This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, Saint St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

[music] You know the expression shoulda, woulda, coulda.

It's about the opportunities we have and the choices we make or could have made.

We all face windows of opportunity in our lives.

It's how we chose our careers and our relationships.

What is it that drives some of us to make bold choices and take big risks, while others make safer choices with fewer risks?

You're about to meet a Tampa Bay entrepreneur who's boldly chosen his windows of opportunity and created powerhouse businesses built on over-the-top customer service.

Next on the Suncoast Business Forum.

Suncoast Business Forum, brought to you by the financial services firm of Raymond James.

Offering personalized wealth management advice and banking and capital markets expertise, all with a commitment to putting client's financial well-being.

First, more information is available at raymondjames.com.

[music] Have you ever heard the expression a bad deal is better than no deal?

It doesn't seem to make common sense, right?

Well, I thought so too, until I spoke with Tampa Bay entrepreneur Scott Fink, who's owned multiple automotive dealerships for nearly 40 years and has been ranked number one in sales many times.

Scott is CEO of Fink Auto Group.

Scott, welcome to Suncoast Business Forum.

Geoff, thanks for having me.

Pleasure to be here.

Now, till I met you, I had never heard that expression that a bad deal is better than no deal.

How is that possible?

So when when I frame that, that is in relation to, um, the car business.

Right.

How I built my businesses and how I drove to be number one.

It's all about customer acquisition.

It is about in our business units in operation.

So the most important thing to me always is that customer profit aside a bad deal, getting them in my car is better than no deal having them not in my car.

That's where that comes from.

How do you turn that into a profitable relationship over time?

Well, of course, in the car business, the sale of the vehicle is just really step one.

It is building customer loyalty over time and being able to service that customer over a longer period of time.

In addition, when they're driving your car and you've taken care of them, they become a vocal advocate for you and your brand.

You bought your first dealership in 1989.

It was a Mitsubishi dealership, and over the last 35, almost 40 years, you've had nearly a dozen, maybe more than a dozen dealerships in this area.

Give us an overview of the auto dealerships you've owned.

So when I came to Florida, I was a minority partner in a Mitsubishi dealership in Clearwater.

A handful of years later, we were able to acquire the adjacent Toyota dealership.

Ran those for a few years and then ultimately sold them.

And then I started again and was afforded the opportunity to get the Hyundai franchise in New Port Richey, Florida.

That was in 2001, opened it in 2003.

Subsequently had another Hyundai store, two Volkswagen store, Genesis stores.

Mazda, Chevrolet opened the Hyundai store in DeLand, Florida, had invested in a Mitsubishi store in Boston, so opportunities presented themselves and in many cases I was able to create different opportunities.

Now, the automotive industry is really not just one industry, it's multiple industries.

There are the car manufacturers, there's the auto dealers like you, and there's the service operations, repair and service.

How do all these fit together?

That's what's interesting, I think, about the car business.

It is simplistically complex.

So you've got the the manufacturer who we call the OEM.

Right.

And they build the cars and they sell the cars to the dealers.

And then the dealers are independent business men and women in different markets all around America.

And we are tasked to then sell the cars and then capture the customer and take care of that customer and build brand loyalty at the local level.

In 1989, you bought your first dealership, Mitsubishi Dealership, located in Clearwater.

It was losing money.

You turned it around in three years, and in that period of time, you became the number one volume dealer in Mitsubishi in the United States, and there were 700 other dealers.

How did you do that?

Yeah.

So I came down as the minority partner, and I didn't know what I didn't know.

We were losing money, as you, as you stated.

And and I thought I really needed to learn the business because I had come from the manufacturer side and I really didn't understand the retail side.

So really, what I did for six months is I just watched, watched and learned, looked at processes, thought what I thought was good or bad, what I can improve on.

But what I really at that point understood is that everything had to center around the customer.

And that's what drove me.

That's where the bad deal is better than no deal came from.

That's where the value of the customer supersedes any profit or loss on the car.

It started right there that if I could build an army of vocal advocates, I can build this brand.

>> You have the opportunity to sell that dealership and an adjacent dealership that you bought, and a few years later, you had an opportunity to get the Hyundai franchise for the west coast, Florida in a short period of time.

You built that into the number one sales volume Hyundai dealership in the United States again, but not just once.

You did it for eight consecutive years as number one.

How did you do that?

That would get you into Hall of Fame?

Yeah, well, thank you for that.

Um, the philosophy was the same and the stars did align, right?

I mean, sometimes you you have to be lucky and smart.

And I was a little bit of both there.

We had the right market.

Hyundai was a a brand that was up and coming.

They were, from a pricing perspective, about 70% or 75% less of Toyota and Honda.

So if I could build this owner base because I really believed in the product, and the product was backed by America's Best Warranty.

And people would say, well, you need to put the best warranty on the car because the cars aren't of true value.

And I would say, no, that's not true.

We can put the best warranty on the car because it doesn't break down.

And one by one, day by day, sale by sale, we were able to build this army of loyal advocates for the brand.

Let's talk about your formative years.

Let's talk about where you grew up and about your family.

Sure.

Yeah.

So I'm the third son of Rose and Dave Fink.

My parents grew up as orphans, and they met in the orphanage.

There was a huge delta between my eldest brother and myself 18.5 years.

So although there was three of us, I really grew up as an only child.

And what I like to tell people is there was lots of conversation in my home about money.

We talked about money all the time.

And we talked about money because we didn't have any money.

So I knew from there I it's not that I wanted to be rich.

I didn't know, really understand the value of money.

What I knew is that I didn't want money or lack of money to be a stressful in my adult life, as it was in my young life.

It was always a point of contention with my parents.

You grew up in Brooklyn, New York and New York City.

Brooklyn.

1960s 1970s.

That was a pretty rough time.

The climate in the projects, because I grew up in the projects and and I remember my mother convinced my dad to finally buy a house outside of the projects because it had turned.

The projects had turned violent, drugs, everything you could understand.

And it was not a healthy situation for me.

And it wasn't a healthy situation for my mother either.

When you were in school, were you were you a good student?

Were you involved in sports?

Did you have a job?

Did you work?

Yeah, I would say I was a solid B minus student.

I was not highly motivated academically.

I think I was smart enough to squeak by, but it was not a priority.

I became an athlete.

I actually grew up as a as an overweight kid, kind of bullied.

And a track coach took me under his wing when I was in ninth grade and asked if I ever considered throwing the shot put, and I didn't know what it was.

He introduced me to it, and I became a shot putter on the track team.

That helped kind of move me both mentally and physically towards a bit of a metamorphosis.

So at an early age in high school, you had a mentor, someone who really had a pretty profound impact on helping you realize who you were.

How did this translate from high school to college?

His name was Bob Murphy and he was a track and field coach.

He was also my physics teacher, a really great guy, and he was a father figure, although he was probably only 9 or 10 years older than me.

And I think he saw a lot of potential.

Some potential, maybe athletically, but maybe more potential from a leadership perspective.

And when it was time to apply to colleges and think about colleges, you know, my parents, because they grew up as orphans, didn't go to college.

They didn't know anything about the process.

Um, but Coach Murphy helped me, and he helped open a door with the track coach at Wagner College.

I didn't really have the grades.

I didn't really understand the process.

And he helped open the door to get me into Wagner with a track scholarship and some other financial aid so I could go.

You got an accounting degree at Wagner College?

What came next?

So my first job after college, I got a job with a large utility in New York.

Brooklyn Union gas.

The position where it was was as a staff Auditor.

So I would do operational and financial audits both internally and externally for the gas company.

But I wasn't challenged enough.

It was a regulated industry and I'm a fairly competitive person, and I did.

I wasn't getting enough out of it, so I needed to to move on.

So I started looking at ads in the New York Times back in the day, well before the internet on Sundays, and there would be a whole sales and marketing section.

So I would send out resumes like handwritten letters, resumes, mail, um, and for a year over a year, I didn't get one response.

And then I did.

And the only thing it said was major automotive manufacturer hiring in the sales and marketing division.

And I got a call and it was the Ford Motor Company, and that was the first interview opportunity I had.

And so you interviewed at Ford.

How'd it go?

Well, the interview I thought went great.

Um, loved the people they loved me.

Except, um, I remember distinctly that, um, the individual running the interview process came to me and said, you know, you're great, but, um, we just got word that they hired an individual out of the corporate office in Dearborn, Michigan.

So we're sorry to say, but the job's been filled, and I was really disappointed, she said.

But good news is that our sister division, Lincoln Mercury, um, they're hiring for the same type of position.

Would you like to talk to them?

And I said I would love to talk to them.

So she facilitated that.

And then I did interview same day and I was, um, asked if I would go to Detroit.

And within three days I was offered the job.

And it was while you were at Lincoln-Mercury that you met your wife to be Cathy.

Tell us about Cathy and your family.

Yeah, sometimes, uh, you know, you really get lucky and smart.

And, you know, at that time this was in the 80s and this was a a male dominated industry.

And really at the time there were very few women and the women held mostly, you know, kind of executive assistant roles.

And I remember I was in my office and I saw this beautiful blond and I was thinking, oh my gosh, who's that?

And I remember going in the hallway and I see her.

And the joke in our family is, I wasn't the only one who saw her.

Like, everybody saw her.

And, um, she, uh, fortunately, in the cafeteria, um, whether it be the day before or the day after she saw me and, um, kind of connected soon after.

And you have how many children here in Tampa?

We have five children.

We just celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary.

Our oldest son's going to be 32.

Our twins are 19 freshman in college.

So you started at Lincoln Mercury in the The 1980s.

How did your career progress at Lincoln?

So I started as an analyst.

My first field position was in upstate New York Rochester, Rochester, Syracuse, Elmira, Finger Lakes all the way around, and then ultimately got promoted and was brought back down to the New York metropolitan area.

What encouraged you to leave Lincoln Mercury?

It sounds like things are going pretty well.

Things were going really well, and I was getting promoted often, and I was getting elevated and my compensation was improving.

But then I got a call one day from a dealer who I viewed as a mentor, a really smart guy, and he asked me to go to lunch.

And I remember going to Queens, New York, and meeting him at a diner on a terrible, cold, rainy day.

And it was at that lunch he asked me how I liked my job.

I told him I loved my job.

He asked me if I ever thought about selling cars retail.

And I remember my answer to him was, I don't want to work for you.

I have a good job.

And he says, I don't want you to work for me either.

I want you to be my partner.

And at that point, I kind of leaned forward and said, what do you have in mind?

And it kind of started from there.

And that led to you.

Finally, the two of you found a dealership.

What was the status of the.

This was one in Clearwater, right?

Yes, yes.

So we looked at dealerships all around the country.

We were in Nashua, New Hampshire, Madison, Wisconsin.

Dallas, Texas.

Um, other markets in Texas.

And then we had an opportunity to look at a Mitsubishi store that was failing in Clearwater.

And I remember distinctly that I could not come to the market to see it.

He did.

He liked what he saw, and he called me up and he said, what do you think about Mitsubishi?

I said, I don't know anything about it.

The franchise.

He said, what do you know about Clearwater, Florida?

I said, I couldn't find it on a map.

He said, would you go?

I said I'd go.

And that's how it kind of came together.

And that's when you learned because you didn't know much, actually.

Hands on running a dealership.

I didn't know much at all, Jeff.

I, I remember when we closed on the sale because we bought the franchise, but we didn't buy the real estate.

We just had a lease agreement for the facility.

And I remember my partner, his name is Mike.

Mike said, put out your hand.

And I put out my hand and he put the keys in my hand.

And he said, congratulations, you're a car dealer now.

And I remember going in the bathroom and thinking, oh my gosh, what did I get myself into?

But that's when I got started.

I knew enough to not make any rash decisions, and I just kind of watched and learned.

So three years after purchasing the Mitsubishi dealer.

Dealership.

You're number one in the country?

Yes.

A few years later, you had the opportunity to buy a Toyota.

Adjacent Toyota dealership.

And that went pretty well.

You turned that around.

And then a few years after that, you had the opportunity to sell the whole package, and you took it?

Yes.

And the timing worked out great because it was the onset of consolidation, the first wave of consolidation in the auto industry.

And we made a couple of calls and we had good performing stores, and we got to Sonic Automotive out of Charlotte, and they were interested and we were able to put a deal together.

And I remember joking with my wife, I'm going to hang up all my suits and I'm going to retire, and I'll kind of dilly dally in some other things.

And retirement lasted maybe 3 or 4 days.

It didn't go well.

I don't have that kind of personality.

And I learned that at 37 years old.

In 2000, the Hyundai opportunity presented itself, he had the opportunity to start a new franchise in the New Port Richey area.

You became the number one dealer for eight consecutive years and grew that dealership and added other dealerships over the next 20 years.

Yes.

What would you say were some of the guiding principles that helped you build that many dealerships and make them as successful as they were?

Well, I think there's a handful of things, right?

First, you have to surround yourself with the best people.

You have to delegate and give people the authority to do what they're good at.

If you are going to micromanage and control everything, then the ability to expand doesn't exist.

So I was fortunate to be able to partner with a really brilliant guy.

His name is Dave and Dave is a great operations person.

He and I would work very closely together, but he was tasked to run the day to day operations of Hyundai, of New Port Richey, and that afforded me the opportunity to look and expand and present other business opportunities for our venture.

And and that has worked out great.

The other thing that was always at the key was putting that customer relationship first at the center of all that we do.

I had the ability to not worry as much about profitability, because it's only Dave and I that run the business.

There's no corporate board, so if we have a financial month is not as good or bad as we like, it's okay because we own the company, but we're all about putting cars in traffic and building an owner base.

You talk about vocal advocates.

This is when you have customers who are so pleased, so over the top, happy with the relationship they have with you that they become advocates for you and they actually bring you more business.

Yes.

How do you do that and how do you build that in the culture of your business, for the people who work for you.

So it's interesting.

Early on when we first started, I coined this phrase as fictional bag of money.

So I said to Dave, Dave, I'm going to give you $1 million, and I want you to keep it in your desk drawer.

And you just use the money as you see fit to sell a car.

And the reason that's important, Jeff, is people have credit issues.

People have payment tolerance issues.

They only make so much money.

So I told Dave, if there's a person who has negative equity, who can only afford to pay $200 a month, and the difference between making a deal or not is a few thousand dollars.

I want you to go to that customer, and I want you to give them the 2 or $3000.

I mean, really give it to them, write them a check, show them their their relationship with us is more important, because what we figured out is that we were typically not the first place they stopped.

They stopped at the Toyota store, couldn't do it, stopped at the Honda store.

They wouldn't do it, but they stopped at the Hyundai store.

We did it.

And what we figured out in the first week is we did that, and that customer goes home and she tells her family.

She tells her friends, she tells her coworker, and then she calls up and says, hey, my friend Jeff's coming in.

Can you take care of Jeff?

And what's interesting about that is that Jeff just comes in and Jeff knows he's going to be taken care of.

So the transaction is easy.

That's how you build vocal advocates.

In 2021, you sold Finck Automotive Group's seven dealerships with more than $400 million in sales to a multi-billion dollar consolidator called Lithia Motors.

Lithia continued to make additional acquisitions and got bigger.

Tell us about the whole trend towards consolidation and how it affects the business now.

I will tell you, consolidation is great for Wall Street.

Consolidation is great for some people.

But from the consumer perspective, I don't believe it's great at all.

I believe local ownership.

I believe dealers like me being completely involved in the community, sponsoring the Little League, taking care of the people that take care of my business.

Um, it kind of goes away with private equity and public ownership.

So Wall Street and making money.

Fine.

John Q public here in Tampa Bay.

Not really.

When you sold the seven dealerships, you didn't completely get out of the automotive business.

You still have two dealerships?

Yes.

What are your plans for the business now?

So I still own a Volkswagen of Wesley Chapel.

And at the time, I had the franchise rights for Subaru of Wesley Chapel.

I didn't want to sell them all.

Even though Lithia wanted to buy them for a couple of reasons.

Um, I love the business.

I did not want to not be in the business.

So this was a way to keep me in the business.

One of my sons loves the business.

He started at General Motors and he works with me.

His name is Ryan, and he's doing a great job in the dealerships.

And this is a great learning opportunity.

And the future is bright for us.

We'll see.

Um, what I want to do and and mostly what he wants to do.

And I still have two kids in college.

Who knows if they might not want to enter the business someday?

Community involvement and philanthropy are important to you personally and important to your wife, Cathy?

Yes.

You've gotten very, very involved in children's healthcare issues, particularly at St. Joseph's Hospital.

Yes.

You and Cathy have made a substantial contribution to St. Joseph's Hospital.

Plus you service chair of the foundation board.

So we've really leaned into St. Joseph's Hospital and how we got involved.

There is when I was a Hyundai dealer, I was the national chair of Hyundai Hope On Wheels, which was their national charitable organization, um, raising funds to find cures for pediatric cancer.

And then about 11 years ago, our youngest son, David, at on or about eight years old, was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at St. Joe's.

And they not only diagnosed him, but they've treated him for over ten years.

They've done a wonderful job.

They've been compassionate with him, not only him, but I spent a lot of time Kathy spent a lot of time at the hospital, and we see how they put the patient experience first.

That's how we first got involved, and that's kind of helped us get more engaged.

You and Kathy are also involved in providing for people in need and for people who are homeless.

We thought about starting our own foundation.

We didn't know enough.

A very good friend suggested I talk to the folks at Met Min, and that was my entry point to talk to Morris Hintzman and Tim Marx.

And a beautiful relationship was born.

And from there, through time, effort, lobbying, effort, we were able to build a campus in Pasco County, mirroring what's built in Tampa.

And it's been very satisfying.

If you look back upon your career, what advice would you give to young entrepreneurs or would be entrepreneurs who are looking to get started?

I framed this acronym a while back because I get an opportunity to speak to students, and it's it's the it spells the word creed.

And everybody's got a personal creed.

So See, you need to be courageous.

You have to step out.

Sometimes I like to say you have to put your foot in the cold, murky water, and maybe you can't see the bottom and you don't know what's there, but step in anyway.

You have to be resilient.

Ah, you have to be courageous.

You understand?

You're going to fall off the horse.

Get up.

Get back on the horse.

Don't let it deter you.

"E", you have to be energetic.

You have to bring positive energy to everything you do.

The other "E", effort, effort is really defined by working within a team.

Nobody successful alone, whether it be Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk.

It doesn't matter.

Everybody's got a team.

You need to surround yourself with the right people and work cohesively within that team.

And then "D" is discipline.

You have to have strong, positive discipline.

Get your sleep.

Positive habits.

And if you can follow Creed, you too can be successful.

However you measure success.

Well, Scott, I'd like to thank you so much for being our guest today.

Thank you.

Geoff, it's been my pleasure and my honor.

If you'd like to see this program again or any of the CEO profiles in our Suncoast Business Forum archive, you can find them on the web at wedu.org/sbf.

Thanks for joining us for the Suncoast Business Forum.

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