Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Trust and Transparency: Cliff Cummings' Business Model | Auto Industry

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Trust and Transparency: Cliff Cummings' Business Model | Auto Industry · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories, where leaders
0:07
share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
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how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
0:13
they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
0:17
the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their
0:20
experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
0:23
by how they've overcome adversity.
0:26
My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and today's guest is Cliff Cummings,
0:29
owner and President of Toyota of San Bernardino, Subaru of San
0:34
Bernardino, I-10, Toyota of Indio, all in California.
0:39
His dealerships have new and used vehicles available for
0:41
purchase or lease. They offer their own financing
0:44
in house for a more convenient shopping experience.
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You can rent a car from them as well.
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They also have state-of-the-art service departments where you
0:52
can also purchase parts, and they have an Imperial
0:56
Motorsports division at the Toyota dealership where you can
0:59
choose from a wide selection of premium performance parts for
1:02
your overlanding adventures. Now, Cliff himself is president
1:06
of the Southern California Toyota Ad Association, with a
1:09
budget of $125 million this year, and on the Toyota National
1:14
Advertising Committee. He's been a trustee for Loma
1:17
Linda's Children's Hospital, a Cal Poly ambassador for higher
1:20
education, and was appointed by Governor Wilson to serve on the
1:24
employee training panel. He has raised hundreds of
1:27
thousands of dollars for a number of the nonprofits that
1:30
he's associated with. And we're going to hear about
1:32
why golf has been so instrumental to his success.
1:36
Now before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is
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2:05
Now back to our guest today, the owner and president of several
2:09
car dealerships in California. Cliff, I appreciate you making
2:12
the time to Share your story today.
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I'm happy to do it. It's always tough to make an
2:17
afternoon available, but I'm glad we're doing this.
2:19
Likewise. So Cliff, let's go back to the
2:22
beginnings. What first drew you to the car
2:25
industry? Man, that's 48 years ago I
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graduated from Henry. Banks, yeah.
2:32
OK, I graduated from Lynchburg College 1976 was I played golf
2:40
in college for four years on the varsity team.
2:43
Went off to go figure out what I should do next to which was in
2:46
the golf world and was playing some events, you know, as as
2:51
trying to sort it out. And I went into a Toyota store
2:55
in Lynchburg, VA and asked for a job and got it.
2:58
The guy was great. Irving Newsome, Irving Newcomb.
3:02
He's dead, unfortunately, but he had, he'd taken an interest in
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athletes coming out of school and I could basically work when
3:13
I wasn't playing. It was a great, great gesture on
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his part. And then we went forward from
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there. And so I kept on playing an
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awful lot of stuff for Toyota and and others stayed open, that
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kind of thing. And then decided at about age
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51, I think, that I wasn't going to do it.
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But the key story here to the element of the story is
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somewhere in the late 80s, I was out there flailing away and a
3:43
guy named Bob Mccurry took over Toyota.
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And he had come from Dodge and he was a Michigan State football
3:51
player. Tough guy, fair guy, but tough
3:55
guy. But he also loved the game,
3:57
golf. And so I managed to weasel my
4:01
way into playing in all kinds of events around the country,
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whether it's it was in Pennsylvania doing or Delaware
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and Toyota wood fly myself and others.
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And I'll give you the list of names and it's a list of names I
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shouldn't be on. Let's go there.
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But Greg Norman, Mark O'mura, Chichi Rodriguez, Lee Tronino,
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we go down the mark file, one of my still one of my great
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friends, as well as as a host of others.
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And so we'd be just sort of, you know, we'd be in Ohio or it'd be
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in Pennsylvania, or it'd been in Delaware.
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We're doing all this good, fun stuff.
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But at some point, Mr. Mccurry has to have a conversation.
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Well, you just say yes, Sir, and what are you going to do?
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And so I go waddling in there and he says, look, kid, I want
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to talk to you. Yes, Sir.
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What what can I do for you? He said, you are one hell of a
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golfer. Well, thank you very much, he
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said, but you're a better car guy.
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And that pretty much sealed that deal.
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And he said you take care of the cars and I'll handle you on
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Golf. And so it went forward that way
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for many, many years. And we had, I guess what you
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would call a symbiotic relationship.
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I brought five of their dealerships out of one.
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Well, actually, one was shut at a very small volume into what
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could be considered very big volume.
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And the same thing happened with Subaru.
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So he was right. I am a better car guy than I am
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a golfer. I'm 70 now.
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So the golf thing doesn't happen very often because it hurts too
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much. But I love playing.
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I like working with kids, Junior Golf especially.
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And we're actually just sponsored, just did a deal,
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probably not even out yet, but the California, California
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Women's Open, we're going to sponsor that Toyota.
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And we've got Brandy Burton who is a two time major winner.
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We've got Julie Inkster who is just a household name in the
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LPGAI. Think Pat Hurst has come in
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there, a couple others. So what?
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That's an embryonic event. Other states are doing a great
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job. California was doing garbage.
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So I met with, with those folks and said, you know what, we're
6:23
in and here we go. So let's see how big we can make
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that over the next few years. So it's, it's all fast.
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It's, and I find it as a, a good diversion.
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You know, you can get out and just get on a range.
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I'll go down to the desert this weekend.
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We just, we are opening the quarry after their coursework
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and I'll see all the friends that fly back in from whether
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it's Canada or the East Coast or the north, you know, whatever.
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And we get together on the weekends and and we have a hell
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of a good time. And you have a good time playing
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golf and you're incorporating, you're tying the Golf into
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promoting the car dealerships as well, is that right?
7:02
Yeah, I think that that's a fairway to put it.
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We, we tend to sponsor an awful lot of charity events, whether
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it's a whole 1 portion of that event or the entire event or a
7:13
big chunk of it like, like we're doing with the California
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Women's Open. We we do.
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We do a lot. And, you know, is it a give
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back? Yeah.
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Is it a little selfish? Yeah, It's that, too, because I
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love working with those kids and it's it's been fun.
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The Junior Golf program here is growing a guy named Dave
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Stockton. If you're a golfer, you know who
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he is. He was Ryder Cup captain when we
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won that one some years ago. He won 28 times, I think.
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And he's a great friend, he and his wife, and so he's involved
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and everybody just does it because they love the game and
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we love the kids. That's great.
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You mentioned that you were told that you're a better car guy
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than you are a golfer. And in what way?
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Like what? What makes you so good at the
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car space? Well, this, this.
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I'm not real nuts about talking about me to be honest with you,
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But when I was down in Virginia in 76 and I was kind of doing
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both. I was dating my wife, as I call
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her, my current wife of we've been together 48 years now.
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And so Bobby, what got a job up in up in DC and actually in
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McLean. And so I needed to get up north
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so we could still hang out. We weren't married at the time.
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And so I moved up to Tyson's Toyota.
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When we got there, Tyson's Toyota was about 125 car a month
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store and when I left it to go to a sister store owned by the
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same guy and I got a piece of ownership there, it was 500 and
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something. And I took the second store,
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which was Calvert Motors and, and just outside DC near the
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Pentagon, and it was about 88 cars and I relocated it, built a
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building, relocated it and beat Tyson's.
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The first year out of the gate was good for me.
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It wasn't too crazy. The people at Tyson's weren't
9:11
nuts about it. Ultimately that owner sold.
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I left there, they're well, he sold because he went under.
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And so I went back. I was in Florida, I went back, I
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was just playing some golf. I went back and salvage that,
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sold it. They paid me a lot of money.
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So I bought a store in Southern California and it was doing
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about 85 cars a month and our biggest has been 800 and change.
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But a second store which was closed when the partners was
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asked to come in, second store was closed, shut, shut.
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And we're doing 300 units a month.
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And then I got the Subaru store, which was about 2530 units a
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month and we're in the two hundreds.
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And we're going to build them 60,000 square feet of new Toyota
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of new Subaru store right across, virtually across the
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street from the the Toyota store where I'm sitting now.
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I'm in my office and this Toyota store is 96,000 square feet on
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16 acres. The car guys will start drooling
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when they hear that because it's it's enormous and we're right on
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the freeway. That's a big space.
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And so what's your superpower? Are you a great sales guy, great
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marketing, great operator, leader, delegator?
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Like what? My wife would say I listened to
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her. I would say that really it, it
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all comes down when you're when you're doing a business.
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I've just found out I I I've always found that finding the
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right person or people, I've gone into dealerships, I've
10:44
gotten rid of one guy and the next thing you know, you're 40%
10:47
higher because you had a poison in the place.
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Also marketing. Yeah.
10:53
You know, we spend a lot of money in in the marketing world
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and with with this national thingamon and have been actually
11:02
was one of the guys who formed it and the the advertising
11:06
associations, which I did in the Virginia market.
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And out here you learn a lot and you find out, you know, it's the
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old adage, right, half of marketing doesn't work.
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The question is what half? And so I haven't figured that
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out yet, but we've got it narrowed down a little bit.
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And so I think that though, if you had to put one, one word
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there, I would say it's people. You've just got to be able to
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read and deal with all kinds of different people, whether it's
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Japanese staff from from the Toyota world or the regional
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staff, my own people, etcetera. It's just comes down to how you
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deal with people. And what's your if you were to
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sum up how you deal with people? Is it sort of the golden rule
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approach, Do unto others as you have done unto you?
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Do you have sort of a guiding light, the guiding principle
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there? I give them a lot of room, OK,
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if you want. I give them like they can make a
12:03
mistake. I hope they do because it means
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they're doing something. There are an awful lot of people
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in my world who won't tolerate any errors.
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Well, that's that's a terrible mistake on their own part.
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And so we let them make mistakes and they learn.
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Now, if they don't learn, we can go to my corporate motto.
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If you want to hear my corporate motto, go right there.
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The new guy will do better. And so it's our running joke
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inside is that that, you know, we're always aware of what
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you're doing and trying to help you get better.
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And, and if you look down the list, my assistant followed me
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from Virginia and I think 1980 she came to work for me in 1983.
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Her husband had come to work for me, sadly deceased now, but he
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came in 78 or 9 back there. Carlos is here 30 years.
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You, the parts manager here started when he, I think he was
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16, about 25 years ago. He's now running the parts
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department. So we keep people for an awfully
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long time and we work with them. And I think that in the car
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business and I, I suspect in the media business as well, that
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there's so much turnover when a good person finds a home that
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they can, they can, they're comfortable in and they can get
13:17
well paid and they can stay and have an opportunity to grow
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because they know I'm buying stuff.
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It's a really good formula. So let let them do their thing.
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They're smart people. So it sounds like not a whole
13:30
lot of micromanagement going on and probably you're investing
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quite a bit in training and education if you've got folks
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who are starting with you here, staying with you for years and
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and moving up through the ranks. Yeah, Toyota's got some very
13:44
good programs. We do stuff in house.
13:47
Subaru has some OK stuff. Subaru dealership's pretty small
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and it's it's going to be pretty big here in two years.
13:56
In fact, it's kind of funny. It's it's, if it's right over
14:00
there next door and we're blowing up the old Toyota
14:04
building because we moved in here and we vacated that right.
14:06
So we're going to nuke that. It's going to be 8 acres, about
14:10
60,000 square feet of Subaru store.
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But in the process, we have a lag time between approvals and
14:17
equipment and architects and all the rest of the stuff in
14:19
California. So I lent the building to the
14:22
SWAT team to go practice. And so they're in there.
14:27
I don't know what age group listens, but I'll just be a good
14:29
boy. They're blowing stuff up.
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And so I walked the captain around last week if I had to run
14:35
out of town and and he said, can we can we get that door?
14:39
Yes. Can we blow that door off?
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It says yes, can we come right? Yes.
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And I'm trying to say, but you can blow the whole place up.
14:47
Now here's the deal. What we generally do is we then
14:50
call the fire department and say whatever you haven't blown up,
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they can set on fire and put out for practice.
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So we get, we get SWAT, we get PD, we get Sheriff's Department,
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we get fire department. And they love us for it.
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I mean, they're really good guys.
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And I'm on the sheriff's council for the for the county of San
15:09
Bernardino. And, and I mean, these are
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really good guys. And so they get to come in and
15:16
they get to like the guys. Can we blow that up?
15:18
Yeah, you can. Blow that up.
15:21
We're all little kids at heart, right?
15:23
Oh yeah, I mean, who doesn't love a good explosion anyway?
15:27
So they're, and they're working. I worked with them when we, when
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we built this building where I'm sitting now, which is on the, it
15:34
was a combination of a Cadillac store, AR an RV store.
15:42
The, the storage lot was a Jeep, Chrysler, Jeep dealership, 6 1/2
15:48
acres. And so when we were about to
15:50
blow this up, I called up PD and say, hey, you guys want to
15:53
practice. And so I went to one of the
15:56
prior two of the practices and they're going in there and they
16:00
are just working hard. So, you know, if it helps the
16:03
community in in one case where they got a little bit better,
16:08
man, we did our job. Right, 'cause there's a probably
16:11
environments where they don't get a whole lot of like hands on
16:14
practice and experience. Correct, they have training
16:17
areas, but when they can go into a warrant and let me a car
16:21
dealerships kind of a warrant, right.
16:23
So the other one I've had, the one we vacated, we're blowing up
16:29
was small when I got it. And so I kept adding to it.
16:33
And so there are chunks where, you know, there's there's metal
16:37
doors for parts storage or there's this and there's offices
16:40
we expanded that were garages and he's like, it was perfect
16:44
for them because they can practice a hostage situation
16:47
where they're in a room that's barricaded, all the glass is
16:51
hidden by boxes, etcetera. You know, I think that they're,
16:55
they're having a really good time with it.
16:57
Do you get to go over and watch any of the explosions?
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Yeah, if I want to. Yeah, I was gone last week.
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My wife turned 70 and so we had birthday month.
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I'm exhausted. So last we were in Scottsdale
17:11
over at one of my my son's place and we had dinner with friends
17:16
there. Came back for a day, went to
17:20
Vegas on Saturday, I took her to Billy Joel, the concert in in in
17:26
Vegas and we happen to be friends with one of their two of
17:29
the band members. And so we had dinner with him
17:31
and she had a great time, absolutely great time.
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We were in Italy 3 weeks ago and made it home for a day before I
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had to go to Dallas. So when this is done, I'm going
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home. I'm laying down.
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Fun stuff. So how did you get from the
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Midwest out to California? Well, it was Virginia, it was
17:52
Northern Virginia. So there's a thing that N nada
17:57
right? North American dealer
17:58
Association, they have study groups 20 dealers non competing
18:04
geographically same franchise. SO20 non competing Toyota
18:08
dealers meet twice or three times a year in an in somewhere
18:13
and sometimes they go to a dealership, tear it apart as far
18:17
as what the good and the bad is. A lot of times we're in the
18:20
hotel and we do a day and a half to two days of meetings and then
18:24
play golf for and they go home. In the 20 group I was in is
18:28
Toyota one. We were very large, you know,
18:31
after I'd gotten done with Tyson's, it was big and there
18:34
were other big dealers in there as well.
18:36
Well, there were a couple that are that were smaller and to me
18:42
and I keep telling young general managers, some guys who have
18:45
some money finally that want to buy in, go to 20 group, go to an
18:49
NCM group, which is the same as twenty group competitor.
18:52
Look at the bottom, find out who's bad, go try to buy them.
18:56
You already know they're bad. You got all their numbers for
18:58
the last 10 years. And so that's what I did.
19:02
And so aside from the people part of it, you mentioned, oh,
19:05
you know, you find the poison, you take them out like that
19:07
helps Talk to me about some of the other levers that you're
19:10
pulling to help drive better sales.
19:13
I think that you've got a market obviously, right.
19:16
So I've got years and years and years of marketing experience
19:21
with the boards I'm on and have been on for forty, 4550 or 45
19:26
years. And so I use that experience,
19:29
but you also have to tailor it to the marketplace.
19:33
Like a great deal of our marketing in Southern
19:35
California, these stores is in Spanish.
19:38
We hit the Spanish stations, we have events on property with
19:45
music and, and food with mariachi bands or whatever the
19:49
case may be, because about 80% of our, our business and maybe
19:53
85 now is, is Hispanic or Hispanic influence.
19:57
We tell a great story about a friend, Dionne Garcia.
19:59
She's as pasty white as you can possibly get, but she married
20:03
Pat Garcia. So she gets male as a Hispanic
20:06
all the time and she's look at me, you know, so but anyway, we,
20:10
we do quite a bit in that market.
20:12
We also have an extremely successful repeat business
20:18
percentage. And referred repeat is the
20:21
easiest sale in the world. They love you already.
20:24
And we take care of them. I mean, just not one of those
20:27
guys. We're doing fine.
20:28
I don't need to murder anybody. And, and we kind of prove that
20:32
every day. And so, and we have staff that's
20:35
there for a long time so that when somebody walks in, there's
20:39
Carlos or there's Tommy, there's, you know, they can do
20:42
business with the same person because you know, if you can, if
20:45
somebody spends $30,000 with you, they like it. 10% of the
20:49
people, they, they don't buy it because they don't like the
20:52
product, 90% don't like the guy. So it's important to like the
20:56
guy and you can get past the rest of it.
20:59
So that's one of the things our we really work hard on the
21:03
repeat business. So for that to be for that to be
21:10
working for you, that repeat part of the business, they got
21:12
to like the guy. You must have a pretty good
21:14
process for recruiting and identifying the right people,
21:19
sort of filtering them out at the gate before they get inside.
21:24
Yeah, it depends on the on the position.
21:26
But for instance, if we're going to go into a sales job, which
21:28
is, let's face it, it's it's an awful big part of this.
21:32
An applicant has to talk to every manager and every
21:35
assistant manager and, and one veto, OK, there's A1 veto and
21:41
that person's out. Because if there's somebody who
21:43
had worked together in the past, they didn't like each other,
21:46
they got into it. Whatever the case may be, you
21:49
don't want to relive that. So one veto kills the deal.
21:53
Now, normally in a managers meeting, everybody gets a vote.
21:56
I get 10, but they get a vote. And so sometimes it's 6:50,
22:00
sometimes it's 17 to nothing. But anyway, it's, it's, it's
22:05
kind of a fun thing and we keep it light.
22:07
But the fact of the matter is somebody can veto a new hire and
22:12
we're just not going to going to break up the harmony that's
22:15
going on out there. And so you still have a hand and
22:18
a say in every person that gets hired across all the
22:20
dealerships. No, not really.
22:23
I'll do the key managers, so parts manager, service manager,
22:27
sales managers, general managers, that kind of thing
22:32
because I'm on the road ridiculous amounts for my Toyota
22:37
positions. I'm in Dallas all the time.
22:41
And so if I know that now, I will approve them and I'll check
22:46
them out through my friends. But if I veto, it's over.
22:50
And I generally speaking don't do that.
22:52
But I did one the other day and I have a formula that has been
22:56
very successful. And every time we branch off it,
23:00
it's a failure. It's a turnover and turnovers
23:03
are extremely expensive in any business.
23:06
So this one I vetoed and said, no, this guy was a a manager
23:12
before wants to go on the sales floor.
23:15
And I guarantee you in two months that guy's going to find
23:18
a manager's job and we're going to have a turnover.
23:20
Oh, no, he promised. They said, OK, let's look at the
23:23
list of guys you've hired who promised you.
23:26
OK. All right.
23:27
So that was the veto that I used.
23:31
That's the value of experience. Yeah, I think so.
23:34
So you made the reference and it's, it's often been said in,
23:37
in marketing and advertising that I know half of my ad
23:40
dollars are working. I just don't know which half.
23:42
If you were to guess though, what do you think are the most
23:46
effective things that you're doing in the marketing and AD
23:49
space? Well, I think you have to to you
23:54
have to look at live sports and news all right, Particularly
24:01
sports. As a rule, the preponderance of
24:05
people do not record sports, right.
24:08
They watch them live. But a great number will record a
24:13
television show and and either watch it later or they watch it
24:17
on Paramount two days after it ran, etcetera, etcetera.
24:22
So we get a distinct advantage by by hanging in in live sports.
24:29
Now the news during a presidential time, good time to
24:32
be there. The election is the election and
24:37
on you go. And so it was not bad to be in
24:40
there. But we also do an awful lot of
24:42
Hispanic advertising. There's really 3 stations you
24:45
want to be on Hispanic wise in LA and we're on them.
24:50
It's a different. It's different because for
24:52
instance, the ADI of Los Angeles covers San Bernardino where I'm
24:57
sitting now, but my other store in Indio is its own ATI.
25:02
So I can buy network out there for pennies compared to San
25:06
Bernardino in the Los Angeles. So we we look at which, which is
25:10
the most efficient and we do other things we do.
25:13
We have the, we'll have the pound come in OK, it's Subaru.
25:17
Once a month they come in with puppies and people can adopt
25:21
puppies. We've had them twice here at the
25:23
Toyota store. We, we, we tend to do the, we do
25:29
a big deal with the breast cancer March in, in Redlands
25:34
next door, next town over. My wife is involved in that and
25:37
they raised I think 1,000,008 this year spent all locally with
25:41
virtually no, no, no expense. You know, we eat some of that
25:45
and, and they, they do a hell of a job.
25:48
Those ladies are something, man. I mean, it's a Stampede.
25:51
It's not a walk there. There are 12,000 of them coming
25:54
at you and dressed in pink. Let me tell you, you're, you're
25:57
a ho, you know? So they're great.
26:00
They do a hell of a job. So some things like the breast
26:03
cancer walk that you know, whether that there's an ROI to
26:07
that or not, you're you're happy to do it, you're happy to
26:09
participate in it, I don't care. I don't care.
26:12
I'm doing just fine and if we can help somebody, and we have,
26:16
we're going to help them. But for these other things, like
26:19
advertising on television, are you able to tell a difference
26:23
when, like, is there ever a time when you turn the ads off just
26:27
to see, like, OK, does traffic drop in the stores when we don't
26:31
run as much? Or are you just buying up as
26:34
much ad space as you can? And so you don't really have
26:37
that comparison. Point no we we we will turn off
26:40
or we'll try different things. We do find that that in the old
26:44
days, April up till Tax Day, those first two weeks were
26:49
really terrible. And then you had a lull around
26:55
June 1st to June 15th and that's kids going back to school.
27:01
You know, the kids hate going to school now, they hate the
27:05
parents. Everybody's having a bad time.
27:07
So they're staying home trying to get everybody re acclimated
27:10
to what they have to do again. But the school systems here now
27:13
are just basically their annual, so we don't have an effect from
27:16
that anymore. They're just year round, no
27:18
summer breaks. Anymore.
27:20
That's right. That's right.
27:21
Some do, but not all. And so it's much more fluid for
27:25
us that we don't have to deal with it.
27:27
We tend to be light the first week.
27:30
Easter, you know, I close Easter, Thanksgiving and
27:33
Christmas. All right.
27:34
So we shut the stores down and we found that that the three
27:39
cars we would have sold, I don't care.
27:41
Other guys stay open. Sometimes they beg for
27:44
volunteers and, and I tried to talk him out of doing it.
27:48
I just go have fun with your family, for God's sake.
27:50
We're all doing pretty well here.
27:53
And so we, we're obviously open New Year's 'cause that's a
27:56
really big day. It's hot.
27:57
It's a really big day for us. But we do kind of play to the
28:01
market and we look what the pulses are.
28:06
When there's, there's national disasters, we pull off the air.
28:10
You know, if there's a big earthquake here, we pull off the
28:12
air. We might buy some nooses, but
28:15
you know, we, we're, we're relatively, we're fluid, I guess
28:18
is the best way to say it. What do you gain from being on
28:23
the different ad councils? Oh, I see what the other guys
28:27
are doing. We do analyze what Honda, Mazda,
28:31
Nissan, theirs isn't working and and others and the domestics do.
28:37
And so we get quite a bit of input there.
28:40
We, we do have a real where we look at what's on the air for
28:45
them and what's been on the air recently and we do comparisons
28:50
with our own, but we also get tremendous information from the
28:54
agency. Their diagnostic division tells
28:58
us the pluses and minuses of our own spots versus other spots.
29:03
This one worked, this one didn't.
29:05
This one was a 78% approval, this was 62 and we go through
29:09
quite a bit of that. So do you get involved in the
29:13
creative aspect of it? Do you, are you more involved in
29:15
looking at the numbers or big picture like when you sit down
29:19
with the with the other dealership owners kind of what's
29:21
the conversation, What's the, what's the dialogue sound?
29:24
Like all of it, I mean it, it's not all of it all at once.
29:28
So numbers are pretty much all at once, but we'll be looking at
29:32
rough cuts and I do it in the agency comes out, they were out
29:37
yesterday and it's just the three of us are are going
29:40
through it and we'll look at some rough cuts and I'll say
29:42
what about this or that and why that.
29:46
And so we do have a really good open discussion about that.
29:50
And then we go into the nuances of the buy and do we want to
29:54
add, do we want to add weight during this period of time?
29:58
And a lot of times that's based upon what Toyota's incentives
30:02
are. So we're also going to play off
30:04
of that to let the public knows, know that all of a sudden you
30:07
get 199 on a Tundra. OK, so we didn't tell you that.
30:11
I'm going to tell you the odds are you don't know that because
30:13
the rates are very high right now.
30:15
So we we it's pretty in depth. And Davis Allen is the ad agency
30:19
of record for the Southern California Toyota dealers.
30:23
They also do McDonald's and Smart and Final.
30:26
They're very big and they're very, very good.
30:28
They've been our agency for 45 or 6 years now.
30:33
Find an ad agency that's had an account that long.
30:36
Doesn't happen. Lots of turnover.
30:38
Doesn't happen, right? Yeah.
30:40
So obviously that's a good relationship there.
30:43
You you kind of made a face when talking about Nissan.
30:46
They're not doing so well. It's laid off 9000 people.
30:50
OK, that's not so good. You previously owned a a Nissan
30:55
dealership. What?
30:56
What's going on over there? Well, they they have an
31:01
interesting style of management, which has been ignore the
31:04
Americans and let the Japanese tell you what to do.
31:07
And they don't have a flipping clue.
31:09
So I think that the the issue is they don't even have a hybrid.
31:15
They don't have a hybrid. But think about think that out
31:19
2025 they'll model, they'll have hybrids.
31:23
They've had some electric stuff. OK fine, who cares but nobody
31:26
wants it and the truck design was not great.
31:32
The cars are super. Let me tell you the product
31:35
longevity and their ability to to to wear well is fantastic.
31:40
Really good. We all make mistakes but over
31:43
the course of history Nissan has had stronger than than than 40
31:48
acres of chopped garlic engines. They they are really good but
31:53
they don't mark it well. They have, in my opinion,
31:56
terrible management and I'd buy another one tomorrow for the
32:00
right for the right money. We I was in Phoenix talking to a
32:03
friend of mine who sold his Nissan store and I say, Mitch,
32:06
what do you think we ought to do with this on?
32:07
He said, I think if it's cheap enough, we ought to buy them
32:10
because the Japanese government, government in our opinion, will
32:13
not allow Nissan to fail and 9000 go hybrid coming on.
32:20
I don't know what they'll do with the American staff, but you
32:22
have companies out there who try to emulate Toyota.
32:27
My Subaru is one of them. You know, by pull a punch.
32:31
Kia tries to copy our advertise. It doesn't quite work.
32:37
Nissan, I don't honestly know what the hell they're doing.
32:41
And again, if great engines, some of those cars are super
32:44
disease things like that, but they're they're rudderless in my
32:50
opinion. But you just said that if you
32:53
found another one, you'd buy it. No, I like buying dogs.
32:55
Look at all. Look at the history.
32:57
I mean, one of the Toyota stores was closed, one was 88 cars, 1
33:00
was, you know, I like that Subaru 29 cars.
33:04
Come on, I'll do that all day long and I've got.
33:06
You're a turn around guy. Well, sure.
33:08
And here's the other thing I've got people who need to go into
33:12
into senior management positions and ownership, right?
33:17
So try buying any piece of the big Toyota store right now.
33:21
They can't do it. It's just not possible.
33:24
So if you buy something and they can have a chunk of it, and what
33:28
I do, I would do in the case of of the next Nissan store or the
33:32
next Subaru, whatever, is if I buy it at X, that guy coming in
33:37
buys it at X. And if he's going to buy more of
33:39
it, he's still buying it at X even if it triples in value
33:43
because he's the one who got it there.
33:44
Why should I penalize him? So I wish more dealers would do
33:48
that, and a lot of the good ones do, but they're probably quite a
33:51
number who don't. That's a very generous approach.
33:54
That's not generous. It's smart.
33:55
You keep the guy, he works his ass off.
33:58
You've provided for his family. He never has to look backwards.
34:01
Am I going to screw him? Which is, by the way, the
34:04
national sport. I think of the automobile
34:06
business. How can I screw somebody?
34:09
And so on we go and, and give them their chance and and let's
34:14
let's help them succeed. We have to replace ourselves.
34:17
Anthony, here's the problem. We're aging.
34:20
OK I'm 7, OK I'm perky 7 but I'm 7 and we have to replace
34:25
ourselves. All my great friends who have
34:28
multiple dealerships 75726980 we have to replace ourselves.
34:37
So are you always kind of actively or semi actively
34:41
looking for new dealership opportunities?
34:44
Yeah, I'd probably do it in two ways.
34:46
I'm semi actively looking but we have brokers out there who are
34:52
very good at bringing packages forward to take a look at.
34:56
Right now the problem with buying anything in the market is
35:00
that during COVID everybody made just just a ridiculous amount of
35:05
money and that has settled down. But the dealers who are selling
35:11
are basing their multiples and their their figures on numbers
35:16
that are a couple of years old that are not germane to today's
35:18
market. So they just got to get a dose
35:20
of reality and then they come back in and, you know, we'll
35:23
see. Are there any brands that you're
35:26
not currently working with that you'd be excited to, or ones
35:29
that you would never touch? There are brands I would never
35:34
touch. That's for that's for absolutely
35:38
sure. Lexus, Toyota, Mazda's a
35:46
sleeper, you know, Toyota financial just took took over
35:51
their finance arm. And so those are a lot of
35:54
friends of mine and and most makes good product Nissan for
35:58
the right price. Like I bought this one.
36:01
I bought this one for the right number.
36:06
Benz is in they're not doing very well right now.
36:11
Yeah, I'm I'm, I'm kind of in that that middle America range.
36:15
That's my comfort level. I'm not huge on Ferrari and, and
36:21
those kinds of things. Bentley, I drive a crown for
36:25
crying out loud. Toyota, my wife drives a, a
36:28
Highlander. And, and so I think that that's
36:31
the the stride that that middle section, that's where I'd be.
36:33
That's who you know how to talk to.
36:35
That's what your marketing experience has been for.
36:37
And, and also add to that, my people know how to talk because
36:41
they've been working with them and with me for a long time.
36:44
So it's an easy, you know, plug and play for them, yeah.
36:48
Let's talk about some of the causes that you are either
36:51
currently involved with or have been Like how do you kind of
36:54
choose which ones you support? Which ones you give your time
36:57
to? Well, you want to stop a room?
37:00
Just they said, well, Cliff, what are you doing?
37:01
I said, well, there's about maybe 30 or 40 Republicans in
37:06
the country who don't belong to Country Club.
37:07
So we have a fund trying to raise money to get them in, and
37:12
then the room stops and you tell them you're kidding, of course,
37:15
but you get them every time. I mean, they fall for it every
37:18
single time. But what we do, what do we do?
37:20
OK, we do. Let's see.
37:22
My wife mentors a class at San Bernardino High School every
37:26
Monday morning. One of our graduates, Anthony,
37:30
I'm sorry. We've had two or three really go
37:37
hard in the military. Alexander Madison is playing
37:41
football for the Raiders, was Minnesota for four years, now at
37:44
the Raiders. Another graduate not from her
37:47
class but has has playing in the NFL.
37:50
We've got people. A lot of lot of success has come
37:54
out of that group of people from a Monday morning and she feeds
37:57
them every Monday morning. There's like 25 or 30 of them
38:00
and she has three or four of her friends.
38:04
The Morrises and others do a great job of working with those
38:08
guys. And they're looking for
38:09
direction, right? So they're helping give them
38:11
direction. Pat Morris is a retired judge.
38:14
Bobby was federal government. You know, whatever I can do to
38:20
help them, mostly by staying out of the way.
38:22
I think is is good. So we do a lot with them, do a
38:25
lot with Junior Golf do I'm kind of a sucker for vets whenever we
38:32
need to do anything. Also law enforcement.
38:35
I just donated. Actually.
38:37
It's interesting. The there was a vote on
38:42
providing new motorcycles for the San Bernardino PD and it got
38:49
turned down the City Council, which kind of pissed me off.
38:52
And so I called the Chiefs. I'll give you 1 and they're like
38:55
4040 grand a throw. So it's being built right now.
38:58
Now here's the important part. When you have a town that has a
39:02
lot of kids, and we do, the traffic situation here is
39:07
abysmal and people are running lights and stop signs like
39:10
crazy. You don't use squad cars,
39:12
generally speaking, to do traffic interdiction.
39:16
OK, You use motorcycles. And so we're getting them a
39:20
motorcycle, and I'm going to embarrass some of my other
39:22
friends to give them a second one.
39:23
They have a couple, but they're aging and so they're getting a
39:26
new one here as soon as it's built.
39:28
But that's the kind of thing I like to do is what can we do to,
39:33
to assist the total effort, You know, solo efforts.
39:36
They're really great. They are, they're great.
39:39
And it it's a generous thing for people to do.
39:41
But when you can have force multipliers getting together,
39:44
you make I think, a little bit bigger impact.
39:49
I feel like you shortened the list there.
39:52
I feel like there's probably many others that you are
39:54
involved with. Yeah, You know, that's OK.
39:58
OK. All right, that's us.
40:00
You know what the I think good guys do good things.
40:05
You know, good for you. Stand on the soapbox.
40:08
The world needs more on that clip.
40:10
So yeah, let's go back and talk a little bit about COVID sales.
40:14
Probably disappeared briefly, then spiked like crazy and came
40:18
back down. Never slowed down, OK, Not even
40:20
at the very beginning. No, we went through the roof.
40:24
I can tell you one day I was walking from the Toyota store,
40:29
the old Toyota store to the what's going to be the old
40:31
Superstore. And there's a day 2, day 2 of
40:35
COVID, the world's coming to an end.
40:38
And there's a, a squad car sitting parked.
40:42
And I walked by and tucked my head and hey, what's up guys?
40:45
I don't know. You know, they were taking a 5
40:47
minute break. He's kind of thinking about
40:49
getting a Camry. So like, this is great.
40:52
OK, so guess what, day three, he's in with his wife and he
40:56
buys a Camry. I think San Bernardino was in a
41:00
very interesting position here. The way California is set up is
41:05
that police PD takes care of the city limits, OK, The sheriff's
41:12
take care of the county and the state take care of the state,
41:17
state highways, things of that nature.
41:20
And there's the county doesn't really come in or the state
41:24
doesn't really come into the city unless it's a high speed
41:27
chase or they're requested. So under circumstances they sure
41:30
as hell do. And by the way, they all work
41:32
together because they sit in the damn meetings and, and so they,
41:35
they work together. So, but everybody as one, my
41:40
friends in law enforcement said, you know, some guy just opened
41:43
his BBQ store and, and he may or may not have been, should have,
41:50
but I'm out here chasing 2 murderers.
41:53
I don't care about a BBQ store. So and, and plus when you have
41:58
automobiles, I don't know, I know of one automobile store
42:01
that closed their sales department for a month.
42:04
They kept service and parts open, as I understand it.
42:07
And everybody I know in California stayed open.
42:11
And remember what happens in California, we sell a car, the
42:14
sales tax is collected. And so if it's, if it's a 10%
42:18
sales tax, easy math, 1% OK, so one of so 10% of the 10 goes to
42:25
the city selling city, resident city.
42:29
So there's a lot of money that goes into the budget for these
42:32
cities based on our success. And when car sales dry up, I got
42:38
news for you. These cities get hurt, and they
42:40
get hurt hard. So when things came back down to
42:44
earth as COVID sort of tapering off, what did that look like for
42:48
you guys internally? Like if you staffed up and now
42:51
you need to pull back. No, we added, I didn't tell you
42:56
what we did. We did add staff, right, because
43:01
we had more contact. That had to be because if you're
43:08
in a business development center, people are thinking
43:11
everybody's closed because they're watching the news.
43:14
So you had to, you had to staff up there.
43:17
We had some people who just quit.
43:21
They went to the beach or they went somewhere.
43:23
So we had to replace and and did well there.
43:27
So all three stores added bodies.
43:31
It worked, it worked fine and we still maintain a a good sales
43:38
pace. Our problem was not staffing,
43:42
our problem was product in Toyota.
43:45
We needed more and we need more now.
43:48
It just now after about four years we're getting to in
43:53
inventory levels that are pre pandemic, imagine this store
43:59
here could sell 500 new. I was operating with 25 on the
44:06
ground. Wow, my other Toyota store 917
44:14
and now we're back up to where we have 160 on the ground before
44:18
today. So it'll be 140 tomorrow and,
44:21
and stuff's coming in on a regular basis, thank God.
44:24
So we're now meeting our our demand and we're able to build
44:30
some inventory. Maybe not so much in the in the
44:33
Camry world. Everybody wants a Camry.
44:35
So you might have four of those. Everybody wants a Highlander
44:39
down to one. But there are trucks there and
44:42
we have new models coming in after the first of the year,
44:45
which are going to be pretty dynamic.
44:47
So there's there's that build back up plus some enthusiasm on
44:53
new product that's that's coming in new old product.
44:56
There's a new newly designed Forerunner, which is really hot.
45:00
The Land Cruiser, OK, just came back out, way less money and
45:04
still really cool. So there are things that that
45:08
are coming that weren't there that are filling some of the
45:11
gaps that were that were zero, they were empty.
45:15
But for the most part, production is up.
45:19
I think that the US will get an extra between 120 a 140,000
45:25
Toyotas next year for the US market, which isn't a hell of a
45:29
lot compared to the number we do, but believe me, we'll take
45:32
it. So I think you just answered my
45:34
question. My supposition was that, OK,
45:37
everybody's clamoring for product, clamoring for product
45:40
and then at some point demand drops off and you're stuck with
45:42
a whole bunch of inventory that's not moving.
45:44
But that that's not the case. From what you're telling me, you
45:47
guys are just finally getting inventory levels to where you
45:50
want them to be? Yeah.
45:51
And I think that the people who were making those comments
45:55
missed one very important part of this.
45:58
A whole lot of the people who probably would have bought OK
46:03
didn't because one, we didn't have it.
46:07
But there's another section of the market that just didn't come
46:11
out for two years. And you can look at the lease,
46:15
leasing is 36 months, you can extend it for six months.
46:21
If you look at the lease extensions throughout the
46:23
marketplace for all the franchises, there are a huge
46:26
number of lease extensions. They just didn't want to come
46:29
out and get into the fray, and now they sure as hell are.
46:36
But if I'd like to shift gears now and maybe explore a
46:40
particular challenge, either personal or professional, that
46:43
you've gone through, overcome and lessons learned coming
46:47
through the other side, do. You have a specific question you
46:53
would like to lay on me? Personal challenges?
46:56
Yeah. I'm 70.
46:57
Everything hurts. OK, What else you want to talk
47:01
about? I've got a great marriage.
47:04
We've been together for 48 years.
47:05
I've got 2 great kids. I've got great businesses.
47:08
I've branched off into other things.
47:11
I do a lot of local radio and other I I I think that one of
47:20
the neat things is that great friends.
47:25
The one thing I've always tried to teach my kids and folks I
47:31
work with and and just never be bored, don't get bored.
47:36
And I can and I told my wife a marriage OK in the so we're
47:41
dated for a little while, we'll get married and somewhere around
47:44
the wedding or somewhere before that, I said, I can promise you
47:47
one thing. It will never be boring.
47:51
And she brings that up a lot because it's never boring.
47:54
We're always we've, we've got stuff going on all the time and
47:58
99.99% of it is fun. So I hear golf, I hear travel.
48:04
What else does Cliff and his wife like to do for fun?
48:07
I would cook up stuff and, and you know, she'll, she's involved
48:12
in the community. I, I do my things, but it's very
48:17
time consuming. If I gave you my schedule for
48:20
the last couple of months, you'd probably want to go lay down.
48:23
And So what we do is time consuming and a lot of airplane
48:28
rides, you know, you're home from Italy for two days and you
48:31
fly to Dallas and then you're back for three days and then you
48:34
go to this. So I think that that a lot of it
48:37
is being very careful to maintain friendships when we're
48:43
gone so much it's it's you know, it's not work, but you can be
48:50
really tired, but you're never too tired to go have dinner with
48:53
somebody and keep keep the conversations going, find out
48:56
how they're doing. And again, we help an awful lot
48:59
of ancillary individuals and and kids.
49:04
So and they're at the house a lot.
49:06
So it's it's. Fun.
49:09
So as a parent, how many kids do you have?
49:11
22 boys. How old are they?
49:14
I'm 3128 one's in the business, one sort of in the business.
49:19
He works for a company and does marketing for McDonald's and
49:24
Smart and Final and occasionally Toyota.
49:27
Were you ever worried about as you're bringing your kids up,
49:31
you, you know, you've been successful, you've been able to
49:33
provide a certain lifestyle to them?
49:36
How do you teach them sort of that get up and go that drive
49:40
that, hey, things aren't going to be handed to you in a silver
49:43
platter, You got to go make it on your own as well?
49:47
By example, I would like to say it would be the good answer, but
49:51
I think that that part of it obviously it's a partnership
49:53
with body and we always kid about our young one who could
49:59
play 8 instruments. He's our artist.
50:03
You know one day I walk in the house, he's in the in the
50:06
playroom and he's playing a guitar.
50:08
I said you know, you know, what are you doing?
50:10
He says, oh, I want to play guitar in the school band.
50:12
I said you don't know how to play guitar.
50:14
He says I got a week and damn if he didn't make it.
50:17
I mean, he's that kind of talented guy musically.
50:20
And so I think that by example, right?
50:24
And then some careful prodding and putting them in positions to
50:30
where they can succeed and or fail and learn.
50:34
So I think that that, you know, it's a fine line because I
50:37
traveled a lot. Bobby did a great job.
50:40
I'm taking over from more on the business side and how to how to
50:45
deal with various companies and individuals and staff, but
50:49
getting them through school and getting all the rest of that
50:52
done. She's heroic.
50:54
She's just fantastic. And again, it's just part of the
50:59
strength of two people getting the job done the right way.
51:05
Cliff, any books or mentors that have been particularly helpful
51:08
for you and your path? You know, I'm a reader.
51:11
I, I, I actually am a reader. So is Bobby James Clavell.
51:21
He wrote a series of books that started from from China through
51:27
feudal times all the way up through Shogun.
51:31
You saw the series? Oh, it's a great book.
51:34
King Rad Taipan read a lot. I read a lot.
51:40
And I think that part of the of what I read or a lot of what I
51:43
read is escape because I'm on an airplane or I read to go to bed
51:48
almost every night. But a lot of the I don't read
51:51
self help books. I can write them.
51:54
I don't, I don't read self help books.
51:56
So, you know, I look at them and OK, fine, this guy said
51:58
something good. I'll do the politics.
52:01
I'll do difficult situations how how to get through them.
52:07
But there I've done Tom Clancy used to read all his stuff,
52:10
'cause my wife was what my wife's family comes from working
52:14
for the federal government, a certain branch of it.
52:17
And so they were kind of involved in in a lot of things.
52:20
And it's kind of funny to us to watch a show and whether it's a
52:27
Tom Cruise movie and you look at it and go, yeah, that would
52:29
never happen. That would never happen, That
52:31
would never happen. They don't even call it that.
52:33
You know, you're sitting there and having a good time with
52:36
that. So yeah, I just, I just go as
52:40
wide as possible. You never know when you're going
52:43
to learn something. It might hit you in the head.
52:45
So fiction, non fiction, sort of just whatever.
52:49
Yeah, a lot of the biographies favorite historical figure is
52:53
Winston Churchill. Will pretty much read anything
52:57
about him that I can get my hands on or watch anything I can
53:00
get my hands on. So he's he, you know, he's the
53:05
guy who was in an absolutely untenable situation, had no
53:10
chance and pulled it out and then got shit on.
53:13
Sorry, I shouldn't have said that.
53:16
Then he got dumped on And so, and then all of a sudden he's a
53:19
good guy again. So he, he sort of is a microcosm
53:23
of, of the world is which the kids and business guys and
53:27
relationship, they should look at this guy because he was all
53:30
of it, then none of it, then back to all of it.
53:32
And, and so I think he's, he's the guy I admire the most.
53:38
Cliff, I just have one more question for you.
53:40
But before I ask it, I want to do 2 things.
53:42
Those listening today, if you like today's content, please hit
53:44
the like share subscribe button on your favorite podcast at
53:48
Cliff. You're a busy guy, so if you
53:49
want to defer on this next one, I I'll understand.
53:52
But what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?
53:55
They can. Probably the easiest way is to
53:57
e-mail me at c.cummings@toyotaspshortforsanbernardino.com
54:07
that that is that's on all the time.
54:10
My assistant Liz, who is is just heroic from 1983 on this
54:16
surprise. She hasn't killed me, but she's
54:19
phenomenal and between all of us.
54:22
And I'm up very late. I usually don't go to bed till
54:25
1:00-ish, right. So it might hit the hit it at
54:30
midnight, but I'll read for an hour.
54:31
So those everything gets answered.
54:34
I don't, I don't know, I can think of 1 e-mail I haven't
54:37
answered in in a very long time and it was purposeful that I
54:42
didn't answer it or because I would have probably said
54:44
something I didn't like. But anyway, yeah, always answer.
54:47
Well, I'm glad you answered our e-mail because I've enjoyed this
54:49
conversation greatly. Thank you.
54:51
Last question. Last question for you clip, what
54:55
do you see being the big changes coming to the car industry in
54:58
the next couple of years? Well, I think you have to take
55:01
that by departments almost and service the cars are getting
55:07
much more complex electronically and much less complex by the
55:13
number of parts that exist. OK, So the transmissions and the
55:18
engines, hybrid engine you can you have a a box of batteries,
55:25
OK. And you, you want to replace,
55:28
you pull it out and you put it in, you got to get rid of them.
55:31
But again, and they're incredibly caustic.
55:34
So they're carefully taken away. So I think that if you look at
55:39
it, you have to look at the technology and the, the people
55:42
getting into the service and Parkside, they've got to be
55:45
aware of the very rapidly changing technology that makes
55:50
the cars better and safer. Our cars.
55:52
Let me give you an example. The Corolla, which is Toyota's
55:56
second most selling automobile is bigger than the original
56:01
Camry, which is Toyota's biggest selling auto.
56:04
But it's size wise bigger because the weight of
56:06
components, the strength of what we're putting into them, you
56:12
you're just able to make a bigger car for with better
56:15
protection and less weight. So you get better gas voltage.
56:19
So those technological advances are tremendous for the customer
56:23
and frankly they, they're great for us 'cause it makes a better
56:25
product. So that's that side.
56:28
On the sale side, one of the objectives I think is to have
56:33
seamless, a seamless selling experience.
56:38
Customer walks in, they have to test drive the car because if
56:41
they don't like it, you know, I had a guy teach me a lot, It's
56:44
Clint McGee. If the first 10 words are wrong,
56:46
the next 10,000 don't matter. Well, he's right.
56:50
And the next thing is if they don't like the way the car
56:52
drives, I don't care. They're going to buy it.
56:54
So you've got to have them get in the car, understand the bells
56:58
and whistles, safety, etcetera and drive it and like it.
57:02
The next thing is, is that customers, we need to make the
57:05
transaction shorter. And I've got this this idea in
57:09
the back of my 70 year old brain that says we should be able to
57:14
do an ad campaign. That's Toyota San Bernardino,
57:18
home of the two hour transaction.
57:20
It's we're built on speed. You're going through drive
57:22
through windows, you know, just anyway we should be able to do
57:27
it. And then I'd sit there and I'll
57:28
lay awake obsessing and I'll think, wait, wait a minute.
57:32
Most of this is is not necessarily anything more than a
57:38
customer not understanding something we said a lot of times
57:43
or needed much more depth in product presentation or pricing
57:48
scheme, what's up and what the standard equipment are.
57:51
But I still think we can do it in 2 1/2 hours.
57:54
And most of the most of the most of the research shows that at 4
58:00
hours, everybody's burnout. OK.
58:03
Three, 3 1/2 you're OK. Three, you're good.
58:07
But 2 1/2 you're a hero. And that's really what what I
58:10
would like to see happen. It's just good.
58:12
And we can do so much more online that when they come in,
58:15
we're good to go. I was.
58:16
Going to ask where do you cut out that extra time you think
58:19
you have them do the work beforehand?
58:21
Yep, and you can't drive it online, so you have to drive it
58:23
when you get here and that's, you know, 2530 minutes.
58:27
But the rest of it, we can get so much more done online and
58:31
it's so much more transparent. You look at my people and
58:34
they've got a screen like this that the customer can see when
58:37
things are going on. You know, we're not I don't hide
58:40
anything. What are we going to hide?
58:41
This is not 1956 and you know not that's not the game.
58:46
But we have we're we're and they know you know what, truthfully,
58:50
after the after being around this market for a very, very
58:53
long time and and being pretty visible, they know that we're
58:58
OK. Yeah.
59:01
Well, Cliff, I want to be the first one to thank you for
59:02
sharing both your time and your story with us today.
59:05
I really appreciate it, Cliff. It was great fun.
59:07
Thank you for asking me to come on.
59:10
Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
59:12
podcast. Thanks for learning with us
59:14
today.