I fell into automotive by accident and stayed on purpose. What started as a job turned into a genuine obsession with how dealerships work, why some thrive and others grind, and what it actually takes to connect the right car to the right person at the right time. Right now I lead marketing and new vehicle inventory strategy at Lighthouse Buick GMC in Morton, IL. Those two roles don't always live together, but I think they should. Marketing shapes and captures demand. Inventory has to meet it. When those functions talk to each other, good things happen. At Lighthouse, we've seen that play out in ways that have been meaningful for the whole store — across sales volume, service retention, and how efficiently we move metal. A lot of that progress has come from taking data seriously. I've built reporting infrastructure that connects marketing spend to actual retail outcomes, and I use AI tools to find patterns and ask better questions faster. I'm not interested in data for data's sake. I want to know what's actually true so I can make a better decision. I spend a lot of time thinking about how data should inform decisions without replacing the human judgment that makes those decisions worth trusting. I build systems, ask uncomfortable questions about what's actually working, and always leave things more organized than I found them. I'm in the depths of real work every single day, learning from people I respect, and trying to contribute something real to an industry I think has a genuinely exciting future ahead of it.