So I’m back…. in the auto biz that is! My three year (not so) “vacation” to play full-time mom, dad, chauffeur, tutor, peace-keeper, etc while my wife buckled down at school to complete a Physicians Assistant program has come to an end. Is it natural that an industry owning twelve years of my life would be the place that I plug back in to pick up where I left off?

Where did I leave off? Well, as a commercial fleet sales manager for a Phoenix area Ford dealership, 2007 hit me like a ton of bricks! 2008 and 2009 were spent trying to re-invent a way to do business and be successful while a client base I spent years growing was struggling just to keep the doors open. You can imagine (if you didn’t live it yourself) how life did a one eighty for anyone anywhere along the food-chain tied to the construction and development industries. Companies that I’d count on to purchase 3-4 trucks a month at their peak where calling just to find a way to do business knowing they were on the cusp of surrendering some or all of their fleets back to the lenders.

Surviving 2008/09 meant getting creative, looking to customers outside Arizona, and embracing used commercial vehicles as a new way of life. eBay became my new office! It was working (and well), but only as long as the supply of good condition commercial trucks and niche high-line cars were available. As the market stabilized somewhere near the bottom of “the crash” the availability of vehicles dried up as demand soared in the pre-owned market and supply dwindled.

My three year absence to play domestic engineer wasn’t completely void of moving metal though. Referrals to help people sell vehicles and dump aging inventories would manage to hustle up enough cash to keep the kids fead and the lights on. A few other side jobs and producing a weekly radio show filled the gaps of whatever time I had left. L O N G story, short. Here I am now. My wife’s graduated, working in orthopedics and sports medicine, we survived as a family, and I’m returning to an industry that I thought I had left for good.

I’ve found myself with the challenge of a dream opportunity within the Chapman Automotive Group and it seems as if life might just alright. They say “timing is everything”. I’m thinking that might just be the case here. While life as we knew it (pre-2007) hasn’t recovered, I’m seeing signs that we’re heading the right direction. Without a doubt, financial lending played a key role in “the crash” so to see lender like Volkswagen Credit expanding operations and automotive insiders like J.D. Power forecasting a hopeful future, I’m thinking the time is NOW to pick up where I left off!

The best part about “playing” cars and trucks for a living is the people I meet and to watch my relationships with clients turn to friends. As the economy strengthens, being positioned to serve my friends in an industry I love and watch their growth and recovery happen, really makes it pretty easy to get out of bed in the mornings. How would things have turned out if I never left for “vacation”? Who knows? And does it really matter anyway? That was then and now it’s today! And besides… “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.” –Bil Keane