Derek Emery is a graduate of the University of Maryland and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminology.
Taking a year off from college Derek moved from his native Maryland to California and started selling Toyota’s at the age of 19. His entrepreneurial spirit kicked in as he became a new car auto broker when he returned to Maryland to finish college and supported himself by helping friends, family members, and referrals negotiate the purchase of a new vehicle.
When Derek graduated from college he moved back to Los Angeles and started selling Nissan’s and was soon promoted to Used Car Manager at the age of 23. At that time, Derek was known as the youngest used car manager for a franchised car dealer in the country as most in his position were double or triple his age. Learning from his experienced mentors in the automotive business, Derek soon mastered the difficult process of buying and selling used vehicles and had the fastest sale (inventory turn-over) rate in the industry.
In his early 20’s Derek subscribed to marketing legend Jay Abraham’s newsletter and eventually was introduced to the work of Dan Kennedy, who Derek considers his mentor. It was this very early introduction to these two mastermind thinkers that Derek understood there can be businesses within businesses and being a true entrepreneur means you manifest your ideas, pinpoint your target audience, and deliver a compelling message. This entrepreneurial spirit continues today.
Successfully operating a Nissan dealer’s highly profitable used car department for seven years, Derek eventually stepped out on his own to become the first used car buyer working directly with new car auto brokers in the country. Through his training with Jay Abraham and Dan Kennedy, Derek developed an affiliate referral program with these new car brokers using a unique custom appraisal process and bidding model that continues today.
A high percentage of the used vehicles Derek purchased were from affluent Los Angeles residents as well as hundreds of celebrity’s. Derek has been in the homes of many Hollywood A-List celebrities acquiring their used vehicle and is well respected within the business management community of these celebrities.
Leveraging his used car expertise and previous experience as a new car auto broker, Derek formulated a new business model that separated his business from all of the other new car auto brokers in Southern California by using his large inventory of used cars as collateral and cash flow to obtain high quality bank lines for customer financing and leasing of new vehicles. Derek knew his expertise on bidding used vehicles and having finance options for his customers would place him on a whole new level compared to all other auto brokers who did not qualify for bank lines nor know the value of a used vehicle. Leveraging the infrastructure of his car buying service and experience a new business was born.
After a successful new car broker business and used car buying service Derek created an affiliate program with multiple credit unions in Southern California providing credit union members with used vehicles and also facilitating the purchase of their trade-in which was always much higher than a dealer trade-in price. This affiliate program has continued successfully for more than fifteen years with more than thirty local credit unions signed up for this program.
In the early 1990’s the Derek created a massive “Cash for Cars” themed Yellow Page campaign in Southern California using Dan Kennedy style marketing. It was this campaign that enabled him to create a unique negotiating and bidding methodology to buy used vehicles from private party sellers. In the mid 1990’s the Internet explosion happened and Derek was the first car dealer in the country to advertise on the “search” platform to buy used cars from the open public. The first pay-per-click (PPC) company was called Goto.com which only required a one cent bid to enter the auction for bid placement. Eventually Goto.com changed its name to Overture and then was bought out by Yahoo and became Yahoo Search Marketing. During this time a new player on the scene called Google started to make waves and Derek started aggressive advertising with Google AdWords when it was only five cents per click. Google became a much more business friendly pay-per-click marketing company than Yahoo so Derek concentrated on mastering Google AdWords as he knew from the beginning Google would dominate online search.
Today, Derek’s Cash4UsedCars.com pay-per-click based used car buying service acquires more than 10,000 used vehicles per year in Southern California. Combining Google AdWords and Microsoft AdCenter (Yahoo and Bing) Cash4UsedCars.com has dominated this Internet space in Southern California.
In 2000, Derek created an online broadcasting company called LogOnLive.com which was a start-up company that became the first website in history to broadcast real time video, using Enter-Vision Broadcasting Software, through a wireless transmission. The original concept was to enable a car dealer to display a vehicle to a potential customer over the Internet by simply logging-on-live! With great internal success at his company, the project eventually disbanded due to lack of funding and because another car related company reverse engineered the software application and marketed it within the automotive industry. Derek considers this project as the most exciting time in his life as it happened during the Internet boom and then the dot-com Internet bust which left most start-up’s wondering ‘how did this happen’!
Seeing the Internet itself as the driving force behind his business an aggressive search-engine-optimized (SEO) campaign was set up as well building out more than 40 websites all producing local customer leads. Along with his PPC and SEO efforts, Derek launched a video syndication campaign, social media presence, article publication, press releases, link building and uses Word Press applications as tools to drive quality customers to his websites.
Becoming more immersed with direct marketing, Internet marketing, affiliate marketing, negotiating techniques, purchasing methodology, and phone scripts, Derek opened yet another business inspired by Dan Kennedy’s business partner Bill Glazer. The birth of NewMediaTraffic.com was born to license Derek’s highly successful “Cash for Cars” Internet marketing system to other car buying services across the country. The first customer was a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company who lowered their customer acquisition cost by 30% and also implemented Derek’s methodology of buying used vehicles which increased their purchasing volume as well as their stock price.
As a person always seeking new ways of expanding, Derek enrolled in a coaching program called the Institute of Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC). Having expertise as a professional salesman, consultant, Broker and now as a coach, Derek formulated and founded perhaps the greatest negotiating system the world has ever seen. Known as The Four Plex, Derek created a system combining these four modalities (salesmanship, consulting via expert, brokering, coaching) of sales and persuasion into a dynamic conversation where each holds equal weight and they can be delivered in any sequence. The Four Plex system has been tested by Derek’s Cash4UsedCars.com used car buying service and has seen a 100% increase in vehicles purchased, a higher profit margin, and more repeat and referred customers. His book, The Four Plex, is co-authored by his good friend and business colleague Timeka Drew. The Four Plex Revolution will be an online training program for any person, in any field, to increase conversion rate and obtain and retain new customers. This system of dialogue can be used in business or social interactions.
With creativity as his driving force, Derek also steps out of the automotive world to manifest unique ideas he comes up such as his newest invention, Tip Spin. Tip Spin is the world’s first designer Tip Jar that illuminates using spinning LED lights to catch the consumer’s eye increasing the amount of tip money someone may receive. Tip Spin can be used by coffee shops, diners, bars, restaurants, hair salons, or anyone who receives tips on a regular basis. Using the “Double Tip Guarantee”, Derek offers a complete money-back guarantee if the amount of tips received does not increase by at least 100%. Check it out at TipSpinJar.com.
As a Certified Business Advisor for GKIC, Derek wants to give back to business owners and entrepreneurs who can benefit from like-minded people in a unique mastermind setting.
