So, I moved into the Jeep world in 1996. I started off at a Jeep dealer, and I quickly rose up. I was a shop foreman, working through the service department. In the early 2000s, one of my best friends bought a brand new Jeep Rubicon when it came out, and he took me out Jeeping with him, and within seconds I was hooked. I knew this was something I had to do.
I wanted to do it within the dealership environment. The owners of the dealership weren't really into that. They really just kind of had this "make cash now, and not worry about the long run". And for me, everything's about the future and about relationships. I decided to just do my own thing. I knew that I liked people, I knew I could work well, I knew I could do the customer service aspect, and of course, I knew Jeeps.
So, we started off tinkering around in a garage. We moved into our first small shop with one employee. My parents, they would come and work with me. My Dad and my Mom.
As we grew, we expanded quickly. Customer service paid off. Our people trusted us. They kept coming back: we'd build one Jeep, they'd get another Jeep; we'd build a second Jeep, they'd trade that one in; we'd build a third Jeep. And just on and on. A lot of our clients go back 15 years. A lot of our clients go back to my dealership days: they followed me over.
I don't believe in the "make a buck now" philosophy. It's not about "How many sales can we close today?" It's about how many relationships and how many longterm clients we can build, and then how do we keep them in the building? That's first and foremost here. Again, we ... Values-based is everything that we do. We know that if we do the right thing and if we help people, if we solve their challenges over and over again, they're going to keep coming back. And that's our goal: solve every challenge that they have in the best way possible.