Business
Ep. 41 — A young man gets held up at knifepoint and learns the value of grit and perseverance / Cliff Banks, Founder and President, The Banks Report. When Philadelphia native Cliff Banks was 19 years old, he traveled to New York City to take a connecting train to Detroit to start a new job and a new life. But he got the fright of his life as he hailed a cab to get from Penn Station to Grand Central Station. “Before I got into the cab, two guys came up and asked if they could help and I said, ‘No, thanks. I've got it.’ And next thing I know, I was up against the cab with a knife to my throat,” Banks remembers. “And they demanded my wallet and anything else valuable that I had and took off running.” Although broke and in shock over what had happened to him, Banks somehow found his way to Dearborn. Lacking the money to buy a car for himself or a college education for that matter but blessed with sheer grit and perseverance, Banks went from hitchhiking to get to that first job loading cars on trains at railroad yards to fulfilling his dream of becoming a journalist covering automotive news. He founded The BanksReport, the most influential trade newsletter in the car retail space today. Now with 30-years covering the auto industry, Banks has a unique lens into the seismic impact of #Covid-19 and the unprecedented shutdown of car manufacturing in the United States. With family friends getting sick or dying from the #Coronavirus in hard-hit Michigan, Banks finds himself both living and working through what’s likely to be the most historic story of his lifetime. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra : When Philadelphia native Cliff Banks was 19 years old, he traveled to New York City to take a connecting train to Detroit in order to start a new job and a new life. But a scary thing happened as he hailed a cab to transfer from Penn Station to Grand Central Station. Although broke and in shock over what happened to him, Banks somehow found a way to make it to Detroit. Chitra : Hello everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan and this is When it Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Chitra : That same resourcefulness that allowed Banks to recover from the armed robbery got him into the Detroit area automotive industry where he fulfilled his passion for journalism. Joining me now is Cliff Banks, Founder and President of The Banks Report, the most influential newsletter covering the automotive retail space. Chitra : Cliff, welcome to the podcast. Cliff: Thanks, Chitra. It's great to be here. Chitra : So tell us what happened and how you got mugged in New York. I mean, this was back in the 1990s when the big Apple wasn't quite so sanitized, was it? Cliff: No. No, not at all. In fact, it did look a lot different back then. It was 1990, early as mid-March I guess, and at the time there wasn't a train that went directly from Philadelphia to Dearborn, Michigan. So I had to go to New York and get off at one stage, Penn Station, and then take a cab to Grand Central to grab the train to Dearborn. Coming out of Penn station and getting into the cab, before I got into the cab, two guys came up and asked if they could help and I said, "No, thanks. I've got it." And next thing I know, I was up against the cab with a knife to my throat and they demanded my wallet and anything else valuable that I had and took off running. Cliff: I actually chased the guy that took the wallet. I caught up to him and he turned around with the knife and slashed at me and I just, I backed off and told him to keep it. I went back to the cab thinking for sure he would be gone with all my luggage. Actually he wasn't. He was standing there with a few cops around him, but there wasn't anything to do that that they could do. So the cab driver very graciously offered to take me to Grand Central. Cliff: