IT’S BECOME A routine. At the beginning of each month, Félix Villatoro is usually announced as the number one salesperson for the previous month. He’s been doing that for a while, for years. True, he’s missed the honor a couple of times, but mainly when he was on vacation. Or when his newest addition to his family was born. Just recently.
Félix works for Crest Cadillac at Frisco. The salesperson of the month announcements are usually done by the GSM, the general sales manager of the dealership, during the first sales meeting of each month.
“And the winner again is,” the GSM often yells out, “Félix Villatoro, the Salvadoran slayer.”
IMAGE: Photo collage of Félix Villatoro and his family. With his wife Alejandra and their children: Eloise, Máximo, and the newest addition, Amanda.
The moniker fits well. In a fun way. Félix is no slayer, but he’s good at what he does. At selling cars, and good at other things, too. I’ve known him for a while, and I can attest to that. He’s focused, for sure, and disciplined. And not just in car sales.
But before I tell you more about that part of his story, please allow me to mention a few bits about Félix: about his past, his educational background, plus other pertinent information, but more than anything else, about playing soccer as a teenager.
Based on the information gathered while interviewing him, it seems that his involvement in that sport helped set a winning framework in Félix’s mind, a mindset that has driven him ever since.
“I played for the Classic League,” Félix mentions. Adding that during the tryouts to gain a spot in that soccer circuit, one of the coaches told him that he played very well but that he just needed to improve his techniques.
The Classic League, incidentally, is a high-level, competitive soccer organization reserved skilled players.
According to Félix, he soon acquired those needed techniques and eventually went on to play in four different Dallas Cup tournaments. He mainly played as a defender, a crucial position in the game of soccer, and in a sport in which teams often just need to score one goal to win.
“Soccer saved me,” Félix adds, meaning that the sport and that playing in a team with highly skilled players, built in him a winning attitude.
And plenty winning he has done since those early teen years. But before telling you more about those winnings, let’s fill you in on other personal information.
Félix is a man of humble beginnings, originally from El Salvador. He’s from El Sauce, a municipality in La Unión, one of the departments in that country. He was fourteen years old when he arrived in Dallas some twenty-eight years ago. His dad was already living in the Metroplex.
“I enrolled in high school soon after coming here,” says Félix, adding that he went to Hillcrest High School.
A few years later, and after graduating from that school, he began to attend Brookhaven Community College. He did it part time because he had to work full time to help pay for expenses at home.
Félix explains that he had been working while in school since he was sixteen-years old. He worked at different places, he says, for about thirteen years at a senior living dining room and also at the Gaylord resort.
Eventually, Félix transferred to UTD, where he was later awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in Global Business. He was twenty-six years old by then.
“I wanted to work in the export-import industry,” he says. “It was something that my father had done in El Salvador for years.”
His degree, however, led him instead to a personal banker position at Chase, a place where he stayed for about seven years.
“I also worked as a business banker and eventually as a roving branch manager,” Félix explains, adding that he obtained Series 6 and Series 63 licenses while working at Chase, as well as a life insurance agent license.
His career plan, and dream, was to become an investment banker there, but when that didn’t happen, and on an advice from a friend, Félix decided to give car sales a try. He did it in the month of December of the year 2019, after landing a sales position at Crest Cars in Frisco.
“It was a great decision,” he says. “It’s been good.”
Félix is married, to the former Alejandra Dueñas. They have three children: Eloise, Máximo and Amanda, the youngest of the three. She was born last November.
There is no doubt, Félix Villatoro, is someone who has learned to grab opportunity by the throat and to make the best of it. He’s success in the car business is not a matter of luck. For sure. It’s part of a process, and something that Félix has over the years learned to master. His experience playing soccer in a highly competitive league, apparently and according to him, paved the way for his current success.
His life story, in some ways, is similar to the ones of other successful men and women of Hispanic heritage that make the DFW Metroplex their home.
Just like in some of the stories of those others, Félix’s own career and life journey has been driven by a commitment to excellence, by a disciplined and focused approach to the objectives at hand, and by a never-ending desire to be number one. But also, to live life to the fullest. And to include his family in that journey.
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