About a decade ago, Noel Ginsburg’s company was in trouble. One of Intertech Plastics’ biggest customers wasn’t paying bills in hopes Intertech would just go out of business. The customer nearly got that wish. Intertech, an employer of hundreds of manufacturing workers, was “in a dire financial situation,” Ginsburg said.
But when Ginsburg approached his accounting firm, EKS&H, the response from its CEO, Bob Hottman, floored Ginsburg.
“He said, ‘Fees aren’t an issue. ’… ‘We’re here for you.’”
It might sound like a crazy business decision. That is, unless you’re in the business of helping people. As the 2015-16 chair of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce board of directors, Hottman takes the reins of an organization poised to make a strong push for its legislative agenda. He said he’s excited about laying a solid foundation to build upon for the next decade. And according to those who know him best, he’ll do it all while maintaining—or maybe because of—his singular focus on others.
“What really motivates me is serving other people,” he said. “Whether it’s internally in the firm or externally in the business community, I just like seeing other people succeed.”
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You’re not going to get anywhere heaping praise on Hottman. According to EKS&H’s COO, Steve Schenbeck, who has known Hottman for more than 30 years, Hottman is embarrassed by recognition.
“If you do praise him, he’ll immediately bring others into the fold and give everyone else credit,” he said. “He’s a true servant leader.”
After Hottman graduated from Colorado State University with a degree in business administration, he joined a national accounting firm. A few years later, he was part of a group that spun off on their own. In 1994, they combined with another firm. At the time, they had 50 employees. Now they have around 600.
The goal was never to grow big, Hottman said. It was to be an employer of choice, to attract great people who would turn around and attract great clients. EKS&H attracted great people, many say, largely due to the vision of those founding partners, including Hottman. Longtime client Ginsburg saw the external results of that when his manufacturing business was in trouble. Schenbeck said there have been countless internal examples as well. Any time an employee has a crisis, Hottman is ready to drop everything to be there for that person.
“There’s a greater need that he makes sure to take care of,” Schenbeck said.
It’s worked.
EKS&H has won the Denver Business Journal’s “Best Place to Work” award so many times, the firm was the Journal’s inaugural inductee into its Best Places to Work Hall of Fame. The company has also been recognized every year by Entrepreneur.com and the Great Place to Work Institute as one of the “25 Best Medium-Sized Companies to Work for in America.”
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“That all emanates from Bob,” Ginsburg said. “He sets the expectations. He lives those values. EKS&H is a reflection of him.”
Business is in Hottman’s blood. His father owned several businesses when he was growing up, including a dry cleaning service and filling station. Hottman enrolled at Colorado State University and majored in business administration. “Accounting seemed to come pretty naturally,” he said.
He may have had the aptitude, but at least initially he didn’t have the motivation. He was, in his own words, “an OK student” who attended a mere fraction of his first-year business calculus class. He ended with a D grade.
“That’s when I learned you do actually have to go to class.”
He seemed to get it together just fine. Those who know him describe a businessman on a level one notch above everyone else. Schenbeck points to a decision five years ago to renew a lease before it was up in order to take care of beneficial rates. It wasn’t flashy. It was just a good move, and Schenbeck said it has saved the firm hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Ginsburg said he’s stuck with Hottman and EKS&H not because they’re accurate and can craft a good audit. That’s what any accountant should be able to do. Ginsburg said Hottman stands out for his high-level strategic thinking. It’s not just accounting decisions. It’s insight into the implications of those decisions with an eye toward accomplishing a company’s larger goals. Ginsburg has pulled Hottman into all sorts of decisions at Intertech—everything from managing their debt structure, to their organizational framework, to whether a certain prospective hire would be a good fit.
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Ask Hottman what his favorite Denver team is and the answer is immediate.
“I’m an Avs fan always,” he said. “Love the Avs. Love hockey. It’s the sport where you can see the need for team play. At hockey in all levels, when someone scores, they celebrate as a team.”
Jena Hausmann has seen how that plays out in his work. The CEO of Children’s Hospital Colorado has worked with Hottman for years, both while he was on subcommittees for the hospital’s board of directors and when he chaired the board. During his tenure as chairman in 2012, Children’s added a new tower, which was a major strategic investment to expand capacity. It built out its campus. And it aggressively ramped up its patient safety efforts. It’s now one of the biggest children’s hospitals in the country and one of the safest, recently being recognized by the American Hospital Organization with its Quest for Quality Prize.
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Through it all, Hottman “tackled tough issues with grace,” Hausmann said. “He was thoughtful and wise. He wanted to balance all the facts and consider all perspectives.”
Adds Kelly Brough, the Chamber’s president and CEO, “He really brings this sense of, he’s in it with us. He helps us problem solve. He helps us think through issues.”
Sometimes leading a team means stepping away from everything you’ve known.
About 15 years ago, EKS&H was at a crossroads. It was big enough that it needed a fulltime manager. It was Hottman who took on that role.
To Schenbeck, the decision should have been hard for Hottman because he had to give up nearly all of his clients.
“For a CPA in public practice to give up their clients … well, it’s their security blanket,” Schenbeck said. “It’s where you feel your value. It’s how you feed your family.”
To Hottman, however, the choice was “fairly simple.” The way he saw it, he used to have many clients. Now he had one big one. The firm was his new client, and he was there to serve it.
Schenbeck said one of Hottman’s strongest attributes as a leader is his ability to see simplicity where others may be clouded by the complex. When EKS&H is trying to get a client, for instance, some might analyze data and pour over statistics. Hottman’s approach, Schenbeck said, might be to simply ask, “What are the client’s problems? What are their goals? And how do we help them get there?”
As may be expected, Hottman doesn’t overthink this attribute. It’s really quite simple, actually. “I just don’t think things have to be nearly as complicated as they seem. I try to get things down to simple problems. Then make a decision, and if it’s a bad one, correct it and move on.”
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There is plenty of opportunity for decision-making in the next year. Hottman said he will focus his chairmanship on the Chamber’s five critical issues: education, energy, transportation, water and engagement of independent voters. While the Chamber may have had to play some defense in recent years to ensure certain harmful measures were not passed, this year seems different.
“We’re going to push the legislature to enact policies that will be good for the business community, which in turn will be good for the entire community,” he said.
Take the National Western Center. The Chamber, Hottman said, is passionate about that as an economic driver and is actively supporting an $856 million ballot initiative to update the complex. On water, the Chamber is actively involved in the development of Colorado’s new water plan. And the Chamber will continue to push for changes to construction defect laws to so that builders will be able to build the affordable and attainable housing Denver desperately needs in order to attract and retain a quality workforce.
It’s not all about Hottman, of course, as he is the first to point out. As it is at EKS&H, so it will be at the Chamber. It’s never about him as a leader, he said. It’s about the team. It’s about pointing amazing talent in the right direction to achieve their goals.
“My role at both organizations is not at the top,” he said. “It’s at the bottom. It’s supporting the individuals of the organization so that they can be successful.”
James Carlson is a Denver-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in 5280 magazine, Eat This, Not That, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He works as the information resources coordinator for the Colorado Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel.