Big city dealerships usually dominate as the top producers when it comes to sales volume. One small Missouri city dealership is outperforming that standard, outselling the local competition by nearly double.
The store is Roper Kia in Joplin, Missouri, run by General Manager Tustin Ulrich. Ulrich joins host Adam Marburger on this episode of Training Camp to share what he is doing differently to drive sales at levels typically seen only in much larger markets.
Culture shift as strategy
Everyone talks about culture, Ulrich says, but few define it in a way that actually matters.
“We all need a good culture, but what is a good culture? How do you drive a good culture? How do you hold accountability in an industry that seems to operate in a lot of gray with not a lot of rules?” he said.
Culture is not just a value posted on the wall. For Ulrich, it is a standard set high enough that the team enforces it, not just management.
He points to a principle from the book Unreasonable Hospitality. He calls it the wrinkled shirt. In the book, everyone’s job is to call it out when the standard slips. At Roper Kia, that means hoodies are fine on Saturdays but not on Tuesdays.
“We don’t wear hoodies on Tuesdays. If you wear a hoodie on Tuesday, I better be the fourth or fifth person to tell you,” Ulrich said.
When Ulrich is the fourth or fifth person to flag something, he says he knows the culture is working.
Three things driving results
Roper Kia just closed a record February, with March trending the same way. Ulrich credits three process changes made in the last six months.
"When you put the right pieces in place and then you hold people to the right standard, they're going to rise to it — as long as you're leading from the front, you're doing it yourself, you're not saying one thing and doing another."
The first change was the schedule. Ulrich cut store hours from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. down to 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. year-round, with shorter Saturdays.
“I want dads taking kids to school, and I want dads home for dinner,” Ulrich said.
Second, he installed a mandatory daily meeting at 8:30 a.m. Every session covers prior-day wins, monthly goals, pace, and live bonus payouts. The team reads the same affirmations every morning. The last one became a group tradition on its own: “The grass is greener where you water it.”
Third is the Moneyball book, a pen-and-paper daily planner covering 10 tasks, hot leads, appointments, and a gratitude prompt. Every salesperson, manager, and director uses one every day.
After implementing those changes, Ulrich says they started selling more cars with 14 salespeople than they did two years earlier with 21.
Managers’ book club
Every manager at Roper Kia is in a book club. It runs on a group text thread and has been going for four years.
Ulrich picks the book, and the team gets a daily page assignment. After reading, they text a takeaway to the group. Right now, they are reading The 12-Week Year by Brian Moran.
The payoff goes beyond the content. Over time, the management team develops a shared vocabulary and a shared thought process. When the market shifts, they adapt faster. When a pivot is needed, it happens quickly.
Wins at Roper
Roper Kia has delivered more cars than any other dealer in its market for several consecutive years. The store consistently outperforms the dealer market guide for a city its size, outselling the local Ford store by nearly double.
Now Ulrich has his sights on Kia’s President’s Club, an award given to a select few top-performing dealers nationwide each year. He says the store finally has the processes in place to earn it the right way.
Building wealth outside the dealership
Ulrich grew up without much. Generational wealth was not a topic in his home. When success in the automotive industry began to come, he set out to understand how the ultra-wealthy stay wealthy. The answer, he says, was real estate.
"They're only making so much dirt. They're only making so many homes."
Ulrich started acquiring property about five years ago. His primary tool is the 1031 exchange, which allows an investor to roll gains from a sold property directly into the next one without a tax hit at each step.
His goal is to reach a work-optional lifestyle by 50. Real estate, structured correctly, is how he plans to get there.
The seven-minute win
Ulrich’s advice to young people in the industry who want to run a store someday is not about grinding harder. It is about starting smaller.
He says the biggest mistake young people make is looking at the whole mountain and deciding it is too high to climb. He did not build an eight-figure portfolio or a record-setting dealership in one move.
Gratitude, goals, and faith, he says, are non-negotiables.
His entry point is what he calls the seven-minute win. A day is made up of 24 hours. Seven minutes is just a fraction of that. Anyone can find seven minutes, he says. The barrier to starting is never time, it is the feeling that the goal is too far away to bother. Show up for seven minutes every day without missing, then the belief starts to build on its own.
“Find one thing, commit to it every day, don’t miss. Prove to yourself you can win. When you prove to yourself that you can win every day, you’re going to start believing it,” he said.
