Ask John Goodyear how he found floorplan financing, and he'll tell you it all started with a bartending shift and a customer who saw promise in his level of service. Now as Vice President – Sales Manager - Floorplan Financing at First Business Bank, Goodyear has spent more than two decades on the lending side of the automotive world. His path there ran through the hardest work he's ever done: running his own business and years managing a dealership lot on his own. Dealers looking for a floorplan partner notice the moment they meet him that Goodyear has sat on their side of the desk.
His story starts a long way from any dealership, at a pharmacy counter in rural Kentucky with his family.
The Client Service Lessons That Started It All
Goodyear grew up in Flatwoods, a small town in northeastern Kentucky along the Country Music Highway, the same stretch that produced musicians Ricky Skaggs and Billy Ray Cyrus. His father owned Scott Drugs, a pharmacy his father purchased from a family friend and mentor who put him through pharmacy school. The store was open from nine in the morning to nine at night, six days a week, with a small lunch counter up front where regulars gathered for malts, hot dogs, and conversation. Goodyear and his three brothers, all born within eighteen months, grew up in the middle of it.
His earliest job was delivering prescriptions to customers with limited mobility who often had no one else to talk to that week. His father taught him to slow down on those stops, to engage with people and build real relationships. It's a lesson Goodyear still carries into how he works with dealers today.
"My dad taught me a lot about being there for those people, engaging and developing relationships, caring for our customers, and recognizing what each individual needed," Goodyear said.
From Selling Cars To Floorplan Financing
Goodyear studied political science and English at Centre College, a small liberal arts school in Danville, Kentucky, with plans to attend law school. Money and timing got in the way, so he took a bartending job in Lexington instead. One of his regulars, sharply dressed and always generous with tips, mentioned he might have a job for him. Short on details, Goodyear showed up anyway. The address turned out to be a Chrysler Plymouth dealership.
That happy accident led to a series of dealership roles: sales at the Chrysler store, new car sales at a Toyota dealership, a move to the more lucrative used car side, then finance and insurance (F&I) manager. When the branch manager of a finance company that worked with his dealership recruited him, Goodyear landed at Mercury Finance Company, where a regional manager named Dan Smith became an early mentor.
"He was instrumental in helping me understand what the work world is about and what professionalism is," Goodyear said.
Five years and three states later, Mercury Finance promoted and transferred Goodyear to Indianapolis. He didn't know a soul in the city. Within a month, he met a TransUnion representative who called on his branch. They recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary.
Betting Everything On Pizza
When Mercury Finance closed, Goodyear found his way into automotive floorplan lending for the first time, spending eight years with a national floorplan finance company. He worked his way from branch manager to regional manager, overseeing ten branches across five states and one Canadian province, and finally to director of branch services. Then the Great Recession hit, and the job disappeared.
With some savings under his belt, he spent nearly a year writing business plans and chasing franchise opportunities before landing on Giovanni's Pizza, a favorite pizza chain he grew up with, along with a childhood friend as his business partner. He and his wife had both lost their jobs within months of each other, and her father had recently passed away.
"We were beat down from life," he said. “We had both lost our jobs, and she'd lost her dad not long before that. We were trying to find a place to land.”
The family moved from Indiana to Kentucky to open the restaurant’s doors.
Financing wasn't easy to find. Goodyear pitched seven banks before a local Kentucky bank agreed to fund the venture with an SBA loan, backed by both families' savings. The restaurant turned a profit within its first year, a notable accomplishment in the restaurant industry, but the hours were brutal. Goodyear worked 362 days the first year and took home $30,000.
"The only time I saw my kids was climbing in bed with them when I came home while they were sleeping," he said.
Five years in, the business plateaued and his business partner needed to step away to care for a parent. Goodyear negotiated a sale to another franchise owner and the family moved back to Indianapolis. Before the moving truck was empty, Goodyear had called a contact from his earlier floorplan finance days to get back into the business.
The Question Every Dealer Asks
Goodyear spent the next several years on the finance company side of floorplanning, including five years handling risk and collections at another floorplan finance company, before moving to the banking side of the industry nine years ago. Early in that role, Goodyear's employer told him the company was exiting the floorplan business and gave him six months to find a new job.
"That's when I was like, you know what, I want to try to control this a little bit," he said. Dusting off his entrepreneurial skills, he developed a business plan and researched stable, trusted banks that shared his vision of serving elite independent used car dealers with high-touch, responsive service.
The search led him to First Business Bank in 2020, drawn to a business model built around long-term commitment to the industry rather than scale for its own sake. Now, with several years at First Business Specialty Finance, LLC, a subsidiary of First Business Bank, Goodyear’s earlier experience still shapes how he talks with dealers who are sizing up a new lender.
"Dealers have seen banks come and go out of floorplanning," he said. "Many want to know, ‘how do I know you're going to be around next year?’"
It's a question Goodyear invites and answers confidently.
"One of our biggest advantages is explaining that we're a publicly traded bank with a 30-plus year history of helping businesses and business leaders," he said. "That kind of stability is what backs up the high-touch, intentional way we work with dealers."
Forbes also named First Business Bank one of America's Best Banks, one more sign of the stability Goodyear leans on when he's building trust with a new dealer.
The View From Both Sides Of The Desk
Between his floorplan finance career and Giovanni's, Goodyear spent a year and a half running a used car dealership as its general manager, working the lot alone until his staff arrived each afternoon. He took the "up," structured the deal, shopped it to lenders, closed the paperwork, and washed the car himself before delivery. That hands-on experience, paired with his own history starting and running and a small business, gives him credibility with dealers that he knows what they’re going through on a day-to-day basis.
"I understand the time away from family. I understand having everything on the line," he said. "When you fail, you lose everything, so failure is not an option."
It's why Goodyear leans on relationship and responsiveness rather than a sales script, a fit with First Business Bank's approach of staying intentionally selective rather than chasing volume.
"We want to grow, but we have no desire to get that big, because we want to preserve our ability to provide high-touch service," he said. “We are there for dealers when they need us, and they understand the value of that relationship compared to being one in thousands at one of the large finance companies.”
Life Away From Floorplan Financing
Goodyear and his wife are settling into early empty-nest life in Indianapolis, with two children in college. Golf made a comeback this summer, largely because one of them wanted to play a few rounds with him.
When asked what people would find surprising about him, he mentions glassblowing. One of his last classes at Centre College, taken to boost his GPA, turned into his favorite. His instructor had trained under renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly, and Goodyear still keeps several pieces from that class at home.
"It's not that hard once you know the safety and the mechanics," he said, "but you're dealing with 1,800-degree molten glass, so you learn a few lessons the hard way."
Why His Experience Matters To Dealers
From a pharmacy counter in Flatwoods to a pizza buffet line in Kentucky to a desk in Indianapolis, Goodyear's path to First Business Bank wound through nearly every seat at the table: dealer, general manager, restaurant owner, and lender. It's a path he never planned, and one he wouldn't trade.
"Everything I've done up until this point has been perfect for what I'm doing now," he said.
For the independent dealers he works with, that experience is the point. Every part of it, from the pharmacy counter to the dealership floor to the long nights at the restaurant, gives him a real understanding of what they're facing and how to help.
Update date: 9/1/2026
