BusinessReport.com

Businessperson of the Year: Lee Domingue

Age: 43

Founder: AppOne

Accomplishments: Developed a company that bridges independent auto dealers with lenders, making it easier for buyers to get financing, keeps the dealers compliant with various lending laws and reduces risk to the financiers.

In 10 years, Lee Domingue managed to grow his business from the basement of a rent house into being a part of a billion-dollar international company. Now he wants to see the same growth happen to the nonprofit foundation he’s set up to combat international sex trafficking.

“Making money is easy, but making a difference is eternal,” says Domingue, who heads AppOne, which connects auto dealers and lenders, and Cyrus International, a relief organization.

Domingue founded AppOne, his cornerstone business, in 1997, shortly after he moved back to Louisiana. A Lafayette native, he had spent the previous 13 years in Houston, working in auto sales and financing.

“This company was birthed out of some of the ideas I had being in the auto industry for a long period of time,” he says. “Financing is what sells the car.” AppOne serves as a bridge between independent auto dealers and lenders, providing software to keep the car lots compliant with all of the various lending laws, while at the same time reducing the exposure to consumer fraud and identity theft for banks, credit unions and finance companies.

AppOne has gone from Domingue and one software developer to more than 40 employees. More than 2,400 auto dealers used AppOne software last year to do $120 million in loans.

As impressive as those numbers are, Domingue says they represent just a small portion of the 47,000 independent used car lots currently in business. He says the company is poised to get a bigger share of the market as well as move into areas such as approving financing for recreational, marine and power sports industries.

AppOne was acquired last year by Wolters Kluwer Financial Services, a Dutch business that’s the world’s second-largest global information services and publishing company.

AppOne was a client of one of Wolters Kluwer’s divisions, so officials had been watching the rapid growth of the Baton Rouge business. “They saw our model as being the way to protect the dealer, the lender and the consumer,” he says. After about six months of negotiations, a deal was struck in August for Wolters Kluwer to take over

AppOne. Now that the company is part of such a large international player, Domingue says AppOne is poised to take off. Plans are in the works to add more employees as well as break ground on a new office building within the next six months.

“I see us growing Wolters Kluwer AppOne into one of the substantial cornerstone businesses of our state,” he says. “We want to bring top talent to Louisiana with both quality jobs and a great atmosphere.”

As important as AppOne is, Domingue says his true purpose is Cyrus International, which was founded in 2001 as a way of helping people, especially those who are forced into prostitution. The foundation sponsors everything from orphanages in Swaziland, to programs in Greece that help young girls get out of being prostitutes.

It might seem unusual for a businessman in Baton Rouge to send money and give up time to operations in Africa and Southeast Asia. Domingue, who has five children ranging in age from 3 to 17, says it was easy for him to get involved. “You really don’t have the full appreciation for how diabolical these things are, to see the atrocities, see what people go through,” he says.

Along with his paternal feelings, Domingue says his faith also led him to form Cyrus. He is a member of Healing Place Church, which he says focuses on helping people globally as well as locally. “Healing Place has helped me enlarge my vision to bring hope to the hurting,” he says.

While Cyrus has been privately funded so far, Domingue plans on ramping up the foundation to start taking donations from other individuals, businesses and public agencies. “This is a life commitment that has grown and will continue to grow,” he says.

Domingue says his faith, family and business feed off of one another. For example, growing AppOne provides more money to help Cyrus International. And setting up a strong business that provides good jobs and a solid work environment is important locally. “Some people are raised with the saying, ‘Put God first, your family second and your business third’ I disagree with that. I think God, family and business all have to be put first, because they’re all tied together,” he says.

The growth of AppOne and the development of Cyrus fit in with Domingue’s vision of focusing on creating opportunities for the next generation to grow and thrive.

“I’m all about pushing the next generation so we can equip them with a chance to make a difference,” he says. “I want to be remembered as somebody who gave it all for the next generation.”