Following the unfortunate passing of your father, you and your mother had to jump into the executive leadership role of Bob Auto Group, tell us about that:
The very fortunate — of a very unfortunate situation — is that my mother who had been with him in this journey of auto dealer ownership, assumed the presidency role. So I handled the day-to-day operations along with my brother, Robert Jr. so we became the executive leadership team of our organization. It’s not often that you have the opportunity to work [professionally] with both parents. And that’s something I had the opportunity to do. They both exuded different styles of operations. And I would say that I’ve learned a lot from both sides of the house. There were some challenges and adversity and nervousness because the dealership was run by a man. And now there’s two women stepping and dealing with management and employees on a day-to-day basis. One of the things that both of us tried to project is that ‘we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. Obviously what he had established in terms of programs, processes and people were working. But when things needed to be fine-tuned or changed our staff was very willing to do so. They had the confidence in us that they had some very viable operations working because, at the end of the day, you can’t be everywhere. Our people are our biggest assets.
