style="font-size:15px;"> ● Website design
● Search engine optimization
● Lead generation
● Third-party lead source providers
● Online classifieds
● Digital marketing
I even taught myself how to design websites in HTML, use editors like Microsoft Front Page and Adobe Dreamweaver, and code in Dynamic HTML and Java. I started to build my own websites, which I needed to drive traffic to. In the early 2000s I started to study search engine optimization (SEO) and tools like WebPosition Gold, Wordtracker, and other early SEO resources. I traveled all across the country, attending as many SEO workshops and seminars as I could find and got certified by the International Search Engine Optimization Academy in Advanced SEO. With all of this information, education, and the skills I was learning, I was building bigger and bigger success stories in the automotive sales industry, so much so that in 2004 I left the automotive sales industry at age 28 earning more than $160,000 per year at age 28 to start my first company: Dealer Synergy Inc.
For the past 11 years I have been the CEO of Dealer Synergy Inc. and personally trained over 11,000 automotive sales professionals as well as approximately 1,000 multimillion-dollar companies (car dealerships). Because of my consulting, training, and digital marketing strategies, I have helped my clients generate over $100 million in additional revenue.
In addition I have also had more than 1,000 articles published in more than 13 different national and international magazines that reach hundreds of thousands of readers on a monthly basis, and I have had a column in AutoSuccess magazine for the past seven years. I have been a keynote speaker or general assembly speaker for every major automotive sales industry event, workshop, or trade show, including:
● National Automobile Dealers Association convention
● American Truck Dealers Association convention
● Numerous State Dealers Association conventions
● J.D. Power & Associates Internet Roundtable
● Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition
● NCM & Associates Internet Sales Bootcamp (co-creator)
● Jim Ziegler's Dealer Battle Plan (co-creator)
● Internet Director Immersion Program (creator)
● The Internet Sales 20 Group (co-creator with Karina Bradley)
● Association of Automotive Internet Sales Professionals (charter member and general assembly speaker)
In addition to working with multimillion-dollar car dealerships, I have also had the honor of working with numerous publicly traded corporations like Autobytel Inc. (ABT) and Toyota. Autobytel has hired me to train their national sales team on Internet sales operations, and Toyota (the Boston region) recently had my www.internetsales20group.com national workshop's curriculum certified by Toyota corporate – meaning that any Toyota dealership from the Boston region that attended my three-day workshop on Internet sales, digital marketing, SEO, and more would receive Toyota certification credit. I have also been contracted by Carsdirect, a $1.1 billion corporation, to train their internal team on automotive Internet sales.
And if that wasn't enough, I pioneered the video search engine optimization phenomenon in the entire automotive sales industry back in 2006, about three years before anyone had video SEO on their radar. I had the amazing luck (destiny) of connecting with Karry Moore and AJ Leblanc of VSEO Inc. (now Car-Mercial). Karry and AJ are partners with John Ferber, the owner of USO Networks, the parent company of VSEO Inc. What is unimaginable is that John Ferber was the co-founder of Advertising.com, the world's largest digital marketing company. He sold the company in 2004 to AOL for $495 million. It is now worth $12 billion! So after John cashed in on Advertising.com, he started a new company, USO Networks, which specializes in video search engine optimization. They have proprietary software, patents, and so on, but they are not in the automotive industry. I connected with AJ and Karry and we hatched a plan to scale video SEO for the automotive industry, and for the first five years, I was the face of video SEO for the entire auto industry. Long story short, video SEO blew up big time, and I personally sold $10 million of video SEO for Car-Mercial. They grew beyond imagination to the point where they are about to be acquired for over $100 million!
So…I killed it in the automotive industry. My wife and I were making millions and millions of dollars, and we got bored; we wanted to venture off into other industries. My wife was a model back before she got into the corporate game and thought it would be awesome to get back into it. She was cast as an extra for a Barrington Levy Music video and was hooked on the music industry; she wanted to become a recording artist. Long story short again, we took an unknown female recording artist who had never been in a recording studio and in less than three years Karina Bradley had:
● Over 60 million online views
● Performed in front of millions of people
● Approximately 1 million viewers on CBS TalkPhilly
● Over 16 million listeners on Shade45 Sirius Satellite Radio
● Six different live appearances on Sirius Satellite Radio on the Miss Mimi show and the DJ Kay Slay show
● Nine major music videos
● Become an official ASCAP recording artist
● Official BDS Spins on FM radio across the country
● Her music licensed by the Tia and Tamera show on the Style television network
● Performed live across the country
● Was the Philadelphia Fashion Week Red Carpet Hostess
● Had major label recording artists featured in her music, including:
● Meek Mill
● Papoose
● Young Chris
● DJ Diamond Kutz
● Remy Ma (unreleased track)
● Produced by major music producers, such as:
● Ruwanga “RU” Samath
● Larry Tee
● Certifyd Production Group
● LA Dubb
Granted, my wife is model-beautiful and has a pop star voice. But that isn't enough; there are a lot of beautiful and talented women and men out there. We knew that talent was not going to be enough. She needed visibility; she needed a fan base. So, we created a massive digital marketing strategy for the Karina Bradley project, and it worked! We created a pop star!
We decided after three years of amazing and unbelievable experiences (that we will cherish for the rest of our lives) that we wanted another child. We also wanted to focus on our core businesses, which were already generating millions of dollars. So we decided to stop the KB project while Karina was at
