>> My name is Jason Swanson.
I'm currently a Portfolio Manager
for Toyota Financial Services.
I work out of our corporate
office in Southern California.
Toyota, well-known company, well-known brand.
Toyota Financial Services is the
captive finance arm of Toyota.
And I work with our National Accounts
Department so I work with large dealer groups
such as Penske Automotive, AutoNation,
Key's Auto Group, any dealership that feeds
into a parent company that's
either publicly traded
or has multiple dealerships spanning either
multiple regions across the United States
or have operations coast to coast.
And so, essentially as a portfolio manager
what I do is I manage that relationship
with a select number of the dealer groups
for all of our products and services.
Our three core products that we offer at
Toyota Financial Services are financing
to retail customers as well as
insurance products to retail customers.
So this would be the Jane and Joe Smith
that walk into a dealership and decide
to purchase a vehicle and they need
either a leasing or financing solutions
for the acquisition of that vehicle.
And so, most dealerships have a
multitude of finance sources they can work
with and/or just one of those finance sources.
So, we're competing against the other big name
banks out there, the Wells Fargos, the Chases.
Credit unions is a big source
of our competition.
So, my goal is to work with the corporate
level of these dealer groups to ensure
that they're reinforcing at each of
their individual stores and of course,
the emphasis being the Toyota and Lexus stores,
that they are selling and promoting our product
and sending retail customers our way rather
than sending them to alternate finance sources.
So, a lot of times, dealerships will
come to us and they'll need financing
for capital improvement projects, real
estate projects, construction projects,
inventory financing, whatever the case may be,
or essentially a lending
source that they draw upon.
And so, essentially, I'm reviewing contractual
obligations, credit agreements, lending terms
and conditions that the dealers make from us
and I'm negotiating those with the dealer groups
to essentially arrive at terms and
conditions that are satisfying both parties.
Probably, the thing that I like best
about what I do is being able to partner
with our dealer groups and finding
solutions that are mutually beneficial.
So, there's nothing better than when you are
working on a deal that oftentimes takes months
to close as you negotiate back and forth
and you work with your in-house counsel,
their in-house counsel, and a lot of times
both parties utilize outside counsel too.
So there's a lot of hands that
get involved in these transactions
but when you're lending a dealer group, you
know, 90 -100 million dollars there's a lot
of due diligence that goes into that.
And so, when you're-- like I said,
oftentimes the closings do take, you know,
up to a couple of months but when you finally
arrive at that and you're at closing date
and all the documents are signed and
fully executed and the transaction closes,
it's just a great feeling,
being able to tie your name
to that kind of transaction for our company.
The hardest part is working those transactions.
It's a dual fold.
You know, some days you go home
and you feel very satisfied
with what was accomplished that day.
And some days a lot was accomplished, you have
a lot of good dialogue going back and forth
and progress has been made, but
there's a lot of moving parts.
And some days you would walk out at
the end of the day and you have--
at the start of the day you have an agenda
on your mind of what you needed to accomplish
and at that end of the day, sometimes very
little gets accomplished because you're waiting
on systems to get approved, you're
waiting on allocation of resources,
you're waiting for other departments
and other personnel to do their part
of the puzzle for all to come together.
And sometimes your hands kind
of feel like they're tied
because you've done everything
you can and you're waiting
for other departments to do their part.
And so, that's kind of, I think,
probably one of the downsides of working
for a large multinational corporation like a
Toyota is that there's just so many departments
that when they work together well it's
a great thing, but we don't always work
and communicate as well as we could.
When you have an opportunity to work for a large
corporation and it has a product or service
that you truly believe in, it's an easy fit.
And it really becomes a matter of how well you
apply yourself and how well you put yourself
into one of my mentors within the
company called the PIE concept,
performance, image and exposure.
You can't rely on any one of those three
components but if you can find the right balance
of your own work performance and work ethic,
your image on how you present yourself
to your coworkers, to your immediate managers,
to other managers, to other leadership
within the company, and then exposure.
Not just being someone who shows up between
8 and 5 and is ready to go no earlier than 8
and is out the door exactly at 5.
Or you're involved with any of
the community involvement projects
that your company gets involved with,
how engaged are you with your work?
Do you offer yourself beyond
your 8 to 5 structure?
So, exposure, putting yourself out there.
And so that PIE, P-I-E, performance,
image, exposure.
If you can put that all together
there's a recipe for success,
at least within the Toyota structure.
My story is right after gra-- actually between
my junior and senior years at University
of Denver I had an opportunity to do
summer internship with Toyota Financial
at their local branch office
that was here on the Denver area.
And it was really just intended to be
a single summertime experience and that
that internship did come to the
conclusion at the end of the summer,
went back to school to complete my senior year.
And a couple of weeks into the academic
year they called me back for part-time work.
So actually, I started with Toyota.
As an intern, they transitioned me
to a part-time employee while
I was finishing out my degree.
And once I graduated and had my degree,
they offered me a full-time job.
And since then, it's just been a
progression up the corporate ladder.
I've worked in our Denver branch office, I've
worked in our regional customers service center
which is in Phoenix, I worked at one of our
dealer sales service offices also in Phoenix,
and then most recently, I've transferred out
to, like I said, our corporate headquarters
which is based in Southern California.
My final piece of advice, it's a cliche,
but in my experience it works
and that is, knowledge is power.
And that is to say that when you get
a degree from whatever university,
whether it's an undergraduate degree or
a graduate degree or a doctorate degree,
that gives you a starting
point but never stop learning.
And knowledge doesn't just come from textbooks
or the knowledge that you obtain from a degree
from a university but ongoing lifelong learning.
And just even something as if you're
sitting at a bar during happy hour
and you've got someone sitting next to you,
his or her story, whatever they have to tell,
whatever their point is in life, there's
probably some knowledge to be gained that--
from a conversation with that person.
So, never stop learning and accept
knowledge in any way it comes to you.