Lynne Beausoleil Ghelfi

I've been in the automotive space for 15 years, and my journey has been quite a ride. I started as a salesperson selling cars, and I became the only female salesperson on the floor. In my first year, I sold 250 cars and was top 3 in sales that year. I was working like 90 hours a week with 3 young children at home. When I went in for that job, I had a list of dates and told them my daughter's a competitive dancer and my kids are really young, so I'm going to need all of these days off. I didn't know the car business, but I asked right then, if I do what I say I'm going to do, will you promote me? We shook on it, and he held up his end of the bargain. I got promoted to management and ran our call center, then kept moving up from there. I've done all of the leadership positions on the sales side, or the variable side of automotive, other than running my own store. My general leader at the time said, would you want to be my director of marketing? We'll give you better hours, you'll make great money, and you'll still be a leader. I've been the Director of Marketing for 7 years now for the Toyota dealerships that I run. A key component to all of this is that I'm also John Maxwell certified as a coach, speaker, and trainer. Along with my day-to-day, which looks like me coming in, responding to emails, approving any ad updates, working our budgets for two really large budgets for the Toyota dealerships, I also do one-on-one coaching sessions, classes at night, and speaking engagements. I have almost a full-time outside business that I do as a leadership coach through my company, Soleil Leadership.