Early Days

As a young kid riding a Honda Big Red 3-wheeler around the pasture as fast as I

could possibly go, I never imagined that I would be standing on the top step of the

podium at the 24 Hours of Le Mans under an American flag listening to the Star

Spangled Banner in front of 300,000 fans. And, when I was in a drug treatment

center for the second time in High School, I could never have imagined that I

would be the largest privately held car dealership group in the State of Texas. It is

crazy to think about where life takes us, but let me start where it all began.

KEATING’S PATH TO TEXAS A and M

If I were to choose musical lyrics to summarize my life, I could easily go with, “So

many times it happens too fast. You change your passion for glory. Don’t lose

your grip on the dreams of the past. You must fight just to keep them alive. It’s

the eye of the tiger. It’s the thrill of the fight. Rising up to the challenge of our

rival.” You might recognize this from “Eye of the Tiger”, by Survivor which was

made famous in the movie, Rocky III. I have felt like Rocky at times, both when

he is beaten to a pulp and when he raises his arms in victory.

I am not afraid to take a risk. I crave competition, love a challenge, and enjoy

adrenaline. At times, those traits have helped me to be quite successful in building

the Keating Auto Group and during my career as a race car driver. At other times

in my life, however, those traits have led me to make some poor decisions. I went

through drug and alcohol rehabilitation twice when I was at Tomball High School

in the late 1980s, once as a sophomore and once again as a junior. I didn’t have

much luck staying sober in Tomball, so I moved to Oklahoma City—where I

finished treatment—leased an apartment and served as my own legal guardian

during my senior year in high school.

In hindsight, this independence and responsibility turned out to be a good thing for

me. Overcoming drug and alcohol addiction certainly wasn’t easy, but it was worth

it. “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of

trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success

achieved.” This quote by Helen Keller rings true in my life, even though each

individual’s trials are unique. Being on my own forced me to grow up quickly.

The saving grace for my time in OKC, was a great group of friends who were

supportive of me and my quest to stay clean. I am proud to say that I haven’t had

an alcoholic beverage or a non-prescribed drug since November 18, 1988, which

was 18 months before I graduated from high school. My parents were still back in

Tomball, so unfortunately, I didn’t have a mom or dad right there reminding me

regularly that it was time to apply to colleges. So, as I neared my high school

graduation in the spring of 1990, I began scrambling to make things happen.

I located a place where I could take an entrance exam as soon as possible, and I

scored a 26 on the ACT, which is roughly the equivalent of a 1,240 on the SAT. I

applied to both Texas A&M and Texas, and I was informed that I needed at least a

27 on the ACT to be admitted to Texas. That was not the case at Texas A&M. I

didn’t have time to take another test, so I decided I would attend classes in

Aggieland, although I certainly didn’t look like the typical Aggie in 1990. I had

long hair that reached to the middle of my back, and I smoked a pack of cigarettes

every day.

Texas A&M

One of the best things I did right away at A&M was to attend Fish Camp. I loved

that experience, and I fell in love with A&M during my time at Lakeview

Methodist Conference Center in Palestine, Texas. Following Fish Camp, I began

classes in the fall of 1990, where the starting quarterback for the Aggies just so

happened to be Lance Pavlas, who had guided Tomball to a 28-2 record and two

straight Class 4A title games. Watching Lance play at Kyle Field was like having

a little piece of my hometown in Aggieland.

For me, college life as a freshman was no big deal. Many of the freshmen students

had never been out on their own and away from their parents for an extended

period. Some of them struggled to be successful in school because it was their first

chance to be independent. It was also their first opportunity to party as often as

they liked, regardless of the next day’s class schedule. Many of my classmates at

A&M were in that stage of life. I was well beyond that, and I was focused on doing

well in school.

In the classroom setting, I never did well at reading a chapter and answering

questions about the chapter. But give me a problem to solve, and I was pretty good

at finding a solution. That’s why I majored in industrial engineering, and I loved

everything about the program. I was a much different person than I had been in

high school, and I was much different than many of my classmates. Texas A&M

has always been a conservative school, but it was definitely more conservative in

the early 1990s than it is now. I finally tired of the way my fellow students looked

at me when I walked out of class and lit up a cigarette on the campus sidewalks.

So in my sophomore year, I quit smoking and cut my hair to be a little less unusual

in Aggieland.

I also decided I would become involved with student government. Back then, we

had a student body president and six different vice presidents. I served as the vice

president of student activities, and I devoted plenty of time in that role. I learned

that being involved with groups on campus heightened the overall college

experience because you met so many different people. I met my future wife,

Kathleen, at A&M, and when we first met, I was still a motorcycle-driving, long-

haired guy whose appearance was wilder than my actual lifestyle. Kathleen and I

started dating our junior year. The following year as seniors, I was the president of

the Institute of Industrial Engineers and Kathleen was the vice president. We

clicked socially and intellectually, and I knew fairly early in my courtship of her

that she was the one.

During the summer between my junior and senior year, I earned an internship

working for an insurance company that serviced auto dealerships. I grew up in a

family of car dealers, and I once thought I wanted nothing to do with the “family

business.” My grandfather was a Ford dealer, he had five children, and four of

them became Ford dealers. My father, Tom, was the Ford dealer in Tomball, and at

11 years old, I started working as a porter at my father’s dealership. So, all I knew

about the car business involved parking cars in a straight line, washing cars and

picking up trash. Based on those experiences, I hated the car business and I

wanted nothing to do with it. Then I landed this internship with Service Group out

of Austin. I attended the training classes, learned about numerous different

positions in the car business and traveled with the trainers from Service Group,

spending one week at a dealership and the next week at a different one.

For the most part, I was just a fly on the wall, as I was the assistant to the trainer.

However, it was during that time when I fell in love with the car business. I was

and am extremely competitive and competition feeds my soul. From growing up

around the business, I knew the car business to be an incredibly competitive

environment. Suddenly, all my competitive juices were flowing as I learned the

behind-the-scenes workings of the industry.

For the first time, I could also see myself being quite successful. While being a fly

on the wall, I listened to the dealers and saw how they ran their business, and I

thought to myself, “Wow, these guys are terrible.” I realize now that I was a

know-at-all young kid with a ton of ambition, but I thought, “If this is the

competition, I think I can run circles around these guys.” My other thought was

that, even though the guys I watched were not great, they were all making a lot of

money. It was during that summer that I decided this was the business for me!

Meanwhile, Kathleen was on the five-year plan to graduate because she had

switched to industrial engineering after initially starting down a different path. I

didn’t want to do a long-distance relationship, so I decided to begin pursuing a

master’s degree in accounting. I had no plans of sticking around long enough to

actually earn my master’s, but I figured that one year of the master’s accounting

program would make me a better businessman and a better car dealer. Ultimately, I

think it did just that.

Kathleen and I both graduated on May 13, 1995, and we were married exactly one

week later at my parents’ home in Tomball on May 20, 1995. I told Kathleen to

find a job anywhere in the country, because wherever she went, I could find a job

in the car business. The highest paying job I knew of when I graduated went to a

friend of ours, who landed a consulting role with McKinsey & Company that paid

$40,000 a year. To most graduates at the time, that seemed like a fortune. In order

to earn that income, our friend was traveling frequently, living out of a hotel room

and working 80 hours a week. No matter how hard he worked or how successful he

made his clients, he was still going to earn roughly $3,350 a month. I wanted to do

something that paid me based on my results, not a locked-in salary. I had no

problem with the idea of working 80 hours or more per week, but I wanted to be

paid based on my productivity. So despite what I always said as a youngster, I

followed the footsteps of my grandfather, father, aunts, and uncles into the

automobile industry.

KEATING’S PATH TO BUSINESS SUCCESS

Kathleen accepted a job as a manufacturing supervisor for Dell Computer

Corporation in Austin, and I interviewed for a sales job at Austin’s Covert Ford.

Knowing that most “dealers kids” would not make a great employee, I decided I

wouldn’t say anything about my father and the family business on that first

interview. I thought the interview went well, but I was not offered a job. I had a

beard, and as I was walking out, one of the old salesmen pulled me aside and said,

“I’m going to give you a tip. These guys are super conservative. If you want a job

here, you are never going to get one with a beard. They believe facial hair doesn’t

work with our customers.”

I had decided Covert Ford was where I wanted to work, so I went home and

shaved. I had a beard for quite some time, and it took about two weeks for some

color to return to my face. Once it did, I returned to Covert with a clean-shaven

face. I told them all about my history being a car dealer’s kid, from working as a

porter to earning an engineering degree at Texas A&M and so forth. I still wasn’t

offered a job. The first time it was because of facial hair, the second time it was

because I was a dealer’s kid. I basically decided that I needed to interview

somewhere else. I was barking up the wrong tree. I ended up talking to someone at

Service Group, which is the insurance company where I done the internship

previously. That person made a phone call on my behalf, and the next thing I

knew, I was offered a sales job at Covert Ford, in August of 1995.

Before I ever started at Covert, I knew from my time working as a porter at

Tomball Ford, the top salespeople typically sold 15 cars a month. The overall size

of the operation at Covert Ford was much larger than what I grew up in, and this

was intimidating. Covert Ford only posted the results of the top 10 salespeople in

the Sales Managers office, and they all selling more than 20 cars a month. I knew I

had to achieve big results to be successful at Covert Ford.

Within that first month of selling cars, however, I knew I had made the right

decision. Covert Ford had 45 salespeople at the time, and I didn’t know what it was

going to take for me to be successful. I committed to working from the time we

opened (8 a.m.) to the time we closed (9 p.m.) six days a week for the first month.

The other commitment I made was to never walk away from an opportunity. That

was a big difference maker. After you have been at the dealership for 14 hours and

you are walking to your car at 10 at night, most everybody would see that customer

on the lot, but act like they didn’t see him. For that first month, however, I

committed to meet every potential customer—even if it was at 10 p.m.—and never

walk away from an opportunity. I didn’t, and it paid off. I sold 26 cars that first

month and earned $11,400! I hit numerous bonus levels and was the salesman of

the month. It didn’t hurt that the top three guys, who were always in the running

for salesman of the month, each took a week of vacation during August.

In that first month, I fell in love with my role as a salesman. When Kathleen went

to work for Dell, the company was working two long shifts with overtime coming

early instead of late. She was going to work around 3 or 4 a.m. and would get off at

around 2 p.m. Meanwhile, I was getting home around 10:30 or 11 at night when

she was already in bed. We slept in the same bed and lived in the same house, but

we basically only saw each other on Sundays.

I thought I was doing really well, and that I had learned everything I needed to

know about selling cars, and I was eager to move up. The real fact is that I thought

way too highly of myself. I was the salesperson who had been successful early on,

and I believed I should be shooting up the ranks. After I had been at Covert for six

months, the leadership team began interviewing numerous salespeople for the

opportunity to move into the finance department at Covert Ford. I was not asked to

interview for this opportunity, which was something I felt like I deserved after

selling cars for six months. This is so ridiculous to me now that I have been

through this so many times with other young employees, like I was. I had no

business interviewing for the finance department after just six months, but like I

said previously, I thought really highly of myself. I also realized there were many

very talented people at Covert Ford and that I might not get the opportunity to

move up any time soon.

I had a close relationship with my father at that point. Other than my wife, he was

my best friend, and I knew he was not happy with his used car manager. The only

reason he had not replaced the used car manager is because he didn’t have a good

candidate. With a view toward a bigger opportunity, I asked my dad for the used

car manager job at Tomball Ford. He thought that was a great idea. My mom,

Carolyn, said absolutely not. She protested because she believed I wouldn’t get the

respect of the other managers because I was the dealer’s son.

Despite the fact she didn’t like the idea, my father hired me and I agreed to become

a salesperson at Tomball Ford. I knew my dad well enough to know he wasn’t a

patient person. I was supposed to start March 1, 1996. But on February 18, 1996,

my dad called and said he needed me here as the used car manager tomorrow. I

was right, he was not patient, and he was eager to send his used car manager

packing. In February of 1996, I began as the used car manager at Tomball Ford. I

loved it, and I was quite successful. I worked plenty of hours, and I was doing

everything: trading for cars, reconditioning cars, buying cars at auctions,

wholesaling cars, pricing them, marketing them, merchandising them, hiring

salespeople and so forth. That’s also the time when I began recruiting at A&M. I’m

a believer that if the car business is a fit for you, then there is not a better

opportunity for a recent college graduate to make seriously good money. I was so

happy with my decision to go into auto sales, and realized that nothing like this

was being offered to graduating students at A&M. I made a commitment to recruit

A&M students, something we have been doing ever since. I first hired Aggies who

were May graduates in 1996. I am also a believer that first impressions are not

always the correct measure of a great fit for this business. We rely heavily on the

Omnia profile, which is an independently validated behavioral assessment that

takes about 15 minutes to complete. This has been our best tool for determining

whether or not someone has the personality traits to be successful in this business,

especially since the test can be applied specifically to retail automotive. We are an

extremely Aggie centric organization. We have hired well over 50 Aggie graduates,

and this has been a large part of our success. Our people are the big differentiators

for our companies, and Aggieland has the best the world can offer.

I worked at Tomball Ford for about five years. I ended up recruiting, hiring and

training most of the managers over that five-year period. My dad gave me the

opportunity to buy into the business up to 5% per year, and every dollar I could

save went into buying stock.

These were great years. Kathleen could now afford to stay at home to raise our

family with the birth of our son, Carter, in 1998, and our daughter, Katherine

(Kate), in 2000. We were settling in, buying our first home and making plans to be

in Tomball forever. One of my dad’s great joys outside the car business was

construction, and he loved to play in the dirt. He loved to be on a tractor, a

backhoe, or bulldozer, and he made the decision he was going to build a new

location for Tomball Ford. Building the new location was his primary focus for

about three years. During that time, I became more of a leader in the day-to-day

operations of the dealership, doing it my own way without much oversight or

involvement from him. Once we moved to a new location after the construction

was done, however, he returned to the business and became intimately involved in

the day to day operations. This is when we started to have some power struggles.

On September 11, 2001, terrorists from al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial

airplanes, deliberately crashing two of the planes into the World Trade Center

towers in New York City and a third plane into the Pentagon in Arlington,

Virginia. My father, who was always a “doomsday prepper,” went into ultra-

conservative mode as he began preparing for World War 3. Everyone in the family,

including my two younger sisters, Laura and Beth, weren given a laminated map

with directions to the family farm in Fredericksburg where my father had stored

several years’ worth of food and diesel fuel.

Following the September 11 attacks, businesses across the country felt the blow.

Stock markets immediately nosedived, and almost every sector of the economy

was damaged economically. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy was already suffering

through a moderate recession following the dotcom bubble, and the terrorist

attacks added further injury to the struggling business community. In response to

9/11, Ford and General Motors introduced a “0 percent interest for 60 months

offer” for the first time. Previously, 7 or 8 percent had been a good interest rate on

a used car, while 5 percent was great on a new car. So, the 0 percent for 60 months

deal was remarkable within the industry.

As a result, we were selling new vehicles faster than I have ever seen. I was

having a blast, and we were selling a ton of cars and trading for plenty of cars. I

was pressing the pedal to the metal, while my father still wanted to pull back on the

reigns. We had a great October in sales, but my father was concerned about the

over-supply of used vehicles. I felt like he was asking me to do unreasonable

things in response to his concern, and on November 3, 2001, things came to a head

when my father fired me. Worse than that, he told me that he didn’t care what I did

with my stock, because he was not buying it back. Everything I had saved had

gone into buying stock, which meant I didn’t have any savings. My father started

paying out all the net income of the business to himself as payroll, but I still had a

tax liability for my portion of the business and there was no distributions to pay the

taxes. It was a terrible situation where I felt like I was getting squeezed into

financial submission.

Fortunately, I still had the incredible support of my wife and our friends. This was

a very difficult time for my family, but also a time that allowed us to develop and

grow our faith, something that came out of our involvement at Northwest Bible

Church. The relationships with pastors Bob and Ann Livesay, our church friends,

and the small groups that we were involved with, were bright spots during this dark

time. The dispute with my dad over the investment I had in the stock was ugly,

and had gotten to the point where attorneys were involved. This time of

unemployment also made me realize how much I wanted my own dealership and

my own financial security. However, our children were extremely young, and I

didn’t have a source of income. Our son, Carter, was now almost 3 and our

daughter, Kate, was 1 at the time. I felt the serious weight of needing to provide

for my family. Kathleen and I had just moved into a new house with a $1,200

monthly mortgage. I only had $700 in the bank, and I was unemployed. I called a

good friend, Joe Mallette, who was a wholesaler, and he gave me an auction buyer

card on his license. I went to the auction and bought two cars. I took them to some

of my dealer friends and sold them, earning $500 from the auction, so I could make

my mortgage payment. I could survive for the month of November, but Christmas

was coming, and I needed to do something quickly.

KEATING’S MOST DIFFICULT CHALLENGES

My father fired me on a Saturday morning, and I had not had a Saturday off in

many years, as Saturdays were typically the big selling days in the car business.

With no place to go and nothing better to do, I drove around all day. I was a lost

puppy dog. Ironically, my wife and I remember this difficult time and the ensuing

months as being some of the best times in our marriage, aside from our family

situation with my father. I wanted to settle with my dad on a reasonable value for

my stock at Tomball Ford, but he wasn’t budging. It was a stressful time, but

Kathleen and I grew incredibly close, and we spent some amazing time with our

kids.

Over the ensuing three months, I learned about the possibility of purchasing a Ford

dealership and a Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep dealership in Columbus. A small

community of about 3,700 people located 74 miles west of Houston on Interstate-

10. I reached out to my longtime friend, Don Whitaker, who was originally from

Tomball and also went to Texas A&M at the same time as Kathleen and me. Don’s

wife, Allison, was my sister’s best friend in grade school. I first met Don when I

was in the fourth grade and my sister was having her second-grade birthday party

out at our home. One of the party activities was a boys against girls scavenger

hunt. Don and I whipped those girls in that scavenger hunt. Don and Allison

started dating each other in high school, and I lost touch with them when I moved

to Oklahoma in high school.

Don was a finance major, and Allison was an accounting major. Following their

graduation from A&M, Don worked at Arthur Andersen in Houston, and Allison

was getting her masters at A&M, so they still lived in Tomball. When Kathleen

and I moved to Tomball in 1996, we became really good friends with the

Whitakers and we’d often get together for dinner. Don was a consultant

specializing in financial modeling at the time, and for the last several years of his

time at Arthur Andersen, he had one client and one project. It was his job to

determine the financial feasibility of bringing the NFL back to Houston after the

Oilers left for Tennessee. He did all of the financial modeling for Bob McNair that

resulted in the founding of the Houston Texans in October 1999. Following that,

he left Arthur Andersen to start his own company doing financial valuation.

One evening at dinner with the Whitakers in Houston, I was talking to Don about

the possibility of purchasing the dealerships in Columbus. I had been looking at the

financial statements, estimating about how much I would need to make each month

to turn a profit. When I told Don some of the details, he started peppering me with

questions. “I don’t care what your income statement is, all I care about is your cash

flow,” he said. “You can make money and still go backward on cash, and that is

what could cause you to go broke. Let me come to the house. I can bring my

computer. I have the spreadsheet I built for the Texans deal, and I can ask you

about 30 questions. I will enter your answers, and then we can print out the cash

flow statements, depreciation statements and so forth.” We met and continued to

go back and forth evaluating the Columbus dealerships.

Ultimately, I negotiated the purchase, believing it was a good opportunity, if I

could borrow the up-front money. I thought it was a small enough opportunity that

I was going to be able to afford it, but large enough that I was going to be

financially successful in it. I eventually met with the owners of the dealership in

Columbus at the Cracker Barrel in Katy and asked them to commit to signing a

letter of intent (LOI). A letter of intent is a document outlining general plans of an

agreement between two or more parties before a legal agreement is finalized. An

LOI is not a contract and cannot be legally enforced, but it signifies a serious

commitment from one involved party to another. I didn’t have any idea how I was

going to structure the deal financially, but I wanted them to commit to it by signing

the LOI. They chose not to sign the LOI, but told me we had a handshake

agreement. They instructed me to finalize the legal documents and we could make

the deal happen.

On the way home from that meeting at Cracker Barrel in Katy, Mike Franklin, who

owned a Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep dealership in Port Lavaca, called and said that

Ford dealership in Port Lavaca had just gone broke. The police were actually in the

showroom holding all the titles and the keys. “You need to get down here and

check it out,” Mike said. At the time, I couldn’t have even told you where Port

Lavaca was located (27 miles southeast of Victoria). When I visited Port Lavaca,

though, it looked like an equal opportunity to the dealership in Columbus. It was a

unique situation, because Ford Motor Company wanted to shut down the Port

Lavaca dealership because two different dealers had gone broke in a span of seven

years. But Ford Credit, on the other hand, did not want to shut it down because

Ford Credit was owed a significant amount of money from the dealership. Ford

Credit wanted its money back. Working in my favor, I knew I had a great

relationship with Ford Credit from when I was in Houston, and I believed these

key contacts would help me in purchasing the dealership. So because it was a much

cheaper investment and I had a higher chance of getting Ford Credit approval, I

went to work on putting a deal together to buy Port Lavaca Ford.

Don Whitaker and I once again formed an alliance as we evaluated Port Lavaca

Ford. Meanwhile, I was also sharing details of my plan and asking for advice from

two other people. I didn’t know it at the time, but one of the guys I was

communicating with was my competitor on the purchase in Port Lavaca, he was

also trying to buy it. The way I ended up structuring the negotiation came from

what I learned during the sales training in my summer internship at Service Group

between my junior and senior year at A&M. I treated it like a car deal. I did it the

right way and I structured it the right way. The seller chose to sell the dealership to

me, and I am convinced that God blessed me because I was doing things the right

away as opposed to my competitor who was essentially trying to sabotage me. In

the meantime, I was able to convince Ford Credit to break some of its lending rules

to loan me the money I needed. Ford Credit wanted their money out of Port Lavaca

Ford badly enough to give me a shot to pay them off.

Throughout the time that passed following being fired by my father, my

grandfather was actively involved in trying to heal the rift between my dad and me.

He was squarely on my dad’s side of these discussions, and my father and I were

not speaking to one another. I was, however, talking to my grandfather, and he

would regularly tell me I needed to fix this. In my mind, there was no point in

trying because I knew my father wouldn’t budge. I put the Port Lavaca deal

together, writing the agreement on a yellow legal pad. I was so proud of the deal,

and decided to call my grandfather to ask for financial help. My grandfather loaned

me $340,000. I placed most of the value on the real estate, so I wouldn’t have to

come up with much equity. I structured the whole deal where I could buy the

dealership with as little cash as possible.

I then had to prove to Ford that it was unencumbered funds. From Ford’s

standpoint, the money could not be borrowed money. So, I took the $340,000 to

Crosby State Bank and opened a certificate of deposit (CD) on Monday. On

Tuesday, I returned to Crosby State Bank and informed the bank officer that I

needed to cancel my CD. I was told that I would have to pay penalties, which I said

I understand. I closed it down and received the paperwork I needed. I showed that

cancellation paperwork to Ford and said that I had all the money sitting in a CD for

an opportunity just like this one in Port Lavaca. I simply left out the fact that all the

money was sitting in a CD for only one day. I borrowed $340,000, and I needed

$320,000 to do the deal. My family was also living off of this money. I don’t

believe the penalties were all that much, but I had to do it in order to prove where I

had the money saved up.

Once I had finalized and structured the deal, we went to the closing table with both

sides ready to sign the contract. We were interrupted before any signatures,

however, by a phone call from a representative from Ford Credit. “I don’t know

what you are trying to pull, but this doesn’t fit any of our guidelines,” the

representative said. “There is no way we are going to approve this deal.” At that

point, the deal looked dead. The previous owner of the dealership had been double

floor planning cars. In case you are unfamiliar with the term, floor planning is a

type of inventory financing for large ticket retail items. Specialty lenders,

traditional banks and finance arms of manufacturers provide the short-term loans

to retailers to purchase vehicle inventory and they are then repaid as the units are

sold. But the previous owner had been double floor planning, so on the same piece

of inventory he was taking a loan from Ford Credit and a loan from the local bank.

When he went out of trust, there was a big money grab regarding who would be

paid back after the completion of the deal. I had to convince the local bank to take

a big loss and to release their liens on all the assets I was trying to purchase.

The representative from Ford Credit was adamant about not approving the deal.

Before the deal was completely dead, however, I asked the representative if I could

speak to a manager or supervisor. I figured it couldn’t hurt to try to appeal to

someone in charge. The representative gave me a number, and I called the Ford

Credit headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan. I was transferred from one person to

another before eventually being transferred to Jim Gauthier, who had been Ford

Credit’s assistant branch manager in Houston, someone I had contacted regularly

when I was the used car manager at Tomball Ford. Jim was now the big decision-

maker in Dearborn. He said, “Ben I had no idea this was you. Sure we will approve

the deal.”

Once the deal was done, it was time to get to work, and I knew I needed to get the

right people in place. It’s always about finding the right people. After helping me

construct the deal for Port Lavaca Ford, Don told me he really enjoyed the process

and working with me. “If you would have a spot for me available, I would love to

come and work with you.” I was honored and excited about what we could build

together, and we both started the process of transitioning our families from

Houston to the Texas gulf coast, or the “Redneck Riviera” as I like to call it. In

fact, Don and I lived together in a duplex for about six months when we first went

to Port Lavaca, and this was as crazy of an experience as anything else we had

done.

In the previous five years, I had hired and trained almost everybody at Tomball

Ford in the sales side of the business, and I ended up recruiting many of them to

come with me to Port Lavaca. I had learned the car business in Houston, where

there were 26 Ford dealers. And since Tomball was a long way away from the big

city, I had to convince customers to drive all the way out to Tomball and I had to

learn how to compete with the big volume Ford stores. We had gotten really good

at it, and I resolved to operate our dealership in Port Lavaca as if we were in one of

the most competitive car markets in the world.

In our first full month of business, we sold out of new Fords. We sold 90 new

Fords while being located in a town of 10,000 people. We were categorized as a

“select dealer,” which meant we were a rural dealer in a small marketplace. Ford

would allow us to order anything we wanted, but if we hung ourselves with too

much inventory, it was our problem. We ordered a ton of cars, and we sold a ton of

cars. We became the No. 1 volume select dealer in the nation out of tiny Port

Lavaca. We were rocking and rolling.

At that point, I decided that with my wife and my kids and our standard of living, I

needed to make close to $15,000 a month to be stable and to be on a firm financial

foundation. In the first month, I made $18,000, which is all that mattered to me. It

was still ugly with my dad during this period of time, but I eventually convinced

myself that I wasn’t going to worry about it. I was going to be able to make at least

$15,000 a month with this deal, and I was going to be able to take care of my

family. I called my mom and told her that I was willing to sell my stock. I owned

33 percent of the real-estate and 25 percent of the dealership. “I will sell everything

for whatever you will give me for it,” I told my mother. “I don’t trust what dad will

do, but the stock isn’t worth all the damage it is doing to our family relationships.”

Even though I thought the full retail value of everything was around $10 million,

the situation with my parents had gotten so ugly that Kathleen and I halfway

expected receive $1.00. In the end, gave us $1 million for our interest in

everything related to the business, real estate and related companies. I took the

first $340,000 and paid back my grandfather. That left me with $660,000. A few

days later, Mike Franklin, the owner of the Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep dealership

across the street from my dealership, called and said he wanted me to buy him out.

“Mike I have only been here a month I am still trying to figure out which way is

up,” I told him. “I am just trying to keep my head above water.”

Mike loved racehorses, and said, “I’m moving closer to faster horses and faster

women. If you don’t buy me out, you’re going to have a new neighbor.” So after

only owning Port Lavaca Ford for 45 days, I met him at the McDonald’s in Port

Lavaca and we worked out a deal. On July 3, 2002, I officially purchased Port

Lavaca Dodge Chrysler Jeep. Soon thereafter, I hired another group of employees

from Tomball Ford, which probably drove a bigger wedge between my father and

me. I took about 10 people from Tomball Ford in total, which meant we had an

unbelievably talented team who were trained in hyper-competitive Houston, so we

were set up for great success in Port Lavaca.

These coworkers came with me from Tomball knowing they were going to make

less money, but it wasn’t about the money, it was about relationships. It was about

the dream of doing something big with people you enjoy. I received a lot of credit

for providing the vision and leadership, but clearly, the only way we were able to

grow and succeed was because we had an amazing group of people who knew the

formula of running our stores. Once I had everyone in place, I would say that 70

percent of our business was coming from over 30 miles away. We were beating all

the dealers in Corpus Christi and in Victoria. We were selling lots of cars and

having lots of fun.

Our success frustrated the Chevrolet, Buick and GMC dealership’s owner in Port

Lavaca. Eventually, I had the opportunity to buy him out as well. Once again, Don

and I put together a plan and scraped together as much money as we could to buy

the Chevrolet, Buick and GMC dealership. We still laugh today about how cash

poor we were at the time, but it was the building of a larger business structure that

was so exciting. We talked then about duplicating the model repeatedly, and it was

happening. With three dealerships in Port Lavaca, we enjoyed an economy of

scale in advertising and other areas, and compared to Houston, Victoria advertising

was dirt cheap. We were advertising so much I became a little bit of a celebrity on

television, or maybe a little annoying. But most significantly, I was learning a lot

about effective advertising in varying markets. I started using the phrase

“BOOMING Port Lavaca” in all of our ads, which was very effective. It was

partly wishful thinking, partly my perspective on our business, and partly a “Field

of Dreams” idea of “if you build it, they will come.”

Perhaps most significantly at that time, I had somewhat of a healing scenario with

my dad in the fall of 2003. For the first time in a long time, the Keating

family—the whole family, me and my dad included,—enjoyed a really good

Thanksgiving. Then on December 12, 2003—four days following his 59th

birthday—my dad took his own life. It is difficult to describe the experience

unless you’ve gone through it, but this was an extremely difficult time. I couldn’t

help but wonder if I had anything to do with this situation. Logically, I knew I

didn’t, but emotionally, you still questions it. We were so close to each other, and

then so aggressively at odds with each other, and then at peace with each other.

The emotional roller coaster was crazy. I was angry at my dad for taking his own

life. It seemed like the most selfish thing a person could ever do. I enjoyed my

dad immensely, and he was gone in a quick moment without the chance to do

anything about it.

There were plenty of factors that contributed to his suicide. The way our family

attorney described it, our dad had a squirrel cage in his head he couldn’t turn off.

We believe he was bipolar, which explained his huge mood swings. He had

recovered from cancer twice in the 1980s, but a cancer scare had returned in 2003.

He had just started taking an anti-depressant a few days before, and somehow he

just lost touch with reality. While it was an incredible shock and personally

devastating, it created the situation where our family became closer than ever as

we all dealt with the shock, and it also created a lot of difficult business issues.

My father had created rules in case anything ever happened to him, and everyone

in the family knew them well. First, he didn’t want my mom to run the dealership.

Second, he didn’t want her to sell it to a family member. And third, he didn’t want

her to carry a note on the sale of the business, and he instead instructed her to sell it

for cash.

In the aftermath of my father’s suicide, I spent plenty of time at Tomball Ford

helping to manage the dealership. Ford allowed plenty of time to pass before

representatives eventually came to my mom and wanted to meet about the future of

the dealership. She asked me to represent her and to accompany her at this meeting

where we all received a big surprise. One of the Ford representatives said, “Carole

you can operate the store if you want to, but we hope you don’t. You can sell the

dealership. It is worth a lot of money, and we can help you find a buyer. You can

sell it to somebody else, but we hope you don’t. We want you to sell it to Ben.”

Then the representative turned to me and said Ford wanted me to sell everything in

Port Lavaca and take over Tomball Ford. My mother and I left the meeting and

tried to process what had just taken place.

Once the dust settled, I made a deal with my mom. She was concerned about

taking care of the employees who had been with the dealership a long time. I

suggested that if I could convince Brent Christiansen to come back to the

dealership, then Steve Boone, Brent, and I would purchase it from her. Brent had

worked for Ford in the mid-90s, and I had convinced him to leave Ford and come

to work in Tomball as the General Sales Manager almost 10 years prior. Steve was

the controller at Tomball Ford who had been my mom’s main point of contact. At

the time of my father’s death, Brent was working for Gulf States Toyota. I

convinced Brent to come back Tomball and to partner with Steve Boone and me in

our purchase of the dealership. This opportunity gave all three of us a chance we

wouldn’t have gotten any other way. My mother put together the deal and used an

interesting formula. The deal was structured so that Brent, Steve and I were not

allowed to take anything out of the dealership until she was paid off. In September

of 2004, we bought the dealership and my mother carried the note. She essentially

broke all my father’s rules. I didn’t have any money at the time because I had just

bought the three stores in Port Lavaca, and we were super tight on cash. Against

Ford’s wishes, I did not sell the Port Lavaca stores. The purchase of Tomball Ford

was a 100 percent stock purchase, I didn’t have to put any money down, it was a

100 percent loan.

I had become somewhat of an advertising expert while I was in Port Lavaca

because advertising was so cheap, and I could try different things for different

stores to see what generated results. It was my own little advertising laboratory. In

March of 2006—March is always Ford’s big truck month—we went really big and

took some huge risks. We made some outrageous offers and I sent out 350,000

mail pieces. I took everything I had learned in Port Lavaca and applied it to

everything we were doing in Tomball. In March of 2006, we were the No. 1

volume Ford dealer in Houston. We were also the No. 1 F-series dealer in the

nation. We received plenty of recognition, and we attracted the attention of other

auto manufacturers. Representatives from Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep came to

Tomball Ford and asked us if we would consider buying one of their dealerships in

Houston. “The only one I would be interested in is the one across the street,” I said.

They said the asking price was ridiculously high, but that did not scare or

intimidate me, even though I still didn’t have the money to buy it.

My mom was really enjoying the success at Tomball Ford, and she was involved in

all of the celebration and growth. She was having a ball being more involved in the

business for the first time. When I told her about the representatives from Dodge,

Chrysler and Jeep and the store across the street, she agreed to finance the purchase

of the Dodge store. We bought the Dodge store and were extremely successful

extremely quickly, but I was still 100 percent leveraged.

I am extremely grateful to my mom for taking the risk on me. I recognize that our

history through drug treatment and the tumultuous time with my dad had to make

this decision very difficult for her. I would have never had the opportunity to

purchase these large Houston dealerships without her willingness to take the risk

on me. These stores provided a much broader foundation for us to become a small

“auto group”, instead of just being the dealer in Port Lavaca. Additionally, I am

grateful for my father and all the things I learned about running a business from

him, even though I didn’t realize what I was learning at the time. He was ultra

conservative, and I am not. Therefore, he was a good ying to my yang, and this

has helped me in my career. I am also grateful for my grandfather and

aunts/uncles who were in the car business, because I know I learned through

osmosis of being around them during holidays.

This time just after the purchase of Tomball Dodge was interesting, because we

had such quick and extreme growth. In our third month at Tomball Dodge, we

were the No. 3 volume Dodge dealer in the nation. Shortly after our big success at

Tomball Dodge, the market representation managers from Chrysler kept trying to

convince me to buy dealerships all over Texas. I was already in over my head, but

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to buy the Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep store in

Boerne in August 2008 and also the Chrysler Jeep dealership in Tomball. I

combined the Tomball brands to create Tomball Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep.

Additionally, I started looking at a few other opportunities within the brand I might

be able to afford soon, and started to focus on Grapevine, Texas.

This was in 2008, and on September 29, 2008, the Dow Jones Industrial

Average fell by 777.68 points, which up to that point was the largest point drop in

history. It was the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression in

1929. Predatory lending targeting low-income homebuyers, excessive risk-taking

by global financial institutions and the bursting of the United States housing

bubble culminated in a “perfect storm.” Financial institutions worldwide suffered

severe damage, reaching a climax with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and a

subsequent international banking crisis.

In the summer of 2009, both General Motors and Chrysler declared bankruptcy.

This meant that five of my seven stores were selling cars for a manufacturer that

was restructuring. At the time of the financial collapse, I had $18 million worth of

loans with Chrysler Financial and GMAC for real estate and capital loans for the

purchases of all these businesses. Since Chrysler Financial and GMAC were

owned by Chrysler and General Motors, they were not FDIC-insured banks, and

didn’t fall within the federal banking rules and regulations. First and foremost,

their job is to support the business of the mother ship, and that meant that they

could—and often did—loan money much more aggressively than the banks would.

I had proven myself as a successful car dealer, so the manufacturers were willing

to take risks on us, but back in the midst of the financial collapse, GMAC and

Chrysler Financial also went bankrupt. In a risky move, I worked with the people

at Chrysler Financial to purchase the assets of Grapevine Dodge Chrysler Jeep out

of bankruptcy court and agreed to cover the debt. I added yet another dealership at

a time when it could have all amounted to nothing.

Several months later, we were forced to restructure our loans with a much more

conservative federally regulated bank. We had mortgages less than 24 months old

and we had to come up with more cash due to the drop in asset values. So, I began

selling down all of our used cars, borrowing money off of our service contract

reserves and piecing together every dollar I could piece together. I came up with $5

million. I was offering to buy down the $18 million in loans with GMAC and

Chrysler Financial to make it $13 million. I remember where I was standing in

March of 2010 when I received a call from Shawn Allgood with GMAC. I was on

spring break vacation with my family, and Shawn said, “Ben, I’m sorry but there is

nothing we can do for you. We have looked at your whole deal, we have gone

through your whole package. We have structured everything the best way we could

structure it. We can’t get you approved.”

I thought my career as an automobile dealer was done. But like I had done in Port

Lavaca, I decided to make one more call. I called Shawn back and asked him if it

would be different if I could find an additional $1 million. “Ben, we have gone

through all of your businesses and you don’t have another $1 million,” Shawn said.

“That’s beside the point,” I told him. “What IF I come up with another $1 million?

I don’t care if you put it on floor plan, if you put it in a CD, if you put it on

mortgages or capital loans. I don’t care what you do with it. You can just have it in

there as reserve for a rainy day, but what if I came up with another million

dollars?”

Shawn said he would find out, and he began calling various board members.

Eventually, he called me back with an answer. “OK, we can get you approved on

two conditions,” he said. “First, you must come up with an additional $1 million.

No. 2, you can’t have a single delinquency for the next twelve months. The reason

you didn’t get approved is because 90 percent of your payoffs are delinquent. You

don’t look like you have any operating capital. You look like you are broke

already.”

I thought it was impossible that 90 percent of our payoffs had been delinquent. We

devised a fool-proof system so that nothing would be delinquent. I then dug into

the system and what I did not know is that Chrysler Financial and General Motors

gave us five days from the day we sold a car to pay off the loan. All of our systems

were in place to pay them off of the fourth day. Under bankruptcy, these loans had

switched to federally regulated banking rules, which changed the payoff deadline

to three days and I didn’t know it. All of our systems were in place to pay

everything off in four days, but we looked broke because everything was one day

late. So, what is interesting about the whole thing is that we were doing enough

business that delaying one day of payoffs created the need for an extra $2 million

in operating capital. Not only did I have to come up with another $1 million for the

down payment to get our loans refinanced, but now I had to move all of our

payoffs forward one day, which required another $2 million. But we didn’t have

any other choice if we wanted to remain in business. So we started doing our own

internal audits every day, chasing down every single car deal, because we could

not allow a single delinquency.

We also could no longer afford to have any used cars. The money we pulled

together to pay down the extra amount was basically the operating capital we had

inside the stores for used car inventory. So, we made the choice to get completely

out of the pre-owned business for a while.

We became an audit firm more than a car dealership. We were making sure we did

not lose our agreement in those loans. We had never been tighter on money than

we were right then. I had literally borrowed money from everywhere I could

possibly think of because of this financial situation. We had a minimum payment

worked out with my mom on Tomball Ford and Tomball Dodge, and we had to go

to my mom and tell her we don’t have enough money to pay the minimum

payment for the quarter. She didn’t know what was really going on in the business,

and was very defensive. She wanted to be sure she wasn’t going to take a huge loss

by taking the risk of breaking dad’s rules. It was a difficult time as we tried to

squeeze blood out of the turnip.

In response to all that was happening, I changed my management of the businesses.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to hold all of these businesses

accountable in a way where I could compare my smallest store (Port Lavaca Ford)

to my largest store (Tomball Ford). I became much more efficient, and I started

making more money because I was wasting less money.

Meanwhile, the price of oil and gas started going up. The first well within the

Eagle Ford Shale near Victoria was drilled in 2008. But it wasn’t until 2010 when

drilling permits in the Eagle Ford Shale began to dramatically increase. In 2010,

there were more than 1,000 permits issued, and things began to absolutely explode.

It represented a golden opportunity for practically anyone involved in the oil and

gas industry, especially those companies and contractors based in Texas. It also

represented a great time in automobile sales in the Lone Star State. From 2011-15,

our sales were really strong.

Sales were so good that in 2013, we paid my mom off, which was a massive

springboard for us. I was free and clear to be able to generate some capital. We

bought College Station Ford in 2014. Then, the BMW, Mazda, VW, Hyundai

stores from Garlyn Shelton in Bryan the following year of 2015. In 2016, we

bought the Nissan and Honda dealerships in Conroe along with the Dodge Chrysler

Jeep Ram store in Victoria. We continued to invest our liquid capital into

purchasing more stores and had reached 16 stores. This time, though, became a

particularly difficult time for me personally. At that point in time, we had a general

manager at each individual store, but I was very personally involved in the day-to-

day operations and decisions with each GM at each dealership. It was too much.

The big change that happened at that point was that I moved out of my office at

Port Lavaca Ford. We created a corporate office in Victoria, which was initially

strange because I had always been anti-corporate, but I knew things needed to

change. We brought Stephen Livesay, who had been our operating partner and

general manager at all three stores in Port Lavaca, into the corporate office as chief

operating officer. Don Whitaker also moved out of Port Lavaca and into our new

building. Our in-house attorney, Chris Wall, got the opportunity to move out of

“the firm,” which was our affectionate name for the portable building we had in the

parking lot of Port Lavaca Chevrolet, to join us in the corporate office. Together

with the advertising agency and the insurance company we had built up over time,

we started a corporate office and got pretty good at sharing the load of leadership.

With this new structure in place we were able to grow from 16 stores to 20 stores.

With 20 dealerships, all of us were running ragged once again. We were busier

than we wanted to be with all the responsibilities and priorities tugging at us.

We all met as a group and made the decision that we did not want to stop growing.

We decided the right thing to do was to bring in some additional support. We met

with Larry Van Tuyl, who had operated an organization of well over 100 privately

held dealerships. Larry was one of the few people in the world who had blazed that

trail and had done what we were looking to do. The meeting with Larry really

energized us. We wanted to have someone supporting service and parts, someone

supporting all e-commerce and someone to help with various other departments.

These moves freed up enough time in the day where we felt comfortable growing

again. In a span of two years, we bought 11 more stores in 2020-2021. We also

sold two and terminated one to bring us to 28 stores.

Under the Keating Auto Group umbrella, we function as entrepreneurs, business

owners who collaborate and figure out how to run their business. I just happen to

be the majority owner in all of them, but Stephen Livesay and Don Whitaker are

providing most of the leadership these days. We do quarterly meetings. We do

incredible composite reporting. Everything is wide open in terms of performance

and numbers. Everything about the business is open to everybody. If you are doing

a poor job, you stick out like a sore thumb. If we added a store in 2010, it was a big

deal. It just felt like so much more work. Now it is much easier to add another

store. All the processes and reporting procedures are in place.

This success is absolutely not about me, but about the incredible team we have in

place. We have proven that we have a model we can repeat over and over again.

Even though the car industry is an incredibly competitive market, we have

developed a model that has enabled us to be extremely successful in this

environment. Our model for success is set up with the understanding that every

Ford dealer has the same F-150 on his lot. Our opportunity to make money is not in

selling the F-150, but instead it is everything that happens after the customer says

he wants to buy the F-150. It is in the banking, financing, insurance, service, parts,

trade-in and so forth. Even though we are selling a product, we are essentially in

the services business. We can afford to be extremely competitive on price if we

build loyal customers at the same time.

When I mention insurance, I am not referring to full coverage or liability. An

example of the insurance I am highlighting involves every time a customer buys a

set of tires, the tires come with a road hazard warranty. If the customer runs over

something and the tire blows out, we will replace it for free. But what most people

don’t realize is that $8 of that tire purchase is insurance. That road hazard warranty

is insurance. That type of insurance can be utilized numerous times in the car

industry in things like gap insurance, service contracts, extended service contracts,

credit life, dent and ding protection, key replacement, windshield, tire wheels and

so forth. I had done all the math and figured out that once we reached a certain

size, we could afford to become a full, federally regulated insurance company. We

currently sell about $50 million a year in insurance. The margins in the business

are very small, but it all adds up in the long haul and it provides a valuable service

to our customers, because we handle it in-house instead of with some giant

corporation.

We also have a management company, run our own advertising agency, and are

heavily involved in the GPS industry. We have grown to be large enough that in

some ways we have decided we could build a better mouse trap to handle some of

the things we were outsourcing.

As of April 2023 when the Automotive News rankings come out for dealer groups

in the USA, Keating Auto Group was the 15 th largest dealer group in the USA.

And with the top six groups all being publicly traded companies, we would be the

9 th largest privately held group, and the largest in Texas. The all seems so crazy

knowing where we started in 2002.

In February 2024, I was honored by the Texas Auto Dealers Association as the

Texas nominee for the Time Dealer of the Year, based on the work we do in our

communities and our work with Texas A&M. There is something special about

being honored by your peers, competitors, and colleagues.

Again, I want to point out that the success of our businesses is based on our people.

I love to get into our quarterly partners’ meeting to see the amazing team of people

we have running our stores. The people we have are our greatest assets, and they

are what gets me most excited about the future. We have made the choice to try to

pour love into as many of our 2200+ families as possible. We do an annual retreat

for those who want to attend where we alternate topics between marriage and

parenting. We try to build into their lives that they are an integral part of a larger

community. For each business, we have devised a model for assembling our

teams. We promote from within on all positions when we are able to, as hiring

people from the outside is much more challenging. When you come from the

inside, you know how we want to do things. As noted earlier, I have been quite

successful in hiring Aggie grads. I fully realize no one attends college with

aspirations of becoming a car salesperson. However, I believe that is because most

people do not realize the opportunity available to them in the car business. It is safe

to say that most Aggies we hired made $80,000 or more in their first year in the car

business. In fact, many have made $100,000 or more. I can also say that several

were making $180,000 or more within their first five years. This is not something

easy to find in big corporate America. Yes, the hours of “retail” are long, but they

are way less than the tremendous hours my friends put in at the accounting firms or

consulting companies. I always appreciated getting paid based on my personal

results and efforts. I love working with a team of people in such a fast paced

environment. The connections and relationships made in this business are special

also. It is so very different from an “office job”, and I think it offers such a great

opportunity for those who are a “good fit”.

I am very proud of the way we showed the importance of our people in our

response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. We kept everyone employed even

though there were no customers coming in the door. We made sure everyone got

paid as we figured out how to deal with the challenges. Luckily for our business,

Governor Abbott declared auto dealerships as essential businesses and we were

allowed to stay open, but it also meant we had to change our business model in

quick order. A large portion of our people ended up getting the virus at some

point over the next 2 years, but we all worked together to support each other and to

be in position to support our communities. I also think this ability to change

quickly to adapt to whatever situation life gives us is a gift for an entrepreneur.

We find solutions and bring people together. In the end, we are rewarded for it.

I also want to give some “kudos” to our adopted hometown of Victoria, Texas.

The value of raising our kids in Victoria was significant. I am constantly amazed at

the adults our kids, Carter and Kate, have grown in to. They are grounded, Godly,

kind, and compassionate. I know the kind of trouble I got into, and I feel

completely blessed that we haven’t yet had those challenges. Victoria has been a

really great place for our family for many reasons. I also don’t really know how it

happened that both kids ended up going to Texas A&M, but I am delighted with

the fact that we are an Aggie family.

I love the saying that behind ever great man is an even greater woman. This is

certainly true in my life. I have been married to Kathleen now for 28 years. There

is no way any of this would have been possible without her. We have been at the

bottom and we have been at the top, but we have done it all together. Her strong

support has allowed me to go out on a limb on occasion and it has been incredible

to share life with her. Whether in business, or in family matters, or even in racing

cars, Kathleen has been a wise sounding board. We have done it all as a team.

KEATING’S ADVICE TO ASPIRING LEADERS OF THE FUTURE

There are so many directions I could go in this section. I could write at length

about the potential hazards of going to work for a family member. I could also

write about the value of being independent so soon. You learn many lessons when

you are on your own and paying your own bills at an early age. I could also write

about the value of simply making one more call, or making one more attempt

before giving up on a dream or plan. I’ve already written at length about the magic

of finding, hiring, and retaining great people. I should also write about all the hard

lessons I learned in 2009 and 2010 about establishing liquidity outside of the

business, and the importance of cash in any business.

Instead of any of those topics, however, I would simply encourage you to find a

way to be passionate in how you invest your time and energy. The world tends to

make way for the person who knows where they are going, and I believe your

passion defines your direction. As I have already noted, I didn’t want anything to

do with the automobile dealership industry when I arrived at Texas A&M. But I

am a highly competitive person, and I quickly discovered that the car business was

a perfect industry to stoke my competitive fire. One of the main reasons I was

successful when I started was that I was so passionate about it. It consumed me,

and I loved it. I also discovered a hobby that I was passionate about in 2006 that

has become another major part of my life. It also involves cars, but not selling

them.

KEATING’S PASSION FOR RACING

It’s typically been difficult for my family to find Christmas gifts for me, but for

Christmas in 2005, Kathleen nailed the perfect gift. She thought it might be fun to

buy me a track day at the now-defunct Texas World Speedway in College Station.

At the time, visitors could learn about racing and could drive their personal car

around the track. I redeemed my $250 Christmas gift in 2006, knowing virtually

nothing about racing. I wore shorts and tennis shoes, and I did not take a helmet or

tools. I borrowed a Dodge Viper from one of my showrooms, and it was the most

fun I’d ever had. I was completely hooked. I started racing in 2007 in the Viper

Racing League, which is a club-level, gentlemen’s racing series. In 2008, I won my

class and continued to move up to more challenging classes through the years. I

often like to say that my personality hasn’t changed much from high school, but

my “drug of choice” is now racing cars.

As mentioned, I started out in what would be considered “club racing” in the Viper

Race League. In my first six races, I was involved in six different incidents, and I

was put on probation. This was exactly what I needed, and I started to progress

quickly. In 2010, my grandparents passed away and left me some money. In total

“addict” behavior, I chose to spend this money on driving in the Rolex 24 Hours at

Daytona. This was where I got completely hooked on endurance sportscar racing.

Fastforward and in June 2022—and in my eighth trip to the 24 Hours of Le

Mans—I earned a class win, with a victory in the LM GTE Am class in an Aston

Martin. I came extremely close in 2019 by winning the class in my personally-

owned Ford GT. But the title was stripped from me due to several minor technical

infractions. It was the Ford GT’s last year racing at Le Mans, and the cars were

carefully scrutinized post-race. The victory in 2022 was especially rewarding

because of the disappointment in 2019. Then in June of 2023, I had the amazing

honor of winning Le Mans again, but this time in a C8R Corvette. It was the

perfect storm… Back to Back wins, the 100 th Anniversary of Le Mans, an

American driver winning with an American team, winning the biggest race in a car

that I sell, winning in the last year of the GTE class, and on and on.

As a driver since 2007, I have now won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the 24 Hours of

Daytona, the 12 Hours of Sebring, Petit Le Mans and many other endurance

events. I won the North American Endurance Cup in IMSA in 2017, 2018, 2019,

and 2021. I won the national championship in the LMP2 class in 2021 in IMSA

and was Vice Champion (second) in the World Endurance Championship.

Maybe the pinnacle of my racing career is happening right now. In 2022, I won

the FIA GT-Am World Championship in the Aston Martin racing for TF Sport.

Then in 2023, racing for Corvette Racing, I won the World Championship again,

with the largest points lead there has ever been. Back to back World

Championships… The only American to have multiple World Championships...

Chosen by the Series to receive the Gentleman of the Year award. Won the IMSA

LMP2 Championship again in 2023. And, ALL of this is far beyond my wildest

dreams of driving around Texas World Speedway in College Station 16 years ago.

While I love adrenaline and the high-speed intensity of the races, I actually find

racing to be relaxing. I call it an “adrenaline flush.” The focus required to perform

well behind the steering wheel won’t allow you to think about anything else, and I

love the way I feel after a race weekend. I also love the teamwork required for

endurance racing. And, of course, I love the competition. The fact I can compete in

the same car, at the same tracks and in the same races with the best racing drivers

in the world is still quite humbling for me. I imagine it would be like playing

basketball with Michael Jordan or stepping to the batter’s box against Nolan Ryan.

I get to compete with the best of the best, and I continue to learn every time I race.

Racing is extremely time-consuming. Realistically, it’s probably too time-

consuming when you factor in my all my businesses and balancing time with my

family. Obviously, I also have an incredible bunch of guys to mind the businesses

while I go out and play.

I really believe there is some truth to the old adage “Win on Sunday, sell on

Monday.” I was a Viper racer before I was a Viper retailer. I have also become a

better salesperson because I can talk about handling characteristics, braking, the

differential or any other topic in a way that most people cannot. I would also say

that my racing has helped improve my relationships with my partners. It makes me

more relaxed. It keeps me from micro-managing them. It gives me some

perspective outside of the car business.

I learn something in virtually every race, just as I have continued to learn with

every dealership we’ve added to the Keating Auto Group. In every way, shape and

form—from my businesses to my hobbies—I am driven to succeed. And I’ll end

this chapter with this simple message to remember: No matter what obstacles you

encounter in life, you can thrive if you always maintain your competitive drive,

and never stop learning. I am a better racer at 51 years old than I was at 48,

because I am passionate about learning.

Finally, I would say that my faith has been a big part of being a survivor. I have

leaned so heavily on God during the many times that it has seemed like all was

lost. It is amazing to me how Kathleen and I look back at these times as some of

the happiest memories. This is not an accident.

I will also end with a music quote. Janis Joplin did a great remake of “Me and my

Bobby McGee” where she sings, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to

lose.” And it wasn’t until I was in the position of being completely broken and

empty that I really understood the freedom of nothing to lose. It is easy to take

risks when you have nothing to lose. And freedom has a much broader meaning

than I expected in that it is freedom in so many ways. The joy that has come from

trusting God during these times has been impactful for me, even in the good times

and successes. It was really hard for me to understand “being a car dealer” as a

calling, but I can honestly say I believe I am doing exactly what God has planned

for me. This is easy for me to see, because there is no way it could have happened

any other way.