Trust and Transparency: Cliff Cummings’ Business Model

Intro  

Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Intro: Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotispoti and today’s guest is Cliff Cummings, owner and president of Toyota of San Bernardino, Subaru of San Bernardino, I-10 Toyota of Indio, all in California. His dealerships have new and used vehicles available for purchase or lease. They offer their own financing in-house for a more convenient shopping experience. You can rent a car from them as well. They also have state-of-the-art service departments where you can also purchase parts.

And they have an Imperial Motorsports division at the Toyota dealership where you can choose from a wide selection of premium performance parts for your overlanding adventures. Now Cliff himself is president of the Southern California Toyota ad association with a budget of $125 million this year and on the Toyota National Advertising Committee. He has been a trustee for Loma Linda’s Children’s Hospital, a Cal Poly ambassador for higher education and was appointed by Governor Wilson to serve on the employee training panel.

He has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for a number of the nonprofits that he’s associated with and we’re going to hear about why golf has been so instrumental to his success. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our proprietary programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today, the owner and president of several car dealerships in California, Cliff, I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Cliff Cummings: I’m happy to do it. It’s always tough to make an afternoon available, but I’m glad we’re doing this. Likewise.

Anthony Codispoti: So Cliff, let’s go back to the beginnings. What first drew you to the car industry?

Cliff Cummings: Man, that’s 48 years ago.

Anthony Codispoti: The graduated from… The memory banks. Okay. The graduated from Lynchburg College 1976 was…

Cliff Cummings: I played golf in college for four years on the varsity team. Went off to go figure out what I should do next, which was in the golf world, and was playing some events, trying to sort it out. And I went into a Toyota store in Lynchburg, Virginia, and asked for a job and got it. The guy was great Irving Newsom.

Irving Newcomb, he’s dead, unfortunately, but he had taken an interest in athletes coming out of school and I could basically work when I wasn’t playing. It was a great, great gesture on his part. And then we went forward from there. And so I kept on playing an awful lot of stuff for Toyota and others, state opens, that kind of thing. And then decided at about age 51, I think, that I wasn’t going to do it. But the key story here, the element of the story, is somewhere in the late 80s, I was out there flailing away, and a guy named Bob McCurry took over Toyota and he had come from Dodge and he was a Michigan State football player, tough guy, fair guy, but tough guy.

But he also loved the game golf. And so I managed to weasel my way into playing in all kinds of events around the country, whether it was in Pennsylvania doing or Delaware, and Toyota would fly myself and others. And I’ll give you the list of names. And it’s a list of names I should be on. Let’s go there.

But Greg Norman, Mark Omira, Chichi Rodriguez, Lee Tornino, we go down the mark file, one of my still one of my great friends, as well as a host of others. And so we’d be just sort of, you know, it would be in Ohio or it’d be in Pennsylvania or it’d be in Delaware, we’re doing all this good fun stuff. But at some point, Mr. McCurry asked to have a conversation. Well, you just say, Yes, sir. What are you going to do? And so I go waddling in there. And he says, Look, kid, I want to talk to you. Yes, sir, what can I do for you? He said, You are one hell of a golfer.

Well, thank you very much. He said, But you’re a better car guy. And that pretty much sealed that deal. And he said, You take care of the cars and I’ll handle the young golf. And so it went forward that way for many, many years.

And we had, I guess, what you would call a symbiotic relationship. I brought five of their dealerships out of one, well, actually one was shut, out of very small volume into what could be considered very big volume. And the same thing happened with Subaru.

So he was right. I am a better car guy than I am a golfer. I’m 70 now. So the golf thing doesn’t happen very often because it hurts too much. But I love playing. I like working with kids, junior golf especially. And we’re actually just sponsored just at a deal.

Probably not even out yet. But the California, California women’s open, we’re going to sponsor that Toyota. And we’ve got Brandy Burton, who is a two time major winner. We’ve got Julie Inkster, who is just a household name in the LPGA.

I think Pat Hurst has come in there a couple others. So that’s an embryonic event. Other states are doing a great job. California was doing garbage. So I met with those folks and said, You know what, we’re in. And here we go.

So let’s see how big we can make that over the next few years. So it’s all fast. And I find it as a good diversion. You know, you can get out and just get on a range. I’ll go down to the desert this weekend.

We just re are opening the quarry after their coursework. And I’ll see all the friends that fly back in from whether it’s Canada or the East Coast or the North, you know, whatever. And we get a lot of good time.

Anthony Codispoti: And you have a good time playing golf and you’re incorporating you’re tying the golf into promoting the car dealerships as well. Is that right?

Cliff Cummings: Yeah, I think that that’s a fair way to put it. We we tend to sponsor an awful lot of charity events, whether it’s a whole one portion of that event, or the entire event, or a big chunk of it, like, like we’re doing with the California Women’s Open.

We do we do a lot. And, you know, is it a give back? Yeah, is it a little selfish?

Yeah, it’s that too. Because I love working with those kids. And it’s been fun. The Junior Golf Program here is growing a guy named Dave Stockton. If you’re a golfer, you know who he is. He was Ryder Cup captain.

When we won that one, some years ago, he won 28 times, I think. And he’s a great friend. He and his wife. And so he’s involved. And everybody just does it because they love the game. And we love the kids.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s great. You mentioned that you were told that you’re a better car guy than you are a golfer. And in what way? Like what makes you so good at the car space?

Cliff Cummings: Well, it’s not real nuts about talking about me, to be honest with you. But when I was down in Virginia in 76, and I was kind of doing both, I was dating my wife as I call her my current wife. We’ve been together 48 years now. And so Bobby got a job up in DC and actually in McLean. And so I needed to get up north so we could still hang out.

We weren’t married at the time. And so I moved up to Tyson’s Toyota. When we got there, Tyson’s Toyota was about 125 car a month store. And when I left it to go to a sister store owned by the same guy, and I got a piece of ownership there, it was 500 something. And I took the second store, which was Calvert Motors and just outside DC near the Pentagon. And it was about 88 cars.

And I relocated it, built a building, relocated it and beat Tyson’s the first year out of the gate. It was good for me. It wasn’t too crazy.

The people at Tyson’s weren’t nuts about it. Ultimately, that owner sold. I left there, well, he sold because he went under. And so I went back. I was in Florida, I went back.

I was just playing some golf. I went back and salvaged that, sold it. They paid me a lot of money. So I bought a store in Southern California. And it was doing about 85 cars a month.

And our biggest has been 800 and change. But a second store, which was closed, went in partners, they asked to come in. Second store was closed.

Shut, shut. And we’re doing 300 units a month. And then I got the Subaru store, which was about 25, 30 units a month.

And we’re in the 200s. And we’re going to build them 60,000 square feet of new Toyota, of new Subaru store, right across virtually across the street from the Toyota store where I’m sitting now, I’m in my office. And this Toyota store is 96,000 square feet on 16 acres. The car guys will start drooling when they hear that because it’s enormous. And we’re right on the freeway. That’s big space.

Anthony Codispoti: And so what’s your superpower? Are you a great sales guy, great marketing, great operator, leader, delegator?

Cliff Cummings: Like what? Oh, my wife would say, I listened to her. I would say that really it all comes down when you’re when you’re doing a business. I’ve just found out I’ve always found that finding the right person or people, I’ve gone into dealerships.

I’ve gotten rid of one guy. And the next thing, you know, you’re 40% higher because you had a poison in the place. Also marketing. Yeah. You know, we spend a lot of money in the marketing world. And with this national thingamon and have been actually, it was one of the guys who formed it. And the advertising associations, which I did in the Virginia market. And now here, you learn a lot.

And you find out, you know, it’s the old adage, right? Half of marketing doesn’t work. The question is what half.

And so I haven’t figured it out yet, but we’ve got it narrowed down a little bit. And so I think that though, if you had to put one, one word there, I would say it’s people, you’ve just got to be able to read and deal with all kinds of different people, whether it’s Japanese staff from from the Toyota world, or the regional staff, my own people, etc. It’s just comes down to how you deal with people.

Anthony Codispoti: And what’s your, if you were to sum up how you deal with people, is it sort of the golden rule approach, do under others as you have done unto you? Do you have sort of a guiding light, the guiding principle there? I give them a lot of room.

Cliff Cummings: Okay, if you want, I give them a they can make a mistake. I hope they do because it means they’re doing something. There are an awful lot of people in my world who won’t tolerate any errors. Well, that’s that’s a terrible mistake on their own part. And so we let them make mistakes and they learn. Now, if they don’t learn, we can go to my corporate motto, if you want to hear my corporate motto, we’ll right there.

The new guy will do better. And so it’s our running joke inside is that that, you know, we’re always aware of what you’re doing and trying to help you get better. And if you look down the list, my assistant followed me from Virginia. And I think 1980, she came to work for me in 1983. Her husband had come to work for me sadly deceased now, but he came in 78 or nine back there.

Carlos is here 30 years, you the parts manager here started when I think he was 16, about 25 years ago, he’s now running the parts department. So we keep people for an awfully long time. And we work with them. And I think that in the car business, and I suspect in the media business as well, that there’s so much turnover. When a good person finds a home that they can, they can, they’re comfortable in and they can get well paid, and they can stay and have an opportunity to grow because they know I’m buying stuff. It’s a really good formula. So let them do their thing. They’re smart people.

Anthony Codispoti: So it sounds like not a whole lot of micromanagement going on. And probably you’re investing quite a bit in training and education. If you’ve got folks who are starting with you here, staying with you for years and moving up through the ranks.

Cliff Cummings: Yeah, Toyota’s got some very good programs. We do stuff in house. Subaru has some okay stuff. Subaru dealerships pretty small. And it’s going to be pretty big here in two years.

In fact, it’s kind of funny. It’s right over there next door. And we’re blowing up the old Toyota building because we moved in here and we vacated there. So we’re going to nuke that. It’s going to be eight acres, about 60,000 square feet of Subaru store. But in that process, we have a lag time between approvals and equipment and architects and all the rest of the stuff in California. So I lent the building to the SWAT team to go practice. And so they’re in there.

I don’t know what age group listens, but I’ll just be a good boy. They’re blowing stuff up. And so I walked the captain around last week. We’ve had a run out of town. And can we hit that door? Yes. Can we blow that door off? It’s a yes. Can we come right and yes. And I’m trying to say, but you can blow the whole place up.

Now here’s the deal. What we generally do is we then call the fire department and say, whatever you have them blown up, they can set on fire and put out for practice. So we get SWAT, we get PD, we get sheriff’s department, we get fire department, and they love us for it. I mean, they’re really good guys.

And I’m on the sheriff’s council for the county of San Bernardino. And I mean, these are really good guys. And so they get to come in and they get to like the guys, can we blow that up? Yeah, you can blow that up.

Anthony Codispoti: We’re all little kids at heart, right? Oh, yeah.

Cliff Cummings: I mean, who doesn’t love a good explosion? Anyway, so they’re, and they’re working, I worked with them when we built this building where I’m sitting now, which is on the, it was a combination of a Cadillac store, an RV store. The storage lot was a Jeep, Chrysler Jeep dealership, six and a half acres. And so when we were about to blow this up, I called up PD and say, Hey, you guys want to practice? And so I went to one of the prayer two of the practices and they’re going in there and they are just working hard. So, you know, if it helps the community in one case, where they got a little bit better, man, we did our job. Right.

Anthony Codispoti: There’s a probably environments where they don’t get a whole lot of like hands on practice and experience.

Cliff Cummings: Correct. They have training areas, but when they can go into a warrant and let me, a car dealership is kind of a warrant, right? So the other one I’ve had, the one we vacated, we’re blowing up, was small when I got it. And so I kept adding to it.

And so there are chunks where, you know, there’s, there’s metal doors for parts storage or there’s this and there’s offices we expanded that were garages. And he’s like, it was perfect for them because they can practice a hostage situation where they’re in a room that’s barricaded, all the glass is hidden by boxes, et cetera. You know, I think that they’re, they’re having a really good time with it.

Anthony Codispoti: Do you get to go over and watch any of the explosions?

Cliff Cummings: Yeah, if I want to. Yeah. I was gone last week. My wife turned 70. And so we had birthday month. I’m exhausted. So last, we were in Scottsdale over at one of my, my son’s place. And we had dinner with friends there, came back for a day, went to Vegas on Saturday, took her to Billy Joel, the concert in, in Vegas. And we happened to be friends with one of their two of the band members. And so we had dinner with him and she had a great time. Absolutely great time. We were in Italy three weeks ago and made it home for a day before I had to go to Dallas. So when this is done, I’m going home, I’m laying down.

Anthony Codispoti: Fun stuff. So how did you get from the Midwest out to California?

Cliff Cummings: Well, it was Virginia. It was Northern Virginia. So there’s a thing that North, NADA, right? North American Dealer Association. They have study groups, 20 dealers non competing geographically, same franchise. So 20 non competing Toyota dealers meet twice or three times a year in, in somewhere.

And sometimes they go to a dealership, tear it apart as far as what the good and the bad is. A lot of times we’re in the hotel and we do a day and a half to two days of meetings and then play golf for a day, go home. In the 20 group I was in, Toyota one, we were very large. After I’d gotten done with Tyson’s, it was big. And there were other big dealers in there as well.

Well, there were a couple that are, that were smaller. And to me, and I keep telling young general managers, some guys who have some money, finally, they want to buy in, go to 20 group, go to an NCM group, which is the same as 20 group competitor. Look at the bottom. Find out who’s bad. Go try to buy them. You already know they’re bad. You got all their numbers for the last 10 years. And so that’s what I did.

Anthony Codispoti: And so aside from the people part of it, you mentioned, oh, you know, you find the poison, you take them out like that helps. Talk to me about some of the other levers that you’re pulling to help drive better sales.

Cliff Cummings: I think that you’ve got a market, obviously, right? So I’ve got years and years and years of marketing experience with the boards I’m on and have been on for 45, 50, 45 years. And so I use that experience.

But you also have to tailor it to the marketplace. Like a great deal of our marketing in Southern California at these stores is in Spanish. We hit the Spanish stations. We have events on property with music and food with mariachi bands or whatever the case may be, because about 80% of our business and maybe 85 now is Hispanic or Hispanic influenced.

We tell a great story about a friend, Dion Garcia. She’s as pasty white as you can possibly get, but she married Pat Garcia. And so she gets mail as a Hispanic all the time. And she’s, look at me, so, but anyway, we do quite a bit in that market.

We also have an extremely successful repeat business percentage and referred repeat is the easiest sale in the world. They love you already. And we take care of them. I mean, just not one of those guys, we’re doing fine.

I don’t need to murder anybody. And we kind of prove that every day. And so and we have staff that’s there for a long time so that when somebody walks in, there’s Carlos or there’s Tommy, there’s, you know, they can do business with the same person. Because, you know, if you can, if somebody spends $30,000 with you, they like it 10% of the people, they don’t buy because they don’t like the product 90% don’t like the guy. So it’s important to like the guy. And you can get past the rest of it. So that’s one of the things are we really work hard on the repeat business.

Anthony Codispoti: So for that to be, for that to be working for you that repeat part of the business, they got to like the guy, you must have a pretty good process for recruiting and identifying the right people, sort of filtering them out at the gate before they get inside.

Cliff Cummings: Yeah, it depends on the position. But for instance, if we’re going to go into a sales job, which is every manager and every assistant manager and one veto, okay, there’s one veto and that person’s out because if there’s somebody who had worked together in the past, they didn’t like each other, they got into it, whatever the case may be, you don’t want to relive that. So one veto kills the deal. Now normally in a managers meeting, everybody gets a vote, I get 10, but they get a vote. And so sometimes it’s 10 to seven, sometimes it’s 17 to nothing.

But anyway, it’s, it’s kind of a fun thing and we keep it light. But the fact of the matter is, somebody can veto a new hire, and we’re just not going to going to break up the harmony that’s going on out there.

Anthony Codispoti: And so you still have a hand and a say in every person that gets hired across all the dealerships?

Cliff Cummings: No, not really. I’ll do the key managers. So parts manager, service manager, sales managers, general managers, that kind of thing. Because I’m on the road, ridiculous amounts for my Toyota positions.

I’m in Dallas all the time. And so if I know that now I will approve them, and I’ll check them out through my friends. But if I veto, it’s over.

And I generally speaking, don’t do that, but I did one the other day. And I have a formula that has been very successful. And every time we branch off it, it’s a failure. It’s a turnover and turnovers are extremely expensive in any business. So this one, I vetoed and said, no, this guy was a manager before wants to go on the sales floor.

And I guarantee you in two months, that guy’s going to find a manager’s job, and we’re going to have a turnover. Oh, no, he promised. I said, okay, let’s look at the list of guys you’ve hired who promised you. Okay. All right. So that was the veto that I used. That’s the value of experience. Yeah, I think so.

Anthony Codispoti: So you made the reference, and it’s often been said in marketing and advertising that I know half of my ad dollars are working. I just don’t know which half. If you were to guess, though, what do you think are the most effective things that you’re doing in the marketing and ad space?

Cliff Cummings: Well, I think you have to look at live sports and news. Particularly sports, as a rule, the preponderance of people do not record sports. They watch them live. But a great number will record a television show and either watch it later or they watch it on Paramount two days after it ran, etc., etc. So we get a distinct advantage by hanging in live sports. Now, the news during a presidential time, good time to be there.

The election is the election and on you go. And so it was not bad to be in there. But we also do an awful lot of Hispanic advertising. There’s really three stations you want to be on, Hispanic-wise, and LA, and we’re on them. It’s different because, for instance, the ADI of Los Angeles covers San Bernardino, where I’m sitting now. But my other store in Indio is its own ADI.

So I can buy network out there for pennies compared to San Bernardino in the Los Angeles. So we look at which is the most efficient. And we do other things.

We’ll have the pound come in. It’s Subaru once a month. They come in with puppies and people can adopt puppies. We’ve had them twice here at the Toyota store. We tend to do a big deal with the breast cancer march in Redlands next door, next town over. My wife is involved in that and they raised, I think, a million eight this year.

Spent all locally with virtually no expense. We eat some of that and they do a hell of a job. Those ladies are something. I mean, it’s a stampede. It’s not a walk. There are 12,000 of them coming at you dressed in pink. Let me tell you, you’re a whole. So they’re great. They do a hell of a job.

Anthony Codispoti: So some things like the breast cancer walk, whether there’s an ROI to that or not, you’re happy to do it.

Cliff Cummings: You’re happy to participate in a clinical course. I don’t care. I’m doing just fine. And if we can help somebody and we have, we’re going to help them.

Anthony Codispoti: But for these other things, like advertising on television, are you able to tell a difference? Is there ever a time when you turn the ads off just to see, like, okay, does traffic drop in the stores when we don’t run as much? Or are you just buying up as much ad space as you can? And so you don’t really have that comparison point?

Cliff Cummings: No, we will turn it off or we’ll try different things. We do find that in the old days, April, up till tax day, those first two weeks were really terrible. And then you had a lull around June 1st to June 15th. And that’s kids going back to school. The kids hate going to school. Now they hate the parents.

Everybody’s having a bad time. So they’re staying home trying to get everybody re-acclimated to what they have to do again. But the school systems here now are just basically their annual. So we don’t have an effect from that anymore. They’re just year-round.

No summer breaks anymore. That’s right. That’s right. Some do, but not all. And so it’s much more fluid for us that we don’t have to deal with it. We tend to be light the first week. Easter, you know, I close Easter Thanksgiving and Christmas. All right. So we shut the stores down.

And we found that the three cars we would have sold, I don’t care. Other guys stay open. Sometimes they beg for volunteers. And I try to talk them out of doing it. I just go have fun with your family for God’s sake.

We’re all doing pretty well here. And so we’re obviously open New Years because that’s a really big day. It’s hot.

It’s a really big day for us. But we do kind of play to the market and we look what the pulses are. When there’s national disasters, we pull off the air. You know, if there’s a big earthquake here, we pull off the air. We might buy some newses. But, you know, we’re relatively, we’re fluid, I guess is the best way to say it.

Anthony Codispoti: What do you gain from being on the different ad councils?

Cliff Cummings: Oh, I see what the other guys are doing. We do analyze what Honda, Mazda, Nissan, theirs isn’t working. And others and the domestics do. And so we get quite a bit of input there. We do have a reel where we look at what’s on the air for them and what’s been on the air recently. And we do comparisons with our own. But we also get tremendous information from the agency.

Their diagnostic division tells us the pluses and minuses of our own spots versus other spots. This one worked. This one didn’t. This one was a 78% approval. This was 62. And we go through quite a bit of that.

Anthony Codispoti: So do you get involved in the creative aspect of it? Are you more involved in looking at the numbers or big picture? Like when you sit down with the other dealership owners, kind of what’s the conversation? What’s the dialogue sound like? All of it.

Cliff Cummings: I mean, it’s not all of it all at once. So numbers are pretty much all of it. ones. But we’ll be looking at rough cuts and I do it in the agency comes out there out yesterday and it’s just the three of us are going through it. And we’ll look at some rough cuts and I’ll say what about this or that and why that? And so we do have a really good open discussion about that and then we go into the nuances of the buy and do we want to add weight during this period of time and a lot of times that’s based upon what Toyota’s incentives are. So we’re also going to play off of that to let the public know that all of a sudden you get $199 on a tundra.

So if we didn’t tell you that, I’m going to tell you the odds are you don’t know that because the rates are very high right now. So we it’s pretty in depth and Davis Ellen is the ad agency of record for the Southern California Toyota dealers. They also do McDonald’s and Smart & Final. They’re very big and they’re very, very good. They’ve been our agency for 45 or 6 years. Now find an ad agency that’s had an account that long.

Anthony Codispoti: Now there’s lots of turnover. That didn’t happen right. So obviously that’s a good relationship there. You kind of made a face when talking about Nissan. They’re not doing so well.

Cliff Cummings: It’s laid off to 90,000 people. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti: I understand you previously owned a Nissan dealership. What’s going on over there?

Cliff Cummings: Well, they have an interesting style of management which has been ignored the Americans and let the Japanese tell you what to do and they don’t have a flip and clue. So I think that the issue is they don’t even have a hybrid. They don’t have a hybrid. Think about that. Think that out. 2025 model they’ll have hybrids.

They’ve had some electric stuff. Okay. Fine. Who cares?

But nobody wants it. And the truck design was not great. The cars are super. Let me tell you the product longevity and their ability to wear well is fantastic. Really good.

We all make mistakes. But over the course of history Nissan has had stronger than 40 acres of chopped garlic engines. They are really good. But they don’t market well.

They have, in my opinion, terrible management. And I’d buy another one tomorrow for the right money. That was in Phoenix talking to a friend of mine who sold his Nissan store. And I say, Mitch, what do you think we ought to do with Nissan? He said, I think if it’s cheap enough, we ought to buy him. Because the Japanese government, in our opinion, will not allow Nissan to fail. And 9000 go.

Hybrid coming on. I don’t know what they’ll do with the American staff. But you have companies out there who try to emulate Toyota. My super is one of them. By pull or punch. Kia tries to copy our advertising.

It doesn’t quite work. Nissan, I don’t honestly know what the hell they’re doing. And again, they have great engines. Some of their cars are super, the Z’s, things like that. But they’re rudderless, in my opinion.

Anthony Codispoti: But you just said that if you found another one, you’d buy it.

Cliff Cummings: No, I like buying dogs. Look at the history. I mean, one of the Toyota stores was closed. One was 88 cars. One was, you know, I like that. Super 29 cars. Come on. I’ll do that all day long. You’re a turnaround guy. Well, sure.

And here’s the other thing. I’ve got people who need to go into senior management positions and ownership. So try buying any piece of the big Toyota store right now. They can’t do it.

It’s just not possible. So if you buy something, and they can have a chunk of it, and what I do, in the case of the next Nissan store, or the next Subaru, whatever, is if I buy it at X, that guy coming in buys it at X. And if he’s going to buy more of it, he’s still buying it at X, even if it triples in value, because he’s the one who got it there.

Why should I penalize him? So I wish more dealers would do that. And a lot of the good ones do, but there are probably quite a number who don’t. That’s a very generous approach.

That’s not generous. It’s smart. You keep the guy. He works his ass off. You’ve provided for his family. He never has to look backwards. Am I going to screw him?

Which is, by the way, the national sport, I think, of the automobile business. How can I screw somebody? And so on we go and give them their chance and let’s help them succeed. We have to replace ourselves.

Anthony, here’s the problem. We’re aging. I’m 70. I’m Parky 70, but I’m 70. And we have to replace ourselves. My great friends who have multiple dealerships, 75, 72, 69, 80, we have to replace ourselves.

Anthony Codispoti: So are you always kind of actively or semiactively looking for new dealership opportunities?

Cliff Cummings: Yeah, I probably do it in two ways. I’m semiactively looking, but we have brokers out there who are very good at bringing packages forward to take a look at. Right now, the problem with buying anything in the market is that during COVID, everybody made just a ridiculous amount of money. And that has settled down. But the dealers who are selling are basing their multiples and their figures on numbers that are a couple of years old that are not germane to today’s market. So they just got to get a dose of reality and then they come back in and we’ll see.

Anthony Codispoti: Are there any brands that you’re not currently working with that you’d be excited to or ones that you would never touch?

Cliff Cummings: There are brands I would never touch. That’s for absolutely sure. Lexus Toyota Mazda is a sleeper. Toyota Financial just took over their finance arm. And so those are a lot of friends of mine. And Mazda makes a good product. Nissan for the right price, like I bought this one.

I bought this one for the right number. Benz is in trouble. They’re not doing very well right now. Yeah, I’m kind of in that middle America range. That’s my comfort level. I’m not huge on Ferrari and those kinds of things. Bentley, I drive a Crown for Crown out at the Toyota. My wife drives a Highlander. And so I think that middle section, that’s where I’d be going.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s who you know how to talk to. That’s what your marketing experience has been for.

Cliff Cummings: And also add to that, my people know how to talk because they’ve been working with them and with me for a long time. So it’s an easy plug and play for them. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti: Let’s talk about some of the causes that you are either currently involved with or have been. Like how do you kind of choose which ones you support, which ones you give your time to?

Cliff Cummings: Well, you want to stop a room. Just they say, well, Cliff, what are you doing? I said, well, there’s about maybe 30 or 40 Republicans in the country who don’t belong to country clubs.

So we have a fund trying to raise money to get them in. And then the room stops and you tell them you’re kidding, of course, but you get them every time. I mean, they fall for it every single time. But what we do, what do we do? Okay, we do. Let’s see, my wife mentors a class that Sam, you know, high school every morning. One of our graduates, Anthony, I’m sorry.

We’ve had two or three really go hard in the military. Alexander Madison is playing football for the Raiders was Minnesota for four years now the Raiders. Another graduate not from her class, but has as playing in the NFL, we’ve got people a lot of a lot of success has come out of that group of people from a Monday morning and she feeds them every Monday morning. There’s like 25 or 30 of them. And she has three or four of her friends, the Morris’s and others do a great job of working with those guys and they’re looking for direction.

Right. So they’re helping give them direction at Morris is a retired judge, Bobby was a federal government. You know, whatever I can do to help them, mostly by staying out of the way, I think is good. So we do a lot with them do a lot with junior golf. Do I’m kind of a sucker for vets whenever we need to do anything. Also law enforcement, I just donated.

Actually, it’s interesting. Um, the there was a vote on providing new motorcycles for the San Bernardino PD. And it got turned down the city council, which kind of pissed me off.

And so I called the chiefs, I’ll give you one, and they’re like 40, 40 grand a throw. So it’s being built right now. Now, here’s the important part. When you have a town that has a lot of kids and we do the traffic situation here is abysmal. And people are running lights and stop signs like crazy. You don’t use squad cars generally speaking to do traffic interdiction. Okay, you use motorcycles. And so we’re getting them a motorcycle and I’m going to embarrass some of my other friends to give them a second one. They have a couple, but they’re aging.

And so they’re getting a new one here as soon as it’s built. But that’s the kind of thing I like to do is what can we do to, um, to assist the total effort, you know, solo efforts. They’re really great. They are. They’re great. And it’s a generous thing for people to do. But when you can have force multipliers getting together, you make, I think a little bit bigger impact.

Anthony Codispoti: I feel like you shortened the list there. I feel like there’s probably many others that you are involved with. Yeah, you know, that’s okay. Okay. All right.

Cliff Cummings: That’s okay. You know what? That I think good guys do good things. You know, they’re free to stand on the soapbox.

Anthony Codispoti: The world needs more on that cliff. So yeah, let’s go back and talk a little bit about COVID. Sales probably disappeared briefly, then spiked like crazy, then came back down. We never slowed down. We never slowed down. Okay. Not even at the very beginning.

Cliff Cummings: No, we went through the roof. Um, I can tell you, one day I was walking from the Toyota store, the old Toyota store, to the what’s going to be the old Superstore.

And there’s a day two, day two of COVID, the world’s coming to an end. And there’s a squad car sitting parked. And I walked by and stuck my head and said, Hey, what’s up guys? I don’t know.

You know, they were taking a five minute break. Kind of thinking about getting a camera. And so I’m like, Oh, this is great. Okay. So guess what?

Day three, he’s in with his wife and he buys a camera. I think Sam Rindino was in a very interesting position here. The way California is set up is that police PD takes care of the city limits. Okay. The sheriffs take care of the county and the state take care of the state, state highways, things of that nature. And there’s the county doesn’t really come in or the state doesn’t really come into the city unless it’s a high speed chase or they’re requested. So under circumstances, they sure as hell do. And by the way, they all work together because they sit in the meetings. And so they work together. So but everybody as one, my friends in law enforcement said, you know, some guy just opened his barbecue store.

And he may or may not have been a should have, but I’m out here chasing two murderers. I don’t care about a barbecue store. So and plus when you have automobiles, I don’t know, I know one automobile store that closed their sales department for a month. They kept servicing parts open as I understand it.

And everybody I know in California stayed open. And remember what happens in California, we sell a car, the sales tax is collected. And so if it’s if it’s a 10% sales tax, easy math, 1%. Okay, so one, so 10% of the 10 goes to the city selling city, residents. So there’s a lot of money that goes into the budget for these cities based on our success. And when car sales dry up, I got news for you, these cities get hurt and they get hurt hard.

Anthony Codispoti: So when things came back down to earth is COVID sort of tapering off. What did that look like for you guys internally? Like, did you staffed up and now you need to pull back?

Cliff Cummings: No, we added them. I can tell you what we did. We did add staff, right, because we had more contact that had to be because if you’re in a business development center, people are thinking everybody’s closed because they’re watching the news. So you had to you had to staff up there. We had some people who just quit, they went to the beach or they went somewhere. So we had to replace and did well there. So all three stores added bodies. It worked.

It worked fine. And we still maintain a good sales pace. Our problem was not staffing our problem was product and Toyota. We needed more.

And we need more now. Just now, after about four years, we’re getting to inventory levels that are pre pandemic. Imagine this store here could sell 500 new. I was operating with 25 on the ground.

Wow. My other Toyota store nine, 17. And now we’re back up to where we have 160 on the ground before today. So it’ll be 140 tomorrow and stuff’s coming in on a regular basis. Thank God. So we’re now meeting our our demand. And we’re able to build some inventory, maybe not so much in the in the Camry where everybody wants a Camry. So you might have four of those. Everybody wants a Highlander down to one.

But there are trucks there. And we have new models coming in after the first of the year, which are going to be pretty dynamic. So there’s there’s that build back up, plus some enthusiasm on new product that’s that’s coming in new old product. There’s a newly designed forerunner, which is really hot. The Land Cruiser, okay, just came back out way less money and still really cool. So there are things that that are coming that weren’t there that are filling some of the gaps that were that were zero.

They were empty. But for the most part, production is up. I think that the US will get an extra between 120, 140,000 Toyotas next year for the US market, which isn’t a hell of a lot compared to the number we do. But believe me, we’ll take it.

Anthony Codispoti: So I think you just answered my question. My supposition was that, okay, everybody’s clamoring for product clamoring for product. And then at some point demand drops off and you’re stuck with a whole bunch of inventory that’s not moving. But that’s not the case from what you’re telling me. You guys are just finally getting inventory levels to where you want them to be.

Cliff Cummings: Yeah, and I think that the people who were making those comments missed one very important part of this, a whole lot of the people who probably would have bought, okay, didn’t. Because one, we didn’t have it, but there’s another section of the market that just didn’t come out for two years. And you can look at the lease, leasing is 36 months. You can extend it for six months. If you look at the lease extensions throughout the marketplace for all the franchises, there are a huge number of lease extensions. They just didn’t want to come out and get into the fray. And now they sure as hell are.

Anthony Codispoti: But if I like to shift gears now and maybe explore a particular challenge, either personal or professional that you’ve gone through, overcome and lessons learned coming through the other side.

Cliff Cummings: Do you have a specific question you would like to lay on me? Personal challenges. Yeah, I’m 70. Everything hurts. Okay, what else you want to talk about? I’ve got a great marriage that we’ve been together for 48 years. I’ve got two great kids. I’ve got great businesses. I’ve branched off in other things.

I do a lot of local radio and other. I think that one of the neat things is that I’m great friends. The one thing I’ve always tried to teach my kids and folks I work with and just never be bored.

Don’t get bored. And I told my wife, marriage, okay, so we’re dated for a little while, we get married. And somewhere around the wedding or somewhere before that, I said, I can promise you one thing. It will never be boring. And she brings that up a lot because it’s never boring. We’ve got stuff going on all the time. And 99.99% of it is fun.

Anthony Codispoti: So I hear golf, I hear travel. What else does Cliff and his wife like to do for fun?

Cliff Cummings: We cook up stuff and she’s involved in the community. I do my things. But it’s very time consuming. If I gave you my schedule for the last couple of months, you’d probably want to go lay down. And so what we do is time consuming. And a lot of airplane rides, you’re home from Italy for two days and you fly to Dallas and then you’re back for three days and then you go to this. So I think that a lot of it is being very careful to maintain friendships when we’re gone so much.

It’s not work, but you can be really tired but you’re never too tired to go have dinner with somebody and keep the conversations going, find out how they’re doing. And again, we help an awful lot of ancillary individuals and kids. So and they’re at the house a lot. So it’s fun.

Anthony Codispoti: So as a parent, how many kids do you have? Two. Two boys. How old are they?

Cliff Cummings: 31, 28. One’s in the business. One’s sort of in the business. He works for a company and does marketing for McDonald’s and Spartan Final and occasionally Toyota.

Anthony Codispoti: Were you ever worried about as you’re bringing your kids up, you’ve been successful, you’ve been able to provide a certain lifestyle to them. How do you teach them sort of that get up and go, that drive that, hey, things aren’t going to be handed to you in a silver platter, you got to go make it on your own as well.

Cliff Cummings: By example, I would like to say it would be the good answer. But I think that part of it, obviously, it’s a partnership with Bobby. And we always kid about our young one who could play eight instruments. He’s our artist. You know, one day I walk in the house, he’s in the playroom and he’s playing a guitar. I say, you know, what are you doing? He says, oh, I want to play guitar in the school band. I said, you don’t know how to play guitar. He says, I got a week and damn, if he didn’t make it. I mean, he’s that kind of talented guy musically. And so I think that, by example, right, and then some careful prodding and putting them in positions to where they can succeed and or fail and learn.

So I think that, you know, it’s a fine line because I traveled a lot. Bobby did a great job. I’m taking over from more on the business side and how to deal with various companies and individuals and staff, but getting them through school and getting all the rest of that done. She’s heroic. She’s just fantastic. And again, it’s just part of the strength of two people getting the job done the right way.

Anthony Codispoti: If any books or mentors that have been particularly helpful for you and your path.

Cliff Cummings: You know, a reader, I actually am a reader. So Bobby, James Clavill, he wrote a series of books that started from from China through feudal times all the way up through show gun. You saw the series. That’s a read a lot. I read a lot. And I think that part of the of what I read or a lot of what I read is escape because I’m on an airplane. Or I read to go to bed almost every night. But a lot of the I don’t read self help books. I can write them. I don’t I don’t read self help books.

I, you know, I look at them and okay, fine, this guy said something good. I’ll do the politics. I’ll do difficult situations, how to get through them. But there are Tom Clancy used to read all his stuff because my wife was what my wife’s family comes from working for the federal government, a certain branch of it.

And so they were kind of involved in a lot of things. And it’s kind of funny to us to watch a show. And whether it’s a Tom Cruise movie, you look at it and go, yeah, that would never happen. That would never happen. That would never happen.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s not even call it that, you know, you sit in there and having a good time with that. So, yeah, I just I just go as wide as possible. You never know when you’re going to learn something that might hit you in the head. So fiction, nonfiction sort of whatever. Yeah.

Cliff Cummings: A lot of the biographies favorite historical figure is Winston Churchill will pretty much read anything about him that I can get my hands on or watch anything I can get my hands on. So he’s, you know, he’s the guy who was in an absolutely untenable situation, had no chance and pulled it out. And then got shit on.

Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Then he got dumped on. And so and then all of a sudden he’s a good guy again. So he sort of is a microcosm of the world is which the kids and business guys in relationship, they should look at this guy because he was all of it, then none of it, then back to all of it. And so I think he’s he’s the guy I admire the most.

Anthony Codispoti: Cliff, I just have one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. Those listening today, if you like today’s content, please hit the like, share, subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. Cliff, you’re a busy guy. So if you want to defer on this next one, I’ll understand. But what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Cliff Cummings: They can probably the easiest way is to email me at ccomings at Toyota SB short for San Bernardino.com. Okay, that is that’s on all the time. My assistant Liz, who is is just heroic from 1983 on this price. She hasn’t killed me.

No, but she’s phenomenal. And between all of us, and I’m up very late, I usually don’t go to bed till one ish, right? So it might hit that hit it at midnight, but I’ll read for an hour. So those everything gets answered. I don’t I don’t know. I can think of one email I haven’t answered in a very long time. And it was purposeful that I didn’t answer it, or because I would have probably said something I didn’t like. But anyway, yeah, always answer.

Anthony Codispoti: Well, I’m glad you answered our emails. I’ve enjoyed this conversation greatly. Last question. Last question for you, Cliff. What do you see being the big changes coming to the car industry the next couple of years?

Cliff Cummings: Well, I think you have to take that by departments almost. In service, the cars are getting much more complex electronically, and much less complex by the number of parts that exist.

Okay, so the transmissions and the engines hybrid engine. You can you have a box of batteries. Okay. And you want to replace you pull it out and you put it in. You got to get rid of them. But again, they’re incredibly caustic.

So they’re carefully taken away. So I think that if you look at it, you have to look at the technology and the people getting into the service and part side, they’ve got to be aware of the very rapidly changing technology that makes the cars better and safer. Our cars, let me give you an example. The Corolla, which is Toyota’s second most selling automobile, is bigger than the original Camry, which is Toyota’s biggest selling line. But it’s size wise bigger because the weight of components, the strength of what we’re putting into them, you’re just able to make a bigger car for with better protection and less weight. So you get better gas mileage. So those technological advances are tremendous for the customer. And frankly, they’re great for us because it makes a better product.

So that’s that side. On the sales side, one of the objectives, I think is to have seamless, a seamless selling experience. Customer walks in, they have to test drive the car because if they don’t like it, you know, a guy teach me a lot, I think it’s Clint McGee, if the first 10 words are wrong, the next 10,000 don’t matter. Well, he’s right. And the next thing is that they don’t like the way the car drives.

Adam Carey, they’re gonna buy it. So you’ve got to have them get in the car, understand the bells and whistles, safety, etc. And drive it and like it. The next thing is, is that customers, we need to make the transaction shorter. And I’ve got this, this idea in the back of my 70 year old brain that says we should be able to do an ad campaign that’s Toyota San Bernardino home of the two hour transaction. It’s we’re built on speed, you’re going through drive through windows, just anyway, we should be able to do it. And then I sit there and I’ll lay awake obsessing, and I’ll think, wait, wait a minute, most of this is, is not necessarily anything more than a customer not understanding something we said a lot of times or needed much more depth in product presentation, or pricing scheme, what’s up and what the standard equipment are. But I still think we can do it in two and a half hours. And most of the, most of the, most of the research shows that at four hours, everybody’s burnout. Okay, three, three and a half year, okay, three, you’re good.

But two and a half year a hero. And that’s really what, what I would like to see happen. It’s just good. And we can do so much more online that when they come in, we’re good to go.

Anthony Codispoti: I was gonna ask, where do you cut out that extra time? You think you have them do the work beforehand? Yep.

Cliff Cummings: And you can’t drive it online. So you have to drive it when you get here. And that’s, you know, 25, 30 minutes. But the rest of it, we can get so much more done online. And it’s so much more transparent.

You look at my people, and they’ve got a screen like this that the customer can see when things are going on. You know, we’re not hiding anything. What are we going to hide? This is not 1956. And, you know, that’s not the game. But we have, we’re, and they you know what, truthfully, after being around this market for a very, very long time and being pretty visible, they know that we’re okay. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti: Well, Cliff, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it, Cliff.

Cliff Cummings: That was great fun. Thank you for asking me to come on.

Anthony Codispoti: Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.