It seems like yesterday, more like nine years ago, I was heading into my freshman year of college as a pre-optometry major. Although, I’ll never forget the call I made to my mom when I decided that I was going to sell cars after graduation. I explained this journey was going to be a learning experience for me to make my way to the corporate automotive world. And, so begun a series of events that have defined my first five years in the car business. Jump back to five days after I graduated from Ferris State University in 2015 and I was walking through the doors of an automotive dealership group in beautiful Northern Michigan. After three more weeks of step-by-step training courses on everything that needed to happen to sell a car, I was placed in our in a dealership store to complete some hands-on training with real customers. I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, but the processes at the dealership enabled me to learn more much faster than I could have anywhere else in the retail automotive industry. Since I decided I was going into the auto industry I have known three things. First, before I hang up the deal sleds, I want to shoot for the moon and end up in a c-suite. Second, I want to have a positive impact on every part of the industry I touch. And third, everything I do must make sense as a step to keep driving my career […]

My absolute affinity for Valentine’s Day began long, long ago. That being said, you can only imagine my level of excitement when Shift Digital’s EVOLVE Community Committee reached out to me 20 years later to assist in the preparation of making valentine cards for the Detroit Medical Center’s Pediatric Unit. In true Shift fashion, EVOLVE hosted a Valentine Card Making Happy Hour complete with champagne and sweet treats. Employees were invited to come down for a short visit during the workday to relax and make a few handcrafted sentiments. It was not hard to recognize the same delight in my fellow Shift Digital employees as I had felt so long ago when delivering my own valentines in fourth grade. One of my favorite parts of this event was seeing employees that I least expected giving me a run for my money in the creativity department. We set, and far surpassed, a goal of 100 valentine cards which were then donated for use by the staff, volunteers and family members to give to patients of DMC Children’s. When asked about delivering the cards, Alex Zito said “I was greeted by nurses when I delivered the Valentine’s Day cards. They were overjoyed by the colorful collection of cards and eager to later deliver them to pediatric patients. They said a lot of the children were very disappointed to be missing their school Valentine’s Day parties, but were thrilled to receive such beautiful cards from Shift Digital.” While the prefab valentines from any […]