Driven to Succeed

How long has your family been in the car business?

My family’s been in the automotive industry since 1922, so for more than 100 years. Our first dealership was in Chicago, and then my father and great-uncle started an Oldsmobile dealership here in Denver in 1975. My father grew that business to seven different dealerships, which he then sold to AutoNation in the 90s. Growing up, after my dad sold the dealerships, I didn’t think I would necessarily take the same path he did. But after going to college out East and spending a summer in New York City, I decided to come back home to Colorado and work at AutoNation for a few years.

I had spent nearly half my life as a kid waiting around the dealership for my dad to give me rides home, so I had absorbed a lot of knowledge about the car business just through osmosis, and I figured I should leverage everything I learned into my own career. Then we got an opportunity to buy the Chevy store and the VW store in Denver, and Emich Automotive restarted from there.

When we bought the stores in 2006, I still didn’t have much full-time experience. We were essentially offered the franchises based on my father’s pedigree, but then he was diagnosed with late-stage prostate cancer. He’s recovered since then, but he took some time away, and that kind of threw me straight into the deep end. I was 25 years old at that point, and I had to figure things out rather quickly. Fortunately, another business partner, Bob Colbert, had worked with my father for years (he recently retired), and we were able to apply all the aspects that had made Emich Automotive successful in the past to our new endeavor. It’s been 20 years since we’ve been re-established in the Denver market, and we’re really happy to still be here.

What has changed under your leadership?

One thing we’re really proud of is our client experience. When I entered the automobile business, or even growing up within it, there was a lot of negativity around car dealers. People felt the sales tactics were too aggressive, there wasn’t enough transparency around price, things like that. So, the first thing I wanted to do was improve the client experience, to make it enjoyable and just do it right, because it really didn’t have to be that way. We’ve done our best to dismantle those stereotypes around buying and selling cars, and I think we’ve come a long way.

We’ve also integrated a lot of new technology into the business. Back when e-commerce was still brand new, we started using Google Analytics and digital lead-generation, and now we’re beginning to optimize our systems with AI. Still, our customer relationships are our most valuable assets. I was just listening to an industry podcast this morning; the expert on the show is this legend in the auto trade, and he said, “This business is about three things: people, people, and people.”

It’s our employees on the front lines who deliver that customer experience, and we invest as much as we can to keep those people. There’s usually a lot of turnover in our business, but we have a lot of tenured employees, particularly as sales consultants and service advisors, and 80% of our management team were promoted internally. That continuity really helps in terms of having the experience—and the confidence—to deliver an outstanding client experience.

How does Emich Automotive give back to the community?

We have a board consisting of employees called Emich Cares, which we fund with an annual six-figure budget. They meet once a month to discuss different nonprofits that have approached us, and then they decide which organizations to support and at what level. We also save a portion of our philanthropic funds for our own employees who have recently experienced a hardship, and we figure out how best to support them as well.

What do you do outside of work?

I drive my children around. Seriously, I drive them to practice and to games, and it’s great—I love watching their sports. But before we had sports every weekend, I did a bit of auto racing. I was a ski racer growing up and all through college, and there are some similar dynamics in terms of knowing the best line to take a turn, for example, to maximize speed and acceleration. Back in 2012, Volkswagen was kind enough to give me a chassis, basically a shell of a vehicle, and we built a race car from that. We had some podium wins, and I also started doing some endurance races, but then my twins were toddlers, and my wife wasn’t thrilled about me racing, so that hobby took a backseat.

I still love racing, though, so Emich Automotive sponsors two racetrack days a year, when we open the track up to both clients and anyone else who wants to come out and drive with us. We give rides in the race cars, we do some teaching, and things like that. The next one is coming up in October. We’ve sold out almost every year, and it’s a lot of fun.

I started ski racing when I was about six years old, so I have a long history with speed. I was very competitive and was ranked number one nationally in my age group a few times, but the pinnacle of my ski racing career was during my senior year at college in Vermont, when I won the Eastern Conference Championship. I’ve gotten to race in Europe, South America, Australia, New Zealand, and all over Canada, but nothing compares to skiing in Colorado. Living in Denver is great because I get to do all the outdoor activities I enjoy, and also spend a couple of days at the racetrack every year. Whether it’s skiing, biking, playing golf, or kayaking, there are great places in and around Denver to do all those things, great weather to do them in, and great people to do them all with.