Ep. 652 - The #1 Mindset Shift That Will Transform Your Dealership’s Success, with Nick Askew
In this episode, my guest is Nick Askew, CEO of Space Auto— a guy who went from composing music to selling cars to building game-changing tech for dealerships. Yeah, you read that right. His journey proves that creativity, sales, and innovation are more connected than we think—and that fresh thinking might be exactly what the auto biz needs right now.
The automotive industry is evolving fast, and if you're in the game—whether as a dealer, vendor, or industry leader—you know that staying ahead means thinking differently. Nick and I dive into the good stuff—big ideas, bold perspectives, and the kind of convo that makes you stop and go, “Huh… never looked at it that way before.” Plus, the man’s got a row of guitars behind him, so you already know he’s cool.
What we discuss in the episode:
How “healthy conflict” fuels business growth (and why most people get it wrong)
The real power of collaboration vs. competition in the automotive space
Why your so-called competitors might actually be your best business partners
How technology is revolutionizing car dealerships and customer relationships
What the auto industry can learn from Amazon, Best Buy, and other retail giants
Nick and I don’t just talk shop—we challenge old-school industry thinking and explore how creativity fuels success in every aspect of business. This is one of those conversations that will change the way you think about sales, tech, and the future of automotive.
Bottom line? This episode will challenge the way you think about sales, business, and the future of automotive.
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Episode Transcript
MC: 0:00
(Episode Sponsor)This episode is brought to you by FlexDealer.
Hey auto industry. Welcome to this episode of the Dealer Playbook Podcast. I am joined by my pal, fellow, fellow commonwealth and fellow Texan, Nick Askew. He's the chief executive officer at Space Auto, which we're going to talk about in just a minute. Nick, thanks so much for joining me on the pod.
Nick: 0:34
Michael, I'm just so happy to be here and back talking to you again. It's been a little while and and yeah, we just found out today that we're within a short drive of each other and never even stopped for a drink.
MC: 0:49
I'm starting to think that DFW is the actual center of America.
Nick: 0:54
It's tough to feel that way.
MC: 0:58
I can't help but notice a row of guitars in the background. That's the first thing that my eye is drawn to. For those that are just listening to audio. He has very ambient lighting and in a row of guitars I've I feel like I've seen you playing with a piano yes you play the piano and guitars. I've seen you post you playing on social media.
Nick: 1:28
Yeah, so I actually went to school because I wanted. My dream was to be a film composer. I went to school for composition, learned how to play about 14 instruments fluently and about halfway through when. Okay, so let's start planning life here. You get a bachelor's degree in music composition and then you go get a job as a musician and so I sold cars. That's what I did. So I dropped out of college and sold cars, but still play every day.
MC: 1:54
This is interesting because I mean, you know Paul Daly, you know Kyle, yeah, mount Sears. I went to school to be a sound engineer. I thought that I would compose. I love playing the piano. I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight guitars in the room I'm in right now and I love writing and I love tinkering and I thought, man, this is going to be the thing. And then, all of a sudden, here I am with a marketing and a tech company in the auto industry.
Nick: 2:28
We got a lot in common with that, but I tell you what learning how to compose, learning production value, learning the artistry of that throughout any form of media, right? Not only I mean it helped me in sales, because what is sales outside of a performance in itself, right? So I think it gave me a really great understanding of production value and it helped me along the way. I always draw parallels back from music and production and everything back into sales and creativity.
MC: 3:08
I think that there's a lot of people that it activates a very similar part of the brain and improvisation and performance when it comes to, when it comes to sales, but, and technology and just creation in general, you know you've got me thinking about something now that I think is really interesting in composition, especially as you bring up the improvisation, this idea of in order to be good at improvising, or sales, means that you have to be able to recognize cues, like people are dropping hints constantly through a sales process, and your job as the composer is to find a place of resolve and for those that are not musicians may not know what we're talking about but like a resolve is really making sure that whatever chords you're playing come back to their starting point, so that you don't feel like you're left hanging.
MC: 4:08
And I think about that as you're saying this in sales, this idea that has heightened your ability or your awareness to pick up on cues and then make sure that there is a resolve. Do you think this is similar to how football players I hear about football players playing, or like doing ballet. It's like learning a creative thing that that like ties into what they actually do for a living, that enhances the thing they do for a living.
Nick: 4:37
I think it's exactly the same right, you've, you've got improvisation, which teaches you how to, like you, you say, pick up on those cues, but instantly, when you're doing it in music, you can't miss a beat.
Nick: 4:50
You can't improvise three seconds later and go oh yeah, I should have done that. It has to be done with finesse and you actually have to start anticipating these things. So I think, with football players and dancing, and you know, you can draw parallels from a lot of those different creative approaches. But I think, just in general, the more that you expose yourself in business to things that are outside of your very tunnel vision area of focus, if I'm focused on building technology and selling cars and creating AI models and that's all I focus on, how can I draw inspiration from anything else in life to be able to bring it to that? I think that's incredibly important for whatever industry that you're in is having these other things to draw inspiration from and learn from in your life to be able to take it to, ultimately, the biggest project that you're working on, and I think it's just a healthy part of having a well-rounded life.
MC: 5:59
Isn't that interesting. I mean, we see this a lot in other industries. You look at, like Tom Cruise, for example, who says I watch at least a movie a day. People go really, you watch a movie a day. He's like I really try to watch a movie a day and some of them I think people don't realize how diverse they are of a movie he watches is like he will watch a black and white, you know obscure French film that inspires. You know that was filmed in 1947. That inspires a fight sequence in the next Mission Impossible.
MC: 6:35
In the same way, I was having this conversation with my 15 year old, who happened upon a clip of Snoop Dogg talking about how some classical song from the 50s that he used to listen to inspired one of his hits today, and my son was baffled Nick, that he's like, but he's a rapper. How can he listen to classical music? And it's exactly what you're saying, I think, which is, but he drew inspiration from like these are. Actually, you don't think of rappers as being these well versed musicians and yet here you have a guy like snoop dogg who's highly successful at his craft, drawing inspiration from jazz and from classical music and all sorts of things.
Nick: 7:24
Oh yeah, and look if there's people all over any industry. Brian May, right, guitarist for Queen, right. Did you know that he has a PhD in astrophysics? Brian May is a guitarist for Queen. But I mean, you just end up having these really high performing individuals. You got Jeff Goldblum, who is, you know, actor, right, but also really accomplished jazz musician, right.
Nick: 7:54
I think those parts of the brain can continue to just get activated and inspired by the diverse type of information that you, that you intake and that you know. And it's with everything, with the people, that you meet the relationships that you build, the diversity of the information that you intake, and it just builds a, it helps with that. Creative thinking allows you to see things in a way that you would have never anticipated seeing them before. And if that is Snoop Dogg listening to classical music, that makes sense. People don't think that rappers and people making that kind of music have this intense intelligence, but let's also not forget that he's an incredible business person. He's an incredible artist, incredible performer. Let's not underestimate the wide breadth of intelligence that these people have.
MC: 8:54
It's interesting too when I think about it, because there's a narrative in our industry that's lasted for quite some time and I would love nothing more than to see it die by the wayside which is oh, you've never sold cars, therefore you can't speak about anything that sold car, or you haven't been a general manager, so you don't have any insights that could possibly help a general manager. And yet here we are, like the way I see it is. Oh wait, so what you're saying is somebody else who didn't perform the incredibly teachable thing can't have commentary about the teachable thing, like there is nothing special, so special about this. In the same breath ooh, I'm allowed one controversial mind wave a day and I think I'm going to use it on this. And then, in the same token, we go to these conferences and say we should get voices from outside the industry to inspire us to do the thing. That we're telling people in the industry who have never done the thing, that they shouldn't have the right to talk about doing the thing. It's like what are you saying here?
Nick: 10:06
There's a little bit of a paradox in that thinking yes, and I would love to see us get away from that as an industry. And, okay, play devil's advocate for a second on that.
MC: 10:16
Oh, I like it.
Nick: 10:18
I've been in that role, okay, right, I've sold cars, been an internet sales manager, been an F&I manager, sat on the desk, been a marketing director in operations for 40 Store Rooftop. Each one of those things has helped me understand the problems that I want to solve as a partner, vendor or whatever we're going to call ourselves. And today we're not a vendor, we're a partner. But I will say that the validity of that is that, yes, taking people, let's draw inspiration from people outside of the industry. But there are some extremely nuanced things that dealers love to see, to be able to speak their language.
Nick: 11:11
Because dealers on the flip side and here's where I'm going to, I will agree with you on that is that dealers on the flip side aren't always the best at communicating the things that they need to accomplish outside of their own field of view, because they are stuck at the dealership every day. They're working on the P&L, they're working on increasing gross profit, customer lifetime value, increasing CSI score. I mean they have that tunnel vision. So it's like how can you tell me how to run my business when I'm in here every day? So there has to be this collaboration of yes, let's listen to the things from outside the industry and see what we can pull back into it. But I do ultimately respect the dealers that and respect the notion, notion of yeah, and unless you've you truly understand our business, it's hard for you to tell me what to do. But it's up to the dealers to take inspiration from the many successful industries out there that are taking care of customers and doing things right and implement those within automotive right, and you know what it is to your point.
MC: 12:30
It's reversible, right? Yeah, you used a very powerful word I'm going to use it at the end of this statement which is, you know you could argue, developing a very challenging status quo CRM tech unifying platform. Very challenging status quo CRM tech unifying platform. Well, you've never built a CRM. So who are you to tell me what it takes to do? You know what I mean so in that regard. But the linchpin, I think, is a very powerful word, which is collaboration. That's why, that's why our industry must be a great collaboration. I mean, it's why we do this show, it's why a Sodu does what it does, it's why you participate in the way that you do. Is that, ultimately, the aligning of thinking around a problem from different points of view solves the problem much more effectively than, like you said, having tunnel vision.
Nick: 13:28
Oh yeah, there's something magical that happens when you it's the grindstone of differing opinions, right, and what ends up coming out at the end is somewhere way closer to the right answer.
Nick: 13:41
You know, everyone's got strong points of view, and nobody wants to be in an echo chamber, especially you know. And what works for points of view and nobody wants to be in an echo chamber, especially you know and what works for one dealer doesn't work for the next dealer, doesn't work for the next dealer, and that's the great thing about any any industry is those differences in in our opinions and those differences in the way that we do business. I mean, that's why 20 groups exists, it's why you know it's for us to all collaborate and work on, you know, bettering the industry together. And you know you're exactly right, it's why we do these kinds of things. It's there's room for all of us. Even in the vendor space, in the dealer space, there is, too, there's plenty of business to go around, and there's a lot that we can learn from each other too. Ultimately, we all have the same goal, which is to make the industry a better place.
MC: 14:34
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Isn't that interesting? I love that you bring it around to that point because I think truly. I mean, maybe there's some you know, but for the most part, we're all here because this industry has blessed our lives and we want to see it improve. We want to leave it better for the next generation than maybe what we inherited. I think that's kind of what everybody wants to do and I love you know, as I'm listening to you talk about this and describe, you know differences in the way that we think, and I love the word you use the grindstone of differing opinions. That we arrive at this point, which is Contention, which is often what people resort to, is so vastly different than conflict.
MC: 15:48
Conflict, to me, is the grindstone of differing opinions. There's a conflict because our opinions differ, but that doesn't mean I have to be contentious about it. It doesn't mean I have to contend against you and and make you an enemy. You said the echo chamber earlier just because you might think about it different than I do. In fact, you and I might have just discovered that we have slightly differing opinions on things and yet here we are, collaborating around it and arriving at a place that we're like oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. We find consensus and I think our industry just needs to hear like collaboration also doesn't mean void of conflict. It actually means best work done when we have healthy conflict, right?
Nick: 16:44
Disagreements. They push people to justify their positions with logic, right. You know, if we have that disagreement, you have to then justify that with logic, data and reasoning. That you might not. It becomes way more than an opinion, opinion. It becomes an actual data-backed position and it creates a culture where decisions are based on facts, right.
Nick: 17:09
And where you disagree and I might disagree honestly eight out of ten times, which I just made up you end up, most of the time we agree on the core principles of it. It's just how to get. There is the thing that we disagree on. And it also does, going back to the beginning of our conversation, foster that creativity. You know, if you challenge conceptual thinking, right, and you have these constructive disagreements right, you have these constructive disagreements right, you actually end up coming with the ideas that then solve the problems holistically from if you're able to do that in a non-contentious way, like you said.
Nick: 17:52
And finally, it builds trust, I think organizations, whether it's dealers, whether it's corporation, any corporation in general. You know, if open disagreements handled respectfully, it makes people feel safe expressing their different opinions and like the amount of transparency that builds for us and our team when people come to me and say you know what, nick, I'd like to agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong. You know, it's a beautiful thing and it just it prepares us for those challenges that we're always going to have in life. There's always going to be a contrarian, there's always going to be someone with a different opinion, but if you can do it in a respectful way, it just it makes you so more resilient and so and so much more innovative.
MC: 18:42
I mean heck. My wife and I rarely initially see things from the same point of view, but to your point, I think it's one of the things that makes our relationship so special. We're not sitting here fighting. There's no need to fight or contend. It could be anything. It's how do we raise the kids, how do we handle that issue with the kids, Each of us approaching our family with the different biases that we were raised with and whatever other factors might be included, and yet here we have a tremendous relationship in which our love deepens by the day.
MC: 19:18
I love that you say healthy conflict and it's bearing on creativity and it is kind of a full circle moment.
MC: 19:27
I think that I want to emphasize here I'm looking at the notes I'm taking as you're speaking we started with this idea of taking inspiration from outside our tunnel vision, from outside our tunnel vision, and we've arrived at differing opinions and why those are so important to progress and growth. And I think, gosh, isn't a differing opinion the same as taking inspiration from outside of your tunnel vision? If we shift our paradigm, it's the exact same thing. And I can't help but think. You know, like you say, disagreement. I think of what you guys are doing at Space Auto, the innovation there, the creativity, the different approach to unifying a dealer's tech and customer relationships, and all the different things that you're working on fundamentally from an outsider's view. Different things that you're working on fundamentally from an outsider's view stem from disagreeing with the status quo position that has been taken, and I'm not saying against other companies or people in the industry, but a fundamental disagreement of the position of the status quo and what can we do to challenge it?
Nick: 20:37
And I appreciate that, because that was a big problem when we were first starting the company. Right, and we had to. You know, we had to build this in sections because, you know, unless we were just to go raise hundreds of millions of dollars of capital and, you know, flip it on overnight and go, hey, we did the thing, we built the company Everyone wishes they could have. You know, we have to lean into that and but it all starts with the you starts with the problem and the solution for us is that it was a great, the fundamental thing that we're here to solve, right, and a lot of other companies and going back into this cross-industry learning this is nothing new, right? If you take a look at things like best buy right, right, and everyone always throws out the Amazon. It was like we want to be the Amazon of car dealers, right? Well, actually, think about things like Best Buy, right, best Buy offer the direct to consumer approach. Right, I can go online order my curbside delivery, can do all that. But if I still want to go, put my hands and measure the fridge or look at the tv and look at the quality of it, uh, I still have the ability to go and do those things. So you draw inspiration and this is cross-industry learning.
Nick: 22:19
You know the automotive industry borrowed and you know, has borrowed and should continue to borrow things from fresh eyes and from other industries. You know so and I think that you know for us and what we do and for any company out there and any dealership out there is, you know it's great to look at. You know not what your competitors doing or what you're. You know even us. We look at our competitors and go. You know they're doing some fantastic things. We're just solving the problem in a different way and challenging the status quo.
MC: 22:56
You know, but right, you know you have a position, you're you like. I think that's what a lot of people don't understand about the business landscape especially. I think the lines get blurred with a sports analogy. Exactly what you just said, nick, which is to compete, in my mind implies that we are playing the same game and hoping to achieve the same outcome.
MC: 23:29
Now, at face value, if the outcome is to grow revenue, yeah, I guess we're kind of playing the same game, but, but I think a marathon runners, they are competing because they all have the exact same objective, which is to run as fast as they can and somebody needs to cross the finish line first. But in business it's like your position, doing what you're doing, to your point of being different at a different approach. It's like somebody playing lacrosse against somebody who wants to play soccer or football or curling. It's like we're not even playing the same game, like we might have some similarities in that we are athletes and we are Do you know what? I don't know if this is making sense, but I'm like first, if we're going to be called competitors with one another, then first we must ascertain that we are playing the exact same game and desire the exact same outcome from the game.
Nick: 24:27
Yeah, and that is it. One of our core values internally is actually that there is room for all of us because we're not all solving the same problem. You know, I mean that's very important to us. As well as that, you know, we're solving the problem that we think is going to help expand the industry, and even I love what you said earlier. There's actually a.
Nick: 24:54
There's a old teaching that I won't get into, but it's basically it's around a.
Nick: 25:00
You know, leaving the, the world in a better place that you found it and and we can't, as individuals, always be the one catalyst that completely changes an industry overnight.
Nick: 25:18
But if we can help leave the industry in a little bit better place than we found it and we can even influence I would love to influence other people in the market that we would, or some people would call your competitors or our competitors to increase their features or change their thinking, to be more customer-centric or to critically analyze the way that they do things, to take some inspiration from that.
Nick: 25:53
I think that if we can inspire even other vendors or other dealers to change the way that they do business, that's still also a success. So it's again, we might not be playing the same game. You might be playing curling Canada reference and I might be playing football or soccer the thing that's actually a ball you play with your foot, as opposed to the egg that you throw. Just lost all my American audience there. But yeah, that's the thing is. Yeah, we might, we absolutely could be playing different games altogether, but that doesn't mean that the collaboration and the inspiration that we can draw from each other doesn't ultimately drive the industry in a positive direction, and that's what we all want to do.
MC: 26:46
What a perfect place to land. This is why I love having these conversations. I love the idea of being able to examine an object from multiple different angles, which requires more than one party most often. And so here we are examining how do we solve problems, how do we create a community of collaboration, how do we leave the industry a little bit better than the way we found it? Well, it requires conversation, it requires collaboration, it requires a desire, which I think is so powerful, and this idea of being able to inspire others to enhance the way that they do business I just think it's so cool.
MC: 27:32
The big paradigm shift for me was that those who I previously thought were my competitors, based on what you've just said, um, are now my business partners, and I just think that is a very interesting position to be in. So what I think is really interesting to what you just said, nick, is that and this is a big paradigm shift for those that are listening or paying attention, which is, people that I previously thought were competitors of mine and maybe that they thought were my competitor, are now business partners of mine. We own a business together. How interesting when you come together and collaborate. So, listen, I couldn't be more grateful that you've been able to share some time with me today. As we wind down, how can those listening and watching get in touch with you and connect?
Nick: 28:29
They can feel free to reach out to me directly, nick, at spaceauto. There's no com. We're so automotive, that's our domain. Visit us on our website, spaceauto, and be happy to have any conversation and help in any way that I can, because, you know, just want to leave you with this. As you know, one thing that I really wanted to say today is you know, true measure of success for me isn't what we build, what we leave behind. So just challenge the limits and set a higher standard for those who follow. So if anyone just wants to reach out to have that conversation, I'm always available.
MC: 29:08
Well, man, nick ask you. Thanks so much for joining me on the dealer playbook podcast.
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