Description

Your Learning Curve Never Sounded So Good

The Panel:

Kevin Eckler is a native New Englander who moved to New York State’s Hudson Valley with his parents back in the mid-1980s.  Kevin began his automotive career at the age of 14, pushing a broom in a mom and pop shop in Rhode Island. He attended a trade school, graduating at the top of his class and went right to work as a tech in a prestigious Porsche/Audi dealership in Cape Cod.  Kevin continued his dealership work when he moved to NY and eventually came to work for two brothers who owned Foreign Car Specialists, Poughkeepsie, NY.  When the owners retired in 1995, Kevin bought the business and the rest is history. Find Kevin’s other episodes HERE.

Lisa Eckler is an executive assistant by trade, and a native upstate New Yorker – and somehow managed to marry a Red Sox fan!  Lisa’s background in office management and marketing brought a new facet to the business. When she left her position three years ago, Lisa became the business and marketing manager for Foreign Car Specialists.  In her new position, she has increased customer awareness for the business, increased the shop’s search engine optimization (SEO) and has brought the business to the first page of Google’s organic rankings for search engine results.

Kevin and Lisa are newlyweds who will celebrate their fourth wedding anniversary soon.  Lisa has two boys who are grown and gone and a daughter still at home.  Kevin’s teenage daughter and son live with them full time and rounding out the family are four cats, a perfect dog and 11 chickens who provide breakfast and entertainment daily. Find Lisa’s other episodes HERE.

Jim Belliveau was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1948 and raised in Springfield, New Jersey, Jim has lived in the Hudson Valley since 1972. He attended Seton Hall University, majoring in finance and played on the varsity golf team all four years. He and his wife of forty–one years have raised five children and have eleven grandchildren.

From 1973 – 1989 Jim owned and managed Belliveau Builders, a residential building construction company which built single-family architecturally-designed homes, two of which were featured in New York State as winning designer homes. He and his wife co-authored a book entitled, Riches Under Your Roof, How to Make Your Home Worth Thousands More, (Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, New York, 1983).

In 1989, Jim started a Professional Employer Company (PEO), Acadia HR with offices in Austin, Texas and Red Hook, New York which provides human resource management to other companies throughout the United States, ranging in size from one employee to five hundred employees in a variety of different types of businesses. Find Jim’s other episodes