About
My family has been in it since 1960, with our name on most of the signs. The difference is that somewhere along the way I found how to do it on my own terms.
In 1960 my father, eighteen or so, asked his parents if he could sell a couple of cars out of their yard in Seekonk, Massachusetts. Two cars became a lot. The lot became a dealership down the road. That's where the family got into this business, and it's been in it ever since.
By 1970 the business had moved to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and my father had taken on Subaru when it was still a young brand in America. Our name was on the building. That's the part I don't think I appreciated until much later — when your family's name is on the building, the way you treat somebody on Tuesday is still there on Friday. You can't move to the next town.
Some of my earliest memories are from when I was about five years old. By then my parents had the Subaru and Saab store in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and the dealership was my playground. While other kids were on jungle gyms, I was climbing through brand-new cars, crawling from the trunk into the back seat through the fold-down seats, much to my mother's horror. She was convinced that one day I'd lock myself in a trunk. Thankfully that day never came.
As I got older, every department fascinated me for a different reason. I spent time in parts, in service, and especially in the body shop. I can still remember the smell of fresh paint and Bondo. Eventually I found my way into the accounting office, playing with the adding machines and getting interested in how the business actually worked behind the scenes.
It wasn't just a business to me. It was a living, breathing place where people solved problems and took care of customers.
In 1976, when I was twelve, my family moved to Florida, where my father opened a Chrysler, Plymouth, AMC, Jeep and Renault dealership in DeLand. Once again the dealership was part of daily life. And yet, despite growing up in it, I wasn't sure I wanted any part of it.
My hesitation was never the work. It was the reputation. I believed too many people in this business were storytellers instead of truth-tellers. I wanted a career where customers trusted the people they were doing business with, and I wasn't convinced the car business could offer that.
So I tried other things first.
My first jobs were outside the dealership entirely — fast food, then Publix, then a convenience store. Eventually I found something that genuinely excited me: a high-performance speed shop selling exhaust systems, wheels, manifolds, anything that made a car faster or louder. Better still, we were involved in NASCAR Busch Series racing, and I got to work around cars that ran at Daytona, Talladega, Atlanta, Darlington and Richmond.
For a while I thought racing was my future. But it wasn't yet the industry it would later become, the opportunities were thin, and eventually I found my way back to the family business.
When I came back, my father hired me as his finance director. I was twenty-one.
Working with my father wasn't always easy. We respected each other but we saw the business differently — my philosophy was built around relationships and transparency, and after enough hard conversations I decided it was time to build my own path.
In 1989 I took a sales job at Fred Bondesen Chevrolet, Oldsmobile and Cadillac in DeLand, and within seven or eight months I was moved into management in the used car department. Over the next nine years I learned every part of the business — not because I had to, but because I wanted to understand what actually made a dealership work.
Eventually the owner and I partnered up and started a company called PrimeCar, in DeLand. I ran it from 1998 to 2018 — twenty years. Owning a store teaches you things a classroom can't: leadership, accountability, how a deal really comes together, and how much of a customer's experience is decided by people they never meet.
That's the part I still draw on every day. When someone asks me why the wait is so long, or how their trade number got where it got, I'm not guessing. I ran those departments.
As the independent used car business got harder, I decided it was time for another chapter, and that chapter brought me to Toyota. Since 2019 I've been selling a brand whose values line up with mine — quality, reliability, and being worth owning for a long time. Toyota customers generally know why they're buying a Toyota, and I like working with people who already care about those things.
Skydiving and boating, mostly. The best days on the lot are the ones that end on the water.
I wanted to prove that buying a vehicle doesn't have to feel stressful, confusing or adversarial. Everybody who walks in deserves honesty, respect, and a day they remember for the right reasons. That's the whole of it.
The best part of this job isn't selling another vehicle. It's watching someone leave knowing they were actually taken care of — confident in the decision, not worn down into it.