NFA Finance

I was never a social media guy.

I still don’t have personal Facebook or Instagram pages. I never cared about posting where I was, what I was eating, or every little thing happening in my life. That kind of social media has never interested me.

But I do wish I had understood YouTube sooner.

I wish I had recognized the value of documenting the journey, sharing what I knew, and building my brand online while I was living through it.

I’ve been in the car business for more than 25 years. I’ve owned dealerships, bought and sold thousands of vehicles, made money, lost money, taken chances, made mistakes, started over, and collected enough stories to fill several lifetimes.

I was already living the content. I just wasn’t recording it.

Every once in a while, I’ll find an old video—like that Monte Carlo video—and it reminds me how much of the journey could have been documented. Imagine having years of those moments: the cars, the deals, the dealership, the problems, the wins, and everything that happened behind the scenes.

I could have been building Modern Day Dealer brick by brick the entire time.

That is probably the one thing I wish I had started doing earlier in life: building my brand and documenting the journey on YouTube.

It would have given me a tremendous head start. All those experiences wouldn’t exist only as memories and stories I tell today. They would be videos still reaching people, building an audience, and working as digital assets.

But everything happens for a reason.

If I had started earlier, I wouldn’t have had the knowledge I have now. I wouldn’t have had all these experiences or understood the bigger picture the way I do today. Maybe I needed to live the story before I could understand how valuable it was.

Building something online every day is a lot of work. One video doesn’t build a brand. One blog post doesn’t build an empire. It happens one day, one story, and one brick at a time.

But I’m starting to enjoy that process.

I may wish I had started earlier, but I started—and now I’m not stopping.

The best time might have been 20 years ago.

The next best time is today.

— Nicholas Francis
NFA Finance