WD-40 Company

One of the ways of doing that are values, potentially.

I remember talking to Gary Ridge, who's the former CEO and chairman of WD-40, who's been on the show.

I'm calling it a show now.

I was one of the first people to do

right? He came on twice and he flew over actually.

It was very sweet of him from the West Coast.

He came into the studio and he talked about values and they have six values, WD-40, which we all know is the iconic oil in a can.

And they have actually created a hierarchy, saying which value is number one, number two, number three, number four, number five, number six, because it allows anyone in that business to make critical decisions based on the values.

I think there's a lot to be said for that.

Gary Ridge, the former CEO and chairman emeritus for WD-40, talks about that.

He talks about, you know, they're a little oil can, right? But at the end of the day, their purpose is much bigger than that, right? Yeah.

And what they as a business can do to do that, right? And I love the fact that, you know, as a company, you shoot for a much bigger vision and what the impact of your individual little product or your individual little piece can have on that and helping people understand.

Okay, well, I'll give you a couple of examples that are extremely different as well, but a couple that I've worked with who do it really well.

WD-40 Company.

which is a DIY lubricant spade used by the trade as well.

Now they are, innovators and you may think well okay their their history came i don't know if you know much about the company their history came from rockets and water displacement and rockets going into space really disruptive interesting space when they were doing that and they realized all these applications through diy trade automotive agricultural they've continued to evolve and develop new products but what is brilliant about that company is they have in essence they are the hoover of their industry they are the they're the category descriptor it'd be very easy just to trade off that but they are so close to the customer, looking at customer trends all the time, trying to preempt and understand what customers need next.

I thought my career had peaked at 25 years old and I was applying for all these jobs, crate and barrel Starbucks.

What is that? WD 40 company.

I even applied to work at a shipyard as a buyer of ship parts.

at a shipyard.

We have a leadership book club.

The next book that we're reading is by Gary Ridge, who was the CEO of WD-40 for many years.

But working on personal financial literacy, then working on open book management, those are all things that helped prepare us for this transaction.

And once we did the transition, it was like, oh, now we get why you're always saying own it.