Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Chuck Haddad. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Chuck, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

Scaling my business did not happen overnight, unfortunately. It was learning from mistakes that helped me grow. Your first loss is the best loss. Realizing that you have to move on to the next sale and make up for it down the line.

In the past, Los Angeles was a super tricky market for the newbie used car dealer. Hitting the auction floor was intimidating. Newbies stick out like a sore thumb and get taken advantage of by the auctioneers. Some major mistakes that I made when starting out was bidding on vehicles, purely out of despite the other dealers. You’re bidding against your competition selling cars down the street from you, and so you want to send them a message.

Or what about the time I accidentally bought a car that I thought was an automatic transmission, but in fact was a manual.

I especially love the time when I bought a car cause I thought it looked good, but turns out it was a clunker or has been into an accident.

There have been critical times in the used car business where you might have to purchase vehicles a vehicle over book value.
Which means lower profit margin after retail.

I couldn’t imagine making these kinds of accidents today, they would be super costly.

Luckily, when scaling your business overtime, you will create safety, mechanisms steps, and processes to help you profit.

Making the key investments in software and experienced employees in your industry will streamline you success.

Surrounding yourself by a good team that is motivated and helping you complete goals.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Chuck Haddad founder and CEO of High Demand Inc, today I get the awesome pleasure of selling luxury exotic vehicles, all across the world.

I started out in the Industry working for a garage in Los Angeles area. Our highest volume customer was a local used car dealership. We would repair cars and condition them for sale.

As a side hustle, I would purchase cars private party and sell them via craigslist and eBay.

Eventually, my side hustle turned into a real business and I opened up my very own buy here, pay here, used car store.

There I would master the art of financing to the public. Playing the bank and collecting payments weekly or monthly with interest.

Having my own used car dealer license opened the doors to a network of other businessman, celebrities and brokers.

Overtime, I was able to leverage my network with high-end ticket sales. Finding niche cars with particular spec for customers all around the world.

I was not only able to sell cars in my area, but I was able to deliver deals out of state and out of the country.

Today we are far away from craigslist and eBay and moved on to social media sites like Facebook and Instagram to sell cars.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Sometimes the car business can be super challenging, especially when there’s a pandemic.

A time that I can remember that I had to really hunker down and pivot was during COVID-19. Challenges arose such as short staff and low inventory.

Sales could be very good, but if you didn’t have the staff to move units, you weren’t making any money. That was super frustrating and I hope I never have to see a challenge like that ever again.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Being a used car dealer, you can start small and be able to work up initial capital through car sales. Every penny I made, I invested back into the business for the first five years. Rarely, would I ever go out and enjoy myself, Missed birthdays missed holidays and missed family outings.

Starting out as a used car dealer, you can apply for floor plans that can help you stock up your lot with inventory. However, some of the downsides were if you were too new, you would pay very high interest on the floor plan, and if you didn’t sell cars within a specific timeframe, they would come and repossess cars off your lot.

The initial sacrifices that I’ve made that I will never forget got me to where I am today and saved me from having to floor plan.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cashcarsandsuperstars.com/heyyochuck
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heyyochuck?igsh=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeyYoChuck?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@heyyochuck?si=23oYNiVLFyHaL0qW

Image Credits

Shout out to Candy Ken, Axel Axe, and Ben Halem