CHAPTER 2 - ABOUT THE AUTHOR

’ve spent almost my whole professional career working with cars. Eversince I could remember, I’ve had an affinity for them, along with most

all things mechanical. I grew up on a farm in upstate Connecticut, andbegan driving earlier than most. My first car, a ‘67 Volvo, came out of a (^)
barn and didn’t run until I’d basically rebuilt it. In high school, I worked for acouple of mechanics, and at 17, I secured a job with one of the top racing
and driver training schools in the country, Skip Barber. While there, I waslucky enough to be given some informal race training, which I practiced by (^)
sliding that old Volvo around on our rain-slicked, fallow grass fields.

I

I began racing at an amateur level while at college in Colorado and found Ihad a decent amount of skill at it, too. I began teaching the type of racing I

was involved in and was soon recruited by an amazing local company,MasterDrive, as an instructor. It was very rewarding to teach, but as the pay (^)
wasn’t that great, I always had to have other sources of income for collegecosts and fun. So I learned how to professionally detail cars and started a
successful business doing so, which supported my motorsports activitiesand helped pay for school.
I would frequently hear from family and acquaintances that I should go intobusiness selling cars, but as my own dealership experiences had been so
bad, I never seriously contemplated the idea. Fate reached out to me oneday, though, when I met a friend of one of my professors, who was an “auto (^)
broker.” Helping people get a good deal on any type of car sounded veryinteresting, even though I was terrified of actual sales. But, when I needed (^)
to raise some real money to pay for graduate school, it seemed worthpursuing, fears or no.