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Car Guy Coffee Podcast Live from NAMAD 2025: Vegas. Special Guest Tim Cox “Leadership and Growth”

Car Guy Coffee Podcast Live from NAMAD 2025: Vegas. Special Guest Tim Cox “Leadership and Growth”

Car Guy Coffee Nov 03, 2025 15 min
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About this episode

Tim Cox joins the Car Guy Coffee Podcast live from NAMAD 2025 in Vegas, sharing insights on leadership and growth within the automotive industry. He emphasizes the importance of humility, accountability, and nurturing talent in dealerships. The conversation highlights the need for a supportive culture that encourages improvement and recognizes individual potential. With a blend of personal anecdotes and industry wisdom, Tim inspires listeners to foster meaningful connections and drive results through effective leadership.

Topics: leadership growth mindset dealer culture accountability mentorship industry insights personal development
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What's going on, Car Guys and Car Gals?
We are at NameMad.
And look at who it is that we wrote in.
The one, the only Tim Cox.
Let's go, brother, welcome to the party.
Good to see you, brother.
It's good to see you too, brother.
Every time we see you, it's always
the smile that always makes me get smile.
It's like the best smile in the business
from across the room, right?
And besides the smile, it's what you try to bring
when you come somewhere.
You try to bring good things.
You try to bring love.
And ultimately, with the capital oil too, right?
And I always love that about you.
When you walk in a room, it's always God first.
I could feel that for you, right?
And you always bring that up.
And to me, it's always been a blessing to run into you
and talk about what's good in life,
what the light of life is, right?
And the light is amazing.
Right now, we're at Namat.
And Namat is the light right now.
I can tell you, I'm excited to be here.
This is our very first Namat.
My very first Namat too.
This is really, absolutely, it is,
I heard from multiple people.
My buddy, Danny at BenQ and multiple others
that they said, you have to go.
And they said, there's just a spirit.
There's just a feeling.
Matt Jones was on earlier.
I listened to that from Truecar,
who now has become one of my favorite people.
Shout out to Matt.
But in all seriousness, he used the word fraternity.
And it doesn't matter what you look like,
smell like, who you work for.
Every, there's just a feeling here that's just good.
It's not for me.
It's a good feeling.
I agree with you.
And I felt like that the moment we walked in,
the very first person that walked by this booth,
as we're setting up, came here and greeted us
with so much passion.
And they're just willing to help
and be part of what we're about.
And I felt like that the moment we're here.
And it is a fraternity.
And I'm so thankful that I'm here.
I'm glad this is our first one,
but I can't wait for many others in the future.
So we're excited that you're out here for one.
Your booth is right next to us.
Yes, yes, yes.
You do know a lot of people choose their booth
based off of where we are.
Exactly.
But it is something that is encouraging
to be able to see you here,
because you can be anywhere.
You are doing so much for the industry right now.
We honor what it is that you're doing
to help advance dealers all over the place
and make the experience better for everybody involved.
But when actually coming out here
and starting to connect,
we're really on day two of this event.
And we still got plenty more to go.
What is it that you're hoping
that you get to see your brand do
inside of this particular environment?
Just look, at the end of the day,
it's about results.
It's about, we talk about all the time.
There's a lot of great companies out here.
There really is.
We tell people all the time.
And quite frankly, it's just like a job interview, right?
Everybody's Miss America, right?
You look at the resume, everybody's gonna change the world.
Every vendor, you haven't seen my dashboard,
oh, but at the end of the day,
I said almost a decade ago, facts not field.
And what I wanna really focus on
is we handle almost a million conversations.
Y'all, every, I said, y'all,
I'm country's corporate.
That's right, that's right.
Y'all, every month.
Scoping blue, baby.
Nearly every month.
By the way, three boys here, right?
Get into the house.
That's right, that's right.
Go cats.
But anyway, in all seriousness,
we handle a million conversations a month
and we study that data.
There's some things that are facts.
There's some things that are feeling.
But when we can go on a website
and we know that we're gonna convert,
if somebody clicks a button,
we know we're gonna convert
between 75 and 85% to get a lead.
And we've got some dealers that are literally,
that lead to close is the most important thing for me.
Because at the end of the day,
one of the reasons we started Carnell
in my dealership when we were playing with the software
was I would have vendors, not being ugly,
but certain vendors would come into my store
and say, oh, Jim, you crushed it last month.
How did I crush it?
We had this many unique visitors
and that's fine as part of the puzzle.
How many cars did I sell?
I can't take that stoker.
Come on, yeah.
Look at how many clicks I had.
That'd be $183, Mr. Cops.
That's what, I had 20,000 unique visitors
to my website.
Then, sir, I need the money to pay it.
And most people, I would assume
that your pay plan is predicated
on how many more cars you sell.
So when I go into a dealer humbly,
I think it's very important,
I'm never the smartest person in the room.
I think that's a huge, when we humble ourselves
and we understand that every day I wanna give more,
I wanna learn more,
I wanna be better than I was the day before.
And if we take that leadership mentality
into our companies, into our businesses,
and pour into our people to make our people better,
then everything else takes care of itself.
So when we go into a store, I literally say,
and it's not coming from a place of conceit.
It's coming from a place of confidence.
I say, don't, I have reports.
Don't look at my report.
Look at your own elite,
your own source report and your CRM.
And if we don't raise that bar
and sell more cars, then don't pay me a dime.
And it's not, but because if you do A, B, and C,
because we're looking at these certain data points,
you're gonna sell more cars.
Because unfortunately, once we get people,
my great friend Kevin Doyshet at Butler Lexis said this,
and I quote this 12 times a day at least.
Most people in any industry, especially automotive,
they go to work to wait.
They don't go to work.
And when you go into a dealership
and you start working on individuals in a dealership,
believing in something big, loving on them,
caring about them, pouring into them,
something happens.
People talk about culture all the time.
We talked about this.
But when you pull the people aside,
and wait for the group meetings, they're like,
you know what I mean?
So I think that's really the big part of this.
And that's what I'm excited about to feel,
even though we're early on in this conference,
of people truly not being the smartest people in the room,
coming by, wanting to learn and wanting to get better.
And that's what we're excited about.
Yeah, I need you to hold my mic so you can drop it.
There we go.
You said so many amazing things in those comments there.
And so many things that really hit me at the heart.
You talked about leadership.
You talked about the way people feel inside stores
truly after those meetings.
Because it's the truth.
We talked about salespeople.
And I know it's heart wrenching for you salespeople,
but let's be honest with each other.
The biggest room in the world is room for improvement.
And if you understand that, know that every day,
there's time that's slipping away from you.
You are allowing it to happen.
And you know it at the end of the month,
when you're sitting there deep in your heart at night,
in your bed, and you're like, hey,
what did I do this month?
You didn't do enough.
And that's the thing is, how do you
get better at doing that weight game instead
of waiting, doing, taking action, having a plan,
make it happen, map it, right, Lou?
And if we can make it happen,
brother and sisters, you're gonna sell more cars,
but more importantly, you're gonna help more people.
You're gonna change your life.
You're gonna be able to change your community's life
by doing so.
So it's a massive thing.
But no, I mean, there's so much to unload
with what you just said there, brother.
That's powerful.
But one thing that Tim does not lack is passion, right?
I think we all saw that just now.
He's definitely passionate,
definitely filled with so much wisdom.
With that wisdom, how do you see the wisdom
being cascaded down from leadership
into their stores now?
Because like you said, this is a critical pivot point
for the industry when it comes to pouring into your people
to create the culture that you want.
And that shift is happening more and more
with more people just really getting
to that humble spot of saying,
you know what, there's a lot I don't know.
We know that there's pride for holding your dealership
for 20, 30, 40 years, but thinking
that everything will come from you.
But many now are looking outward
to get some information, to get some education,
to help bring up their people.
How do you see that shifting inside of the industry?
Listen, there's so many examples
where I have had the pleasure
in the honor of witnessing it firsthand.
There's also been so many examples
where I've seen the antithesis and people are prideful
and people get to a management position
and they don't change.
And because that's the way they were brought up
when they were salespeople and the managers paraded them,
I think there comes a point in company,
but especially in dealerships,
if you truly have culture,
your people a lot of times are more upset
because if they don't hit their numbers
because they let you down,
and they have that conversation,
boss I hit my number, it's never gonna happen.
I didn't hit my number, it's never gonna happen again.
But let me tell you a story.
When I was 17 years old, way back in 1989,
Jake Sweeney Hyundai, a sales manager named David,
and we have the great Jake Sweeney Automotive Group
which I'm humbled, which is cool
because that was 36 or 37 years ago.
And I started crushing it per se, selling a lot of cars
and I was getting berated by the old guard, right?
The guys with the big pot belly smoking cigarettes,
the dealership was brand new, fresh paint,
and it was in North Kentucky and had ashtrays.
That's how long ago it was, kids.
It was smoking smoke inside the dealership in Kentucky.
In fact, up until a few years ago,
there was still smoking cigarettes, right?
You remember?
We had ashtrays in my drawer in case of customer,
when it was smoking out here, right here.
No, it's staying in my office.
This is the key.
Y'all, it was one of the,
as Malcolm Gladwell's book, the tipping point,
it was one of the tipping points in my life.
As these people were, oh, how many hours do you work
and how much money do you really make?
And as they were trying to block me out,
my manager who had just got to the store saw it
and he said, you know what?
Said, let's take a walk.
It was a 10 minute conversation.
Still this, my daddy was a preacher for 48 years.
We didn't go hungry, but we didn't have a lot.
In fact, my mom and dad had it,
when parachute pants were cool,
my mom and dad had to meet to figure out in the budget
how they could buy me parachute pants.
That's how I grew up.
But I looked cool.
But he marched me up the hill
and he pointed across, I saw a picture of the house.
He said, Tim, you have so much potential
and so much God given talent.
I see in you, you have the ability
to do great things in this business.
And one day, one day, you might be able to buy a house
just like that.
Ladies and gentlemen, you can have a great sales meeting
and I'm offered a great sales meeting.
But when you take the time to pull your people aside
and see what is in them and pour into them,
y'all, that was almost four decades ago
and I'm telling you about it right now.
What I dare you, I dare you, dare you.
Get involved in your people.
Pour in what matters to you people
because what happens, because we grew very quickly
the first several years apart now
people throw microphones at my face.
How do you do it?
How do you do it?
And I quote John Maxwell,
21 irrefutable laws of leadership.
But I think the two main laws, the law of attraction,
something's going on here, I'll be a part of it.
The dealership across the street
is hitting me in the head with like something,
I wanna go to that law of attraction
and then here's the big one.
We talked about it before, law of duplication.
Leadership, pouring into the people
to make them better than them.
And one of my most proud moments,
sometimes even in our company people wanna grow
and maybe there's not a leadership position,
maybe there's not,
but even some of the people that have loved us
since we're going on our 11th tier
are now BPs of sales, SDPs, directors.
That makes me, that's proud.
It's legacy, brother.
So I think, look, life is short
and every day is a gift from God
and if we're truly, do I fail miserably?
Daily, just ask my wife.
I'm not gonna give you the self manure,
but trust me, I fail daily,
but in all seriousness, every day,
let me touch somebody,
let me be his hands and feet,
let me pour into somebody today and make it better
and you watch those days turn into weeks,
those weeks turn into months
and before you look back,
you see what God's done in and through your life.
It's over, man.
It's good stuff.
It's over.
God's moving, God's doing great things.
It hurts right now.
I love it.
I love it.
There's so much to be said inside of that
because at the end of the day,
we are each uniquely wonderfully made by God.
Amen.
And there is a glimpse of him
that you can get in everybody
and what's so important for leaders to be able to do,
it's helped to unlock that person,
that individual and get their light to shine,
not so much for them to reflect their manager,
reflect their boss,
but for them to shine their unique light.
I don't care how you walked inside of your shoes
when you were in my position.
I care if you as my leader
can help me walk in my shoes at my optimum ability
and that's where leadership should be going.
That's how it should be shifting.
And I'm loving that the auto industry
is now more receptive and so much more tenderized
to that fact because there's a different generation.
You can't mother eff us.
Like you can't MF this next generation coming through
and get a job done.
They'll change on you.
They'll go to a different place.
It's a totally different world there.
Yeah, it's not all love on your people.
Let's get in a circle and sing kumbaya.
There has to be great culture.
There has to be standards.
You have to be the standards.
You have to support you.
If you don't perform,
then unfortunately you're not going to work here.
And that should be simple.
Yes, love on people and demand that and ask that.
Matter of fact, you actually really love them
when you do that and you hold them accountable for it.
Because if you're not holding them accountable,
I really believe you don't really love them
because it's your child.
You hold them accountable
because you want them to have the best.
You don't want them to make mistakes that you made.
You want them to do better than you ever could
and 10 times their speed of it, right?
And that's all we want for our teams.
And if you're not doing that for your teams,
you don't love them, period.
Yeah, man.
Yeah, look, Darry, I love hanging out with these guys.
I will tell you, obviously you subscribe,
hopefully to this podcast.
I'm so energized.
I'm going to pull along leadership and beyond
because I think this is important.
And quite frankly, look, car now is a great tool.
There's a lot of great tools.
At the end of the day,
it's about what you do in your store.
You, I don't care for your salesperson.
I don't care from the receptionist.
You can make a difference.
I heard a study said that
even the most introverted person throughout their lifetime
influences a minimum of 10,000 people.
As we walk through the day, what kind of influence?
Listen, just the great philosopher Michael Jackson
once said, I'm starting with a man in the mirror,
the woman in the mirror.
I love it.
And at the end of the day, it's about you.
It's about, are you going to make a difference today?
And that was good.
I love it.
Get it.
At the end of the day, did you make a difference?
Did you do everything you could today?
Did you get better than you were yesterday?
And if we have an industry that is asking, truly asking,
not just going through a checkbox,
but truly asking those questions, it's I dare you.
It's over.
I'm just telling you, it's literally that simple.
MJ also said, if you want to be starting something,
you got to be starting something.
And these three Kentucky guys showed up here
because we want to start something at NameMad.
We want to start being a part of this.
We want to see this community continue to grow.
And really, we want these relationships.
I'm jealous that these relationships have been going
on for years, and I haven't had a part of it.
Now we're excited to be here, and we are starting something
new, and we're excited about that.
Tim, thank you so much for spending some time for us.
Can't wait to be on your show and have some fun.
But there are things that we do to wrap up the show
to make sure that we all fly together.
Fred, break them down.
You already know.
We like to drop F-bombs.
And these are the forgive, focus, fly,
because the thing is that most of us
hold that weight on our shoulders.
And a lot of it's ourselves.
We tell ourselves we can't do it because we messed up yesterday.
It's OK.
Let it go because you've got to give it another shot.
A lot of times we learn things from those mistakes.
Matter of fact, if you're not learning from your mistakes,
you're not growing.
So let's learn together and let's grow together.
So we're going to forgive, and we're
going to focus together so we can reach out
and start flying together.
And when we're flying, we just keep growing.
So let's do it together on a count of three.
Here we go.
One, two, three, forgive, focus, fly, and keep growing,
keep growing.
Thank you so much for tuning in, everybody.
You have been brewing solutions on the CarGuy Coffee
podcast at NAMAD, the 45th membership
meeting with the one, the only, Tim Cox.
From CarNow, we'll talk to you later, everybody.
We out.

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