TERRY MYERS MAN DECADES of the

IfIf you received your Dealer’s License in the past 25 years, there is a good chance that Terry Myers was your instructor. For the past two decades, Terry has traveled the state of Florida sharing his unmatched knowledge of the rules and regulations that concern used car dealers, wisdom gained from a 30-year career as a small business owner and a collection of selfadmitted corny jokes usually met with equal amounts of groans and grins. He hasn’t put an official number on it, but Terry thinks he has taught over 3,500 students, logged more than 56,000 hours behind the podium and traveled over 660,000 miles teaching PreLicense classes. That does not include Continuing Education and private classes.

His service to the industry and the Association was recognized in Orlando last month as he received a Man of the Decades award during the FIADA Annual Convention. A standing ovation is how attendees showed him their appreciation. Terry has won four NIADA Crystal Eagle awards for membership recruitment, too many FIADA Eagles to count, a Man of the Year award and a trophy room of other service awards from the industry, but this one was special.

“There is no payment equal to the one where someone else goes out of their way to acknowledge the knowledge, wisdom, advice, encouragement, etc. they received that helped them start their dream, build on their dream, achieve their dream, and accelerate their dream. What it meant then and still means. It is humbling to be allowed to be a part of something bigger than myself. It is gratifying to know that the fine men and women it is my honor to serve are using their knowledge and expertise to benefit their employees and serve their customers and the needs and wants of those customers. Being personally presented this award by someone who I have found great joy is watching grow in the industry, helps make this journey complete. I give God the glory for inserting into me the gifts and abilities needed.”

Just a few weeks after receiving the award, Terry celebrated his 80th birthday and as his family asked friends and colleagues to send in cards and congratulations it got me wondering about his story. I’ve known Terry well for 10 years or more but I realized I had no idea of what he had done before we began working together. When I asked if he would be willing to share his story, he happily agreed and I hope you will find it as entertaining and inspiring as I did.

By Christy Taylor

Terry traces his entire professional career back to a class he took in high school simply called “Sales.” It was an unassuming elective that he signed up for to earn a graduation credit but, he says, it ended up teaching him important life lessons as well. After the school day ended he continued over to his part-time job as a salesman at a store called Shift Shoes and learned three things from the Regional Manager that Terry says are the secret for anyone who is looking for a successful sales career.

“When somebody tells you what they want, and you know it isn’t going to fit, never tell them it won’t fit. Bring it to them, let them try it on and decide for themselves it doesn’t fit,” Terry said. In other words, never “correct” them.

“If they ask for something in blue, bring out all the other colors too because chances are if they want one, they might want them all,” Terry said. Always present options and opportunities to upsell.

“If someone asks you for something and you don’t have it, but you know where they can get it, tell them. They will appreciate your honesty and come back, and the next time they will buy something from you. They become excellent referral resources, as well.” Terry said. Honesty and helpfulness are everything when it comes to building rapport with people.

It was at this point in our conversation that Terry gave me his first “Terry-ism,” those little nuggets of wisdom he wraps up usually in an acronym or pun. If there were business-themed fortune cookies, Terry-isms would be the proverb you would find inside.

“Your job is to make decisions. You do not make mistakes. You discover the right way ‘not’ to do something and stop doing it. Capture the ‘right way’ in your Policies and Procedures Manual so may continue to duplicate the end results you want and need. This also becomes a great training tool for those looking to you for training and guidance about how they may duplicate that those results.”

After high school, Terry enlisted in the army and became part of the 82nd Airborne. Yes, Terry Myers was a paratrooper and trained for the job of jumping out of airplanes. He recounted a time when his unit had been assigned a jump into Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis and how relieved he was when it was called off.

We got sidetracked at this point because he mentioned he had studied hypnosis during a psychology class in school and he was pretty good at it. His army buddies called him “Professor” because he demonstrated his talent by hypnotizing one of the guys into believing that the water line feeding the fountain in the barracks had gotten crossed somewhere and instead of water, it was pure Southern Comfort whiskey bubbling out. He used his hypnotic powers for good to help another friend to speak fluent Spanish to impress a girl and another buddy to overcome a traumatic past experience that was interfering with his ability to jump. He was even asked by the Officer’s Club on base to put together an act and entertain the Officers and their wives. Don’t worry, Terry swears he has never used his hypnosis skills in any of his dealer training courses—just his hypnotic voice.

Terry grew up in Ohio, but always remembered his mother and aunt telling stories about growing up in Lake Worth, Florida and how wonderful it was. So, when he got out of the army he decided that was as good a place as any to start his life. His plan was to become a sheriff, but when he discovered a hiring requirement was be a Florida resident for two years he had to find something else. He came across a department store with an outsourced shoe department looking for an assistant manager, and given his previous experience, knew he was a shoe-in.

“I worked in the shoe business for 13 years. They called me the “king of sole” and I loved every minute of it,” Terry said.

The real reason this was an important place and time in his story is because it is where he met his wife Charlotte. Charlotte was a high-school student working at the department store when they met, and she had a boyfriend. Terry asked her out anyways, and after breaking up with her boyfriend, she agreed. A week after their first date, Charlotte was setting up a box of shoes and Terry asked her to marry him. She said yes and the couple has been married for 58 years.

Terry spent some time trying to figure out what was next for him when the chain of department stores that housed the shoe departments he was supervising went out of business. He tried starting a pressure washing business, making, and selling custom candle holders and a job as a “professional sprinkler watcher” at a golf course. While each of these jobs provided their own set of stories, like killing a four-foot snake with a throwing knife, they weren’t the career he was looking for. On the advice of a friend, he started learning about insurance and got his license to become an independent agent.

Eventually friends and independent agents formed a business relationship known as Dudeck, Kruger & Myers.

The next 30 years was spent building the insurance business through knocking on doors and good old-fashioned cold calling. Somewhere along the way, the group switched to a seminar style pitch and Terry became the man with the microphone presenting the program to the potential customers that attended. In 1993, the State of Florida required that all licensed insurance agents be required to complete 28 hours of Continuing Education if they intended to renew their license. So, at the cost of $20 an hour, Terry signed up for his training, went to class and discovered it was just a guy reading from a book for four hours.

He really wasn’t looking for a change of career when he called the group that presented the training, but after talking with them about some improvements they could make he found himself offered with an opportunity to do it better. After two years, his courses were very popular, and he was pretty much running the school creating new courses and classes. The snowball kept rolling when he discovered that a lot of the insurance agents attending training were also CPAs and attorneys, who needed CE to keep those licenses as well. He researched the requirements and the school started offering CE to more and more licensed professionals from CFPs to bank branch managers.

A phone call from a group called the FIADA in 2002 was instrumental in changing his career course again when he was asked if he would be interested in being an instructor in the newly organized Dealer Training School the association was creating. A law had just been passed that required anyone applying for a dealer’s license to complete a 16hour course from a state-approved instructor. FIADA was trying to meet the needs of the industry but needed additional teachers to do it. Terry got licensed as an instructor, partnered with FIADA in teaching some courses and added auto dealer pre-licensing to the course catalog at his own school. The rest, they say, is history.

“The biggest motivator to me is all the people that I’ve been introduced to through teaching these courses,” Terry said. “They have a shot at taking control of their own future. They are just looking for some business advice and a little help along the way. It is exciting to help them realize their goals.”

The pre-licensing course is recommended to be taken early on in someone’s journey to become a used car dealer because it can really

Terry-isms A few

Just a few examples of Terry's wit and wisdom from over the years:

"What you know makes you money. What you don’t know costs you a fortune."

"If you want to fly with eagles, don't hang around with turkeys."

"Nature gave man two ends–one to sit on and one to think with."

"Professionalism properly applied produces profitable results!” help someone to see if the used car business is right for them. Not everyone who comes to the class will get their license, and even after decades of teaching it Terry says he isn’t able to tell which ones will go on to become successful and which ones won’t. He feels it is his responsibility to help them all. That is why he offers himself as a resource to every student, gives them his phone number to call if they need help and pledges to do his best to offer support.

“I think my mission is to recognize what’s inside of people and introduce them to steps and processes needed to help accomplish their goal,” Terry said. “It is so rewarding to go to a convention or get a call from someone that has been in one of the trainings and they come up and say thank you. Or they tell me they remember something I said in the class, and it has stuck with them.”

Over the past few years, Terry has moved from just an instructor in the PreLicense class to the Director of Education for FIADA and has developed new trainings, resources, and programs to help every dealer at every level. Now into his 80s, he is considering slowing down but is not interested in completely retiring. His love for helping dealers and connecting them with the FIADA is more than just a job. Terry wants to preach that message for as long as he can.

“FIADA is a family. I’m trying to build a knowledge-bank for members where information can be and is deposited into for dealers to withdrawal from whenever it is needed.”