A journey from the kibbutz to car sales
Santa Fe is a long way off from where Aspen Leaf started out.
“I’m originally from Israel,” he said. “I grew up on a kibbutz, a farming community. I was a citrus grower. Then I made a total 180 and came here.”
The decision to leave his home was difficult, but understandable.
“The adventure,” Leaf said. “Growing up on a kibbutz, you sort of live in a bubble. First I lived in Tel Aviv for a few years. I just wanted to see the world. And that’s how I ended up here.”
Well, here after stops in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
“I moved here from L.A.,” Leaf said. “I wanted something of a smaller town feel. The community I grew up in was a farming (community) with 600 or 700 people. I just kind of missed the smaller town feel. I just felt like I should move to New Mexico. I did a little research and I liked the weather and the elevation. The mountains.”
After moving to the United States, Leaf got into sales, primarily selling furniture. But after landing in New Mexico almost two decades ago, he decided he wanted to try something different.
“I saw in an in the paper that the Santa Fe Toyota dealership was looking for salesmen,” he said. “So I came over here, did the interview and took the job.”
Although the sales point was higher, it wasn’t that much different, Leaf said.
“It’s a people business,” he said. “I was in sales before. It was something new and exciting.”
There were many fundamentals in common. “Basically, you’re taking care of people and listening to what they need,” Leaf said. “It was really just a different product, but it’s all about service and listening. “It’s a little different in the sense that with car sales, customers are trading in their old car so it’s a little more complex. In furniture, they don’t bring in their old sofa or old bed. But the principles are the same. There are long hours; I’m used to that. Working on the weekends; I’m used to that.”
So other than a brief fling in Florida to work for the old owners of the dealership, Leaf has been with the Toyota of Santa Fe ever since.
“I’ve been here through three owners,” he said. “I think you have to care and you have to probably be detail-oriented. You have to be a little not too sensitive or too touchy-feely. The majority of people don’t buy right away so you can’t take things personally. It’s not about you, it’s what the customer needs, and budget. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t.”