The mechanical work of art in the above picture is an Aston Martin Vulcan. It has 800 horsepower, can only be driven on a track, and costs over $2 million. Just 24 cars will be built. One of them just so happens to belong to a regular American car guy—Bernie Moreno.
Bernie Moreno is the CEO of Bernie Moreno Companies in the Midwest, which he transformed from one lowly dealership into a conglomerate of over 20 separate dealerships.
But if you ask him, he's not in the car business.
“If you define that you’re in the car business, it’s an extraordinarily narrow definition. If you ask any employee in our company, whether it’s a receptionist, a car wash kid, a technician or a salesperson, they would say, ‘We’re in the customer service business.’”
It's this mentality that's partly responsible for the conglomerate's staggering success with Moreno at the helm. He takes this concept a step further by addressing the most common issue with buying a car: more often than not, it's a bad time.
“Some people hate buying cars,” he says. “But people love to buy iPhones. What’s the difference? The difference is that car dealers have made it painful for customers to buy cars. Car dealers have made the buying process completely unenjoyable, and it should be the complete opposite.”
There's a final key to Moreno's success, and it's perhaps the most important.
“No. 1, you have to do what you love because if you’re not doing what you love, then you’re never going to be as successful as you can be,” he says. “For me, cars have always been a passion since I was a little kid.”
In Moreno's case, that passion led to a business worth hundreds of millions, and it put him in the driver's seat of a Vulcan. Take care of people and do what you love—not a bad way to live, if you ask me.
(If you want to read the full article, go here.)