As soon as Siegel had an idea for business, even if it was after hours, he would write it down or call his office phone and leave himself a voice message to revisit in the morning.
Siegel asked himself question after question about his operations.
"If I went into my showroom and had my salespeople give me a presentation on a car, would I be satisfied with that?" Siegel asked himself. "How often do we practice what we're supposed to do before we actually do it?"
He credits coming up with new strategies to simply allocating time to spend on the process.
"What did it for me — the way in which I was able to find the path and processes — I started to spend more time at the store when the store was closed," Siegel said. "I came in earlier."
Siegel worked with his employees to rectify their unintentional lack of efficiency, built up by accepting the status quo for years. The recession forced him to look critically at the way business was conducted.
"It's not an epiphany. It was just logic that started to kick in," Siegel said.
"I would laugh to myself," he added. "This really isn't that hard."