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THE PROFIT


Key Potential W


Unlocking


ithout peer bench- marking I would not have been nearly as successful in the auto salvage industry as I was. In an industry


not known for making millionaires, I sold my auto salvage operation to Ford Motor Company in 1998 for an eight-figure sum. I considered it to be so important that I wrote a book on it, available on Amazon.


Part of what made me successful was an extraordi-


The difference between doing pretty well and selling my yard for


eight-figures was saying yes to an invitation, the same one


I’m giving you today. BY RON STURGEON


48 Automotive Recycling | September-October 2016


nary amount of motivation to succeed that I got because of the circumstances of my early life. When I was 17, my father died and my stepmother threw my twin brother and me out. While still in high school, I started an auto repair business and began buying, repairing, and reselling VWs. I was hungry to be successful and to learn how to make my business grow. It morphed into a salvage yard when I discovered that I was making more selling parts from my boneyard than I was turning a wrench. I was doing pretty well when I got an invitation from Howard Nusbaum, a true innovator in our industry. He invited me to be part of a group of 10 salvage yard owners from across the country in 1988. We were not competitors because our markets were remote from one another. We agreed to meet, to share our numbers for the crucial metrics, and to share the things we were doing to try to improve them.


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