repair order. Luckily, that wasn't me. It was way more hands-on, whereas the Master's program was more technical.
Do you think your time studying Psychology gives you additional leadership insight?
I think that the biggest insight is you become really good at reading people. I think that skill really helped me in sales. I try to coach everyone that works for me that sales is psychology. It's the psychology behind the sale, how you're setting it up, and what that looks like. So yeah, I think that it definitely helps in the sales side of it.
I had no leadership skills, so that has been something that I've been challenging myself to get really good at. Being a good leader to everybody here and investing in the people that we have so they can become good leaders.
I see a lot of times in this business that we take people and progress them through positions in a car dealership based on their longevity, how many cars they sell, and how much gross they make. And they end up in a leadership role where they really need more leadership training or capabilities to be in that role. We're trying to change that in our organization.
A quick look at your LinkedIn shows all kinds of community engagement. Was that inherited from your father's time?
My dad always invested in the community, but not to the extent that we do. He always cared for and invested in the community we lived in, for the people who worked for us, or for those who lived in the neighborhood. That definitely came from my dad, but I think we took it to another level.
We only close three or four days out of the year, and in the past, one of those days was for a golf tournament where my dad took all of the employees out golfing. He actually wasn't even a golfer, he just thought it was a nice thing for everyone to get out of the dealership and spend time together. So when he passed, we started a golf tournament in his memory.
We turned that golf day into a day to honor and remember him and raise money for his doctor at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. Wen, and his neuro-oncologist team there. Every year his doctor comes out and tells the progress and the strides he made with the money we donated. So, the people who come get to put the pieces together.
It's such an amazing, touching event. This will be 15 years, and we'll hit $1.5 million donated. That got us started in the culture of giving back, and now we always look for opportunities to be and build a culture that cares for people.