Joe Feldmann Joins Automotive Masterclass: Leading With EQ

Joe Feldmann has had people call him from other stores, years after he let them go, to say thank you. They tell him they didn’t understand the conversation at the time. Now they do.

Today he’s GM/Owner of Feldmann Imports, the dealership his father started 15 minutes outside Minneapolis. Joe says it has been with Mercedes-Benz for more than 40 years. His full Automotive Masterclass, Leading With EQ, released onstage at VINCUE: UNLEASHED26 and is now free and live on RockED. It teaches how empathy, vulnerability, and learning through failure build stronger teams and more effective leaders.

EQ beats IQ, Joe says. IQ and street smarts matter, but “if you can’t meet your people and your customers with where they’re at, none of the IQ stuff really matters.” The dealership sells and services cars, he says, but the real work is the ripple effect on people’s lives.

His father started the business, and Joe says he knew at six years old that he wanted to run it. His father died when Joe was young, and Joe stepped in early.

What drives him is finding out each person’s personal dream and helping them make it specific. People tell him they bought their first cabin, or got married and had kids, and credit the opportunity and the push. Sometimes the push means a hard decision. “You can be good, but just might not be good enough here.”

Lead and be vulnerable first, and tell your management team you don’t have it all figured out. A title means nothing if people can’t trust you, Joe says. The environment he’s built is a freedom to fail. When someone makes a mistake, he asks what they learned. When something goes wrong in another department, he’s the first to say it’s on him.

A men’s group shows how he does it. A couple of years ago he joined one, and it now has 14 men in it. Once a month he’s on a 90-minute call with them, and his managers know it. That makes it easier for them to share openly. “What works in business doesn’t work at home,” he says.

Joe compares caring to a garden. You have to tend it. For him, the discipline is being present. When an employee comes to you, they don’t know about the car that fell off the hoist or the angry customer. His check is to pause, take a breath, and ask, “Am I being present?”

His wife says she told him, “You can’t come home and run the house like a business.” Joe says trust works the same way at work. It takes years to plant a forest and seconds to burn it down with a match.

“Nothing gets better until you get better.” The goal is to get 1% better every day.

Reading is how he does it. He read 43 books two years ago without planning to. He’d been reading business books by authors like John Maxwell but no personal growth books. He compares that to a teeter-totter. Now he does both. Every morning he writes down what he wants to get better at that day, and the item isn’t on the page when he leaves. He also calls other dealers who do something well. “It is like weights at a gym,” he says. You still have to pick them up.

Managers are great at stewarding a vision, a playbook, and a process, Joe says, and not every manager can or wants to be a leader. The leader is the pioneer who says, “Follow me.” Leaders also make tough calls. “You can’t have one foot on the dock and one foot on the boat.”

That includes hard conversations. If a salesperson is selling four cars a month, the store average is six, and the goal is ten, Joe tells them they’re running out of time. He gives them 30 days and works with them. He says he avoided conversations like this early on because of his own discomfort. “Let’s not mistake kindness for a weakness either.”

Make more deposits in people than withdrawals, Joe says. He asks his top performers what they need, and says they want accountability and consistency.

One high-performing salesperson had to make 20 meaningful calls a day to stay on the rotation. The rep made the calls after hours, and each lasted under 30 seconds. Joe sat him down and gave him a choice: do what we’re asking, or you can’t work here. The rep stayed, Joe’s managers say he’s a different person, and he has thanked Joe since. Joe’s lesson: “Do the next right thing first, then see what gets exposed.”

Joe calls leadership a contact sport. He does meaningful one-on-ones, and he makes sure his managers do too. He splits his day into thirds and checks the scoreboard by 10 a.m. New hires from other stores tell him they never saw ownership in their departments. “To be above average is so easy.”

What people want from a leader is what his sons want from a dad, Joe says: someone who shows up and stays consistent. He wants them to see the same person at home that his employees see at work.

A life well run, he says, is “running a good race and being proud of your character.” What lasts, in his words, is “the impression and the friendships and the connections that you make.” He credits his father for showing him what it looks like to get uncomfortable, ask for help, and join a men’s group.

Interested in watching the full masterclass? Learn more on how to access the Automotive Masterclass series on RockED here. Joe covers vulnerability, empathy, accountability, and leadership, plus his reflections on legacy. Joe is one of three leaders joining Automotive Masterclass. Meet all three new classes in our announcement.