Who could be surprised that Orange County car dealer David Wilson is in the club of Horatio Alger Award winners?
His rise from a farm in Traer, Iowa, to ownership of one of the largest auto groups in the United States exemplifies the 19th-century author’s tales of individuals overcoming adversity through perseverance and strong ethical values.
Today, the 65-year-old is not merely exemplifying but passing on to his 2,000 employees lessons of leadership modeled by others for him over a work life that started in fourth grade. He sums it up simply, “The truth is, you can only lead by example. If you’re having trouble in your company, look in the mirror.”
Wilson’s family of seven didn’t have indoor plumbing until he was 14. His parents couldn’t afford a baseball mitt when he was in the fourth grade, so Wilson mowed lawns to earn the money to buy one. The satisfaction that came from working for something he wanted has stuck with him throughout life.
“I had a number of jobs where you had to ask for the order: raking leaves, mowing lawns, shoveling snow,” Wilson told the Horatio Alger Association when he was named a winner in 2005. “Once I got the job, I had to perform. Later, I had to collect. Sometimes that was the hardest part of the job. But these were good lessons to learn early in life about business and dealing with the public.”
Wilson’s mother, who sold Stanley Home Products through house parties, paid for his first year of college with the understanding that he would have to finance the rest. He graduated in 1970 with a degree in religion and philosophy by pumping gas, selling shoes, pouring molten steel and changing oil and tires at a car dealership.
After his mother, Wilson’s next exemplar of leadership was car dealer Dick Gray, who introduced him to “The Power of Positive Thinking,” a book and philosophy of Norman Vincent Peale.
“Dick Gray didn’t want me to think more highly of him as the boss; he wanted me to think more highly of myself and what I could achieve,” Wilson said. “He didn’t teach leadership. He instilled leadership by his actions.”
During that experience, Wilson learned that actions, not titles, make leaders. “First, you have to be a good follower,” he said. “Look at the military. They don’t go to Harvard to hire generals. You have to work your way up.”
After a few years selling cars, Wilson and a friend wanted to start their own dealership in Iowa, but when that didn’t work out, Wilson packed up his family and moved to Arizona. As the Horatio Alger Association tells it, Wilson’s car broke down as he drove into Phoenix. The repairs at a Lincoln/Mercury dealer were expensive, so Wilson took a job with the firm to pay the bill.
Four years later, Wilson was a junior partner at that dealership. “I wanted to be majority partner there, but that was going to go to the owner’s son, so I came to Toyota of Orange in December 1982,” he recalls.
He bought a 25 percent ownership of the company and became general manager, boosting annual sales from 2,500 vehicles to 8,000 within two years.
Here, Wilson encountered his next mentor, Bob McCurry, regional manager of Toyota of Southern California.
“He obviously was a leader,” Wilson said. “Bob had been captain of the Michigan State football team for three years, and he played center. What kind of personality do you have to have for the team to follow you when you’re not the quarterback?
“Bob expected people to do better, and they did,” Wilson said.
Wilson started buying car dealers and building his reputation within Toyota. He owned three locations in 2001 when Toyota asked him to buy the South Coast and South Bay dealers that the state of California had closed and fined $2 million for fraud.
“Toyota knew we ran a reputable operation, and I saw it as a good business opportunity,” Wilson said. But he knew that turning around the reputations of those two locations would take time. “Any quick fixes are not going to last. We put key people in those dealerships from our other dealerships who understood our moral, ethical way of doing business. Over time, they became award-winning dealerships.”
Charitable giving is a natural part of that leadership, Wilson said. Again, leaders exemplify charity; they don’t talk about it.
During a cold winter in 1986, Wilson bought 20 humidifiers for Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange, where many of the children had colds and the flu. Last December, he called up the Costa Mesa Kmart and paid off almost $16,000 in amounts due on Christmas gifts on layaway.
As Wilson Automotive Group amassed 16 dealerships selling not only Toyota and Lexus models, but Acura, Ford and Mazda, Wilson used the junior-partner model he had learned in order to train new leaders.
Wilson’s favorite motto is “managers manage; leaders lead.”
He explained, “Capable managers can manage, but employees are not dying for a manager. They’re not coming in early and staying late or missing their kid’s baseball game for a manager.
“I’ve had employees say they want to be general manager, and I tell them, ‘I could give you that title tomorrow, but until everyone at the dealership says you’re the person they think of who will handle all the problems, you won’t be the leader.'”
Contact the writer: 714-796-7927 or jnorman@ocregister.com
