By New Car Dealers of Utah
Robert H. Garff (Sept. 15, 1942-March 29, 2020)
Robert H. Garff, like his father Ken Garff, believed in listening. The company website for the Ken Garff Automotive Group has a page specifically called We Hear You. The title is emphasized by the image of an ear on the “About Us” page. As the website explains, all businesses are about people. Although the Ken Garff dealership does sell and service cars, its relationships with employees and customers are what the company has focused on.
Listening to people, and building trust-based relationships, and hard work are what made the Ken Garff Automotive Group a success. The company was founded by Ken Garff in 1932. That wasn’t a great time to start a business; it was during the Great Depression, which began in October 1929, hit its lowest point in 1933, and ended in 1939 when World War II began. Despite that difficult beginning, however, the company is currently ranked nationally as one of the top 10 automotive companies in the U.S.
Utah has more than 20 Garff dealerships, and there are more than 50 Garff dealerships in six states: California, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Texas and Utah.
There’s one thing you won’t ever see at a Garff dealership: huge inflatable gorillas. Instead of focusing on making people do a double-take when they see the lot, the Garff dealerships have chosen to focus instead on creating and maintaining excellent relationships with people.
Bob built an excellent educational foundation for his work in the dealerships. He earned a B.S. in accounting and followed that up with an MBA, both from the University of Utah. He succeeded Ken as CEO of the group when Ken retired and was succeeded in turn by his son John Garff. Bob was chairman of the board of Garff Enterprises until his death. During his career, the company became almost 10 times larger than it had been when he began working.
In addition to being a successful businessman, Bob and his wife Kathi were determined to strengthen the community. They created the Success in Education Foundation and also started a program called the Keys to Success. Bob helped pay for an executive education building that is part of the David Eccles School of Business, and also contributed to a Ken Garff Performance Zone at Rice-Eccles Stadium that was initially scheduled to be ready for the 2021 season. That project has been on hold since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, while everyone figures out how to navigate the current logistics, but the intent is to build it as soon as it is reasonable.
Megan Maybee, the director of internal communication at the Ken Garff Automotive group, only worked with Bob for a year before his passing. Still, his death left her feeling as though she had lost a family member because of the way he treated her during that year. “He was an amazing human being who treated everyone well regardless of how long he knew them,” she said. “He genuinely loved and cared about people, appreciated input and was supportive.”
Dana Geddes, director of employee experience at the Ken Garff Automotive group, worked with Bob for a large part of her career, and she agrees with Megan’s assessment. “I have never met anybody who genuinely cared about people the way Bob did,” she said. “He was always asking about how you were doing or how your family was doing. For example, my father died a couple of years ago. Bob called me to give his condolences and make sure I was doing OK. His sympathy, and the knowledge he was thinking about me, meant a lot. After Hurricane Harvey, Bob said that the company had to take care of people. The company paid to have more than 20 homes rebuilt for employees and gave money to the people who were affected to help them recover. He always took care of his employees.” (Hurricane Harvey was a Category 4 hurricane in August 2017 that affected people in eastern Texas, Louisiana and southern Arkansas. Some of the Garff dealerships are in Texas.)
Megan said, “His comments in that meeting show you the compassion and care he had for his employees.” Dana added, “He was always looking out for his employees. It was a huge comfort to work for him because he wanted to keep us safe and take care of our families. That was the last time I saw him. It was pretty amazing.”
Dana also talked about Bob’s love for life. Bob organized a bike tour in Palm Springs for all the company’s general managers. He and his wife Kathi went on the tour because they loved biking and the outdoors. They wanted the managers to learn about the country there and the environment.
Bob was remarkable for his deep love of people, and for emphasizing the importance of putting family first. He had a gift for making everyone feel as though they were his favorite. He liked to pound his fist on his heart and then move his fist toward someone else as if to say, “My heart to your heart.” At the same time, Bob was a private man. “We don’t know even half of what Bob did because he didn’t want the accolades or the publicity,” said Dana. “Bob just wanted to give back. He wanted to pitch in and help out. He didn’t just talk about it. He lived it.”
One of his favorite programs was something called Drivers of Excellence at every dealership. Each month, employees at each dealership would nominate someone as a Driver of Excellence for living the values of the company. Although the program is a little like an employee of the month program, the thing that made it different was that you didn’t have to be a top earner to get the award. At the end of the year, the company picks one person at each dealership from the year’s monthly winners. The company invites these winners and their plus one to go on a trip to an exclusive resort in Mexico. In 2019, there were about 106 people there from the dealerships, including Dana. Bob’s wife wasn’t able to go that year, but Bob decided to go anyway. He said, “I have to let those employees know how much they mean to me.” He was there the entire time by himself. Everyone who attended the trip lined up to get a picture with Bob and say thanks. It was as if he was a rock star there.
When asked about Bob’s greatest strengths as a businessman, Dana said, “He wasn’t afraid to be different, and to be forward-thinking and to think outside the box. He was steady and consistent. You never saw him panicked, riled, losing his temper, or freaked out about what to do. I never, ever heard him raise his voice. It still hasn’t hit me that he’s gone. He was the best. He created such an amazing foundation for us as we move forward. All we have to do is what he taught us to do, and we will be just fine.”
Dana sees a clear legacy from all three generations of Garff leadership. Bob’s father, Ken, was the pioneer who laid the framework of the company. In turn, Bob’s greatest legacy was his ability to care about people genuinely. He was a fatherly man who wanted to take care of people, and people responded to that by working hard for him because they knew he had their best interests at heart. That made it possible for him to make the company substantially bigger. Bob’s son John, who is currently leading the company, can make smart decisions and (when necessary) make hard decisions, too.
When thinking about Bob’s life, Dana said, “Our brand is that we are striving to be different. He was different, but what a great world it would be if we could all be like him: seeing the best in people, being kind and suspending judgment.”
This story appears in the 2019-2020 Issue 3 of the Utah Auto Dealer Magazine.
