Here, I'll start.
Hi, My name is actually Ken Nix, I'm the owner / founder / admin for several automotive forums. I used to sell cars for Toyota, Honda and of course Volkswagen. I always lived and worked in small towns and dealerships. Where you develop a relationship with your clientèle and loyalty means a lot.
In 2000 I moved to the city and went to work for a big dealership. Honestly, I didn't do so well. I knew the product better than anyone in the dealerships, But something was missing. I finally realized what it was. I had a conscience. In the city, things are different, people are different. Everyone, both the client and your employer has the same attitude. What have you done for me in the last 5 minutes.
The final straw was when I got hurt at the last dealership I worked for, and was told 3 days later after I had been at work for 3 hours, that I was actually fired 30 minutes before I got hurt. I was denied Workmans comp and Unemployment. Of course not all dealers are bad. As a matter of fact, I still think that dealer has some good qualities. Otherwise, I would have never worked for them to begin with. I don't blame the dealership or the owners, just the management.
Think of a dealership as a Peach tree. The managers are the farmers. You can have a beautiful tree, but if it isn't cared for correctly, you'll get a lot of crappy fruit. Many people blame the dealer for problem people. Most dealers have no idea they have a problem person until it's too late. Managers are very good at hiding top performers bad habits and problems from owners. If you have a problem with a dealer, don't just write the sales manager, write the owner. let him or her know that you're pissed. That way they can fix it.
I have the same problem on my forums. If you don't let me know there is a problem with a moderator or the software or whatever, how am I suppose to know? I can promise you I can't read minds. If I did, I'd be living in Vegas not the great northwest.
My fist big site was a Honda Odyssey site. A friend sent me spy pics of the first 2005 Odyssey. I didn't have much on it, but it kicked but. I was a member of an Ody forum and they banned me because they felt members were leaving because of me. (actually, I sent thousands of people to their site) I decided I wanted my own forum.
My first forum was a failure, it was ridgelineclub.com. I had about 800 members and being new to running forums, was stomped on by hackers. Not once, but like 20 times. once so bad my host was scared of the malicious scripts they implanted and wouldn't give me my backups.
Luckily I had 2 competitors who decided to clue me in a little bit of what I did wrong. They ran the Ridgeline4wd.com and RidgelineOwnersClub.com boards. So, I waited, took my time, spend months learning how to run a forum, modded for some small forums, got my p's and q's together and planned to launch a forum with the launch of the new VW GTI.
Lucky me I got some VW celebrity visitors, Kerri Martin and a few CP+B employees. Then Alex Bogusky of CP+B told Business Week readers to visit my site. That was great, but I wasn't prepared for 300,000 hits per day and lost service. I also lost my host, they were scared to death of another bombardment. I moved to a bigger account but then was bombarded by a incredible 13 year old hacker from Turkey, why? because a Turkish coworker told him he owned my website.
Now it's 2 years later, and I've got a degree from the forum school of hard knocks. Of course majoring in computer programming for 2 years at a technical school probably helped, I think most of my knowledge came from the school where you got the sh*&^ kicked out of you.
Okay, I told you my boring story, now let's hear yours.