The David Spisak Show

Hosted by David Spisak

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Episodes

280

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Aug 2026

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About the show

What happens when you get access to uncommon conversations with people who achieved the highest levels of success? Join David Spisak as he brings you inside the room where success stories are told by the people who lived them so that you can achieve your definition of success at an accelerated pace.

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60 recent

August 20, 202634 min

Tim Manning (Mazda's SVP): The System Behind Mazda's 59% Service Retention

Tim Manning has spent 20+ years inside Mazda North American Operations, and he's run almost every department that matters. Port logistics. Regional GM. Customer service. VP of Aftersales. Dealer Network Operations, where he took Mazda's image-commensurate stores from 40 to over 300. He's a Berkeley grad with a Notre Dame MBA, and he's now Senior VP of Retail Operations, the seat where every one of Mazda's numbers gets built or broken. And the numbers are the kind other OEMs don't want dealers to see: 3 straight years leading the industry in IIHS Top Safety Pick+ awards. Service retention at 59%, with stores clearing 60%. A 14% smaller dealer network that grew sales by nearly 40% anyway. $2.5 billion in combined Mazda-and-dealer investment. This isn't a brand riding momentum. This is a brand that engineered it, on purpose, in public, for a decade. So why does almost nobody talk about it? That's the exact question that kicks off this episode. Tune in to find out more! Connect with David Spisak to Achieve Exponential Growth: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidspisak/ Website: https://www.davidspisak.com Email: david@disruptivegrowthsolutions.com Phone: +1 (510) 604-0308 Visit https://linktr.ee/davidspisak for all our links Like this show? Please leave us a rating and review where you're listening right now! 🎧 Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-david-spisak-show/id1602552929 🔊 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6oPjFeHfnxNXPTHXxNwIsm?si=4fc3f546d07a4679

August 13, 20261 hr 14 min

Gabriel Millien: The Real Cost of AI in the Dealership

Gabriel Millien has architected AI systems for Nestlé, Pfizer, and UL. He's advised Fortune 100 leadership teams on transformation projects most consultants never get close to. Over 550,000 people follow him on LinkedIn for one reason: he never sells anything. He just gives away the exact frameworks other people charge five figures for. In this episode, he gives them to you. If you've bought AI tools this year and still can't answer "what did this actually do for my business," you need this conversation. Gabriel breaks down the five questions almost no dealer asks a vendor before signing, and why skipping them is how a $50,000 contract turns into a liability nobody saw coming. Connect with David Spisak to Achieve Exponential Growth: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidspisak/ Website: https://www.davidspisak.com Email: david@disruptivegrowthsolutions.com Phone: +1 (510) 604-0308 Visit https://linktr.ee/davidspisak for all our links Like this show? Please leave us a rating and review where you're listening right now! 🎧 Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-david-spisak-show/id1602552929 🔊 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6oPjFeHfnxNXPTHXxNwIsm?si=4fc3f546d07a4679

August 6, 20261 hr 14 min

John Fitzpatrick: 99% Of Dealers Get This Wrong

Force Marketing CEO John Fitzpatrick has audited the data of 1,400+ dealerships, and he says 30-40% of what's sitting in your DMS and CRM is unusable trash costing you real money. In this episode, David Spisak sits down with the Force Marketing co-founder to break down exactly where dealership ad dollars go to die, why 99% of stores spend $5,000 or less marketing the department that drives 75% of their profit, and what's coming next as AI search reshapes how car buyers find dealerships. Connect with David Spisak to Achieve Exponential Growth: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidspisak/ Website: https://www.davidspisak.com Email: david@disruptivegrowthsolutions.com Phone: +1 (510) 604-0308 Visit https://linktr.ee/davidspisak for all our links Like this show? Please leave us a rating and review where you're listening right now! 🎧 Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-david-spisak-show/id1602552929 🔊 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6oPjFeHfnxNXPTHXxNwIsm?si=4fc3f546d07a4679

July 30, 20261 hr 37 min

Erikka Tiffani Wells: From $6 An Hour To General Manager of Walser Hyundai

She started at $6 an hour in a daycare. Today she's running one of the most talked-about dealership models in the country. Erikka Tiffani Wells is the GM of Walser Hyundai Brooklyn Park and co-founder of WOCAN (Women of Color Automotive Network). Her path into automotive started with a broken-down car she couldn't afford to fix and a trade for marketing flyers. It turned into a career that's landed her on Automotive News' 40 Under 40 list and at the center of one of the industry's most disruptive operating models. In this episode, David sits down with Erikka to unpack: Why Walser's no-commission, four-day workweek model is outperforming traditional dealerships The real reason single-price, single-point-of-contact stores fail everywhere else and succeed at Walser What Erica learned building Audi's first pilot BDC, and why she thinks OEM steering committees are broken The burnout trap of hustle culture, and the moment she realized working 12-hour days was hurting her team, not helping it Why WOCAN exists, what's actually stalling progress for women and people of color in dealership leadership, and what change requires from everyone in the room, not just the people already convinced This is a conversation about culture, leadership, and what it really takes to build a dealership people want to work for and buy from. Connect with David Spisak to Achieve Exponential Growth: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidspisak/ Website: https://www.davidspisak.com Email: david@disruptivegrowthsolutions.com Phone: +1 (510) 604-0308 Visit https://linktr.ee/davidspisak for all our links Like this show? Please leave us a rating and review where you're listening right now! 🎧 Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-david-spisak-show/id1602552929 🔊 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6oPjFeHfnxNXPTHXxNwIsm?si=4fc3f546d07a4679

July 23, 202652 min

Napo Rumteen: Why Simulation Beats Interviews

Every hiring decision is a bet on a resume. Napo Rumtin built a way to see the truth before you sign the offer letter. David sits down with Napo Rumteen, the guy who scaled Tekion from zero to $100M+ ARR and built Interactive EQ, a platform that puts candidates and employees inside immersive, high-pressure simulations instead of asking them to describe themselves on paper. The results from 7,500 simulated experiences is uncomfortable. Only 3.7% of people could separate their intentions from their actual judgment under pressure. Managers showed less than half the awareness of frontline staff when a subtle bias played out in real time. And the gap between how people handle a customer problem versus an internal one exposes exactly where dealerships are quietly bleeding money. This is the conversation that explains why the best resume in the stack might be hiding your worst hire, and why the quiet ones on your floor might be your next rockstars, if you knew where to look. Connect with David Spisak to Achieve Exponential Growth: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidspisak/ Website: https://www.davidspisak.com Email: david@disruptivegrowthsolutions.com Phone: +1 (510) 604-0308 Visit https://linktr.ee/davidspisak for all our links Like this show? Please leave us a rating and review where you're listening right now! 🎧 Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-david-spisak-show/id1602552929 🔊 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6oPjFeHfnxNXPTHXxNwIsm?si=4fc3f546d07a4679

July 16, 202657 min

George Karolis: Building Auto Retail's $22 Billion Playbook

He's advised on over 315 dealership transactions worth more than $22 billion. He's watched Park Place, one of the largest deals in industry history, fall apart at the height of COVID and come back together within weeks. And right now, he's telling us this could be the most active M&A year the auto industry has ever seen. George Karolis, President of Presidio Group, doesn't just track the deals. He's the guy dealers call before they make one. This is the conversation happening in boardrooms at the top 150 dealer groups right now. If you're trying to buy, sell, or just understand where the next eighteen months are heading, you cannot afford to be behind on this one. Connect with David Spisak to Achieve Exponential Growth: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidspisak/ Website: https://www.davidspisak.com Email: david@disruptivegrowthsolutions.com Phone: +1 (510) 604-0308 Visit https://linktr.ee/davidspisak for all our links Like this show? Please leave us a rating and review where you're listening right now! 🎧 Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-david-spisak-show/id1602552929 🔊 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6oPjFeHfnxNXPTHXxNwIsm?si=4fc3f546d07a4679

July 9, 202655 min

Matt Leone: How DriveCentric Is Changing the Way Dealers Win Customers (Part 2)

If you listened to part one, you know where Matt Leone came from. Now it's time to talk about where he's taking the industry. In part two, we get into the conversation that I think every dealer, every GM, and every person making technology decisions in this business needs to hear. We talk about why the traditional CRM was broken before most people admitted it. Why the difference between a management platform and an engagement platform is costing dealerships more than they realize. Why 140 dealerships a month are making the switch to DriveCentric. And why Matt believes the CRM category is more relevant now in the age of AI than it has ever been — just not in the way most people think. I've been in this business since 1981. I've watched technology promise to change everything and deliver very little. If part one made you think differently about where great leaders come from, part two will make you think differently about where your dealership is going. Connect with David Spisak to Achieve Exponential Growth: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidspisak/ Website: https://www.davidspisak.com Email: david@disruptivegrowthsolutions.com Phone: +1 (510) 604-0308 Visit https://linktr.ee/davidspisak for all our links Like this show? Please leave us a rating and review where you're listening right now! 🎧 Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-david-spisak-show/id1602552929 🔊 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6oPjFeHfnxNXPTHXxNwIsm?si=4fc3f546d07a4679

July 2, 202617 min

25 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask Themselves (Part 1)

Most entrepreneurs won't fail because of the economy. They won't fail because of competitors, funding, or bad timing. They'll fail because they never asked themselves the questions that actually matter, and by the time reality forces the answer, it's too late. In Part 1 of this 5-part episode series, David Spisak opens with the foundation: five questions designed to expose the truth about your business before the market does it for you. One of them is the same question Kevin O'Leary uses to gut-check founders on Shark Tank, and it draws a hard line between a real business and an expensive hobby. Another question takes ten seconds to answer if your value proposition is actually strong... and most entrepreneurs can't do it. If you've been avoiding the hard conversation with yourself about what's really holding your business back, these five questions will find it. Twenty-five questions total. Five parts. This is where it starts. Connect with David Spisak to Achieve Exponential Growth: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidspisak/ Website: https://www.davidspisak.com Email: david@disruptivegrowthsolutions.com Phone: +1 (510) 604-0308 Visit https://linktr.ee/davidspisak for all our links Like this show? Please leave us a rating and review where you're listening right now! 🎧 Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-david-spisak-show/id1602552929 🔊 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6oPjFeHfnxNXPTHXxNwIsm?si=4fc3f546d07a4679

June 25, 202650 min

Matt Leone: The Long Road to DriveCentric (Part 1)

Matt Leone didn't grow up dreaming about the car business. He grew up watching his Italian immigrant grandfather work three jobs and build houses by hand in Newton, Massachusetts. He watched his aerospace engineer father get laid off when Boeing scrapped a supersonic jet program. He grew up in San Diego, raised by parents who woke up at 4:30 AM to make breakfast and never missed a single sporting event, recital, or graduation. He wanted to be Michael J. Fox in Secret of My Success. He wanted Wall Street. He got something better. I've interviewed hundreds of people in this industry. This is the first time I've ever done a two-part episode. After sitting down with Matt Leone, CEO of DriveCentric, I didn't have a choice. There was too much here, too much story, too much substance, too much that this industry needs to hear, and I refused to cut a single thing. Part one is about the man. Part two is about the mission. Start here. Connect with David Spisak to Achieve Exponential Growth: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidspisak/ Website: https://www.davidspisak.com Email: david@disruptivegrowthsolutions.com Phone: +1 (510) 604-0308 Visit https://linktr.ee/davidspisak for all our links Like this show? Please leave us a rating and review where you're listening right now! 🎧 Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-david-spisak-show/id1602552929 🔊 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6oPjFeHfnxNXPTHXxNwIsm?si=4fc3f546d07a4679

June 18, 202626 min

What Carvana Knows That We Don't

David Spisak walked into a dealership that had nearly 1,000 vehicles listed online. The lot was empty. No salespeople. No tower. No showroom buzz. Just a quiet operation that by every traditional measure shouldn't be working. It's working. In this episode, David takes you inside Carvana's CDJR store in Sacramento for an unscripted, unfiltered walkthrough that challenged assumptions he didn't even know he was carrying. What he found wasn't a gimmick. It wasn't smoke and mirrors. It was something far more unsettling for the industry: a different set of questions producing radically different outcomes. Connect with David Spisak to Achieve Exponential Growth: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidspisak/ Website: https://www.davidspisak.com Email: david@disruptivegrowthsolutions.com Phone: +1 (510) 604-0308 Visit https://linktr.ee/davidspisak for all our links Like this show? Please leave us a rating and review where you're listening right now! 🎧 Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-david-spisak-show/id1602552929 🔊 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6oPjFeHfnxNXPTHXxNwIsm?si=4fc3f546d07a4679