Mike Brown was working as the fixed operations director for nucar auto group when, in August of 2024, he got a call from David Rosenberg. Rosenberg, whom Brown had worked for in the past, had an intriguing offer. Rosenberg, owner of DSR Motor Group, was working on an acquisition.

“You’ve been very loyal to me,” Rosenberg told Brownie, as he calls Brown. “I want to offer you a partnership or a piece of this store.”

Brown says he “thought about it for about an hour,” then said yes.

He is now general manager and operating partner of Atlantic Toyota in Lynn, Massachusetts. The store is part of DSR Motor Group and Rosenberg is the dealer principal.

“My model is I have an operating partner in every dealership who is the GM,” says Rosenberg.

Rosenberg helped him obtain financing to acquire his stake in the Toyota franchise, says Brown.

Opportunities left on the table

Atlantic Toyota had been under the same ownership for 38 years and the former owners were tired, says Brown.

“They were making good money, and they were comfortable with what they were doing,” he says. “But there's a lot of opportunity left on the table.”

The general manager and the general sales manager under the old ownership, both left when the store was acquired

Brown sees areas where he can substantially grow the store’s business.

Now the dealership is just taking the deals that walk through the door,” he says. “This store is a very sleepy store.”

His first task is to get the dealership employees’ moral up, says Brown.

The facility is image compliant and “top-notch,” says Brown, but the sales and service are “extremely underperforming.”

The store is still profitable because the overhead is low but “without trying I can go up 15% on both sides,” he says.

One area that the former ownership neglected is social media. The dealership didn’t do any marketing through Google, for example, says Brown. And though the former owners paid for Facebook and Instagram marketing, they didn’t use it, he says. They also weren’t on TikTok.

Brown is investing “a lot” in Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing.

And “I just got off the phone with Foundation (Direct),” a digital marketing firm, he says.

Brown is also encouraging his employees to take pictures of happy customers and post them on social media. Also to do videos of how to operate some of the car’s functions that seldom get explained.

“Make it informational because it gives them a reason to keep coming back to you, right?” says Brown.

Starting on the service side

Brown, 60, began working on cars at a gas station he acquired when he was 22. After eight years, he moved to being a service advisor at Jeep dealerships. “It was a culture shock to work for someone,” he says.

He worked his way up to the service manager position at a dealership that just happened to be owned by a good friend of Rosenberg’s. That is how the two met.

Rosenberg had sold his group, Ira Motor Group, to Group 1 Automotive in 1999 but stayed on the run the platform. He sought Brown out to work as a service manager at one of the stores.

After a period, Brown was moved from a store with 14 service technicians to one with 60 technicians. “That was the move that made me who I am today,” says Brown. “If it wasn’t for that, I would probably still be at that Dodge store in Lowell.”

But he did go back to working at a Dodge store – as General Manager. After mentioning he might want to be a general manager, he was enrolled in the NADA Dealer Academy by his manager and made GM before he even graduated.

By then, Rosenberg’s dealership group had been acquired by Group 1 Automotive, where Rosenberg worked for seven years running the platform.

After retiring from Group 1, Rosenberg partnered with Matt McGovern to purchase what became Prime Motor Group. Brown went with him.

Brown alternated between general manager and service director jobs as the Prime Motors platform expanded. He remained when Prime was sold to GPB Holdings in 2017.

When Prime Motors was forced to close because of an investigation into GPB, Brown moved to nucar. That’s where he was Rosenberg offered Brown a chance to own his own store.

Still looking to grow

Brown aims to keep increasing his ownership share in Atlantic Toyota, but he isn’t stopping at one store. If an opportunity to acquire another store comes up down the road, he will consider the deal “as long as the brand is right,” says Brown.

He figures his substantial experience on the service side of the business as well as stints as general manager gives him a leg up as a dealer operator. But his service experience is especially valuable.

“I feel I am well-rounded,” says Brown. “I know the language of both (sides of the business). Within two days here everyone was amazed I talked to the people in service and parts. They are comfortable with me.”

At the same time, “the front side knows I get involved. I ask the front side a lot of questions. They love that.”

This article was written for Getting to Go, a buy/sell newsletter from Scali Rasmussen.