The Dealer Playbook
The Dealer Playbook is the top-rated podcast for automotive professionals who want to dominate the retail industry.
Hosted by Michael Cirillo, this show delivers expert interviews, proven strategies, and actionable insights to help you sell more cars, lead stronger teams, and grow thriving dealerships.
Whether you work in sales, service, F&I, marketing, or management, you’ll gain the tools and confidence to excel in a rapidly evolving market.
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The Dealer Playbook
The Growth-Mindset Advantage: How Tustin Ulrich Leads His Dealership to Record Performance
Tustin Ulrich is the General Sales Manager at Roper Kia. In this episode, we discuss his inspiring journey of self-improvement, leadership, and maintaining balance in a demanding industry.
Tustin’s personal journey is equally compelling—he has successfully managed a significant weight loss, focused on personal growth, and developed a mindset that prioritizes grace and intention.
What We Discuss in This Episode
Before we begin, I want you to self-reflect on these 3 questions...
- How often do you take the time to reflect on your personal and professional life with genuine intention?
- What small daily habits can we adopt to start seeing significant changes in our overall growth?
- How can leaders in demanding industries cultivate a culture that prioritizes both personal well-being and professional success?
In this episode, we discuss just that: Tustin shares his strategies for managing his responsibilities as a general sales manager, entrepreneur, investor, and dedicated family man. He emphasizes the importance of living intentionally and cultivating a forward-thinking mindset. This mindset, he explains, has been crucial in helping him manage the various aspects of his life without feeling overwhelmed.
Tustin’s journey is a powerful reminder that success isn’t just about professional achievements but also about personal growth, intentional living, and leading with grace. Tune in to this insightful conversation to gain valuable perspectives that can help you navigate your own challenges with a renewed sense of purpose.
Thanks, Tustin Ulrich!
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This episode is brought to you by FlexDealer, the car business, does not mean you have to miss all of your kids' basketball games. I don't think you should miss any of your kids' basketball games, so I define that as a root pillar in my life, like family can be first and you don't have to sacrifice success to do so. It just means when you're here, you got to go to work and you have to be extremely intentional with the time that you're here. You got to go to work and you have to be extremely intentional with the time that you're here, hey gang, on this episode of the dealer playbook podcast.
Speaker 1:sitting down with my pal Tustin, we're talking about how to maneuver life's challenges and growth with grace. Stay tuned. The car business is rapidly changing and modern car dealers are meeting the demand. I'm Michael Cirillo, and together we'll explore the best strategies, ideas and tools to create a thriving life in and out of the business. This is the Dealer Playbook. Hey Tustin, thanks so much for joining me on the Dealer Playbook podcast.
Speaker 2:Thanks, man, happy to be here. Thanks for the invite.
Speaker 1:This has been a while in the making. Yeah, man, happy to be here. Thanks for the invite. This has been a while in the making, yeah, yeah, and so I'm excited to make it happen. Obviously, you and I are partners. You're the general manager of Roper Kia. You're an entrepreneur and investor. You're somebody that I look up to. You're doing so many incredible things In addition to a weight loss journey that I want to talk about and growth in your personal life and your mindset, and maybe a future book. My question is Roper Kia, roper Range Line fun for the people? I see your face multiple times a day on social media. You're invested in some cool businesses. You are in real estate. You're a dad, a great dad, from what I have learned, and I can see how the heck do you maneuver all of that with the grace that you do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. When you list it like that, it seems like a lot. You know, I'd say that my mindset has always been one where I don't like being stuck. So I like thinking ahead, I like moving ahead and I've always been in that frame of mind. I think the difference in these last three years, as I focus on growth and focus on myself and really honing in some of those skills, is one understanding we're not perfect. You know I there's no way to achieve perfection. So I think it's it's vital that we understand that we have to have grace for ourselves first I think that's a very important word and then being super intentional. I mean, I just you can't get caught up in TikTok for two hours a day because there's just not time to do so. There's too many lives that need to be impacted, too many people that can be helped, and I take that with as big of a flag as I can and yell it as loud as I can, and then be super intentional in every moment that I am at.
Speaker 1:I love the word intention. I was at an event a couple of years ago. Our mutual friend, liza Borshes, said that her organization adopts a new word that kind of becomes their theme for the year, but that as individuals, they also pick a word, and that really got me thinking. And at that time intention was the word that I picked. And then the year swapped and I thought, no, I don't feel like I want or need a new word. So when you're talking about intention, it really strikes me Also what you said about TikTok and how easy and addictive it can be to not even realize how much time you're losing on those platforms versus investing back in yourself and in the things that you want to accomplish. I mean, have you always been minded like this or is this something that developed organically over time?
Speaker 2:Minded as in like go get crap done, or minded as focusing on the growth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Focus on growth intention, not wasting time.
Speaker 2:No, I would say I was a big waster of time and it was because I lacked intention. I, you know a little background. I was raised by my aunt and uncle. I was seven, they were 19 and 21. They took me into their home 10 months into their marriage and I am forever grateful for that, and you know. But before that I bounced from house to house to house to house as I didn't live with my real mom and dad from, you know, 10 months until seven, and you know it.
Speaker 2:It created a mantra for me where it's like, no matter what, I'm going to be a better dad than what my dad was to me, not my uncle that raised me, not that life, but the guy that's my biological dad. And then I compare that also to type of father. He was a type of husband he was. They were never married, so he wasn't a husband, but you can digress to understand what kind of situation that was. And so for the longest time 15, 16 years I would take my deficiencies when I looked at them in the mirror and I would say, yeah, but I'm better than that. I'm providing a better lifestyle than my dad ever provided for me, because he didn't provide one at all. It's easy to provide something better than that. I'm providing a better lifestyle than my dad ever provided for me, because he didn't provide one at all. It's easy to provide something better than zero. I'm a better dad than my dad was, because I've been present and my dad wasn't. So you know, when you hold yourself up to that comparison game, it can be pretty bad.
Speaker 2:Now I was still achieving success. I still became the general manager of the store that I started at when I was 19 years old and worked from the bottom of that store to the top of that store, was leading that store to success and to anybody on the outside in. I was the most successful person in my family and able to help people out and get back to my church and do all of these things. And the world is looking at me saying, hey, good job. And I was looking inward and saying this I'm a mess. I weighed 450 pounds, I did not take care of myself, I didn't exercise, I wasn't reading, I had a good battle cry like culture over everything. But I didn't really know why that was, and so you know it was really four years ago. I turned that inward and said, hey, if I'm actually going to achieve anything productive or lasting in this world. I probably need to start focusing on some of myself. So I really started down that path of self-growth.
Speaker 1:That requires what I think many people shy away from, which is taking a real honest look at yourself. Yeah, absolutely, and I mean kind of similar for me, looking in the mirror and not liking what I saw. You know that's uncomfortable, yeah. And do you think, though, that, people, is it easier, you think, to just stay uncomfortable than it is to do something about it?
Speaker 2:no, but I think it's an acquired mindset.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's much easier to be 450 pounds right, but you know, in that moment of getting to 450 pounds, you know my food was an expression of the emotion I was feeling on the inside and, despite the success of the dealership, despite the income, despite the beautiful wife and the kids at home and the nice vehicle and all of these things that the world wraps ourselves up in, despite all of those things, my, my lash out was to just go eat.
Speaker 2:You know, lunch was at the Mexican restaurant because it was cheap and it was fast and it was three baskets of chips and all the salsa you could. You know, it's all these horrible, negative things that were that were a lash out of an expression of who I really was on the inside. It's pick your poison like. You can either live a really uncomfortable life, weighing 450 pounds, never riding a roller coaster with your kids and only being able to wear four different shirts, because that's all you can find at the store, or you can pick your heart of doing the work to become a better version of yourself. The ripple effects of that are astounding.
Speaker 1:How do you find the impact on stress load? Because I know the car business is not for the faint of heart, right? It's Jay-Z in that. New York songs Like, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. And I'm like, dude, new York's got nothing on the car business. That's funny. Um, how? What have you noticed in the time since that you've really been focused on this? That you've been cutting and getting healthier and all of that? The impact of maneuvering the car business, maintaining grace in a cutthroat industry. How do you do that?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the industry needs grace. I think you know that's when I say culture over everything, and that was my battle cry the first couple of years. It was because the mentor that and I talked to him this morning. I still have a ton of respect for the guy, but it was he laughed about you can't throw coffee cups at people's heads anymore. And he says that because he threw a coffee cup at somebody's head.
Speaker 2:And that's what people relate to the car business as is cutthroat and conniving and dishonest, disingenuous. And why is that? Like we have to do everything we can to disprove that. The car business does not mean you have to miss all of your kids' basketball games. I don't think you should miss any of your kids' basketball games.
Speaker 2:So it's taking that and you know I define that as a root pillar in my life Like family can be first, and you don't have to sacrifice success to do so. It just means when you're here, you got to go to work and you don't get that. Well, I'm going to keep referencing, scrolling, TikTok, but any social media platform of your choosing, like you, have to be extremely intentional with the time that you're here, and so I've always tried to bounce every decision, every frustration, off of that, off of family first, even when it's uncomfortable, even when it's uncomfortable, even when it's frustrating, to the point of when the production's not there and you have to have hard conversations. But I like being an outlier, I like being different, I like being known for what I am known for, because in turn, I can say five years later it's resulted in cultivating a pool of talent inside of my dealership that is second to none, and so the world needs change. I was just excited to be a part of that.
Speaker 1:It's a paradigm shift, I think, for many, because it's like, all of the things you do don't are not like being a general manager of a store. All of the money, all of those things. What I'm picking up is those aren't things that define you.
Speaker 2:No, I don't. I don't think so at all. I mean, I've always said that I people ask what I do. I'm like I grow people. We sell cars as a byproduct of that, but it's. It is about focusing on creating better humans, not for the result of selling cars, Like if I can invest three years in somebody and they can go become a better human at whatever, I've had a positive impact on their life and the rest is going to wash out If you're doing enough. I just believe that if you're doing enough good, it's always going to shake out in your favor.
Speaker 1:In order to do good, you have to be in a good place.
Speaker 2:I would say you have to lead the charge, you have to be in an improving place. Let's start with one thing. Right now my management staff is. I very politely instruct them to read 10 pages a day and we're all in a group thread so I picked the book. Everybody's at the same spot, at the same time. You read your 10 pages a day and then you text your takeaway to the group thread and the group thread has a lot of banter in it and they give each other a hard time. I post my sweat pictures in there every day because I September 23rd of last year to sweat every day for a year.
Speaker 2:So you know that that group thread does a lot of different things. But you know, in our very first book that we read, our completion rate was like 40, some percent, and then on the second book it was like 60. On the third book it was like 85. And so it's understanding that it's my job as a leader to do it first. And if I do it first and I continue to do it and it becomes a habit and it's unignorable, then people are naturally going to come along and do the same thing.
Speaker 2:So if I'm, if I see that you know Bill has some issues and he needs to work on them. Well, it's really hard to hold the mirror up to Bill when Bill can look at me and say, yeah, but you do this, this, this and this, whereas if you're constantly focusing on self-growth and that's you know, chasing gratitude and goals and grace and growth and the weight loss and the sweat and they see the momentum, it's hard to ignore that tide. And so at some point that tide becomes the mirror. Whether you want to hold it up or not, they're just naturally going to come to you and say, hey, I need to work on X, what would you recommend? And you, those conversations just happen naturally.
Speaker 1:Hey, does your marketing agency suck? Listen, before we hop back into this episode, I know you know me as the host of the Dealer Playbook, but did you also know that I'm the CEO of FlexDealer, an agency that's helping dealers capture better quality leads from local SEO and hyper-targeted ads that convert? So if you want to sell more cars and finally have a partner that's in it with you, that doesn't suck visit flexdealercom. Let's hop back into this episode. What I think is so cool about it is I have this visual a pitch dark room. I mean, you can't see not an ounce of light in this room and it's dark. You can't see your hand in front of your face and what happens is when you're in that dark of a room, the smallest amount of light stands out. In contrast, and the way I see it is, we have this big industry and many perceive it as this dark void, and you and I are aligned in. We want to remove that stigma. And to your point about if I shoot up a light from where I stand, standing in my own and doing what I do, what happens is it gives others who might be in the dark void a reference point to draw close to. And to your point. It's hard to ignore results. We naturally gravitate towards hope and light and grace and humility.
Speaker 1:Think there's leaders on both sides of the industry, whether it's the supplier side, which I sit on, or the dealership side, which you sit on there's leaders who would rather pay to solve their problems for them. Versus what I'm picking up, what you're doing, which is, versus what I'm picking up, what you're doing, which is no, I'm leading the charge, I'm going to be the light, I'm going to be the example, and I just feel like you can't overcompensate for that. You have to put in the work. You have to not be afraid to put in the work. What do you say to other leaders out there who are maybe in that position, wondering what they can do? What would you recommend? How do they? What would you recommend? How do they self-assess? What should they be looking at?
Speaker 2:Oh man, that's good. I think we make it all too complicated, if I'm being honest. So I'll never forget a sermon that I heard a church. This is a few years ago and the reference point was people say I'm going to, they start out every, I'm going to read the Bible in a year and everybody starts on January 1st, I think. To do that you have to read three chapters a day and five chapters on Sunday.
Speaker 2:And the pastor is like it's no different than somebody saying I'm going to work out six days a week. So they go to their sporting goods store and they buy all the workout outfits, and they buy the water bottle and the shoes, and they're excited. And they come home and on Monday new outfit, new shoes they go to the gym. They're excited. Tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday all the same things. Well, the second Monday guess what? No more new outfits. And that motivation wanes. And then that's when it's a true test of discipline and they might that Monday go again, and then Tuesday and Wednesday go again. But then on Thursday something happens. They don't go. There's no more motivation involved.
Speaker 2:He's like why do we make goals so big and say I'm going to do this massive thing? Like I can look back on the work I've done in the last four years and say that it has been a massive paradigm shift in my life, but it started out with one simple task I wrote down 10 things I was grateful for every single day, and I've done that every day since, and it sounds silly, and sometimes it's not even about the practice of writing down gratitude, like I think my viewpoint on the world is just so much different than most because I come from a position of gratitude, like I look at things as an opportunity, and a lot of people don't. A lot of people want to view everything as a negative and a lot of people don't. A lot of people want to view everything as a negative. However, and my book club is currently reading Atomic Habits by James Clear it's a great book. We just read the chapter yesterday that talks about you have to show up. You can't optimize something that doesn't exist, and so how are you going to make something better?
Speaker 2:But, as a visionary and I'm a visionary like you want to see this big, grandioso picture of perfection at the end, and then you want to work on it. I do want to work on it, tweak on it, make sure it's perfect. This decision is going to be amazing. This is going to be the thing that changes us. Blah, blah, blah, blah blah.
Speaker 2:And then what you realize is that there is no perfect decision. There is no perfect decision. There is no perfect person, there's no perfect path. There are imperfect people in an imperfect world, in an imperfect environment, all trying to create something better together. And as long as your hearts are aligned and you're willing to show up every single day, that's where the discipline part comes in. You have to be willing to show up, then you can tweak and get better, then you can grow and get better. So it started with writing down 10 things I was grateful for. If you want to change the culture in whatever environment you're, in, whatever industry you're in, start with one thing, small, that takes less than 10 minutes a day, and commit to do it, no matter what, and I challenge you to just carry that through. And if you do that, the impacts will build, the habits will stack, you'll grow, they'll grow.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've talked about it over the years. What resonates with me, what you're saying, tustin, is, you know, looking at the dark spots in my life, what snapped me out of it fundamentally and first, was gratitude, that a very similar gratitude practice to what you mentioned, and so that resonates deeply with me. And then you know, over the years, right, just just not ignoring my faith and realizing that all of the good things that I've got going for me whether it's gratitude or grace or you know any of those sorts of things patience, perseverance I'm like these are all principles Christ taught. Yeah, absolutely, you can't.
Speaker 1:The line couldn't get more straight for me, and I don't want to say that People that don't believe are doomed and will never get it, but I just believe truth is truth and, and for me, I believe that he's the source of truth, and that definitely has an impact, I think, on the way that I lead and try and run my business, and I can certainly feel that I can feel that same thing for you. It's, it seems like that is a very important aspect of how you operate very important aspect of how you operate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, without a shadow of a doubt, I don't know where I'd be without it. I say all the time that the four G's that I practice every day the gratitude, goals, growth and grace are the foundation of my life. But my devotional habit that we do every day is what keeps me rooted in my life, and I think it's important to have both of those pieces if you want to grow anything lasting.
Speaker 1:I find it interesting, you know, because the stakes are so high in our space, and I want to give props and kudos to you because I mean, gosh, I've been in this industry now 23 years. This will be my 23rd year and I haven't really known other industries. I've had little spurts here and there in other spaces, but really since I was 17 years old, this is it. My kudos is I haven't met anyone other than you yet who has so well articulated the bigger picture that there is a bigger purpose and that, and that grounded that you're, that groundedness that you're talking about, I think is is so amazing. So thank you for being a great example. Um, um, I think it's tremendous those are I.
Speaker 2:I appreciate those words very much. You know a lot of incredible humans, so thank you for that.
Speaker 1:And I mean it you. I think you know I don't. I'm not a smoke blower either.
Speaker 1:You know that the Italian in me prohibits smoke blowing. Yeah, what's what's next for you? What's what's your vision? I mean the industry. The industry went from unexplainable highs to a reset, so to speak, that we're in and there's. I mean our industry gravitates towards buzz topics and EVs and alternate fuels and OEM regulations, and what are they going to force us to sell next and what do we have to do? And in this high stakes game stakes game, I mean, what are you most focused on moving into the next six to 12 months?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's great. You're right, the target is always moving, but the target's always going to move. I am um, I love playing games, so I love playing strategy games with my kids and it's always fun. They if they want, if they find a game they love, and then they want to buy an expansion pack of that game. They know the rule they have to beat me. So right now, the big thing in my world is pickleball. My kids love pickleball. We are in our driveway every night playing pickleball and it's awesome and it gets us moving and it's great. They know that they've all picked the pickleball paddle of their choice and they have two decisions to make they can either buy it with their own money or they can beat that and earn it. And so you know it's.
Speaker 2:I say that to tell you that in the next six to 12 months I think the game is going to be constantly changing and you know the amount of risk that you're willing to stomach and work through is going to be a big dictator of, I think, where you go. We've been focusing on pre-owned cars for the last three years and grown that department to record numbers for us because we didn't want to be new car dependent and you know the market's going to continue to shift again as new car inventory comes back in surplus and manufacturers have to get back in the game. New car inventory comes back in surplus and manufacturers have to get back in the game. But I I truly believe that if I continue to focus on our employees, that, regardless of what pieces are on the game board or what game we are playing, we will win. And you know they're yeah, they're risky decisions. I mean, I'll never forget, I'll never forget, when COVID broke out, I was on spring break trip with my family in Colorado.
Speaker 2:That meant me spending half of my time on Zoom calls with my team handling things at the store. We're driving home from Colorado because we're a family of six and flying is astronomical. We're driving home from Colorado and I called the owner of my store and I said, hey, I got a crazy idea. He's like yeah, hit me. I'm like I'm going to go spend like $2 million on used cars. He's like nobody knows if we're going to be able to sell cars in two weeks. I'm like I know, but that means they're panic selling and that means it's an opportunity and there's no way they go to zero. He's like whatever you think. So we did. We went and spent the, set us up for success and we you know that propelled us to a level that none of us probably seen coming. Then it worked out well.
Speaker 2:I think whatever risk you're willing to tolerate in the next six to 12 months is going to dictate a lot of your success business wise. But the execution of that plan is going to depend on who you have in your stable and you know it's not the great resignation. But I would say a downside of the automotive industry is everybody knows everybody, so they think it's easier to go find greener grass on the other side of the fence. There's a lot of ship jumping going on right now. I'm very grateful that's not the case for our dealership. Our dealership is steadfast. We haven't lost anybody that's just gone to take a job somewhere else just because they think they can make an extra dollar. At the end of the day, we understand the mission that's in front of us and the vision that's in front of us. We actually just went through an entire shakeup in our dealership, changing our hours and our structure and how our day started, and all of these things because if we're going to improve and grow to the next level. It is what is required.
Speaker 1:I love it. How much risk can you handle? How much risk can you stomach? You know it's. It's funny because it's a lot of people love the sound of these words and hate the way they feel an application like risk might mean not taking a paycheck. Like, imagine you're, you know, imagine the dealer when you're like hey, I know we might be closed and not be able to sell a single thing, but can we just go into the bank account and spend two mil on used? He's like okay, pork and meat, pork and beans for dinner. Yeah, you know, and most people aren't willing to get that raw and gritty and uncomfortable. Um, when push comes to shove, although what I would stress is but it's available to everyone, it's just a choice whether or not you're going to go for it or not.
Speaker 2:Yep, well, I mean I posted on that about social media. Yesterday I was able to experience a reward trip that we've been chasing for two years with my business partner for a real estate goal and I laugh at our first purchase of real estate together. I woke up that morning and did my gratitude book like I always did. I opened up Facebook. There was a listing for a house that was going live in the town that I live in. I'm like this makes all the sense in the world. So by 10 am we were looking at it. By noon we had an offer. By 1 pm it was accepted and we bought a house.
Speaker 2:Now the amount of lessons that came from that were huge. It took 15 months to get that property renovated because we had no idea what we were doing nor the time to do it. It was. It was a lot, but we took the step, you know, and and then we stuck it out and we didn't give up and and now we've grown that real estate portfolio quite a bit. You know we bootstrapped that by ourselves and did it as a side thing and it's been fun. I mean, you got to be willing to take a step and take risk. I do joke.
Speaker 2:Now we have a full-time property manager. She's incredible and her and I were looking at a house together and she started she took a bunch of pictures and I thought she was just taking them for her own records and then she sends it to the group thread with me and my wife and my business partner and his wife and I'm like what are you doing? She's like oh, I just sent that picture so you know what we're looking at. I'm like that's not how this works. Like I find a house and then I tell them there's a contract in your email. You need to go sign it so we can buy this house together, which is how we bought the last few. We laughed about it, but I do mean that that's happened several times and it's because I'm I'm willing to go take that risk. Like I right, you don't get what you don't go get.
Speaker 1:I love it. It's yeah, put, put, put the money where your mouth is. Yeah, I love it. Man, um, I feel like I there's so many things. I'm going to have to have you back on the show if you're willing to do it, because there's more things I want to pick your brain on, but for now, I just want to turn it over to you one last time. How can those listening and watching connect with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can find me on social media. I think I'm the only tested on planet Earth that I'm aware of, so that is a weird tagline that I get to say yeah, I'm on Facebook. Yeah, just get a hold of me, send me a private message. Message, I'm happy to help in any way that I can. I will not turn someone away that is looking to improve their lives. There's life's too short so amazing, man.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for joining me on the dealer playbook podcast. You did, man. Thanks for having me. Hey, thanks for listening to the dealer playbook podcast. If you enjoyed tuning in, please subscribe, share and hit that like button. You can can also join us and the DPB community on social media. Check back next week for a new Dealer Playbook episode. Thanks so much for joining.
