Today we’d like to introduce you to Sean Pour.
Sean, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I started very early. Growing up in San Diego, my father owned a used car dealership and let me help out after school. He was an incredible businessman, and I learned a lot by watching him work, and I became really invested. My family is everything to me, so by my teens, I was fully intending on eventually taking over the company, proud to follow in my father’s footsteps.
A shift happened, though, when the financial crisis hit in 2008. My family was really struggling with a lack of inventory, and I looked around and said, what can I do? Like any teenager old in the aughts, I turned to the internet. I was 14 when I started a small website where my family could buy cars across the US. The site grew into something bigger than we could have imagined, and it was really that love for my family’s business and that change in economic circumstances that led me to where I am. At the time, I didn’t even really know how to code beyond the very basics, which I had taught myself entirely, so I’ve certainly come a long way.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
This whole enterprise was really born of a struggle. When the crisis hit, the economy and the dealership were heading south, and fast. My parents have always been smart with their finances, but now they were pinching pennies at a rate I hadn’t seen before. I don’t think my parents were sure we were going to make it, and it was hard to watch that. As a family, we were constantly adjusting things at the company, working extra hours, but the bills were still piling up. It was really a destitute feeling for me, and while other kids were out playing basketball and lacrosse, all my time went into working and brainstorming ways to help my family. There’s rarely a “smooth road,” but dedication and determination carried us through.
Once I’d set up the site, a whole different category of struggles came about. I had never run a website before – as I said, I only knew the basics – and my parents certainly didn’t know how to help with this new, incredibly technical aspect of the company that I had introduced. So, while the website was growing fast, I had to learn even faster. Scaling a website is a huge undertaking, and there were plenty of bugs popping up in the early days that I had to fix, too. It’s really important to us that our platform runs smoothly for customers, but it took a lot of late nights and cups of coffee for me to make sure that happened.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the SellMax story. Tell us more about the business.
SellMax is the easiest way to sell your used vehicle, in a process that doesn’t require you to post ads or entertain potential buyers, half of which you will meet and they won’t pull the trigger on purchasing your car anyway. With us, you give us a call, let us know what you have, whether it’s a used car in mint condition or a damaged vehicle bordering on scrap metal, and we will pick it up and pay you for it within 24-48 hours. It’s a simple model with major benefits for our users, and we are then able to keep a high inventory and range of marketable vehicles to sell on the flip side. It’s really special to be able to save people so much time and help them get paid, especially in our community. There is a large military presence in San Diego, so when you have a mother deploying next week, we can come in and handle the car she needs to sell. We are able to take what would otherwise be a time-intensive project off her plate so that she can redirect that time to her family before she heads out.
We’re a big business with small business roots, and since we never accepted any venture capital, we answer only to ourselves, meaning we can continue to focus on customers like that mother and others who really will benefit from our service. The ability to continue doing right by the customer, like my father always did when I was a kid, makes me proud. It’s a big business model with a small business attitude that really sets us apart.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Well, I don’t necessarily believe in luck. I’ve always approached the concept the way Seneca framed it, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” But certainly, there are things that helped me reach success. I got to the industry early, allowing me to be a leader within it. You could say it was lucky that I had business-minded parents because I don’t think I would have followed this entrepreneurial path had they not done the work they did. And you could probably say it was lucky that I had the internet when I needed it. Had I grown up even a decade earlier, everything would be different for me, and who knows what would have been of the dealership. On the flip side, plenty of things have gone wrong! In 2012, the business was going well, and my team and I thought they would be a good time to lease new offices. We had new employees and could use more space, and thought it would be great for morale, too. Just as soon as we made that upgrade, we lost a huge contract. Now, we were running on higher costs and lower billables, and we had a lot of catching up to do. It took a lot of work to get back on track, and if I believed in luck, I’d certainly call that bad.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sellmax.com/california/san-diego-cash-for-cars
- Phone: (619) 268-6333
- Email: sean@sellmax.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SellMaxUSA/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/sellmaxusa
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