Gigi Stetler Power Press Kit

Gigi Stetler

Author • Ft Lauderdale, FL United States

About Gigi Stetler

Gigi Stetler is an accomplished business woman, entrepreneur, author and equestrian, who has overcome many obstacles on her journey to success, and proven herself unstoppable. ...

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Gigi Stetler’s story reads like a best-seller, replete with plot twists, shady characters, and a heroine with many layers. A father-figure mentor who gave Gigi her first opportunity but later stabbed her in the back. An attacker who literally stabbed her 21 times and left her for dead. A good ol’ boys network in an industry that conspired to keep her out. Every time Gigi got knocked down, she kept getting back up, and her RV Sales of Broward in Florida did $18.2 million in sales last year as a result. But there are many sides to this tough-as-nails businesswoman: She is also a single mom, an equestrian, and a woman of such immeasurable grace that she visited every day at the deathbed of the mentor who had tried to destroy her. What we learned from Gigi: That you just can’t give up. Not on yourself, no matter how many setbacks you have to fight your way through. And not on others, no matter how badly you’ve been burned. As Gigi likes to say: Trust everyone … but verify as much as you can. To RV or Not to RV “I came into this career completely by accident. My mentor, Jerry, was a man who had been involved with my mother and was a father figure to me for many years. He had purchased an investment property and it came with an inventory of mobile homes. I was just 23 years old, but I could see that the man running the lot was lying to customers and not delivering what he promised. I told Jerry about it and the lot just became my problem to deal with after he kicked the guy out.” On-the-Job Training “In the beginning, I didn’t even know that ‘RV’ stood for ‘Recreational Vehicle.’ The business I had just inherited had been run into the ground; we were $400,000 in debt and we had a lot of unhappy customers. I just started doing what I could do on my own, making repairs for existing customers. Once I had gotten to know several of them, I threw a party and offered each of them a $500 referral bonus for any new business they sent me, and from there things just boomed. It turned into a real business.” Boys’ Club “It is never easy to be the only woman in a male-dominated industry, and I was not taken seriously as a cute and bubbly girl among the cigar-smoking fat cats of the RV industry. At the first dealer meeting, they said, ‘You need to go home and bake cookies, little girl.’ The next month, they held their meeting an hour before the official time so that I would be excluded. They tricked me three months in a row.” She’s Small but She’s Scrappy “I didn’t care that I wasn’t accepted, because I was there to make money. So I started getting more aggressive and undercutting everyone’s price. They had a complete monopoly—they were all carrying the same product at the same prices, so there was no negotiating. I cut prices in half and was giving customers better value and better service, and then they started paying attention to me.” Work Ethic “For the first 11 years in the business, I worked 14-hour days, seven days a week, every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. My philosophy when I was young was ‘Work to learn’ not ‘Work to earn.’” Something Doesn’t Add Up “We were doing a lot of business, but I was never paid more than $500 a week plus a small commission on sales. I never even earned a Christmas bonus. When Jerry started complaining that there was no money in the bank, I didn’t understand it. Our overhead wasn’t very high and we owned the property, so I didn’t know where the money was going. I didn’t know that the entire time, he had been drawing a $5,000 a week salary for himself.” A Painful Betrayal “I had worked for so little, always believing that Jerry and I were partners and that I was working hard for a business that would be mine in the end. The story of his betrayal is long and involved, but the bottom line is that he decided to sell the property and cut me out, despite a long-standing verbal agreement that if and when he was ready to get out he would sell to me. He had drained the business of assets and it was encumbered by debt. A supplier was owed $350,000 and Jerry threatened that if I did not pay it myself, he would tell the supplier that I had stolen the money so that my reputation would be ruined and I would not be able to start over.” Take Two “The goodwill I had built in the community saved me. I went right across the street and made a deal for a new lot. The employees came with me and the vendors kept supplying me. I covered payroll using my credit cards. I paid off every single one of Jerry’s creditors even though I had no legal obligation to do so. So there I was working for free again for those first few years, but we made it and I have since bought out two other dealerships.” Branching Out “I just purchased a former hockey/skating sports facility in Deerfield Beach, Florida, that I plan to develop into ‘RV World’, an RV destination with recreation for adults and children, food/beverage and retail outlets, and other amenities. I am also developing a specialty line of kitchen, bed, and bath products for use in RVs.” Motivation “I have been obsessed with horses since I was 2, and this is what gave me the desire to make something out of myself. I wanted to ride horses so badly and the only way I was going to have the money to do so was if I made it myself. It’s good for kids to really want something and to have to figure out how to earn it. Now I compete on the equestrian circuit and it’s something that brings a lot of balance to my life.” Nine Lives “I’m writing a book about my life story, about all of these different things that have happened to me and how I always ended up landing on my feet. Prior to getting into the RV business I was working in hotel and property management and was renovating a run-down apartment building. I made a deal with a guy who was living in the boiler room to let him live in an apartment in exchange for painting. One day he went a little crazy and started throwing beer bottles from the roof. I called 911, but he burst in and stabbed me 21 times and tried to strangle me with an air conditioner cord while I was on the line with the police. I fought back and finally played dead, doing whatever I had to do to stay alive until the police got there. The moral to the story—to all of my stories—is that you just can’t give up.” Parting Thoughts … -”Success to me means … waking up in the morning.” -”I will always think of myself as … a winner.” -”I care least about … the small stuff.”

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