When Joe Agresti used his life savings and mortgaged his parents’ New Jersey home to buy into a failing Baton Rouge Mercedes-Benz dealership in 2004, his mother was terrified. His father’s response? “Trust this guy. He’s a winner.” Two decades later, that investment has grown into a variet y of business ventures, including Dream Motor Group, an 11-location empire co-owned with legendary college football coach Nick Saban that generates $2.2 billion in annual revenue. Now, the 53-year-old billionaire who built his fortune on “a will to be weird” is weighing his next idea: a run for the U.S. Senate. His mother, a Depression baby who grew up with seven siblings, carried a lifetime of financial anxiety. So when her son approached his parents to help fund his buy-in to a Mercedes dealership in Baton Rouge, worry consumed her. But Agresti had something his mother didn’t: data. With an accounting degree from Rutgers University in hand, he had begun his career at Big Six accounting firm Arthur Andersen in New York. This led to a senior operations role at Asbury Automotive, one of the largest auto retailers in the U.S. Through an Asbury connection, at 31 he secured the opportunity to invest in and run a Mercedes dealership in Baton Rouge. At Asbury Automotive, he’d spent a few years watching how 100 dealerships performed. “What I knew was Mercedes, BMW and Lexus in the South was our sweet spot,” Agresti recalls. “This was a Mercedes store that lost $600,000 the year before I bought it. I didn’t need to be a genius to see how bad that place was.” Dietmar Exler, former president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA, saw a rare combination of skills. “Joe is very smart. When he was at Baton Rouge, he was the best finance guy in the store, the best CFO and the best salesperson at the same time,” Exler explains. “It’s very unique that talents of sales and financial acumen come together.” That dual capability—data-driven analysis combined with customer connection—became Agresti’s secret weapon. “I called every customer we ever sold a car to,” he says. Within a few years, he’d quadrupled sales and bought out his partner. When Agresti came home to New Jersey for Christmas one year, he took his mother out to her favorite restaurant. Over dinner, he told her he’d lost everything and was moving back home. “She was shocked,” he remembers. “She said, `Joey, what are we going to do?” Then he admitted he was lying and handed her an interest payment plus a $50,000 bonus. Not long after, he paid his parents back in full. His father had been right all along. Obsessing over culture When Steve Cannon, then chief marketing officer of Mercedes-Benz USA, met Agresti in 2008, Agresti was focused on his first dealership. “What I saw in Joe was the next generation of Mercedes-Benz dealer,” Cannon says. “He was connected to the customer and pulse of the marketplace like nobody else. He became my right-hand man, my speed-dial guy.” If Cannon implemented a new dealership-level initiative, Agresti was the guy who would not only enthusiastically embrace it but make it better in the process. The two bonded over their similar roots; both were Jersey boys and engaged in “Jersey smack talk” from the beginning. Something else they had in common was they both believed that culture drives everything. “If you get the culture right, business outcome will follow,” Cannon says. “Joe was obsessed with culture in a way I hadn’t seen before.” Agresti needed culture to be more than a mission statement on the wall. “We needed to find a way to measure culture, to make it take flight and remain afloat,” he explains. His solution was unconventional, bordering on absurd. Each dealership has a culture team that identifies team members who’ve gone above and beyond. Miss a weekly meeting or show up late, and you’re locked out—unless your colleagues vote to let you back in after you stand on a desk and sing. “Everyone makes it on time and if they don’t, we love it because it’s so funny,” Agresti says. The team also votes on the best story of the week. The winning employee receives a culture coin worth at least $500 in prizes by year’s end. Collect enough, and employees can redeem them for trips to Italy, Jet Skis or other elite perks. Every employee must wear a lanyard displaying the rules of culture, which focus on ethics. Forget your lanyard? Ten pushups or jumping jacks on the spot. “That’s insane, but you have to have a will to be weird for people to remember,” Agresti says. “Those things in the aggregate keep our culture afloat. We’re able to scale but still be the people we are.” When Cannon visited Baton Rouge, he witnessed Agresti transform the service department into a family dinner venue, flying in his parents, his brothers and sisters-in-law and two college roommates to help him cook for 200 customers. The time-intensive tradition continues at one or two locations each year. “I call it a labor of love because Joe kind of loves on his customers,” Cannon says. “Joe doesn’t have an arms-length business relationship. For Joe, everything is personal. He has a deep belief in partnership, and he wants to love and respect the partner he works with.” Agresti describes Cannon as a mentor. “I didn’t want to let him down,” he says. “Mercedes-Benz as a brand has a strong culture and I am passionate about the heritage and the engineering, but I can’t get completely motivated and passionate about an inanimate object. To be truly passionate I need a human that I can be on a team with.” When Agresti was invited by Mercedes-Benz to open a second location in The Woodlands, Texas, he developed an unusual interview technique. He’d take prospective employees to lunch, and on the way out, they’d encounter a visibly distressed woman in a wheelchair who appeared to need help. If the candidate broke away to help her, they moved to the next phase. If not, the interview was over. Kindness can’t easily be taught, Agresti explains. His favorite interview question became: “What’s one thing you’ve done in your life that has changed somebody else’s life?” The Saban Partnership “It’s one of the best decisions I ever made. It’s been really good for both of us.” – Nick Saban to Forbes magazine last year, on his partnership with Joe Agresti (Photo by David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire) The phone message seemed too bizarre to be real. “Somebody saying he’s Nick Saban,” Agresti recalls. The legendary college football coach of LSU and Alabama fame wanted to talk business. Initially, Agresti thought it was a buddy pulling a prank, but he verified it was legitimate and called back. “I go visit him; that’s when Joe and Nick become Joe and Nick and at that point, we did everything together,” he says. They became business partners, and in 2014 opened their first joint venture: Mercedes-Benz of Birmingham in Alabama. Now Dream Motor Group, founded in 2004 with Agresti’s first location, operates 11 dealerships in Alabama, Florida and Tennessee and will open three more in the next three months. In 2025, Agresti and Saban sold 24,362 vehicles at their Mercedes dealerships. They also own Toyota, Lexus, Infiniti and Ferrari dealerships. “It’s one of the best decisions I ever made,” Saban told Forbes magazine last year. “It’s been really good for both of us.” Says Agresti of Saban, “I look up to him as a person. And it’s amazing to have that guy as the person I can call or text at 2 in the morning if I need perspective. I consider the relationship a 50/50 marriage.” Cannon has joined them on recent deals, adding another layer of expertise. Agresti says it’s important to note that his success story doesn’t stop with cars. His financial interests span hospitality, a bourbon company, a skyscraper under construction in Nashville that will be the tallest building in Tennessee, and overseas development ventures. The Dream Companies, which serves as the parent company, owns five subsidiaries, all of which include Saban. In 2025, the two acquired an interest in the Nashville Predators National Hockey League franchise under the subsidiary Dream Sports Ventures. They’ve also in talks with an NFL franchise. Dream Beverage Group owns Bourbon company Slow Pass Bourbon and is building a distillery and acquiring a beer distributor. The Dream Hospitality Group owns minority shares in the Margaritaville in Lake Conroe, Texas, with Mike Wampold of Baton Rouge; and has majority ownership in the Perdido Beach Resort in Orange Beach, Alabama, and the Alamite in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Agresti is also in talks with the government of Guyana through a subsidiary called Dream Overseas Ventures to distribute cars and build a resort, convention center and casino in the coastal city of Georgetown. At his Baton Rouge Mercedes-Benz dealership, three years after acquiring it in 2004. Lifestyle, logistics and largesse Managing a diverse roster of businesses across five states requires creative logistics, which is why Agresti maintains seven residences. To simplify life, he keeps an identical wardrobe in each location—no packing, no thinking about what to wear. Asked about his weaknesses, Agresti says he talks too much, “way too much,” and struggles with delegating. “But my biggest weakness is a deep fear of failure that makes me work like an insane person,” he says. His weekly routine is punishing: 40 hours straight Monday through Tuesday night, then 16-hour days most other days. The relentless pace has paid off. Agresti estimates his net worth at between $1.2 billion and $1.3 billion. “I turn bright red and otherwise react horribly to bragging about myself,” Agresti says. “But there’s the distinct possibly that I will be running for the Senate and now I have to learn how to say how I’m different.” In 2008, Agresti established DREAM Teachers as a 501(c)(3) charity in Baton Rouge. Through it, he awards a Mercedes to Louisiana’s public education teacher of the year. But much of his philanthropy happens spontaneously and, until now, anonymously. In 2014, Agresti was having drinks at a New Jersey bar when the bartender, Christine Summit, mentioned she didn’t have money for her dog Tucker’s lifesaving surgery. The dog had swallowed a tennis ball and would die without the procedure. Agresti left her a $1,000 tip. The surgery was successful. Tucker recovered and the story was told on ABC News, CNN, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show. But Agresti asked to remain anonymous and stayed out of the story. Since then, he’s made it a tradition, particularly on Valentine’s Day and Christmas, to distribute cash or buy gifts for Walmart shoppers who appear to be struggling. He estimates he has spent $150,000 on such gestures. Says Cannon, “For Joe, giving needs to feel personal. Loading his pockets with stacks of cash and then going out with his wife, [Adrienne], to amaze and delight people, that’s more his style. He’s a good human being. I love it when good guys win.” “Joe is very smart. When he was at Baton Rouge, he was the best finance guy in the store, the best CFO and the best salesperson at the same time.” – Dietmar Exler, former president and CEO, Mercedes-Benz USA (The Associated Press – Richard Drew) A New Kind of Risk Agresti, a Republican, is mulling a run for the U.S. Senate, describing himself as a common sense candidate. However, he isn’t prepared yet to say in which state he would establish residency in order to run. Possibilities floated have included Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana. “I feel I have to, because the country has gone haywire,” he says. “Everybody hates each other. Politics are things that matter and they’re worth having an argument about; they’re not worth killing each other over.” His diagnosis of what’s wrong: “Most people are in politics for the power. And I think we should limit the amount of power that they have. Attract more sane people instead of the freaking lunatics that will do anything for power.” Agresti has always been confident. But his confidence is tempered by the caution he picked up from his mom. He chose to study accounting, for example, because he knew he’d practically be guaranteed a job at the time. “It’s a fun ride hanging around with Joe Agresti,” Cannon says. “He’s super generous. He’s ridiculously confident, but it ain’t arrogance. He’s been in deep waters from day one; he managed to navigate it and he’s still thriving.” ...read more read less