ORLANDO, Fla., Feb. 13, 2010 – Phil Schmidt, President/General Manager of Greiner/Schmidt Motor Co., Inc., which does business as Greiner Ford Lincoln Mercury, a Ford, Lincoln and Mercury dealership in Casper, Wyo., was named the TIME Magazine Dealer of the Year from Wyoming.
Schmidt was chosen to represent the Wyoming Automobile Dealers Association in the national competition. The award is sponsored by TIME Magazine in association with Goodyear, and in cooperation with NADA.
“At nine years old, I started working in a family owned Shakey's Pizza Parlor,” says Schmidt, “I held down a couple of other jobs while working my way through college.”
Schmidt graduated from Rapid City (SD) Central High School in 1978, and then earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business, with an emphasis on Accounting, at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, SD, in 1982. “After graduation, I went into public accounting to bolster my business acumen,” Schmidt says, “and after six years, I was offered the opportunity to be a partner in the CPA firm I was working for that also had two dealership clients who had talked to me about joining their organizations.”
The dealership where Schmidt is now majority owner was a client that, he says, “was distressed and I felt I had a huge opportunity for a turnaround, so I accepted the controller position and was in charge of parts, service and the body shop [of what was then Greiner Motor and Marine].” Within six months, Schmidt was General Manager. But, he says, “even though I had been the company’s CPA, things were more challenging than I had anticipated—so much for bolstering my business acumen by being in public accounting!”
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