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Deborah Triplett

The concept for Leslie’s business was generated by an unsavory car-selling experience in which she had driven to her buyer’s home and let the family take her car for a spin—while she waited on a curb. “I knew I wasn’t going to sell the car if I didn’t let them take it to the mechanic,” Leslie says, adding she felt completely unprotected. “I thought, ‘Am I crazy?’”

And then it hit her—she couldn’t be the only one to find it a major hassle to sell a car. She did some research, discovered there was a market in owner-to-owner car sales, and her business, Automotive Consignment, which offers all of the benefits of selling a car directly to a customer while handling the worrisome details, was born in 2003. “It’s really surpassed any of our imaginations,” says Leslie. “This is really the last thing I thought I’d be doing.”