Prepared for Success: Steve Luyckx
Walsh provided foundation for Entrepreneur of the Year nominee
When Steve Luyckx began studying toward his master’s degree in finance at Walsh in 1988, he didn’t picture himself occupying a corner office. But in 2019, professional services network Ernst & Young (EY) nominated Luyckx for its annual Entrepreneur of the Year award, recognizing his work over the past decade as president and CEO of auto dealership technology company Open Dealer Exchange (ODE).
Luyckx’s journey to the executive’s chair has been fueled by an entrepreneurial spirit and passion for developing creative, common-sense solutions. While working in Chrysler’s (later DaimlerChrysler’s) financial arm after he graduated from Walsh in 1990, Luyckx viewed finance as an “enabler” for what he really enjoyed: working closely with the company’s dealers. He immediately identified numerous inefficiencies in the way dealerships operated, and he says he “attacked” what he recognized as outdated practices.
“I’m not going to sit here and pave a cow path,” Luyckx says. “I’m going to reinvent the wheel.” His leadership at DaimlerChrysler led to an invitation in 2009 to become the founding president of ODE, of Farmington Hills-based company that provides technological services to streamline systems at auto dealerships nationwide. Most notably, the company has led the charge to help dealerships go paperless, shifting their paperwork to cloud-based systems. But it also provides technological interfaces between dealers and credit bureaus, lenders, and aftermarket service providers.
The company started small, with just three employees including Luyckx. But today, it employs 163 and directly does business with more than 12,000 dealers, handling up to 50 transactions per second. “What happens behind the scenes is just unbelievable,” Luyckx says. “It would make anybody’s head spin.”
Luyckx has presided over the company’s explosive, successful growth by employing a people-focused mindset that embraces failure as a learning exercise. Luyckx says his experience at ODE has brought many challenges – and failures – but he says he and the company are better for them, and he seeks out employees who share that approach. Luyckx says “it meant a lot” to him to have EY salute his accomplishments at ODE.
“There’s a lot of tough lessons and a lot of tough days,” he says. “But to be recognized in your peer group that you’ve survived those tough days and you’ve delivered many of the things you’ve set out to deliver, it really was meaningful.”
Luyckx says his education at Walsh prepared him well for success in the corporate world, where mastery of one’s field can make or break an interaction. “When you’re sitting across the table and you don’t know your stuff, it will be minutes or seconds before the other party will know,” he says. “Walsh will prepare you so you will be knowledgeable.”
