Keep The Change

In 1996, Joseph Robinson’s dad bought a failing Toyota store in Jackson, Tennessee, with a total stranger he picked up on the drive over. When Toyota told him he would have to sell it, he said, “Give me six months.” He turned the store around and went on to win Toyota’s President’s Award multiple times. Years later, Joseph left a banking career in Dallas to come home. He was the owner’s son, and h...

Jason Miller got fired from his first youth ministry job, and he says he totally deserved it. The ministry was growing fast, but he didn’t have the character behind it. Years later, his first church as lead pastor closed. Those failures taught him what leadership really is. Today Jason is lead pastor at Zion Lutheran Church in Clear Lake, Iowa, with 26 years in ministry, and he coaches leaders in...

Dana Rowe was a bank teller who was great with customers but could never balance her cash drawer. Her company didn’t fire her. They moved her to customer service, and she thrived. Today she leads the same way. Dana is VP of Business Development at KYCS Global. KYCS stands for Keep Your Community Safe. She started as a road warrior cold calling dealerships for Boomerang Tracking, the Canadian arm o...

What does it look like to lead people who are broken, hurting, and rebuilding their lives — and what can every leader learn from that? In this episode of Keep the Change, Bart sits down with his longtime friend Scott Rodgers — pastor, author, and leader — for a conversation about leading with compassion, building culture in ministry, and what it really means to treat people the way they want to be...

From EMT to GSM: Michael Wengert on Showing Up Michael Wengert was an EMT for eight years until a layoff sent him to a Toyota dealership. He was top salesperson by month two. Now he is the General Sales Manager at Toyota of Lancaster in Southern California. Bart Nollenberger and Michael talk about leading a sales team, owning every problem, keeping processes simple, and serving today's custom...

Most car salespeople don't have a word-track problem. They have a prospecting problem. Trent Denman has spent 15+ years as an auto broker at HM Brown in Colorado Springs, selling thousands of cars across recessions, COVID, and supply chain shortages, almost entirely from business he generated himself. He's also the founder of Elevation Performance Group and a fellow Maxwell Leadership ex...

Forty-four years in the car business, eight dealerships, and one rule Greg Pollice won't break: if you don't believe it, don't say it. Greg Pollice, GM of Brenneman Ford in Chester, PA, joins Bart to talk about what's actually changed in dealership leadership — and what hasn't. He came in when contracts were hand-typed and management was a dictatorship. Today he calls his...

Ask any executive how important culture is and you'll hear "it's our DNA." Ask how they measure it and the room goes quiet. Tyler Long built the tool that answers that. He and Bart get into why engagement surveys capture opinions while the Culture Health Scorecard measures behavior, why one client's "fun" score dropping was the best news in the report, and the on...

Every month, in thousands of businesses, the same thing happens: the top producer gets promoted to run the department. Ninety days later she's exhausted, working more hours than anyone, and the department is no better than it was before she got there — because everything that made her great at the old job is the wrong instinct for the new one. And nobody told her. In this episode, Bart Nollen...

Mickey Seelye and Stan Qualls return to Keep the Change for an hour that turned into more than a business conversation. Mickey runs Seelye Auto Group, five Southwest Michigan stores founded in 1963 by his grandfather — a wounded Iwo Jima Marine who went from bagging groceries to janitor to owner. Stan, the group's VP and chairman of the NADA Kia 20 Group, came up with no legacy and no plan un...

Chris Saraceno is back on Keep the Change. As VP and Partner of Kelly Automotive Group (12 franchises, 7 locations, ~500 team members), Chris knows what it takes to build and sustain culture at scale. In this conversation, Bart and Chris go deep on why culture is really about behaviors, how great leaders adapt their communication style to each individual, and why being questioned by your team is a...

Ken Cook, owner of BZ Automotive in Indiana, sits down with Bart Nollenberger to share his journey from a short career in the Marine Corps to becoming a successful independent dealer in a market dominated by giants.  Ken opens up about the power of core values in shaping culture, why he rewards employees based on those values (including sending a long-tenured couple to Hawaii), and the personal de...

Rob Ruth from Bob Ruth Ford joins Bart Nollenberger for a second time to pull back the curtain on the buying center model that transformed his dealership. Rob shares how he went from personally messaging sellers on Facebook Marketplace to building a six-person team that acquired a record 362 vehicles off the street last month. He walks through the staffing, the daily metrics, the hiring profile, a...

Sam Sweis went from washing cars at a California Dodge store to owning Sweis Infiniti in Indiana — with 27 acquisitions along the way. In this episode, Sam and Bart dig into what actually drives long-term success in the car business: building your bench from within, understanding that every customer walks in with an unidentified problem, and knowing that used cars are the one department the factor...

Bart Nollenberger just got back from twelve days in Lusaka, Zambia — and he came home with a message he can't stop thinking about. Invited to speak to more than two dozen audiences, from children in the slums to recovering men in a treatment center to business leaders and church congregations, Bart realized he wasn't giving twenty different talks. He was giving one. In this episode, Bart...

David Long returns to Keep the Change to talk about his new book, Step Zero — and why winning isn't just about executing the process, but everything that happens before step one. Bart and David break down the three things that separate top performers: attitude, energy, and approach. David also shares his personal journey — building four businesses, walking in faith, life as a grandfather, and...

COVID didn't just inflate paychecks — it gutted a generation of car people. Old dogs cashed out, GSMs got promoted before they were ready, and salespeople learned to take orders instead of build value. Now the margins are gone and a leadership gap is staring the industry down. Bart sits down with John Alcorn — Operating Partner of Dogwood Auto Group (Mazda, VW, Volvo) — for a raw conversation...

Your team isn't underperforming. Your feedback loops are. The best leaders I know aren't failing because they lack knowledge. They're failing because nobody around them is telling them the truth. Their team nods. Their managers agree. Their numbers stay flat. And somewhere in the back of their mind, they already know something's off, they just can't name it yet. That'...

Most leaders are making this mistake daily, and their team already knows it. Drew Tutton has built what most people in automotive only talk about at 20-group meetings and never actually create. Multiple dealerships. Multiple partnerships. A reputation that precedes him across Georgia and Alabama. But what's driven all of it isn't what you'd expect. It started on an airplane. One boo...

What separates thriving dealerships from failing ones? It's not the tools. It's not the leads. It's the culture, and most dealers are building theirs on a cracked foundation. In this episode of Keep the Change, Bart sits down with Wendy Reeves, founder of BDC Angels and EiQ Performance Solutions, and one of the most connected and results-driven operators in automotive for a raw, uns...

Be honest, when's the last time someone actually challenged how you lead? Not your strategy. Not your numbers. You. I didn't know Emer Sanabria before we sat down. Michael Cillo told me I had to talk to him. Within minutes I understood exactly why. Emer spent 20 years in the Marine Corps. He's seen chaos most people can't imagine. And somewhere in the middle of all of it he lea...

A dad watches his daughter lose everything — her strength, her coordination, her independence — over six months. Doctors have no answers. Hope is running thin. Then one night, everything changes. What Brian Robbins did with that moment didn't just transform his family. It became a nonprofit that has now quietly, without fanfare, changed the lives of 107 women who needed a fighting chance. He&...

My guest this week is my oldest son, Ty Nollenberger, and what started as a simple discussion turned into one of the most honest talks I’ve had on this show about discipline, pressure, leadership, risk, and what it really takes to build something over time. We talk about the moments that shape your work ethic. The decisions that force you to grow. And why some people move forward while others stay...

If you’ve ever looked around your business and thought, “Why does it feel like we’re working so hard… but something still feels off?” this conversation is for you. Adam Marburger is one of those rare guys who can talk growth without hype, leadership without ego, and success without pretending the cost doesn’t exist. He’s the CEO of Ascent Dealer Services, a bestselling author, a Brazilian jujitsu...

If you’ve been around this show for a while, you know I love a good solo episode. But this week? I get to sit down with one of the most class-act humans I’ve met in this industry, Rob Ruth from Bob Ruth Ford in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania. And I’m telling you… the more conversations we have on Keep The Change, the more I’m convinced this is why I love podcasting. Because you don’t just hear “success.”...