On October 16, Joseph Sala, co-founder of Swirls and Twirls USA, spoke to Mrs. Conte’s Entrepreneurship and Marketing class about what it takes to run and operate a business on both a local and regional scale.
Sala, born into a mason family, lived in Lindenhurst when he was younger. “My father worked weekends, nights and holidays to make sure that I can have a good life. His work ethic rubbed off on me at a young age,” Sala said.
At twenty-one, Sala graduated with a business degree from the SUNY University of Oneonta. “I wanted to do something big with my life,” he said, “I wanted to be a ‘somebody’”
Sadly, he had to put his dreams on hold. Sala’s father died of a rare form of cancer in 1981. The crushing blow affected his family emotionally and financially. “I became a twenty-one year old man with a twenty-four/seven job. I had to support my family somehow.”
“I wanted to be a somebody”
After two years, Sala worked at New York One Plaza in Manhattan. He shortly left that company and joined the automobile industry. Sala was an incredibly successful independent warranty salesmen. In fact, his boss gave him a position to oversee dealerships in the tri-state area. This position not only gave Sala power to manage a store, but he also was able to teach sales personnel how to increase profits.
“I went in and innovated how a dealer would sell his or her product. Through multiple visits and rigorous training of employees, I increased the commissions by eight-hundred dollars per sale and the profit margin by ten percent on every car.”
Soon after, Sala decided to purchase a dealership. Although it was a risky buy, Sala bought a local dealership called Five Town Toyota. However, the dealership experienced many hardships, losing two-hundred fifty thousand dollars a year.
Sala noticed his employees didn’t feel united, so he had them work on various character building exercises. “Through teamwork, [my employees] could accomplish anything, and they knew it.”
His strategy paid off– the dealership then started to make over one million dollars a year.
“Through teamwork, [my employees] could accomplish anything…”
In 2006, after about a decade of owning Five Town Toyota, Sala decided to sell the dealership, a very bittersweet decision. “I was beside myself the day I left the dealership,” he told the class.
Sala officially retired in 2010, and although he enjoyed more free time with his family, he never stopped brainstorming business ideas. One day, his friend and owner of Crazy Freddy’s Motorsports, Freddy Ippolito, had an idea: he and Sala could open up a local self-serve frozen yogurt store to be called Swirls and Twirls.
“I thought [Ippolito] was crazy,” Sala said. “Then, I came to my senses and joined him on this wild business adventure.” In the summer of 2011, the first Swirls and Twirls self-serve yogurt store opened next to Sports Authority on Sunrise Highway.
“That one store became two, and two became five,” Sala said. The business grew so quickly that Sala and Ippolito decided to franchise it. After 2012, the store was then called Swirls and Twirls USA. Today, there are over fifteen stores.
Sala never expected to get to where he is today. “[When] I was twenty-one, I had no idea what I was doing,” Sala said. But regardless of that fact, he never lost faith in himself.
“As an entrepreneur, you need follow your dreams because you’ll never know if your plan will work unless you try,” Sala said. “You need to believe in yourselves for [your dreams] to work.”
Through this incredible story, Mrs. Conte’s students saw that hard work does pay off. They just have to look at Sala to see that there really is no limit to one’s success.