From Auction Block to Restoration Road: Mitch Kruse on Wisdom, Work, and Winning
Leadership · From Student of the Game
From Auction Block to Restoration Road: Mitch Kruse on Wisdom, Work, and Winning
Picture this: a six-year-old boy in a Timex watch riding shotgun with his dad on State Road 8 in Auburn, Indiana. They hit traffic. Dad assumes a wreck. Then they crest the hill on I-69 and see it: 15,000 people pouring toward a Dairy Queen parking lot to bid on 75 collector cars. That night, NBC National News calls two bidders fools because a Duesenberg just sold for $60,000. The previous record was $10,000.
That boy was Mitch Kruse. And that moment, whether he knew it or not, set the trajectory for a career that would redefine the collector car industry, break world records, and eventually lead him to a quiet surrender beside his bed on July 1, 1992.
On the latest episode of Student of the Game, host Brad Noll sits down with Mitch Kruse, former owner of Kruse International and one of the most accomplished auctioneers in the world, for a conversation that moves from gavel drops to gospel truth, from million-dollar Duesenbergs to the deeper question every entrepreneur eventually has to answer: what are you actually keeping score of?
The Family Business Born From a Flood
Mitch's story didn't start with a strategy deck. It started with fish swimming where crops should have been growing. In 1952, his grandfather's farm flooded, and a father-in-law who clerked and cashiered auctions suggested a pivot. By 1959, Mitch's dad joined the business straight out of Leo High School. By the 1970s, the family was pioneering multi-parcel real estate auctions and launching the annual collector car auction that would put Auburn on the map.
Mitch was thrown into the fire early. He earned his real estate license at 18, becoming the youngest licensed realtor in the nation. He got his auctioneer's license that same year. But here's the part most people miss: he didn't want it.
"I'm probably naturally a little more introverted," Mitch admits. "I remember in the cellar with a microphone, my dad forced me to auction these jars, and I wouldn't do it unless the people couldn't see me."
That tension, between calling and comfort, would shape everything that came next.
“Have you ever thought about changing the scorecard of your life from money to wisdom?”
Mitch Kruse
Selling the First Million-Dollar Car
In 1985, Mitch sold the first car to ever trade hands for $1 million cash. Tom Monahan, the owner of Domino's Pizza, took delivery at home plate in Tiger Stadium. The supercharger kicked in. The car rolled through the center field wall. The crowd lost it.
From 1987 to 1990, Mitch's business went vertical. He thought he was, in his own words, "God's gift to the collector car auction business." Then on July 1, 1990, the lights went out on the economy. Volume dropped 25 percent. The next year, another 25 percent. By July 1, 1992, Mitch couldn't make payroll. And the IRS raided his offices, mistakenly suspecting money laundering tied to the cash gate receipts at his 400-acre auction park.
That night, he got on his knees.
"I said, God, I know better than to make a deal with you. You don't have to get me out of anything, but I was willing to surrender my business to him."
Changing the Scorecard
The next morning, Mitch sat across from his uncle, an attorney he describes as "the most accepting person I knew and the most righteous person I knew." His uncle asked a question that rewired his life: "Mitchell, have you ever thought about changing the scorecard of your life from money to wisdom?"
Mitch defines wisdom as God's righteousness intersecting with street smarts. Vertical meeting horizontal. Faith made sticky to everyday decisions. Over the next seven years, he rebuilt the business with a different mission statement: serving God and serving others. He printed Proverbs verses on millions of brochures. He learned that relationships outranked remuneration. By 1999, he sold the company to eBay.
The Fundamentals That Built an Empire
When Brad asks Mitch what fundamentals carried him to the top of the industry, the answer is sharp: communicating, connecting, marketing, and skill development. Notice what's at the top of the list.
"You can't do any of those things unless you listen," Mitch says. "Language or words are an expression of the heart, and people are usually not really good at expressing what's in their hearts. So you don't really listen to just the words being said. You listen to the desires underneath."
He's writing a new book on communication, and he says it's predominantly about listening. In a world drowning in DMs and dead-eyed restaurant servers, he's convinced that real-time, lock-eyes, energy-transferring connection has become the single most valuable skill in the marketplace.
"Nothing happens in an economy until something's sold," he says. "Communication and connecting is going to be the highest skill set rewarded in our culture, because the internet has almost ruined it."
Falling in Love With the Practice
Brad pushes deeper into a theme he hammers on every episode: falling in love with practice. Mitch's reframe is classic Wooden: perfect practice makes perfect, and perfection is unattainable, but striving for it is.
The question he started asking himself was simple and brutal: what process would I do if the end result didn't matter? That single filter clarified what he loved (connecting buyers and sellers, building marketing plans, deal-making) and what he loathed. It also exposed the dark side: he'd built a career where you can never have a "car off." That always-on posture, he admits, fueled a season of workaholism before God restored what greed had quietly cost him.
Restoration Road and the House of Leadership
Mitch's brand identity, Restoration Road, isn't a marketing gimmick. It's the integration of his life's two greatest loves: collector cars and the gospel of restoration. Surrender the old. Surrender the pieces. Surrender the new.
He closes the episode with a framework he calls the House of Leadership, drawn from Proverbs. The footer is humility. The foundation is wisdom. The framework is understanding. The rooms are filled with the rare and beautiful treasures of knowledge, which in Hebrew and Greek means intimacy, relationship, your innermost being connected with God's and with others.
"I wanted to make it a point where I would worship God the most where others expected that the least," Mitch says. "And that was in a business transaction."
The Flowers Brad Noll Didn't See Coming
In a moment that lands hard, Mitch gives flowers to Brad's grandfather, Ms Lehman, who taught him how to work the auction ring. "You ask with an open hand," Mitch recalls. "A soft heart and an open hand go together in the Bible."
He also honors his uncle, the attorney who challenged him to trade greed for generosity. "Greed is a horrible thing. There's never enough. To move from a greedy heart to a generous heart is life transforming."
▶ Listen to the full episode
Wisdom for the Road with Mitch Kruse, on Student of the Game.
Work with the Noll Team
Ready to make your move?
Since 2003, Noll Team Real Estate has been helping people in the Fort Wayne area find the freedom to live the lifestyle they want. Tell us where you are headed and we will build the plan around your life.